Destined for War: America & China | Graham Allison | Talks at Google

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GRAHAM ALLISON: So thanks very much for coming. And I look forward to a lively discussion. I was-- I guess this is the 13th day of the rollout of the new book. It's called "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides' Trap?" I was out on the West Coast last week, actually did an event in Silicon Valley with the Andreesen Horowitz folks, to which some Google people came. And I mentioned at the event that basically I'm a big fan of Silicon Valley, and it's even more-- it's Boston based equivalents, since this is where I live, and the ways in which you're blowing my mind almost every day, or every week, or every month, with products that I couldn't have imagined, of which Google is kind of a poster child. But I hope that what I'm going to do in the next 20 minutes is expand your mind a little bit about some things that you may not have thought about, but that which are likely to have great consequence for your lives and for actually your activity. So most of you are too young to imagine that there could be wars between great powers. I teach at Harvard, as I've done for a long time. Students say, well no, no, that's a last century thing. It's been seven decades since World War II without great power war, so great power wars have been consigned to the dustbin of history, move on. To which the answer is that's historically ignorant. And this seven decade without great power war is historically an anomaly. Indeed there's a great essay written by a Yale historian, John Gaddis, about the so-called long peace, and how anomalous it is. So before I'm done, I hope I will have persuaded you that if that's what you thought when you came in, you should think again, that wars between great powers are possible, maybe even a lot more possible than you would have imagined. And if there were to be a great power war, your lives will change fundamentally. What you're working on will change fundamentally. What you're thinking about will change fundamentally. You might even be drafted to have to go fight somewhere where you wouldn't like to be. And if that seems incredible, you should try to think back 100 years ago. I think one of the ways of locating yourself is to think what was going on 100 years ago today, or this month. A hundred years ago, Europe was consumed by the first great war, a war that was so devastating that at the end of it, historians felt obliged to create an entirely new category. That's why if you Google it, it says World War, and it's was called World War I. Now World War I was not just that it encompassed so many people and so many countries, but that it was so ultimately devastating. At the end of it, about 25 million people had perished. And the Americans actually had just entered World War I two months ago, in April of 1970. So you can go back and look at it, and think a little bit about it, and think, well, what if I were living in 1970. What would I be thinking about? What would be my orientation? What would I be having to work on? What [INAUDIBLE]? So in any case, that's the big picture. This is about China, and the US, and today. And I'm going to do three questions, three big questions. I'll give you three tweet versions of an answer, so that you've got the picture. And then I'll do a little elaboration on each. So first question, what is the geopolitical event of your lifetime to date? So let's imagine you were born in 1990, let's say, a little after or a little before. So over the last 25 years. What's the big, big, big, geopolitical event? And the tweet version of the answer is that it's the rise of China. The second question, what will be the geo strategic challenge for the rest of your professional life, for today, and as far as any eye can see? And the tweet version is that that's the impact of the rise of China on the US and the international order that the US constructed in the aftermath of World War II, and has maintained, that principally accounts for the fact that there's been seven decades without any great power war. So the impact of the rise of China on the US and the international order. And the third question is the subtitle of the book, can America and China escape Thucydides' trap? And the answer is-- excuse me for being professorial real, but that's my job-- no, and yes. So what about no? No-- if we, in the relations between the US and China, this year, and next year, and the year after, only see business as usual, then we should expect history as usual. And history as usual in this case would be a war and it would be catastrophic. And that's pretty plain for everybody to see. So that's no, OK. But yes, as the saying goes, only those who fail to study history are condemned to repeat it. So we're not required by some iron law of history to repeat mistakes that people made that led them into World War I. We're not required to repeat mistakes that lead into World War II. And we can learn from the cases in which states have successfully averted war, lessons that we can apply in the current instance. So that's my three tweet versions, a little bit more on the lot. So start with Thucydides. For most American audiences, I've been now 13 days doing this. I have a little bit of experience, especially for radio call-in shows. Yes, this is multi-syllabic. I know that in your Google efforts to communicate, you can get people down to a single syllables, or at least two. And yes, it's a mouthful. And it's a little difficult to pronounce. But a group like this should know who Thucydides is. If he's not part of your mental canon, part of your library that helps orient you, you've missed a big thing and a big opportunity. So just to make sure we all know how to pronounce his name, let me remind you, it's Thu-ci-di-dees-- Thucydides. So let's say it out loud together-- Thucydides, Thucydides, Thucydides. So you should not stumble over that. Yes, multi-syllabic, yes complicated, but he should be somebody you know. And actually, in this wonderful world today, you can go download Thucydides "Great History of the Peloponnesian War," for free and just read the first 100 pages. And if it doesn't knock your socks off, I'll be surprised. I'll be very surprised, brilliant book. Thucydides, who is that? Well, you can Google him. You'll find he was the founder and father of history. So he's the person who defined the discipline of history, which is getting the facts about what happened right so that other people can read about it them, and learn what happened, and learn the lessons from them. So the founder of history, he wrote about the conflict, the competition and then conflict between the two great city-states of classical Greece, Athens and Sparta. And he wrote most famously, "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made the war inevitable." So Thucydides' trap, which is a term I coined, takes Thucydides insight, and Thucydides' trap says when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, basically shit happens-- alarm bells should sound, danger ahead. I looked in this book at the last 500 years of history. And I give you in the appendix little potted plant versions of 16 cases, where if you go to the Thucydides' Trap website, which is up live, we're actually inviting additional cases. These are 16 cases over the last 500 years in which a rising power threatened to displace a major ruling power. In 12 of these cases, the outcome was war. In four of the cases, the outcome was no war. So Thucydides' line about inevitable, that's an exaggeration, that's hyperbole, exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. He just means likely, very likely. So 12 of the cases ended in war, four of the cases ended in no war. And what the book does is try to look at both the failures and the successes for lessons that might be relevant for us today. So to think about this dynamic-- actually this came up in the discussion last week in Silicon Valley-- I think for you all, probably you should think of an incumbent and a upstart, a disruptive upstart. So what happens? So basically, a rising power feels like I'm bigger, I'm stronger, my interests deserve more weight. I deserve more say, I deserve more sway. Actually, the current arrangements are discriminating against me, because they were established before I was even a player. So things need to adjust. I'm being confined. So think of Uber and the taxi industry. Think of Google when it was an upstart. Actually, Google now is interesting because, you live on both sides of this fence. You're a upstart in some domains, where you're trying to disrupt some incumbent, and at the same time you're looking over your shoulder where you're an incumbent in some spaces, finding Baidu or somebody, coming to see what they can do. So what does the ruling power think? Well, the ruling power thinks this is natural. The way things are it's good, maybe even the way they should be. The status quo has provided an environment in which actually you, upstart, have had a chance to grow up. So we say to the Chinese, quite reasonably, how in the world have you had seven decades of peace in which you've had the opportunity to grow in the manner in which you have? I mean, actually, it's because of us, because of the order we provided. You should be grateful. But in general, upstarts are not grateful for the conditions that the incumbent provided And in general, the incumbent, their entreaties don't end up having that much impact. So think about this as a general dynamic. Indeed, I even described it in the book as-- if you can see-- this is a version of hierarchical dominance systems that you can see in the animal kingdom. Take for example gorillas, with an alpha gorilla, who's the dominant, and the want to be. You can even see in families, as one child who's shorter than the other one, all of a sudden sprouts. And pretty soon, the taller child, when they sit down at the dinner table, talks more, thinks he has more to say. Maybe even wants to discuss whether the bedrooms have been appropriately allocated, who knows what. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] - Well, first, I want to make a comment about this track. I find it difficult, because I don't know how to pronounce that name. - You know, the Thucydides trap that people talk about. - The so-called Thucydides trap. - The Thucydides trap. - Thucydides trap. - Thucydides trap. - Thucydides trap. - The Thucydides trap. [END PLAYBACK] GRAHAM ALLISON: OK, so, we can have fun pronouncing it. We put up in conjunction at the website, look who's talking about Thucydides and the various ways in which they mush it up. But this group is going to be sophisticated. And when somebody else is pausing over the title of the book, you tell them Thucydides. That's not hard to say-- Thucydides. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] - The committee meets today to consider the nomination of General James Mattis to be the Secretary of Defense of the United States. - I thank both Senator Nunn and Senator Cohen for being here. - He's probably the only one here at this table who can hear the words Thucydides trap and not have to go to Wikipedia. - Of course, Secretary Cohen has insulted every member of this committee by suggesting that we don't readily understand that. - We're going to have to manage that competition between us and China. There's another piece of wisdom from antiquity that says fear, honor, and interest always seem to be the root causes of why a nation chooses to go to hostilities. [END PLAYBACK] GRAHAM ALLISON: Well, that's another hot line from two Thucydides "Peloponnesian War," why do nations go to war? Interests, fear, honor, and respect, that I should be given the deference that I'm due. This idea, this concept, as I published an article about it about four years ago, and then I've been working on this book, five years in the making-- Xi Jinping, the President of China is very interested in this idea and argues about it or discusses it often, insisting, rightly, that it's not necessary to be caught in Thucydides trap. And President Obama has opined on the subject as well. We're still waiting to see what we hear from President Trump, though his National Security Adviser, H.R. McMaster, as well as the Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, are quite familiar with the idea. And I've actually discussed it with them. So that's the basic idea. Thucydides trap, a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power. In general, bad things happen, but not necessarily. So that's the big intro. Let me be very quick about a little bit on the rise of China, and then a little bit more about what to do. So go back to the first question, the geopolitical event of your lifetime, the rise of China. So some of you will be familiar with this bridge. I'm very familiar with it since it connects the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School, and often produces a traffic jam that I've spent too much time in. So renovation of this bridge began, the discussion of it, while I was still dean at the Kennedy School. I quit being dean in 1988. The construction project actually began in 2012. It was a two year project. Then it was announced to be a three year project, then a four year project. They've given up announcing the completion date. So now if you go to the website, it just says question mark. And it's already three times over budget. There's a bridge in Beijing that's called Sanyuan Bridge. I've been across this bridge. Actually, I'll go cross it next week when I'm in China. They began to renovate this bridge in 2015. It's three times larger than the Anderson Bridge. How long does it take to complete the renovation? Take a guess. How long? How long? How much? 43 hours. You can watch it. Go to YouTube. Forty three hours, and see the timeline on it. Now, of course, they work hard, and they work at night. But if they would come and fix the Anderson Bridge now, I would pay. And I think some of you have seen the BU Bridge or your own versions of this. So that's China. So a country that in 1990, when you-- about when you were born, or a few years after-- didn't appear on any international league chart. By 2014, it was declared the largest economy in the world by the best yardstick for measuring and comparing national economies, purchasing power parity. And on the current trajectory will be half again larger than the US in 2024. What? This doesn't make any sense. So in my class at Harvard, I give people a quiz with 26 indicators. This is an abbreviated version from the book. So when will China become number one? Auto maker, trading nation, middle class, billionaires, fastest supercomputer, AI, primary engine of economic growth. Generally, Harvard students guessed 2040, 2050, not in my lifetime. Then I give them a second chart, which says already. Basically, all this already happened. Vaclav Havel, who was the President of the Czech Republic, has a great line that I quote in the book. He says things have happened so fast that we have not yet had time to be astonished. So if you have not seen China in your face, you are not looking. If you haven't seen China in your space, just wait. Because in every domain, the Chinese people have awakened, they are emerging. They're proud of what they're doing. And all the lines about, well, they can only copy, I would say go look at Alibaba's pay system. Only copies, I don't think so. Well, they can only-- go, take your line only, and go look around. And it mainly is because I think you haven't looked to see. This is extremely creative people. I think they're emerging with a lot of enthusiasm. They're very hungry. And I think everywhere, in every way, you're going to see the impact of China. So that puts me to the second question that I started with, what's the great geo strategic challenge? And it's the impact, the impact, of the rise of China on the US and the international order. So I was testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee about this. A former student of mine is the ranking Democrat, Jack Reed. And he said, you've got to make this simple, very simple. So I sent him 10 pages. And he said, no, simple, simple. I sent him five pages. He said, nope. So I finally did a cartoon. So this is a seesaw. I imagine, this is now 2004. US is on one end of the seesaw. Chinese is on the other end. At this point, China's about 20% the size of the US. 2004, excuse me, you were alive then, even awake, yeah? 2014, China is equal to the US. 2024, substantially larger. So, basically, think of the seesaw just moving. Now in the Obama administration, the big debate about Asia, and the thing that President Obama features actually in his swan song about what was accomplished in the Obama foreign policy, was the so-called pivot to Asia. You've heard about that. So go Google it. The pivot to Asia said we're putting too much weight on our left foot, in the Middle East, where we were fighting wars. And we need to lighten there, to put more weight on our right foot, in Asia, where the future's going to be. So there we were trying to do this. And I say in the book, and I think this is correct, that all the time we're arguing about that, we don't seem to notice that our feet have just lifted off the ground. So this is a tectonic shift in basically the principal substructure of power in the World, economic power. It's not the only measure. I give you a number of other measures in the book. So that's been happening. And the impact of that on China, as it emerges and feels its oats, and the US, as we think, wait a minute, we are the dominant power in the world. We have provided the international order. The international rule-based order has provided seven decades of peace. China should take its place in this and be comfortable. That's what we say. But the Chinese say, excuse me, we have something to say about this. We were not consulted when these rules were written. We didn't set the set of arrangements. So just to conclude here, as we see the impact of the rise of China on the US, the place where this comes the closest to coming to a head is in North Korea today. So if I were picking a path from here to war-- I have a chapter in the book called "From Here to War, Five Scenarios" to get from where we are now to a war between-- with thousands of Americans and Chinese killing each other-- with no leaps, only short steps, step by step. But the one that's most dangerous is North Korea. Most of you will remember that Xi Jinping met with President Trump in Mar-a-Lago about six weeks ago. At that meeting the principal message from President Trump was North Korea is a threat we are not going to tolerate and you've got to solve this problem. So what's the issue? The issue is as follows. North Korea, this isolated impoverished state, will, in the months ahead, not longer than a year or two, for sure, test an ICBM that will allow it to deliver a nuclear warhead against San Francisco or Los Angeles. That's hard to believe, but that's a fact. North Korea already can deliver a nuclear warhead against Japan. North Korea can already delivered a nuclear warhead against South Korea. So that's already happened. That's already a fact. So in the months ahead, it's going to conduct tests that will allow it to deliver, or it's somehow going to be interrupted. So when President Trump first heard of this, it was in the handoff between President Obama and President-Elect Trump. Trump said I never heard of this before in my life. And the answer, most Americans haven't. But Obama said, I'm sorry, but that's the facts, that's the problem you're going to have to face. Trump went out immediately and tweeted not going to happen. Maybe Obama let these things happen, and maybe Bush let these things happen, and maybe Clinton let these things happen, but not Trump. This is not going to happen. And every day since then, he's been saying and repeating. So at the Mar-a-Lago summit, what he said to Xi Jinping was you can solve this problem. But if you don't solve this problem, I can solve this problem. But if I do, you're not going to like it. And then he served chocolate cake at the opening dinner, excused himself, and went out and announced that the US had launched 50 cruise missiles against Syria, just in case you missed the point. So can the US deliver cruise missiles against North Korea to prevent it conducting tests that could launch ICBMs? Absolutely. Can we do that successfully? No question about it. The question is what does North Korea do in response? And the most likely response would be an attack on Seoul. They'd kill a million people in 24 or 48 hours. Whereupon, the US will then, with South Korea, destroy all the additional artillery and rockets that could kill even more people in South Korea. Whereupon, we have the second Korean War. And most of you probably don't even remember from your history books what happened in the first Korean War. In the first Korean War, the US was marching rapidly towards China's border, going to unify the country under South Korea's control. The Chinese entered the world, beat the US back down the peninsula to the 38th parallel, which is the dividing line today. And in that war, thousands of Americans and thousands of Chinese died. So could we see a second Korean War? I think, God forbid, we could. Now could you imagine, the US and China, Trump and Xi, sitting down and saying let's be adults and figure out a solution to this problem? I think you could. But this problem arises in the context of this Thucydides dynamic, in which, because we look at the Chinese and think really what they want is for us to just be out of here. And that is what they want. I mean, I spent two days doing a post-mortem on Mar-a-Lago with some of the Chinese and some of the Americans who were there. And they said if you were not there, we wouldn't have this problem. So just leave. And we say, wait a minute. South Korea is one of the most successful countries in the world. South Korea is a poster child of what we are hoping to see in the world. South Korea is a democracy. South Korea is a market economy. South Korea has the 13th largest economy in the world. It's a fantastic success story. We're not going anywhere. This is part of the order that's the order of Asia. And if we were to walk away from there, what's going to happen to the whole international structure? So under those conditions is zero trust. Everything, each thing any party-- either of the parties does is misinterpreted. So you try to do something helpful, and I think you have an ulterior motive. And then external events, like Kim Jong-un deciding to launch a missile, it triggers a set of actions and reactions that get people to where they don't want to go. So to conclude, what is the big idea? Big idea, Thucydides' trap. Rising power threatens to displace ruling power, basically serious structural stress that allows external events, or external actors, who would otherwise be inconsequential or easily manageable to trigger cascades of consequences that get you to places you don't want to go. And the big takeaway from this is we should be serious about avoiding preventable wars. If this war happens-- I pray it won't-- but if a war between the US and China happens in your lifetime, it will not be because of the iron laws of history. It will be because of mistakes that people made. And because of mistakes that they make that they could have avoided. So the object of the book is to try to help stimulate a great debate about what we should be doing in a more imaginative fashion to get beyond the business as usual, which is how I characterize what we have been doing for the last 20 years. So that's once over lightly. I'm happy to take the arguments and discussions on all topics. AUDIENCE: It seems like it's easiest to get concrete around a specific scenario. So it's valuable for you to have brought up the possibility of a second Korean War. The first Korean War, as you described it, with China having entered it, and being many Americans and Chinese dying, that was not due to Thucydides' trap, right? GRAHAM ALLISON: It's just another war for another set of dynamics, yes. AUDIENCE: So it seems like there's nothing that-- the motives would be similar if it were to happen again. And it's not related to the fact that China is a growing power, right? If the scenario played out as you say as you said, that's not because they're a growing power and they think they need to change the world order. It's just territorial issues, the same as it would be in the first Korean War, right? GRAHAM ALLISON: Well, yes and no. So I would say it certainly is a very good question. So in the first case-- just again, for people that don't remember, and you obviously have read about it-- but, basically, in 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea, just out of the blue. That the country was divided where it is currently. North Korea attacked South Korea, and almost captured the whole peninsula. Americans came to the rescue at the very last minute. MacArthur was in Japan with a division of troops, because this was just five years after the end of World War II. The American troops pushed the North Koreans right back up the peninsula and across the 38th parallel, which is the dividing line today, as it had been before, and were rapidly approaching the Chinese border. The Americans thought it was inconceivable that China, which Mao was just barely consolidating control of China after a long civil war, would think of attacking the US. The US was the world supremo. Five years earlier, we had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just next door, to end World War II. So the idea that some little country, 150th our size, would attack us was inconceivable. They did, and lo and behold, as I said, they beat us and pushed us back down. That had nothing to do with any Thucydides dynamic, for sure, for sure. In this case, if I imagine we didn't have that Thucydides dynamic, which creates such a degree of mistrust, and misunderstanding, and makes it so difficult for adult behavior, I believe that we could, China and America, resolve the North Korean problem fairly easily. So in the book, I even try to imagine an adult supervisor. I do this in my class at Harvard from time to time. I say, remember in international relations, there are no adult supervisors. This is a jungle. So there's nobody superior to Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Nobody that can just say guys, hello. But let's imagine there were. So there's a Martian strategists, and she parachutes down to Mar-a-Lago, and sits down, and says guys, sit down for a minute. I'm just going to tell you a few things. She could easily say this problem can be solved. This is this little pipsqueak country. It's going to drag the two of you into a war? This would be stupid, I mean really stupid. Now, you would have to stand back a little bit. You probably would have to adjust some things that you would otherwise imagine you want to hold onto, but let's talk about ways of solving this. So if this was Britain and the US, and the problem was created by Ireland, this would be easily solved. But in the cases in which you have a Thucydides dynamic, external events are able to have this exaggerated impact. AUDIENCE: Thank you. GRAHAM ALLISON: Please, sir. AUDIENCE: Your book and your talk raises a whole set of issues around China and the US as actors. And one view is to think of those issues assuming that China and the US are each monolithic actors. I want to offer you a whole collection of new issues, and let you take a pick of which ones to tackle, that drill down a layer. The US is not monolithic. There's multiple power centers. There's multiple political divisions and personalities, individually. I don't know about China, but I assume there's something below the surface there. When you talk about we can solve this, we can learn the lessons of history, who are the we? What are the power centers? Who needs to be educated? And when you look at your table of 16 cases of which went to war, and which did not, what do we learn about the dynamics of the internal politics and powers of those nations and how they contribute to the outcome? GRAHAM ALLISON: You see me smiling because actually the first book I ever wrote called "Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crises," which some of you probably have looked at, makes up this argument that while mostly we think about international relations as if it were a game between two monolithic chess players, or billiard balls, it's sometimes said, that in fact desegregating the actors to the large organizations of which they're components, or even in a third frame that I offer, desegregating them into the individual human beings who are players, who may have quite contrary views, are also necessary if you're going to try to understand the actions of this so-called monolith. So this book has model one, model two, and model three, and shows how by using them, you can better understand what happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis. So in this case, I love the idea of taking them and working your way down. The book does not do that. It says-- again the book would not be 270 pages, it would be considerably longer. But in the case of the US, obviously it matters a whole lot who is the president, because he's the biggest player and gets the biggest set of choices. So if I go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis just for that analog, John Kennedy was president in his first-- in April of 1961, four months into office. He authorized an invasion of Cuba, this so-called Bay of Pigs, which was catastrophic. A bunch of Cuban refugees trained by CIA and was CIA instructors invaded Cuba and were captured. And it was a total mess. A year and a half later, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the US found the Soviet Union installing nuclear tipped missiles in Cuba, he conducted an exercise, which was still one of the great performances and brilliant imaginative type diplomacy. But if the Kennedy of the first year-- if the Cuban Missile Crisis had occurred in John F. Kennedy's first year, there's no question whatever we would have gone to nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Because a novice, even a novice who's been a senator, trying to operate the US government doesn't really understand how things work. Now, in the case of Trump, you have a person who doesn't know anything about the government before, and having to learn entirely new situations. I say you have him. Then you have the principal players around him. And I think there's a lot of comfort in the fact that in H.R. McMaster, the National Security Adviser, you've got a seasoned professional who's very independent minded, and Jim Mattis, who we saw in the video, you've got a seasoned warrior, who's very professional. In Tillerson, you've got a person who's got a significant international vision. So they're are also players. You then have the military establishment. The military establishment has developed capabilities that are just magical. I'm a Defense Department type. So the US has the finest military that the world has ever seen. Any target, anywhere in the world that Google can find, we can destroy. And actually, we can do a better job than that in terms of the coordinates. So that's for destroying things. So we have a whole toolbox of hammers, and we can nail any target. Unfortunately, most of the problems in the world cannot be solved as if they were a nail with a hammer. That's a problem. That's a problem when you end up having your best hope in the structure of the government's decision making military people, because military people or defense types come thinking look, excuse me, we have hammers, we need to find a nail. So I would say that's for desegregating the US side of it. On the Chinese side, Xi Jinping, If we just take the year ahead, he is the Supremo in an authoritarian system. But it's not totalitarian, and not everything, not all power runs through him. His big idea this year is getting through what's called the 19th Party Congress, which is an event that will occur this fall, where he's going to win a second term of office, a second five-year term as president. But more importantly, he's going to try to put in place a standing committee, which are seven people who were supposed to be the collective leadership, even though he's pretty much excluded them now. And he's called the COE, the Chief of Everything. So he tries to run everything, and all the power verticals are going to him. He's going to have a standing committee, in which there is no obvious successor. So that he'll be able to look at runway of 15 or even 20 years, because he has an agenda that he thinks is going to be that long to run. So you would have to desegregate that. You look at this, and you say, in this structure, is there anybody who thinks war on the Korean peninsula is a good idea? No. Is this a good thing? Yes. So there's not one person in China who thinks war with the US is a good idea. That's great. Nor in the US, with China. So we could work our way down this piece by piece, and I'd be happy to talk about it after, because it's a topic that excites my imagination. But in this book, I try to do it-- I just have to do it at the first level. Please sir-- AUDIENCE: Not everybody at Google was born after 1990. GRAHAM ALLISON: Thank goodness, yes. Actually, I had Eric Schmidt over visiting me a month ago, and he said that yes, there were a few stars that were, not my age, but in any case, your age. AUDIENCE: So one thing that bothers me, or has worried me for a long time, is the so-called long peace. The fact that the whole generation that had any experience at all with World War II is pretty much gone. So we have nobody left who has any direct experience with World War. And just on the topic of the American military magic, you know one of the wars of my lifetime was the Vietnam War, where the sense of American arrogance about the capabilities of the military was pretty well shattered, although we seem to have lost a lot of those lessons in Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever. That's just a throwaway comment. That's not my real question. My real question has to do with nuclear weapons, actually. And you know, I grew up during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. And by the way, the key geopolitical event of my lifetime before the rise of China was clearly the collapse of the Soviet Union. That is by far the most important thing. But I vividly remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and how frightening it was to everybody. And how, you know, close we actually came to nuclear war at that time. My sense though is that throughout the Cold War, mutually assured destruction really did work. Maybe you disagree with this. You're an expert on this subject, I'm not. But really kind of did work, in the sense that whenever things got close enough to really threaten nuclear war, both sides ultimately did back off. And my sense is that it was that understanding-- and again, people at that time knew about Hiroshima, had been through that-- but that was the understanding that this would be the end of the world, basically, at least the world as we knew it. So here's my question, in the rising conflict between the US and China, is there still a sense that nuclear weapons provide a sort of mutually assured destruction that could play a role in keeping the lid on, so to speak, in terms of a new, really, totally destructive World War breaking out? If it does, and if we're not really likely to see nuclear war develop between the US and China, although of course, North Korea is a complete wildcard. But if it does, then-- I haven't read your book, you've said you have scenarios advancing toward war-- what kind of war are we looking at if it's a war that will not be a totally destructive nuclear war? Is this going to be a war that's a cyber war? Or is it going to be a war that's actually a military arms war? GRAHAM ALLISON: I've got it. Good, it's a great question and I could go on for a long time about it. But given that we have a number, let me try to be brief. Your first point, just your preface, I agree with. Because it's been so long since there has been a war, and all the people who saw great wars, basically are gone, there's a temptation to think wars have been consigned to the dustbin of history, as I said, and therefore complacency. So complacency, a very big worry. Secondly, arrogance in the US military is absolutely, absolutely a problem. And actually, in this rise versus rule, the rising power thinks our forces are so great that nobody can possibly challenge them. We say, for example, you know, China, my goodness, we've been investing five times as much as they have per year for the last 25 years. So they can't catch up. But we failed to notice, you don't have to play the game-- you don't have to replicate. You can play it asymmetrically. So I build a billion dollar, multibillion dollar, carrier. And you develop a million dollar missile that can kill it. So if you can play million dollar missiles against my billion dollar carriers. China is not investing in all of the legacy systems that the US continues building and buying. So I would say again, there's a danger there. But the fundamental question, mutual assured destruction, the answer is yes. In the case of the US and the Soviet Union, the fact that once we had each developed arsenals so big that after you attack me and do your best to disarm me, I can still kill you, that creates what's called mutually assured destruction. And that becomes a fundamental fact about life for the two of us, if we keep it in mind, and if we deal with it. And that's now a fact, not just in our relations with Russia, but in our relations with China. Now in the book, I described this, as if-- in a grotesque analogy, but if you think about it-- it's as if you and I wake up tomorrow morning, and we each have our head, we have our arms, but our backbone and our respiratory systems have been unified. And we therefore are Siamese twins. And now you look at me and you say, well, this guy is evil. This guy is dangerous. This guy is delirious. This guy deserves to be strangled. But then you think about, well, if I strangle him, in the next minute, I will have committed suicide. So it's like a suicide pact. But one that you can't get out of. In that case, yes, indeed, as in the Cold War, that creates a caution, even a willingness to compromise. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, that obtained in 1962. In 1962, to prevent the Soviet Union from placing nuclear tipped missiles in Cuba, John Kennedy ran what he thought was a one in three chance of nuclear war to prevent the missiles being there. Say what? We took a chance of nuclear war to prevent your adversary from doing something. The answer is yes, I would. He did. So that's a fact. Under conditions of mutual assured destruction, can parties take risks that don't have a certainty attached to them, especially if the other party is prepared to yield? In fact, I discuss this a little bit in the book about-- this is basically, if you model it in game theory, it's a chicken game. If we both know that the collision between the two cars will be destruction, then each of us have an incentive to swerve. And if I think you're more likely to swerve than I am, then I don't need to swerve. And then under those conditions, occasionally we end up with a collision that kills us all. So that's the path on this. I think, was this gentleman next? Please-- AUDIENCE: This is a slightly more lighthearted comment. I hadn't heard the name Thucydides in a little while. And I went to the Wonder Woman movie on Saturday, and he gets name checked, you know, very explicitly. You know, Wonder Woman mentions his name. GRAHAM ALLISON: Oh, I didn't know that, that's fantastic. AUDIENCE: Yeah, he says-- somebody says, you know, peace is merely an armistice in an endless war. And she goes Thucydides. And so-- GRAHAM ALLISON: Fantastic. AUDIENCE: And so, just thinking is there an opportunity for you to capitalize on this new-found publicity to maybe tie in-- hey, you want to know more about what Thucydides actually said-- GRAHAM ALLISON: You just sold a ticket to Wonder Woman. I'm going to go see. And if we're going to be-- in fact, here's a request for any of you. So I'm absolutely serious about that set of ideas. I'm passionate about the ideas in the book, about the danger that we face and about the necessity to recognize the danger to motivate you to doing something about. So if you have any good ideas, of which I've just heard a great idea, for trying to promote the book, first if you can do it, do it. And if you have a suggestion that somebody else can do it, send it to us. So I've got this one, yes. AUDIENCE: Great. GRAHAM ALLISON: Actually, at the Silicon Valley last week, a fellow who used to work for me is a research assistant, who's now the chief revenue officer for Facebook, David Fisher, said, gee, I have an idea how Facebook can do this. And I said, this is way beyond me. This is not my space. So he's giving me six ideas. So please, I'm eager for suggestions. If you can do it, just do it. But if you have an idea that we can do it, you know, I'm game. Thanks, I didn't know that. Now, I have new respect for Wonder Woman. Yes-- AUDIENCE: Thank you for coming. A really interesting talk. I wanted to get your thoughts on Ian Bremmer's theory of G0. I don't know if you've heard of it? GRAHAM ALLISON: Yes. AUDIENCE: The basic idea is that China is not interested in being the new ruler of the international order, like the US was. Just wanted to get your thoughts on that. GRAHAM ALLISON: Very good point. And in fact, Ian did his podcast with me, you know, he interviewed me for his podcast, whenever it was. Somewhere in this 13 day period, so if you go to his thing, you'll see his back and forth on this. He likes this idea a lot. I would say his idea is right. China, there's no evidence that China today is thinking about replacing the US as the global leader. In fact, China has been actually puzzled by the extent to which it has been pushed forth to be the global leader by the American exit. So at Davos this year, the US had basically trashed the so-called TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership and the global trading system. And Xi Jinping was standing there. And so people said, well, you're the leader of the Liberal economic order. And he's looking, thinking, wait a minute, this is me? Then the spotlight comes on, yeah, this is me. China is the most protectionist economy in the world. China is the most mercantilistic economy in the world. And here's Mrs. Merkel and everybody else celebrating Xi Jinping as the leader of this because the Americans just retreated from the field. So he will bask in the-- and the same thing in the climate space. I would say that's even more so. I mean basically, China is the number one greenhouse gas emitter. China does 70% of its energy from coal. But if you want to tell me that I'm the leader of the Green Revolution, you know, that's OK with me. So Mrs. Merkel and Xi were in Germany a couple of weeks ago, and she's saying, OK. But does China aspire to be a global leader in the sense of playing a role the way the US has done in attempting to manage affairs everywhere? No. That's on the one hand. On the other hand, in Asia, what about Asia? So in the book, I discuss this. So the world's premier China watcher was Lee Kuan Yew. Lee Kuan Yew was the founder and builder of Singapore. He took a little rock, and by the end of-- after a generation of running it, it's wealthier per capita than the US. So it's a fantastic megalopolis. Some of you have been there. It's an amazing society. Now it's got six or seven million people. So Lee Kuan Yew spent a lot of time studying China because he knows Singapore survives at China's forbearance. It's a big country right beside it. And also, all of the leaders of China since [INAUDIBLE] Xiaoping, when they started their march to the market, have consulted Lee Kuan Yew as kind of-- he's been the one that led the way. And Singapore's looked like a model. So he's had thousands of hours talking to Chinese leaders, including Xi Jinping. And I asked him, and I say this in the book, are China's current leaders, including Xi, serious about displacing the US as the predominant power in Asia in the foreseeable future. Now if you go read my old professor, Henry Kissinger's book, you'll find in 700 pages, it says it's complicated-- on the one hand, on the other hand, and so forth. Lee Kuan Yew-- of course, why not? Who could imagine otherwise? How could they not aspire to be predominant in Asia? Indeed, if you look at the Chinese narrative about what's going on, which has some merit, they say for 5,000 years we were the dominant power. So they're line about making China great again, they mean again, just back to where we were. There was this 200 year anomaly when the Westerners came, and invaded us, and imperialized us, and exploited us. But that period is now over. We are reemerging back to where we were before. And as we reemerge, you're not supposed to be where you are. You're not supposed to be the arbiter of events in the South China Sea. Why should the US Navy decide who can build an island, who owns an island? I mean, it's not-- as I say in the book-- one of my Chinese friends says, go look at your map. Look what's adjacent to the Chinese border. It's called South China Sea. It's not called American Sea. This other one called East China Sea. Why is it called that? Because Chinese see Chinese seas. That's our sea. That's like the Caribbean is for us. And if you want even a more shocking version of this, I have a great chapter in the book on what if Xi's China were just like us. Americans love to lecture other countries about why they should be more like us. I've given this lecture many times when I was working for the US government. I imagine what if China were just like the US, who when we were emerging into what Teddy Roosevelt was supremely confident was going to be in American century, the beginning of the 20th Century. And if you look and see what we did, the idea that the Spanish were in Cuba. He called that an abomination. On the first occasion we got, when a mysterious explosion occurred on a ship in the Havana Harbor, we declared war on Spain. And we beat them quickly. And we liberated Cuba. And we took Puerto Rico. And we took Guam as a spoil of war. And a whole bunch of else that follows from that. So I would say watch this space, yes. Let me take this last one, and then I got to run because I'm got to go to the airport. Please-- AUDIENCE: Thank you so much, first of all. It was extremely interesting. My one question, and I'm going to try to phrase this in a positive light-- GRAHAM ALLISON: Please. AUDIENCE: --is around as you said, it's been business as usual for the past 20 years, and business as usual going forward would lead us to this, into this trap, and this war. We could all probably agree that there's nothing business as usual going on right now with how President Trump is leading this country. Is there an argument to be made in a positive light that maybe that is what can break us out of leading down this path and trying to take, like I said, this not business as usual, and moving in the right direction? GRAHAM ALLISON: Good, a very good place to stop. So let me-- so we're all denizens of the Republic of Cambridge, and we know that like Manhattan, and DC, and the blue coast, and the West Coast, 95% of people voted for Hillary, and Trump was hardly imaginable. But, you know, God works in mysterious ways. I'm ultimately an optimist. So I like the question. So this is now a fact. This is the Mar-a-Lago summit. Trump did something no president has ever even imagined and done. And that was so amazing that he blew Xi Jinping right away. So in the Chinese tradition, they think of the emperor as God. And foreigners, when you approach the emperor, you have to get on your-- flat on the ground, with your head on the ground, showing your respect. That's what it is to show proper respect. Again, nobody does that now. But how would you respect the emperor that is his stand in, President Xi Jinping, and his wife today? So Trump had his granddaughter, she's standing there, Arabella, she's five years old. Xi Jinping's wife is a famous singer in China, very famous. And her signature song is "Jasmine," which is a very famous Chinese song. So Arabella sang "Jasmine" in Mandarin-- excuse me, in Mandarin. And Xi Jinping, you can see him and his wife looking at it, thinking Holy Moses, where have we come? What is going on? After that, Trump had him, absolutely, in terms of just kind of consciousness. So if you could be that imaginative in trying to deal with the North Korean problem, that could be finished in a second, in a second, wouldn't be in it. So it is perfectly possible, perfectly possible that Trump is certainly unorthodox. And if you're trying to get beyond the box, and you're trying to be optimistic. So I would say that's probably a good place to stop. Thank you.
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Channel: Talks at Google
Views: 64,153
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Keywords: talks at google, ted talks, inspirational talks, educational talks, Destined for War: America China, Graham Allison, graham allison 2019, graham allison destined for war can america and china escape thucydides's trap, graham allison destined for war, china
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Length: 58min 53sec (3533 seconds)
Published: Tue Jul 18 2017
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