Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap?

I'm delighted and want to join my executive director Ella's Mon to thank Carol suckle off my old friend and founder and chairman of 13d for making this event possible kara and I probably go back 25 27 years I've known him as a excellent investor advice an investment advisor he knows geopolitics enjoy economics very well and the best thing I like about him is he doesn't perhaps something not like me if he has a view he has a view he better never view it doesn't have a view and he doesn't talk about something he's because probably because he doesn't review all he's thinking about it and I remember about or eight nine months before Donald Trump became the president Kiro beginner tell me is that Ronnie I don't think we should write off that guy I think that guy have a good chance to become the president of the United States and sure enough Kerry you're right again but I'm getting used to the fact that you're right many many times and we're delighted that you're with us here today and to share your thoughts of course we're here because professor Graham Allison is gonna speak about his book we all know Graham that he needs no introduction this is the fourth time in the last two years that I have found myself in occasions such as this one to work with Graham on his book at Ellis thesis two of those three times previously were related to the Asia Society so for those of you who have not joined the a society in spite of what Alice mom have said please do so if you're smart you will first time Graham we were in Singapore Israeli invited Graham to speak it was a really really wonderful event where a lot of the dignitary Hill hosted us I suspect that is partly because of Graham and then another time we were at the palace of the king of Belgium and we had a wonderful time there as well and that too was a program of the Asia Society because of the king of Belgium wants to work with us at the a society on trilateral relationship between Europe u.s. and Asia in particular China by the way if you are really involved in the Asia Society you may be invited to one of those things one of these days and I'll be there next week the third time was errantly some of you may have known Eric Eric will be coming here later today he is a trustee of the a society Hong Kong center and he invited Graham to give a talk in Beijing in which I participated it is wonderful to have him present in different locations big crowds small crowd and is always very very enlightening so the program today is very simple I will first invite Graham to come up to make some opening presentations perhaps 10-15 minutes he will have some slides and I will invite Kira to come up to disagree with Graham whatever a Graham set that is wrong I expect Hiro you will point it out and defend yourself and with after that will engage in some dialogue and then open to the floor so with that lean and gentleman please welcome to the stage Professor Graham Ellison so thank thank you very much Ronnie Thank You Carol thank those of you for coming tonight especially some of you whom I know and some whom I'm looking forward to getting a chance to interact with I told Carol and and Ronnie that I was coming to Hong Kong because I'm searching for new big radical unconventional ideas about how to escape through Siddha t-strap so my book is not about fatalism a war between the US and China that would be catastrophic it's not about even pessimism it's about even some urgency in the need for imagination and I think this rarely a place that very few places like Hong Kong where folks are some combination of chain and Americans and Hong honey's and internationals but are not possible to think of things that are a little different as different as Hong Kong is from the rest of the world so I would say I'm hoping tonight and in the conversations that follow or even some emails and I'll hear some ideas we started that earlier today and Kerala and I've thought of five so far but I need 15 before I go home so I'm gonna take fewer than 15 minutes to first start with I'll give you four bottom lines so on the trade tip that's spilling off over into the technology space now with Qualcomm and zdt expect things to get worse before they get worse and if you want a further account of that I had a piece this weekend in the national interest which you can google and find second point the reason why things are gonna get worse was explained to us by Thucydides about 2,500 years ago and it is that when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power one finds a dangerous dynamic in which things like a tariff conflict or even a trade war or even an economic war are not uncommon and are extremely dangerous 0.3 I was in Beijing just three or four weeks ago for the China development for him I had a chance both there and in one-on-ones to talk directly to and listen to all the leadership of China below Xi Jinping and when I got back to HR McMaster who was in the National Security Adviser was a friend for a long time and whom I've consulted during this administration a said Graham what's your takeaway I said well if Thucydides were watching he would say all the actors are right on script moving seaming inexorably towards what will be the grandest collision in history and finally 2/4 bottom line the show I'm not entirely pessimistic one one front North Korea I think it is likely that the summit between moon and Kim jong-un next week will be successful and declared a success I think the summit that will follow between Trump and Kim jong-un which again you could sell at a high price opportunities to be a fly on the wall so it'll be interesting but I think that's gonna be a success in fact I outline in a piece that you can read in last week's Politico why I think there's going to be a six win solution and if we come in the questions interest we may want to discuss that further so that's so much for bottom lines what I'm gonna do in the remaining period is three things first I'm going to introduce you or reintroduce most of you I hope you to a great thinker secondly I'm going to present to you a big idea and third I'm gonna pose a most consequential question so the great thinker is lucidity let's see if we can make this work lucidity I know that many people have difficulty with his name so in unison one two three one two three through Citadis one more time lucidity so if nothing else when you go home tonight you can tweet or tell your friend or colleague I met tonight a great thinker and I can even pronounce his name lucida DS was the father and of history he wrote the first ever history book its title is the history of the Peloponnesian War you can go to your web and download the book for free just download a book one read the first hundred pages book one and if every other page doesn't knock your socks off check your pulse so this is a serious thinker and actually it's very interesting how fascinated gee champagne and wonky Sean and others in the leadership of China are by this fellow Thucydides and a by Thucydides trap so the idea that there was somebody who lived 2,500 years ago roughly a contemporary of Confucius who identified a pattern in history that we've seen we played many times with catastrophic consequences pretty fascinating especially if you have some respect for history so one two three lucidity okay so the big idea is called lucidity strap this is a concept I coined a half-dozen years ago to make vivid and insight that Thucydides had so lucid ADIZ was right was writing about the great war in classical Greece between Athens the rising city-state and Sparta there's a city-state that had ruled for a hundred years and Thucydides said famously a wrote famously it was the rise of Evans and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made the war inevitable so when a rising power like Athens or like Germany a hundred and a bit years ago prior to World War one or China in the last generation rises to three to displace a ruling power like Sparta which had ruled Reis for a hundred years or Britain which had ruled the world for a hundred years or America just at the end of an American century in general bad things happen in the book I look at the last five hundred years of history I find 16 cases in which a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power twelve other cases in then war four of the cases in not war so to say that war between the US and China is inevitable that's even wrong on the record and Thucydides doesn't mean inevitable a hundred percent he just means likely very likely but to say that war between US and China is more likely than not when the in the course of history would not be incorrect and the consequential question is basically the subtitle of the book can America and China escaped through Silla t-strap as I said that beginning that's that's the thing in which I'm scratching my head searching for ideas trying to understand better as are many people in China today as are many people in the u.s. today but there's no monopoly of wisdom in Washington there's no monopoly of wisdom in Beijing or in Harvard so there's no reason why people in Hong Kong can't contribute to this conversation significantly and if I'm successful tonight I'm hoping that I'm gonna stir you up a little bit to try to make some contribution now first I want to make a comment about this trap I found difficult because I even don't know how to pronounce his name you know the city and trap that people talk about the so-called CCC days trap the Thucydides trap who set these traps the Thucydides trap those acidities trap the Thucydides trap so the concept of Thucydides trap has jumped immediately into that blood stream of the policy debate because as Henry Kissinger has argued this is the best slims available the best limbs available for looking through the noise and news of the day to understand the reach to the underlying dynamic so what we have today is a rising China that is impacting a ruling us and that dangerous dynamic creates huge risks so here's the last summit between xi Jinping and President Obama and as you can see from the slide both are talking about how countries like the US and China can escape through Citadis trap and in particular she's in paying has come to this formulation of a call for a so-called new form of great power relations when I was in Beijing in December talking to been another person who works directly for gzipping he said to me why do you think we call this new form of great power relations because we recognize what's the old form and the consequence of the old form so we got to invent something new and here's Xi Jinping at Davos in 2017 again trying to struggle with the question how to escape lucidity strap so I don't need to spend much time on the first point here the rise of China those of you who lived here see this all the time but this is a bridge that goes across the Charles River and Cambridge between the Business School and the Kennedy School I can see it on my office the renovation of it the discussion began when I was Dean of the Kennedy School I quit being Dean in 1989 project began in earnest in 2012 it was a two-year project and 2014 they said not done take another year 2015 they said not done they'll take another year's three times over budget 2016 they said we're not telling you it well it's gonna be done okay and now at least the traffic is flowing there's a bridge in Beijing is called a San Yun bridge some of you know it got about twice as many lanes of traffic in 2015 the mayor there decided they should renovate it how long did it take to complete the project I guess how much you can go to YouTube forty three hours forty three hours before the traffic is flowing and it works fine actually the deputy mayor there is a graduate of a Kennedy School program and I said to him in December if he would bring the guys that fix this the Cambridge and fix it I would make a small contribution YouTube in my course at Harvard I give students a quiz 53 indicators this is just a short version a little bit about it in the book when could China become number one the largest manufacturing largest trading most billionaires fastest supercomputers largest economy in the world and they have to fill in the quiz here their year 2030 2040 not in my lifetime then I show him a second slide that says already all these things already happened in case you missed it the IMF released their report on the International economy week before last who has the largest economy in the world today China not the US despite them reporting in the newspapers about China's the second largest economy no take the yardstick chosen both by the IMF and the CIA for comparing national economies or do that yardstick China today is about twenty one point two trillion end of 17 and the US about 19 so the question is the impact of the rise of China on the US the American sense of our role in the world and the international order that the US has been the principal guardian of for the past seven decades seven decades not accidentally that were decades without great power war so this is a slide I produced for the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2014 the ranking members of former student of mine Jack Reed and he said we need a context for the debate about President Obama's initiative to Asia remember the name of the Obama initiative was it called the pivot okay so and what was the pivot about the pivot was about putting less weight on our left foot in the Middle East fighting wars in order to put more weight on our right foot in Asia where the future is so this is a cartoon that try to illustrate what's actually been happening imagine see sauce in a schoolyard with kids on either end who eats the size of their GDP so in 2004 China is about 20% the size of the u.s. in 2014 China became slightly larger in 2024 on the current trend lines it'll be half again bigger so while Americans have been debating whether we should have more weight on our left foot or right foot China has been growing to the point that both feet have lifted off the ground you see this in the training in the whole region China is now the principal trading partner of all the Asian countries and 130 others the committee meets today to consider the nomination of General James Madison be the secretary defense the United States I thank both senator Nunn and senator corn for being here he's probably the only one here at this table who can hear the words through Citadis 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 seemed to be the root causes of why a nation chooses to go to hostilities ok so Zeus in ADIZ is full of big ideas we're dogmatists get the idea about interests fear and honor lucidity beginning of each one of the chapters actually has a little epigraph from Thucydides so lots of big ideas in the book one particular one that I'm interested in for us exploring tonight is Thucydides trap but that's not the end of the story so finally Korea at Mary Lago and then again when he was in Beijing president trumpets kept saying to she's in pain a problem for me now my most important problem my most urgent problem is North Korea and either you're gonna help me solve the problem or I'm gonna solve it on my own and if I solve it on my own you're not gonna like it at this point it looked most likely that nothing good was going to happen and the Trump would have attacked North Korea to prevent it completing a set of ICBM tests that would have given it a reliable capability to strike the u.s. with nuclear weapons that certainly was Trump's intention and that's what he had said fortunately now things are moving in a way in a better direction so that I see the prospect of a framework agreement coming out of first set up by the moon meeting and then by the by the Trump meeting and then a set of negotiations it'll go on for some considerable period of time and that'll be criticized and they should be criticized but I think when I look at it it will be the worst possible solution except for every other feasible alternative so that's my optimistic note - the final question that I started with can America and China escape lucidity strap the book has a professorial no and yes so no if we settle for business as usual for diplomacy as usual four states craft as usual then we should expect history as usual and history as usual in this case would be a catastrophic war but on the other hand yes as santiana taught us only those who refuse to study history are condemned to repeat it so we're not obliged to make mistakes that were made by our predecessors so I'm hoping we're gonna have some imagination about how to escape through Citadis trap I would have written that book by now if I knew the answer I don't so I'm looking for ideas and looking to the conversation Thank You Graham it was excellent as always Carol I'll start with you Karros ear is not the best so I may have to repeat the question sometimes Carol you agree with Graham are you as optimistic or pessimistic as Graham where do you think it will all end actually I do agree with Graham I think that the the major issue is not going to be trade as much as it is technology and military technology if we think about conventional nuclear weapons that's a 20th century weapon it's no longer where the future is it's the weaponization of space its undersea drones its hypersonic vehicles and in some of these areas China is leading and then of course we have machine learning and we have artificial intelligence AI I call them they're different things by my definition and we have gene Jeane enhancement in many other areas china is leading however there's a wild card here that i would like to introduce that might change the dynamics you are familiar with the me to movement and you've watched powerful men be taken down in 24 hours that you never thought was possible this is the new world that we live in that what you thought was the world the superstructure that was there all of a sudden he's crashing and it was like a domino dududududududu there isn't any man who hasn't been taken down except for Donald Trump he's the only one left now there are three hundred and nine women running for Congress this year so far and they're 50 running for the Senate and I have an internal bet with our people that these women are going to win there have been six special elections this year four of them have gone to women there has been a legislative primary in the state of Texas and half of half of the wins were women now it's early days there are 25,000 women who are working with an organization called Emily calm which essentially is helping a woman who's motivated to change what she sees as the country she doesn't like and the culture she's not happy with to run for public office these are young women these are millennial women these are intelligent and they want to make change so let's fast-forward to the election twenty percent of the Congress is female let's say you have I'm picking a number another hundred women join the Congress if the house swings 23 seats if I recall towards the Democrats then impeachment proceedings will begin against Donald Trump I'm just calling the reality I'm not taking a stand here at all because you know you know I'm just here to tell you what I think could happen I'm also told from a very good source that there are 20 Republican senators who would vote in favor of impeachment at the present time so this is a situation that no one yet has focused on and this could change everything so what would the Congress be like leaving Donald Trump out of it what would the Congress be like with a huge influx of women that could be the biggest political movement in a generation would be much different do women want to send their sons to war I don't think so do they want to engage in foreign adventurism I don't think so they want to fix the educational system in America which is the worst of the major developed countries they want to stop school shooting and make them safe they want to end the opioid crisis they want to fix what's wrong with America and a lot of men I'm told are coming up at this room and saying I like what you have to say I'm gonna vote for you and the women may tell their husbands you know maybe you should stay home this dysphonia day otherwise you know no dinner for a couple of months right so this is a we're now 6-7 months away from the election as Ronnie mentioned I did all the Donald Trump election correctly because I saw the people who had been left behind and I knew they were going to vote against the existing power structure and the elites that had abandoned them the women's movement is more powerful there is huge anger we can't underestimate how it's going to change America and eventually the world all I'm saying is this could just change this dynamic and we have to be open to it and this could put off this confrontation which based on history is inevitable and more importantly based on the differences in culture and belief between America and China so America believes there's one truth it's democracy it's human rights it's free enterprise in China they are proud of their unique cultural differences they don't want to be part of the American exceptionalism spreading it's it's it's model that is a huge difference from the past and makes this much more risky and then you add to that military superiority as a possibility with the advanced technology and you have China that is has three advantages it has a late movie advantage meaning that they can leapfrog over the existing legacy systems to move right into the latest technology without any problems of the legacy hindrances the second is China is developing technology that doesn't have a commercial application which doesn't happen in the United States at the moment when DARPA was up and strong it it exists and the third you have industry and the government are working together very closely on a target for dominance in certain areas so anyway that's my thought of him well okay let's take your last point Graham why is America so fearful use what fear just now the existing power fear something what is the nature of that what's the essence of that fear what is the main fear is it trait is it weaponry as a Carroll mention is it even a logical difference what is it so in a word it's psychological so the word it's not okay yeah the word fear was used by Thucydides so this is his idea and in the story of a rising power and a ruling power this dynamic is one in which the rising power thinks I'm bigger I'm stronger I deserve more say I deserve more sway we should do some things more my way and the current arrangements that were put in place didn't even take me into account they were put there before I ever got there that's all seems quite reasonable and I described that in the book as the rising power syndrome and you see this in every case and the ruling power whether Sparta or Britain or the US says wait a minute just like that incumbent and an upstart in the business world what the hell do you think you're doing on the taxi industry and you're you over or I'm virtually any industry in your Google or Apple I think wait a minute I've been doing this all my life actually because I was doing this you've had the opportunity to get your start and they grow and they get bigger and they get stronger you should be grateful you should appreciative you shouldn't be trying to change things the way they are and were and should be this is natural so the fear that's instilled in the ruling power is completely normal if you think of it in Psychological terms and then it can get to be exaggerated because again the Greek language has these wonderful progressions after fear comes paranoia and if you want to see in the Washington context today most I think people here at least I'm just as I've noticed talking earlier today have missed there's been a sea change in Washington in the past year in the belief of who is China and what is China and how should the u.s. relate to China so if you last watched during the Obama administration that movie is over for the center of gravity before if you said who is China it there our partner or our strategic partner and that's for Obama that's for Bush that's for Clinton today China is our rival our strategic rival or our strategic adversary so what to do with China in Obama Bush Clinton integrate them into the international order and they'll become more responsible stakeholders they'll help support this structure and then they'll become to have human rights like we understand them and they'll have democracies like we haven't that we understand them and then that's the story read the national security strategy from the Trump administration it says that was a bet big bet that was made for a long time that bit turned out to be false and this view of the Trump administration is reflected not just simply in the Trump administration literate look at the article by Kurt Campbell who was the article who was the architect of the pivot for Obama the foreign affairs piece this this month says these fundamental assumptions turned out to be wrong so there's a big reassessment going on in Washington today about China and how to relate to China and it's informed by this fear some of which is rational that is it really is true sadness bigger and stronger and willing to change things and part of which is exaggerated in just the way ruling powers often get things wrong my problem with what the word psychology Graham is that it is to a good extent emotive emotional it is not necessarily rational right but there must be a rational aspect to that fear as well so back to my original question was it the the the the military rise of China that scares America or at least worries Americans is it trait is it ideological what is it apart from just emotive factors the real factors hot core things that we as business people have to deal with let me and then I'm going to turn to you for that one Kiril you answer that afterwards so so first let me disagree slightly with that I'll answer the question but let me disagree with it the reason why Madison's quote of Thucydides is correct and why it's powerful and why it's frustrating to people who are simply realistic businessman is that in history in history there are three big variables that if lead war led states to war repeatedly one is their interests that's very objective a second is their honor this gets more complicated honor or respect is having the deference that I'm due excuse me I am at the top of every pecking order you are small you're right you've grown up in this environment you should be respectful that's what it is to have relations between the smaller and the larger the bigger and the stronger and then lucidity says there's fear which is psychological some of which can be reasonable fear that is if you find the tiger in the jungle you should be fearful that's a good idea but in this dangerous dynamic that Thucydides reminds us of you exaggerate everything so I look and I say wait a minute not only are they bigger and stronger the reason why they want to be bigger and stronger is because they probably want to displace wheat now if you talk to Xi Jinping or anybody in the in the Chinese government today they would say this is nothing to do with you our 19th party plan ambitious and audacious is this is that's about us we're trying to have China beat China the way we would like to restore ourselves to the place that we ever were before but from an American perspective as one sees that it's not just that China once the American ship is not to be doing what they're doing in the South China Sea it's that great China would like to be a leader in artificial intelligence would they of course they would if you thought that was the next industry up and I was gonna have big implement Airy implications would you be a little fearful about that because if they were the dominant power within a military domain would they exercise that well the Chinese would say no no we're always been a peaceful power we never have dealt with anybody outside too which answers look at their history ask the Koreans yes the Vietnamese okay they spent thousands of years and hundreds of years in the second case dominating these countries I don't think China has aspirations to be occupying anybody else's territory but it does aspire understandably to be restored to what it thinks is its natural place that it exercised for all of history and their story until a couple hundred years ago when these Westerners showed up with their technologies to exploit them and humiliate them they think we're becoming big and strong again and we would like to get back to the way things ought to be and so I think this is it would be nice to be able to say wow this is just a misunderstanding I don't think this is just a misunderstanding I think there's a real conflict of interest in many areas there's a real conflict with respect to honor or respect and deference and there's a difference in the psychological or emotional domain yeah well Carol what do you say I'm getting nowhere with the professor so maybe you as infested vizor well I have money manager clients and some of them are American and I've been bullish on China since I first came here to invest in 1992 and if in times you want to invest in times you don't want to invest but generally have been bullish so if I try to speak to an American from let's say 2007 until maybe a year ago about China no one wanted to hear it you couldn't have a conversation with them they were emotional and so I stopped talking about it so I thought about it for a long time why do they have this fear and it's because at one point three billion people who work an incredibly hard and it's like they have this subliminal desire for China to crash that's why there's all this conversation there was for the last 10 years over building Ponzi scheme too much debt it can't go on it's because of this subliminal desire that China should crash so it won't be a problem so that's that's part of it about two years ago I started to tell my clients that was going to be a rewriting so China was down here Europe was here and America was up here I said it's going to be a rewriting and China will be seen to be not a Ponzi scheme but the great growth market that it really is the Euro will hold together and the EU will be seen as a place to invest and America will be seen as flawed and that is exactly what's happened and the turning point was and I'll tell you in a second if you drive across the United States you get to the Continental Divide but you never know when you pass it and the Continental Divide or rivers flowing east and rivers flowing west it's not like there's a line saying you've passed the Continental Divide so the moment of the turning point when China became a real threat was to me Davos and XI 2017 17 yeah every so here we have trump has just taken over he's saying I'm withdrawing from TPP I'm going to leave the Paris Accord I don't want to buy from you I'm going to beat up Mexico and Canada on NAFTA and I'm going to take China on she is saying I believe in the environment I want to buy from you and I believe in free trade and it was a magnificent moment of great strategy and that I believe was the crossing of the Continental Divide so China went from being a Ponzi scheme in people's minds to oh my god they're real we got to worry about them now every day you're reading about China being more advanced in this technology in that technology we write about it all the time whether it's actually true or whether it's almost true there's a lot of truth to it and the reason is because innovation is deemed to be only American but if you look at the innovators half of them are immigrants and Trump wants to keep them out we have a we have a big Indian office and they say the the h-1b visa applications United States are down by 50% pre Trump they want to stay home and China could become a hotbed of attracting global talent robert kwok the founder of shangri-la and the sugar king wrote his autobiography 95 years old and he said that the greatest entrepreneurs in the world come from South China that's absolutely true if you look at Southeast Asia who dominated the trade the last three or four hundred years it's the it's the South Chinese entrepreneurs you look at this road room you're all from South China right but so China is is an entrepreneurial hotbed added to that is my theme that countries come alive at various points think about Renaissance Florence a town of maybe 2,000 people 100 artistic geniuses don't tell me that somebody taught them how to be a genius they were set on fire by something and then we saw the same thing in Germany we've seen the same thing in France we've seen the same thing the UK the same thing in the United States it's my belief that China is on fire in entrepreneurial ability innovation passion and President Xi at the party Congress said that very thing let me go back to from Graham you mentioned that Clinton Bush to Obama they were all more or less considering China as a not partner but at least not an adversary Oh partner how much partner okay how much of it is Trump that really pushed the thing in shall I say the wrong direction and then everybody just buy in and you have some hardcore people like Kurt Campbell of my friend in the Obama administration then re-examined himself and say I was wrong our premises were wrong perhaps trum was right no not perhaps trum was right it's pretty you know honest bowl of him to say that I was wrong so how much of it is because of Trump if it has not been for Trump would have been a little better that process might have been Palala before it get to where we are today I would say that fundamentally it's not about Trump fundamentally it's about this awakening to a China that has become bigger and stronger that Americans are just slowly waking up to and I think you can see this now across the whole policy spectrum of which Kurt's piece is a good example but you can see this right across the political spectrum so when I was in Beijing again I mentioned three weeks ago one of my friends here said to me he said Graham you know well that's what's happened in Washington people seem to have lost their mind so I said well that's a frequent comment in Cambridge as far as but what do you mean in particularly says with respect to China what the hell is going on you see the whole place seems to have done a back flip and I said well I I think that's right well how do you where do you see this he said who gave the the loudest shout out for Trump's tariffs against China I said I don't know who the Democratic leader of the Senate Chuck Schumer so basically this this is just now what's going on it's hard to tell first most Americans have us whatever ad D so their attention span it's not not great attention divisions agent okay so lots of the foreign policy communities here has been stuck in the sand of the Middle East fighting wars for the whole 21st century so that's a big deal for most of these people's lives so now they're up looking around a little bit and thinking whoa here's a here's a giant panda in the room and nobody nobody even told me nobody consulted me nobody invited them into how can they have got this big in this strong so it's a little bit like hello as I say my Chinese friend was saying we haven't been hiding you know we've been this going in our own fashion so this is not like we were creeping up on you or this was mythili some some form of surprises a little bit of awakening to that awakening in the context of the through Saturday and dynamic I want to keep going back to this in unless one sees how deeply wounded this is in structural conditions that have played themselves out 2500 years ago and 500 years ago when Spain vs Portugal and 200 years ago and 100 you we've seen this story before the storyline is very clear and the elements of it which seem strange because if you were to go back a hundred years ago just before World War one it was not hard to figure out that war between Britain and Germany would be catastrophic indeed the best-selling book in Europe in the whole decade before 1914 was a famous book by Norman Angell it's called the grand illusion and it said war cannot happen anymore because the victor will lose war even though he wins then he expended in the course of the war how many people is that okay if war is if you know that it's a losing proposition who would fight a war which interest only Britain and Germany and all the other powers of Europe in the in the context so I think I think that basically you've got this dawning Awakening and I think Trump has offered his own color to the matter and his own sort of extreme formulation from time to time but overall is it's deeply rooted and it's very I would say extremely dangerous because for Washington which has trouble focusing its buying anyhow the notion of an enemy is at least a category that people can recognize and externalizing one's problems by blaming somebody else is again a deep historical pattern yeah well Graham you scare the hell out of me because I thought that with nuclear arsenal on both sides given mutual assured destruction that perhaps nuclear will become a deterrent but what you're telling me is perhaps nuclear deterrent is not there well no what I mean here I would say you're absolutely right absolutely right that the fact that nuclear weapons at the level of Arsenal's that China and the US have mean that if ever god forbid there should be a nuclear war we might succeed in killing everybody so that seems like a clearly bad idea that has a crystal ball effect as as security students say that helps you look and say okay wait a minute that's like committing suicide so nobody would wisely or thoughtfully choose nuclear war the question is whether you could have a choice about whether Kim jong-un should be able to test ICBMs in such a way that he could attack the US with nuclear weapons and you could imagine a person like Trump saying no this is a little pipsqueak country why should they be able to threaten the American cities and if I have to attack him in order to prevent this I'll do it and then he attacks him let's imagine and now you have a second Korean War so everybody should go back to their history books and remember what happened in the first Korean War in 1950 the furthest thing from Morrow's mind was to go fight Superman America had just dropped the atomic bombs in Japan five years before Marl had just barely consolidated control over the mainland he did not want a war with the US the u.s. didn't want to fight China it had a chance to get involved in the civil war if it wanted to was inside no do not fight on the Asian mainland those turned out badly okay that was wise advice lo and behold though North Korea attacks South Korea almost captures a little place u.s. comes to the rescue the last-minute pushes back without thinking right across the 38th parallel towards the Chinese border Chinese come into the war and beat the Americans right back down to the 38th parallel so that's a war that nobody chose quote nobody wanted a war between us in China but such a war happened and I think that while nuclear weapons are another app fortunately cautionary element anybody who thinks that they mean therefore there could not possibly be a nuclear war should go back and study the Cuban Missile Crisis about which I wrote a book earlier in 1962 the most dangerous woman in recorded history John Kennedy uh otherwise quite wise man was prepared to run what he thought was a one in three chance of nuclear war that would have killed a hundred million people then to prevent the Soviet Union sneaking nuclear to hit missiles into Cuba wait a minute do that again for me on an expected value basis here's sky pudding nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba he already has nuclear tipped missiles in the Soviet Union they've can attack you and you're gonna take a one in three chance of killing a hundred million people the answer is yes okay so that's only to say it's a helpful factor but not decisive Carol I like business people I let investors they are more rational what's your take on that same question well let's look at machine learning which is probably the most interesting technology in the world at least to me so it's a machine that teaches itself so obviously deep-blue was going to be the best chess master no surprise chess is a memory Ken but about a year and a half ago google's deepmind developed a machine called alphago zero and it beat the best go player four games to one which is a huge shock Asians particularly because they understand how goes a game of intuition but those of us who study this we said oh boy this has changed everything so last fall deepmind launched alphago you know these names are all the same but essentially it's a different machine and all they did was to give the machine the rudiments of how to play chess they didn't teach it they didn't program it and it learned in 30 hours 1400 years of chess history and beat all of the best chess playing machines 50 to zero and those who study the game said this is the best chess game ever played in the history of chess because it was different it was only about winning so there was huge losses at the beginning of major pieces that shocked the chess experts now let's let's go forward let's think about what this means this means that whoever controls these machines will look at the problems of the world strategic to statically militarily with a different slant than has ever been looked at before so the worst thing that could happen the United States is an EMP attack an EMP attack is if you set off a nuclear weapon about the United States every single piece of electronics would be destroyed permanently the the grid would be down there would be riots it's generally acknowledged that there's nothing worse outside of a bubonic plague that could happen and the fourth or a real nuclear or yeah yeah yeah right so I you know imagine that you were Russia or you were wrong and you have such a machine that is more advanced than alphago and alphago is not the most advanced it's just the only one that went public because the those who created it wanted recognition so we have no idea where various countries are and the rate of acceleration is so astronomical what happened three months ago we just have no idea where it is now so let's say you're Russia how could we create the impact of an EMP attack without setting off a nuclear weapon I'm told that this technology exists so the whole nature of warfare has changed and I don't think any of us have any idea where it can go and the question is as always will the dark forces control it and I had a long conversation with Henry Kissinger about this he said well maybe the machine is the dark force maybe it is but and this was Steven Hawkings point that these machines we are launching on the world we have no idea how to control them now if the machine is smarter than we are what's the first thing the machine would do it would turn off the ability of the human to control it so I'm saying is the nature of warfare has changed because of technology it's a whole different world out there and with machine learning think about this in 30 hours alphago mastered chess better than any chess player in history because it kept learning is human if we're lucky we learn from our mistakes or we watch other people make mistakes and we learn from them but the machine is learning at the speed of light over and over and over again try try and fail try feel better better better better better and now I was asking our analyst who studies this would quantum computing which means China's supposedly going to have a quantum computer in 2019 that would be a million times faster than all of the computing power in the world today so I said will that make machine learning more effective the answer is no it seems like he was going slower was better but who knows where it's gone so it's just such a complicated technical subject and we don't have any idea but if you want to be scared that's that's the place to be scared Graham perhaps your problem is not big not that big of a problem in face of what kara has just said that before the US China goes to war if it goes to war perhaps so you have this problem maybe the machines get both of us yes right or or perhaps this will force the US and China to work together in to prevent something of that nature from happening is that a possibility you were Defense Department official before so you must have thought about these things absolutely so Carroll is certainly right to remind us the ways in which technology is changing and transforming our lives and lo and behold mostly for good so you know ten years ago we didn't have an iPhone so if one looks at what's happening with genomics and possibilities for more clinical genomics fantastic so the number of things that are positive are so amazing that it's easy to forget that every new technology is a two-edged sword Curtin is one side of it that makes world richer better safer more wonderful and there's another side of it that offers opportunities for somebody that wants to take advantage of somebody else and historically that's always included somebody so in that while you could imagine if it were an external force the universe in China seeing this as a common threat at the Defense Department or at the PLA headquarters in Beijing they mainly think of it as coming from the other guy so Ronald Reagan once said to Gorbachev in one of these tete-a-tetes he said you know if we were invaded by Martians we would find ourselves on the same side so maybe there's not that much difference between us so that's one way to think about it and I think if we thought sensibly as human beings we would say how about climate if Chinese and Americans just keep doing what we're doing we're gonna have a climate in a hundred years which nobody wants to live in so we have to do that together if we don't do it together against I see so that's so there are there are a number of things that what in principle if you were adults having to solve a problem to bring parties together on the other hand in the area of new technologies that have military applications the confidence I don't think if I were either playing the China Han or the u.s. n I would have sufficient confidence that the other party were not actually playing this hand to its advantage the Trust's that that will be you know this will be shared so I think that you see in the AI space very serious competition going on you see in the space arena very excited you see in machine learning a very high you see in big data a very so I would say these are competitive technologies now and their military applications are especially interesting and exciting and also dangerous let me ask both of you a question China and United States are not the only two big countries in the world there's another one out there and you alluded to it here oh that's Russia and how does Russia play into this if I were Boonton listening to you you guys man I'm having a hell of a good time I mean in the United States and China and you know getting rid of each other perhaps and man that's wonderful as far as I mr. Putin is concerned so where does Russia come into this become Russia's only big factor just as you said so first if you were a Martian strategist looking at this you would say China as a rising power is very threatening to everybody and nobody they should feel more threatened by this and Russia look at the history look at the border look at the territorial disputes so that ought naturally again geopolitics would lead the US Japan South Korea even in the effort cadets get us act together to be a kind of a coalition of interests trying to cope with this juggernaut call China but partly because she seeping has played this end so well brilliantly I would say who's the first person--he with the visit the first foreign trip he took after he became president the Moscow to see mr. Putin who's the person he talks to most regularly mr. Putin who's the person that pops up in every event in Beijing right after she does his speech and one belt one road who comes next Putin so he shows him great respect so this has been handled brilliantly by him and been handled very clumsily by the Americans and now that's got caught up in the politics of Trump and Russia gate and all that it means is his poisonous and as a consequence this relationship is thick the other thing what do they talk about when they're just sitting like this talking privately what do you think they think about they talk about another country that's trying to undermine the legitimate authority of us to autocrats who were ruling in their own country and who keeps telling them telling us that we're not legitimate and that we should have a cover but like there's so I would say that's a pretty thick relationship in Carroll now Curos family originated from Russia and so you know that country very well I know that so what is Putin thinking so if you're in a strategic battle you have to think about the weakness of your opponent and China has obviously some weaknesses in the American situation but it's been forgotten that Russia does the uranium enrichment and us depends 20% for its nuclear power 20% of its energy from nuclear power but it depends on enriched uranium from Russia now here you have the American government is beating up Russia and it's stock markets crashed embargo on production of aluminum which has been lifted a little bit but I understand that the Duma voted to embargo enriched uranium that's thinking strategically the problem is the you do that and then then something else happens and then something else happens and something else happens but we have the price of oil is going up as we speak and Putin would love higher oil prices absolutely no reason why he doesn't want a hundred or 150 or whatever it is one industry economy yeah and the Soviets the entire post-war period were experts at fomenting third party trouble and if there's a world where you can foment trouble with Syria Iran Saudi Arabia Abu Dhabi Egypt Israel Palestine it's there so I would be thinking strategically if I were he and I'm sure that's what he's doing what should America's position be these are these Russia now I understand if I'm wrong correct me Graham that Trump perhaps at the beginning wanted to work with Russia in order to target China that didn't work out in fact it backfire and then Russia probably well anyway so so if that's a case now that Russia is no longer a part of trumps game where will that leave Russia what do you think Russia is thinking right now well so I think that Russia feels besieged now people forget that Russia defeated Napoleon and people forget that Russia defeated Hitler the Americans like to take credit for winning the second world war they did not the Russians lost 50 million lives it was the Battle of Stalingrad it was when the German army got to within 20 miles of Moscow Stalin said not one foot more and the number of soldiers and civilians who were killed is beyond any comprehension so what Russia has to be thinking they're under threat they've been invaded twice so they treat this these threats by the Americans very seriously and you have to be planning a response and it has to be a strategic response and you don't have many cards so you play the cards you have really well oh I I agree I think that trumps instinct at the beginning of the administration that would be better for the u.s. to have a better relationship with Putin and Russia was correct though I supported them strongly because from a strategic point of view the counterbalance to a China that's going to be bigger and stronger a counterbalance Lada to basically create a correlation of forces that which China has to adapt seems to me to be in the American interest so that but the combination of she's very effective diplomacy and American politics which now has made this completely poisonous I think has meant that Putin and Russia have pretty much now pivoted to to the east and all of those relationships are getting thicker and thicker and it'll be interesting to see how this plays out now in Europe because again it's perfectly possible that the Trump administration will make such a mess in Iran that all of us will get a little bit sidelined but I think it's quite possible that otherwise you're gonna see even opportunities for if you look at what Merkel has said lately with respect to Russia it sounds pretty much like Washington why not for the United States who work with China against Russia why'd the other direction given the history of a Russia which is I would say rather troubled yes why not and china-us relationship has always been good historically if we go to the story of the relationship between the US and China again it's a long story you were showing me a book of 200 years but why China was initially part of the communist bloc the opening to China was about one thing only one thing the enemy of my enemy is a friend right so this was about the feeding the evil empire and in the defeating of the evil empire we were prepared to do whatever so that was the story until 1991 Cold War's over victory in the Cold War Soviet unit disappears now what's the basis for the relationship what's the strategic rationale for a relationship within the US and China the the theory of the case was well now we've entered the period of the end of history so everybody is going to be a free market democracy just like us and all we have to do is welcome China into this international community and pretty soon it's gonna have a market economy and they'll grow rich then I have a middle class middle class one rights they don't have rights you have law and order they have law and order the others democracy if their democracy Tom Friedman's version of this they're gonna have Golden Arches McDonald's and two countries that have McDonald's can't fight each other that's right go look at will go look at the Flat Earth book that's exactly what he says like what okay any case that was the theory of the case well people have awakened done for time if you listen to the 19th Party Congress she's in pain says no I don't think I want to be just like you I think we're Chinese we don't want to be Americans we want to be Chinese as I quote Lee Kuan Yew in the book China wants to be respected as China not as an honorary member of the West so they don't want to be like Japan and Germany actually they weren't defeated in a war they weren't occupied we didn't write their constitution and besides they have a long culture they think that they were doing pretty well for 4000 years before we came to give them instructions so as you wake up to that fact the proposition that says okay well we can just deal with this big new stronger China and then Russia that's resurgent and angry and honoré but not as powerful I think it's pretty hard to make that to make them to be the boogeyman yeah but then do you expect as an American that Russia will one day become democratic and wealthy you know yes in the in the fujiyama's end of history everybody was gonna be this way including Russia and actually Russia made a start if you look at the Russian democratization of the put under Yeltsin Yeltsin's his first objective was to bury communism he hated communism and Richard Nixon said he said wait a minute I'm a die-hard anti-communist but I'm not anti Russia it's not about Russia this is about this evil in the ology okay so that was the hope in the in the Russian case - now then a lot of other mistakes were made and now we are where we are the fundamental premise of the United States and Frank Fukuyama himself would be the first to tell you that perhaps he was not exactly correct it was a little romantic yes yeah is it a romantic so so if that's a case it's a choice between choosing Russia versus choosing China perhaps against the other party right so you agree that United States should work with Russia against China I think not not for warlike purposes but for if if you were just thinking of strategy 101 per Kissinger let's say mmm it would be if you have a strong rising power if you could have a coalition of forces whose interests were impacted by that rising China that could include US and Japan and as I say maybe India if it ever got its act together in Australia and Russia then China would be taking more time to adapt and adjust to that set of standards so you could see this in every arena though to the extent that China sets the standards or China writes the rules they'll be generals and Americans would prefer to have American rules so we can work that through you know air every every one of these domains so I I would say that would be if you were apart from the politics but the politics of Russia today is paranoid in the u.s. if you want a good picture that helped you understand they I mean I know you know the u.s. very well but most Americans certainly don't that I know don't appreciate the wonderful insight in the article and then book by Richard Hofstadter a famous professor at Columbia University he wrote in the 1960s it's called the paranoid strain in American politics and he demonstrates that right from our beginning we've had a part of our DNA has been a paranoia about foreigners and their interference in our internal affairs and you could certainly see that in the Russia story today you agree with him Carol you think Russia is a better partner potentially for the United States than China what well I think that you we have to deal with pragmatism and for some reason there is this cold war going on and there is this visceral hatred of Russia and Putin I don't quite understand it you know if you look at Crimea and Ukraine and you look at the history of invasions and you look at the promise that Reagan made to Gorbachev about not expanding NATO that Putin had some reason to do what he did but that's one of the problems is that people don't read history to understand where people are coming from and that was the turning point they're like the questa crossing the Transcontinental divide when the world started to turn against Russia because it now had gone back to its old status so I don't see that mentality changing as much as one might like it and it's unfortunate but that's the reality so Putin has only a few cards to play but then that may mean that America may one day be facing two enemies instead of one correct if you read if you read the trump administration's national security strategy and if you read mattis's national defense strategy those two documents everybody should at least scan or read their read the short version of it and I would read if I was reading a third document the annual report of the special trade representative you can see there are two new strategic rivals that almost get used in the same sentence over and over as if they were Tweedledum and Tweedledee and they're both Russia and China so it's not like we need you know one enemy we need two little I think and myself I don't subscribe to this theory but I'm saying that's where we are so you subscribe to the fact that it's much better to have one enemy instead of two and probably Russia is a better friend because it's less developed and China should be the big one i I think actually conceiving China as an enemy is also a mistake in my view I think since I believe that a war between the US and China would very possibly become a nuclear war and the nuclear war would be suicidal for the u.s. so however much China how and for China but that's not my problem my problem is the US so if we live in Cambridge message if if something is suicidal for me then this is a bad idea a very bad idea and if I first get my head around that then I discover if I can't have a war with you I find some way to live with you maybe very uncomfortably maybe after just some of my attitudes maybe after just some of my behavior but I would say that's the condition of lucidity strap not for a day a week not for some signing of a document or whatever this is a chronic condition that Americans and Chinese are going to face for as long as we can see and either they're going to find some way to invent a new form of great power relations on history that's unlikely but they could because they have four of the 16 cases didn't in an order or they're gonna be inventive and think of something and so I would say our test should be about not figuring out necessary who's our enemy in this context but asking can I figure a way to destroy them if I could do that successfully and I didn't kill myself well you could be interested in if the interest though then forget about it this is completely forget about now can I find a way to live with them oh well that would be uncomfortable well if the alternative is dying that's not so bad yeah what's the possibility of that or flip that I asked gram in front of a hundred students who are now listen to us at the Robert Miller theater up there what do you think is a chance give me a number 10% 20% 50% 80% 90% chance that something really untoward should happen to the us-china relationship that they will fall into the facility's trap I've said and I say in the book that I think it's much larger than is generally appreciated so and I don't have a specific number but if you said is it at least 20 percent at least 25 percent I would say over a decade I would say yes so I would say a real serious chance but I think one that we can address and that we should address and that we were wiser intelligence we we would address if you imagine the back to your business kind of analogy or are you just imagine two adults imagine that were adult supervision in this picture actually in my course at Harvard I have a have an imaginary figure who's called the Martian strategist this is a lady okay and she comes to visit the class from time to time to observe what the debate is about so if she would have parachute in to a meeting between Trump and G champagne she would say hello hold on for a second if you manage to stumble your way into a war you're gonna each destroy everything you care about all your hopes all your dreams all your opportunities got that that's the first point okay second point you could get there all by yourselves just doing what you're doing let me explain to you a couple of legs yeah yeah you got that I can't you got that third if you were each to think about what your real problems are your real problems for both of you are inside your borders not outside so one of you has a retro authoritarian system that is leaked one you said to gzip in he said this is like having a 20th century operating system in the 21st century apps where everybody has a smartphone that's not gonna work that's what he told him and he would say I think this that she would say to Trump you got a dysfunctional democracy that's not even working and governing itself so where did you look at your first problem first for a while for some time till you solve it because if you don't solve your problem at home the other problem is not gonna be yeah and if you do solve your problem at home you probably have some ideas by then what they do in the other case so Pericles came up with a version of this idea in the lucidity story so this is back to 2500 years ago here you're having this competition between Sparta and in Athens he he thought well why don't we have a long piece for 30 years so they negotiated a peace for 30 years for 30 years we're gonna concentrate on our own problems and we're not gonna we're gonna put within Chinese terms would be put something on a shelf for a while and that was actually working rather well at least for 16 years until it broke down so I would say that's a good suggestion your second point from the Martian lady she said that either one of you could muck it up all by yourself you think America's the chance of America mucking it up is bigger or the chance of China going its own way and muck it up by itself who do you worry I worry about I worry about both I think that again back to Thucydides I didn't want to keep this be like I'm stuck but I would say that the the if you listen to see some Payne's 19th Party Congress speech and then his speech at the International Congress just recently this is a being full of confidence audacious ambitions rising sense that our time has come this is this is it and we're gonna stand tall and strong as he said with a with the military he exercises less we can in the straits we're finally standing big and strong in the East so China is not gonna just be China hiding by there all that's what I saw and if there were a Tiananmen like event in Hong Kong I believe he'll shoot however many people are required that's my bit and if Taiwan should try to become independent I think he'll destroy Taiwan that's what I would bet so I don't really need to destroy it I want to destroy Taiwan but I'm not in favor of either these ideas I'm just saying this is a nice piece of this in the American case I think with respect to Trump You certainly have somebody whom if the North Korean story goes badly could very well order an attack on North Korea which then could cause a second Korean war in which China and the US could ultimately find themselves fighting each other I described this in the book and five paths to war so I think unfortunately we have two candidates it could get us there well let me give you one scenario Graham he and I were together in Beijing what a couple months ago and there were two PLA generals there and that presented a possibility I don't think he's patented so it's okay for me to say it here probably if Trump were to really get nuclear with North Korea and North Korea knows that they don't have the ability let's face it to really destroy San Francisco or even Alaska although they may try but once they know that they are going to get destroyed the worst scenario perhaps is for them to detonate their own nuclear devices three of which are very close to the Chinese border right and when that happens China is sunk all my investment in northeast China will be sunk South Korea will be sound and indeed much of the world as the win will win borne material nuclear material will go around the world and that will be an international it would global disaster and the United States would have to bear the consequences in some ways because you're the one data attack right and how will that play into the consideration of Washington DC or they don't give a damn no they they they give a if you were at the Defense Department talking about scenarios for this people look and say wait a minute if we attack North Korea so Trump has said give us give me a menu of options they've given them a menu options or six options at the bottom of it you just attack the launch pads in North Korea so they can't launch any more ICBMs so they can't complete their tests so they don't have a credible threat to San Francisco but they go right up to the make the place disappear okay all of those are possible not hard all of them are possible so if though there should be an attack on North Korea and if North Korea then attack Seoul which is what most everybody believes sorry and certainly what the Prime Minister Latrun believes is terrified about it and then you have a second Korean War well north Korea has maybe 60 nuclear weapons today not three but certainly a dozen or a score or more probably 60 they'd have short-range missiles that can deliver those weapons in South Korea right there medium-range missiles can deliver those who are heads against Japan or against Guam indeed this year if you recall from that conversation in Beijing Chinese have began to look at the fact that you know missiles they go whichever way you want them to go it's not very hard to just alright if the trajectory and they go to China right so wait a minute North Korea could attack China well certainly the Chinese have looked at this story so the answers this is a very very dangerous situation Wow that's why attacking North Korea it's not a great idea and why the path that were on if we could if Trump succeeds which I'm praying that he will do in reaching a framework agreement with North Korea the outlines of which you can see that that article that I mentioned basically it'll say we've agreed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and who the elimination of threats to States or the regime and to the normalization of relations and eventually to a peace treaty and maybe to the reunify is going to take a long time and then you start negotiations and it goes for a year or two I am not quite sure where those negotiations ends okay but I'm sure that in all that time we're not attacking them and they're not testing ICBMs so we don't have a war all that's good so that's where I am in that let's respect to that spaces I think Chinese are looking to get this and say wait a minute this is extremely dangerous and I say I met with somebody who is as influential a military person in China as there is and I said to him I think actually we made a terrible mistake we Americans we should have said to you back 20 years ago we don't really care whether North Korea has nuclear weapons we don't care whether South Korea has nuclear weapons we don't care where the Taiwan has nuclear weapons so you pick whichever rule you want for your ally we will follow your rule for our line so who prevented Taiwan having nuclear weapons Americans did had a serious nuclear weapons program they would have had nuclear weapons except for what the Americans who prevented South Korea from having including the Americans did they said oh you know I cannot do this or otherwise we're not having alliance with you whenever any group said so I'd say the Chinese made a terrible mistake in the North Korean case well this guy said to me hey man you know we didn't think about that I said well you didn't and we didn't think about it either but this is a great failure for China and the Chinese feel this they feel how did this great danger come up you know why they're on our border but the North Koreans are a wild card absolutely a wild card you're absolutely correct that you know China is gonna be the biggest loser in this whole thing if they can toward nuclear wise take place but on the other hand the United States I don't know why graham explained to me for the last 30-some years refused to talk to the North Koreans and refused to guarantee their survival and you're forcing them to develop the nuclear capability and each time when you reject them you you ratchet the game in the wrong direction and allow them to move closer and closer to having a nuclear and now they well we have to believe that they do what they do and so you know everybody made mistake oh I think there's plenty to say the Chinese say and I think this is correct that why did the North Korean regime develop nuclear weapons because they think you would destroy them otherwise they believe you're an existential threat to them now Americans could say to him oh you shouldn't worry about us and they say oh ho ho let me could so where's Saddam where let me see Saddam Hussein we need to talk to him where is Qaddafi Qaddafi let's talk to him so the Americans are a threatening presence and their threats have been a big part of the motivation for North Korea but then I would still say it's been a story of failed aplomb see and particularly failures in the areas of which China and the US could cooperate so one of the reasons I showed the XI Trump picture is to the extent China and the US are working together to prevent North Korea nuclear advanced and they begin to roll it back that's the kind of example in which parties that could not have asked have solved the problem alone fine they could solve a problem if they work together well there's a clue there can we think of any such other problems well I would think of climate the Trump doesn't like that one so leave that for the site so what about even global economic growth has global economic growth been greatly enhanced by the global economic system that China and the US have agency now does it need to be adjusted yes in substantial way so there are enough things that I would say you could in principle find in which Chinese and American cooperation have been crucial but the one that looks the most promising on the horizon right now is North Korea well time it's really passing fast but I see nobody moving and we have a hell of a good time here so I'm gonna ask each of them the last question and then we're gonna open to the floor okay if something untoward happened what will be the lightly worst-case scenario how bad will it be nuclear is perhaps unimaginable so could it be a limited type of war what may happen if either size don't get it right well I'll give I mean it's a long story but I'll try to give a short version so in the book I have a chapter called from here to war and it says how could you get from where we are today without stretching so it doesn't require any magic or otherwise to a war in which Americans and Chinese are killing each other and I offer five pets so I would say it's quite possible to imagine a real shooting war between the US and China in which thousands and tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of people are killing each other no shortage of new weapons short of nuclear weapons but then you let that scenario play for a little bit and you ask yourself okay so can G simply lose such a war not without losing his position for sure so his incentives to escalate are huge and how would you escalate in such a conflict so if it was in the South China Sea or on the Korean Peninsula I mean this again we were gamed many many times oh I'm playing the Chinese hand so I take out satellites that the Americans are dependent on for their intelligence for their target acquisition and for their communications well how do you fight a war if you can't talk to this your own troops that's pretty tough and if you can't see the targets a similarly cyber hold other dimension of this so in the American war game American ships come up China uses a D 2126 ground ship missile and can sink a carrier so 5,000 people die the kanakaria and we therefore attack all the missiles on the china mainland that can attack American ships and we say to the Chinese notice this is just a regional war and they say I got it you just attacked the Chinese mainland the Chinese are not going to do anything to the American mainland forget about it you'll see a significant cyber event maybe to shut down all that shut all down all the electricity grids shut down the financial system see how that works for a day or two or a week so they it's very easy these are these are in the book called accelerants that kind of makes it slippery to find yourself escalating along such a path if you ever get to the place where people are actually killing each other here you're the last word of wisdom for us before we opened it up everybody well if the escalates conflict other yeah other countries are going to have to make a decision are they with or without China whose side are you on and there'll be a lot of economic pressure to join a trading bloc a maybe a military bloc so that is no question that's gonna happen so the world is going to be divided into two camps it's possible but who's gonna be on China's side I mean the United States were really got India Japan and probably South Korea if it's still around Australia Vietnam so all South East Asia Central Asia Africa burdens not gonna help Africa Latin America you know Japan is an interesting story that's to be determined but if a hundred and thirty countries have a majority of their trade with with China that's that's the lever you know you can have to decide whose side are you on Wow I won't be able to sleep tonight okay the lady at the last table please yeah kind of the microphone yeah in the middle please please good evening my name is Preeti Dhara I write a column for India's largest Business and Economics newspaper I'd like to take issue with you due respect with your statement dr. Allison that if India I ever got its act together I'd like to mention that the GDP growth in India and foreign direct investment growth is today higher than China and some would argue that there is actually qcad t-strap unfolding in Asia between China and India how do you see this play out and we you think this relationship is headed it's a very good question so it's a question about India and its growth which is rival China's and which has done from time to time for a year or two I would wish that China that's right that India would get its act together and sustain a period of growth and I think Modi looks to me like a very promising start and I think if you look and see is you know very you know better than any of us how he did in the province that he ran that was a very very impressive story I am dubious about whether this will be sustained in the current program but I've always been more bearish about India probably unprejudiced a little bit by Lee Kuan Yew maybe I prejudiced a lot by Lee Kuan Yew but in any case I think your point about the local lucidity and potential is absolutely right if you go back to the story of World War one Britain faced not only a Rising America in the beginning of the 20th century but am I saying Germany so there you had two rising powers and the Germans were worried especially about a Russia which they thought might be getting its act together even though it had been defeated by the Japanese of the rush of Japanese war so you can have multiple dynamics going on in the same picture and I think if it has in the awarded sustain such a growth rate that would become another element a preventive it's right at the back and they're over here one comment and then one question the comment was professor Allison said that the Chinese colleague he had spoken to said that we didn't hide our power and our rising but that's just not true the truth is that tongues helping said hydropower right so it was a clear strategy and it's C Jinping who started to influence foreign policy maybe around 208 209 that we start to see a more assertive Chinese foreign policy and as you yourself has described a much more assertive guy in terms of his foreign-policy so part of the shock in America is very likely due to the fact that for a long time China presented itself and I believe that they meant it that they were going along with the system and that everything was okay and then you get a new leader as new leaders changed things and this leader changed the way China was dealing with the world so my question is from your research on Thucydides trap what does the riser do that creates part of the problem this has been a very one-sided conversation this has all been about American paranoia it's all been presented as what America America can't deal with it I don't disagree with you that America has a real problem dealing with the rising China I accept that 100% I'm a Canadian it's really easy for me to do this right but what is the riser is there something about the way that the riser behaves in terms of threatening in terms of demanding his rights in terms of his behavior to what extent in your analysis of the 12 cases that there's a war is the riser partly responsible for the confrontation at the end okay thank you very good question and so I obviously have either misspoken or been misunderstood I see this mostly from an American point of view and therefore a mostly inclined to blame somebody else rather than us so that's very I'm very American in that regard though I try to look at it somewhat more objectively one your first point the comment the Chinese observation that they haven't been hiding this they mean since 2008 that is that it's not like something happened last year or the year before or the year before that for anybody that had been watching since the financial crisis at Great Recession China's been very evidently getting bigger and stronger and more assertive now what is the rising power do to make war more likely so look at the behavior of Germany prior to World War one so for Britain the Empire was what they regarded this vital and their command of the seas they thought was the essential element in protecting India Canada of the Empire so what did the Kaiser do he started building a big Navy that became threatening to Britain in terms of its appreciation of its interests so I would say lots of what China is doing impacts American perceptions about the threats that China represents now widest she's in being one to be more assertive now well partly we're bigger we're stronger so normal partly it's time for us to stand up but be more assertive with respect to rights partly it's because he's drawing or reviving the sense of nationalism and pride in China and in China being China as part of the legitimation of the regime so I would say there quite a lot of things that the Chinese are doing that if they were to modify them might allow an easier transition how about the other one Graham 1996 - aircraft carrier was around Taiwan Island and and China could have done nothing at the time 1996 now China depends on what 20-some percent of his energy in has to be imported much of it come from the Gulf Gulf of a moose for example so if a Chinese tanker comes out from Kuwait or somewhere get into the Indian sea and as and as the pirate from a Somalia they couldn't you know captain Phillips you know you know that movie came to Phillips the the the the the Pirates cannot discern between a Chinese flat an American flat and say hey captain Phillips this here is China so what's good what's I'm gonna do how's it going to protect itself by calling this sex lis or the Fifth Fleet and mind you the 7th fleets are I mean the 7th fleet was exactly the one that sent her to aircraft carrier to the Taiwan Islands so I think that was a huge mistake perhaps on a part of Clinton to have sent those two aircraft carriers that woke up China and say wow we better be able to defend ourselves and our energy and important and so for China to hide this power doesn't make sense anymore because of economic needs if nothing else or you gave order you know non economic reasons so allow me to add some economic reasons and food import and food security energy security those are serious let me disagree okay so I was in the Pentagon in 1996 this assistance in your daily defense and this true that we moved up to carriers sufficiently to force China to basically back down after it had been bracketing Taiwan with missile tests in order to intimidate them and it was also the case that the predictable consequence of that was the Chinese military buildup to deny the u.s. the capability to do that again so what the D 21 s and D 26 s are primarily about is not having a replay of that scenario and now actually they've succeeded in pushing the American carriers back behind the first island chain so so that part I agree with in terms of the effect the Chinese though and I explained this to Chinese friends they are dependent on deliveries of oil over the ocean who owns the blue water the Americans absolutely who will own the blue water for as far as you can see the Americans so building a navy to protect the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf through the Persian Gulf where the Americans are through the Indian Oceans where the Americans are so 2/3 of the Strait you finally get to the South China Sea well at least we're Dharma in the South China Sea if all you could do is the last mile forget about it forget about it so I think again this is an area where in principle the Americans and the Chinese have a considerable common interest in order it will take some considerable time the Chinese certainly aspire to and if you look at the building of the of the of the bases and otherwise they aspire to be able to defend this route for themselves but that'll take decades right so what you're trying to do nothing today and say lie down and rape me so what do you expect Chinese to do except to begin to build their Navy I simply want anything they are building a Bluewater Navy and it'll take some time right then as Carol said earlier because technologies change you don't have to just build all the old legacy systems however China comes with a second mover advantage in this regard and I think that's important and they're looking actively imaginatively at I mean why would you have manned aircraft right I wouldn't buy a single manned aircraft hardly anymore okay because loan can do everything that it aircraft can do and actually it doesn't have the constraints on an airplane is the number of G's that the pilot can can stand so I think how about drums underwater white weather why do I need to have so and then what about so now you go down that list this is why this is an area of high high competition yeah right correct the gentleman here in the second table and then there's a hand at the very very back back here and then there and it worked in I don't well thank you for your comments and I want to put it to you that the two societies the US and China have very different approaches to the passage of time at the cultural level at their business and investment level as Carol commented earlier and obviously in terms of political duration of the players how do you think that impacts on the conversation that we're having yeah so good thank you very much there's a there's a pretty good chapter in the book it's not the best chapter but Zuko it's a good chapter called clash of civilizations which goes back to my former teacher and colleague Sam Huntington's great book on the clash of civilizations so the idea that Chinese are going to become Americans which again I'm exaggerating but essentially Americans very unlikely okay a lot of similarities is no question whatever that if you give Chinese the chance to have a market economy they succeed hugely in that respect and even if it's a state-led market economy dip down that Chinese are very entrepreneurial of course they've been entrepreneurial for thousands of years but the proposition that the Chinese are going to embrace a view of the world that's essentially an American view of the world maybe maybe maybe I don't think so okay so if you look at that comparison in the book between Chinese civilization an American civilization and the way that that gets reflected there in the strategic communities thinking about challenges from an American point of view if you can't solve the problem now I'm not very interested Chinese have a great capacity for saying as don't you ping said about the East China Seas in the islands we're not smart enough to solve this in this generation why don't we put that on the shelf for a generation and we'll come back to and when we're smarter so I would say there we should take advantage of the differences in trying to design potential solutions the gentlemen a very very bad last table in the middle please and then over here in the front to my right recently I have taught me some deployment in Singapore we always say that when Chinese or US courts or officials met they usually have a loss in translation and seems that Asia now lack of world leaders like Lee Kuan Yew and done shopping is there any hope to find a good leaders in Asia talk better we've to stay and reunited and bring back more communication and engagement that's an extremely good question so why was Lee Kuan Yew taken seriously not because he came from a big country he came from a little tinny country not because he had any military power than everything power because of his strategic acumen because he was a genuinely strategic thinker I wrote a book before this book on Lee Kuan Yew called the Grand Master Lee Kwang views views on everything it's a terrific book because actually 90% of all the words in the books or Lee Kuan Yew's words so basically we asked him the questions that we thought people should be interested in and we captured his pearls of wisdom in terms of the answers so Lee Kuan Yew contributed to the global conversation about what to do with everything this is my virtue of his mind and his insights I don't see any recent why I mean you could imagine somebody in Hong Kong or in Singapore or in Malaysia or in India or coming to say we have some ideas we have some thoughts and their ideas that would be significant because anybody who has seen people in power exercise power I've had a good fortune over my career to see press presidents for 40 years and the see secretaries of state and Senators these people are not different than we are unfortunately they have no great insight other than normal human beings so there's opportunity well let me ask you a question that I asked dr. Harry Kissinger your former professor as well as Helmut Schmidt I did not have a chance to as Lee Kuan Yew those three pin men and my opinion of the last generation are by far the best I asked them who do you see in the horizon anywhere in the world are at the level that is approaching your level frankly both of those two gentlemen didn't give me really satisfactory answers which means that in their view they don't see any you see anybody gram and you see any Carol I I again I asked this question there Lee Kuan Yew and he said she champagne this is now but for shishun being became Fame he said what's this myth really he said watch this man oh and so I said oh what do you see and I have a little description of this in the book he says this fellow was not normal they says he's he look at his look at his biography here he is a kid the prints link he and his sister his father who's a colleague of mom gets humiliated and then imprisoned he and his sister are sent off to the countryside that shovel dung his sister gets so desperate she commits suicide he thinks of ending his own life and then decides screw it I'm gonna become redder than red that's what he said and he scrambles his way all the way up to top to take charge he's like when you said this man has iron in his soul what year was it that he said it I'd have to look back and see but it's roughly be yeah it could have been just about the time that the baby 12 or sometimes I'm just yeah I I have to look I don't know exactly there's a two or three years before he died okay Carol you see anybody do you see anybody I would agree with him yeah okay the gentleman right here - last question here and then that table there okay just out of curiosity of the 12 times that the rising power has taken on the ruling power how many times has the rising power one and other four times that the that they haven't taken each other how many times is the rising power eventually taken over and is there any inevitability about what's going to happen here that's a that's a good question of which I should know the answer I would say check the appendix to the book but in the in the case of Germany under Bismarck a rising power who provoked France in the war in order to unify Germany there's a rising power that rose fought succeeded and that served its purposes in the case of the US as it rose at the beginning of the 20th century de Rivel and then surpassed Britain that did not end in war the u.s. rose there was an accommodation ultimately indeed the British were so agile and adaptive and imaginative that the Americans came to see their interest us essentially aligned with the British so that when World War one came in 1914 the u.s. was immediately the lifeline for Britain both for supplies and then for finance and then when we entered entered the war we entered as Britain's allies so those are at least two cases to think about the gentleman here right please yes that's a last question please Dean Allison it's it's wonderful to have you here with us in Hong Kong and I hope you don't mind if I call you Dean because when I showed up in Cambridge as a freshman you were the Dean of the of the Kennedy School and I attended many of your your lectures and in that first year got a kind of crash course in in the ideas of neo-realism from not only you but also Samuel Huntington and Bob Cohen and of course you and I and and others and I remember going home over the Christmas break preparing for my finals and my father asking me what I was learning in Cambridge and telling him about the Peloponnesian wars and seeing his face kind of glazed over as over pause and saying when are they going to teach you something useful at Harvard thank you for for making Thucydides great again but one of the things thinkers that was on the syllabus for you know many years that I was at Harvard which we haven't really discussed here is of course Ken Waltz who is famous for this book man war and the state in which he lays out these three different categories of explanations as to why the world erupts into conflict and he sort of categorically dismisses the first two that history is not made by great men and that it's not really about the types of nations you know whether they're democracy's whether they have McDonald's or not it's not these second-order things what really drives history and and global conflict is third order questions which is exactly what they're to say through sanity's was trying to explain which is that it's differential growth rates of states that create these conditions that you've described so eloquently in your book and I'm struck by the fact that you know although you're focused on facilities you've said that you're not a fatalist because through synergies is in many ways kind of a fatalist his argument is essentially the pure neo-realist argument that it's only this third category of changing differences in power and there's no escape really from that that trap that trap creates frictions you seem to be slightly more optimistic about that and I'm curious as to know why is it because you actually put more credence to the second or first order factors do you think that if if if it were Trump were different if there was something different that Xi Jinping did or if these two nations were democracies instead of one an authoritarian country and wanted an open system that there would be more hope or you know what is it that gives you the cause for for your slavery of optimism a good question if you're if you're true fatalist you would sort of believe what John Mearsheimer are doing which is hit the other guy first and fast before he it's more powerful okay so I'm I'm glad to be we first I'm glad that anybody remembers that long ago glad for your comments but I would say you got through Sidda T's slightly wrong through synthase is not a fatalist though we sometimes misread as such lucidity is writing in a context in which the rulers of the roost at the time or fatalists the playwrights like Sophocles so they do believe the gods and fate defines your role and all you do was play your role so Oedipus has no choice he's gonna kill his father and marry his mother and discover he's a monster that's it but do Citadis is looking at this war and thinking gee people made mistakes that led us into this war so he waits in the I hope this is a contribution for future statesmen so they can learn from the mistakes that were made so they don't have to repeat these over again so if you look at what is really motivating him for writing this book it's not to tell people you know life is determined by fate get used to it it's instead to say human being his book is about history understood as the choices human beings may and their consequences and the possibility of learning from other people's mistakes so you don't have to make those all over again so that's as I argue in the books Santayana then offers his version of that in which he says only those who refuse to study history are condemned to repeat it so I don't think two cities is a fatalist that I certainly loved it well the last question goes to Carroll it is the most important question given this troubled world that we're in today where should I put my money in the next one year and in the next ten years Carol where are you putting your money that's a good question the next year in oil oil got it oil yeah okay ten years ten years if we live that long God willing God willing exactly I would having in emerging markets emerging marketing markets where is that oh just broad front abroad investment in emerging markets with China still be emerging markets I would include that emerging market but yeah okay Lina German living in Hong Kong you are in we are in the midst of we are a first of all city in the midst of developing economies and so we're delighted that we are at least in the right place we are far enough from a North Korea also anyway I have a book here for the two of them it is very befitting we have a show being shown Robert Indiana at our Chantelle Miller gallery it's called love long so while we are worrying about everything less love long later gentlemen a final round of applause to our two speakers Graham Allison and Carol [Applause]

Channel: Asia Society

Views: 334,647

Rating: 4.3700943 out of 5

Keywords: united states, u.s.-china relations, china's economy, video, graham allison, ronnie c. chan, kiril sokoloff

Id: _gPoXwD_Jj8

Length: 124min 36sec (7476 seconds)

Published: Tue May 15 2018