Hal Brands on Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China

good day this is the program on constitutional government at Harvard I'm Harvey Mansfield one with my wife Anna and our guest today is Donald brands Our Brands is an historian he's a graduate of Stanford he got his PhD in history at eao he's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and he's also a professor or not just that he's the Henry a Kissinger distinguished professor of global Affairs not International but Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins school of advanced International Studies science that's in Washington and he's a columnist or Bloomberg he's worked as a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense and uh was a lead writer for the national defense strategy Commission and he's written several books these are the lessons of tragedy statecraft and World Order 2019. American Grand strategy in the age of trump 2018. making the unipolar moment U.S foreign policy and the rise of the post-cold war order 2016 the power of the past history and state craft okay that's 2016 also and what good is Grand strategy power and purpose in American statecraft from Harry S Truman the George W bush 2014 and a couple of more too but most recently he has written the danger zone the coming conflict with China so he's going to talk on China and the Ukraine so how brands all right well thank you very much uh for having me it's a pleasure to be here and uh to see everyone including a few faces I I recognize from DC I could probably just do this from Adam's office down the street and we we could save a little bit of space um so I'll just say at the outset I'm I'm an admirer of this program and of its Mission which I sort of take to be finding a place for voices that might not otherwise be welcome on campus to express themselves because that's uh really important to the work that I do and it's actually the aim of a program that I run with a couple of friends at Duke and the University of Texas called the America in the world Consortium where we try to do for the foreign policy debate what this forum tries to do for an array of issues so it's it's a mission with which uh I'm in a tremendous sympathy uh in terms of the somewhat um capacious title of this session I think what initially provoked the invitation was the idea that I would talk a little bit about the book that Mike Beckley and I wrote uh which came out about six months ago on China's trajectory and the risks that poses for the United States and the rest of the world but as we went back and forth we thought it might also be interesting to touch on the Ukraine crisis now that we're a little bit more than a year into that war and to think a little bit about how we got to where we are and where it might go from here so um I'm gonna try to do both of those things and these opening remarks which I'll keep pretty short because I understand that the core of this is really a free-flowing discussion so let me just talk for kind of five to ten minutes about each of those subjects and then we can just open it up and have a good conversation so um the way I would to start with the China issue because that's what sort of got us started the way I would summarize uh the book that Mike and I wrote which came out um really in the middle of the Taiwan crisis this past August is that it is meant to be a counter-intuitive counter-intuitive addition to the let's all hyperventilate about China uh genre and and so Mike and I we are the camp that think we ought to be hyperventilating about China but but for a reason that's a little bit different than you sometimes hear and our basic argument is that China is potentially more dangerous than many people realize because China has far more problems than many people uh realize and so to unpack that a little bit if you think about kind of what the the conventional wisdom has been in Washington um and in sort of public discussion of this issue for a number of years it might be summarized as kind of the thucydides Trap thesis this is the idea that China is rising the United States is declining at least in relative terms that China will supplant the United States first economically and then diplomatically and militarily as the world superpower it will basically be to the 21st century uh as America was to the 20th century and that as China rises in the United States declines you get what political scientists call a power transition or hegemonic transition tension Spike and War results uh and this is taken from the the notion of the facilities trap is taken from what I would consider to be a stylized reading of the history of Polynesian war and has often been applied to contemporary cases as well our basic argument is that this is this is wrong um in in ways that we can talk about people are interested in I'm pretty sure that the thucydides Trap doesn't actually explain why Athens and Sparta went to war 2500 years ago and I'm quite certain that it doesn't explain what's going on between the United States and and China because I'm fairly certain that China is actually not going to overtake the United States as the world's leading power it's its rise is real of course the economic rise has been spectacular over the period about four decades although really concentrated in the first three decades of that period um the military buildup that China's been embarked on since the early 1990s is obviously quite real and is Shifting the balance of power in the Western Pacific and potentially Beyond in some fundamental ways but if you think about China's trajectory um China has some some very serious very deeply rooted problems that are going to make it very difficult for it to overtake the United States and economic power alone let alone in sort of comprehensive National Power and and let alone if you are to act factor in that it's not just the United States that's trying to obstruct China's Ambitions it's the United States plus a whole bunch of allies in East Asia and potentially Beyond and and I can summarize I can talk in more detail about what these are but basically the way you should think about this is that all of the Tailwinds that Propel China's economic miracle in the decades after 1978 have turned into headwinds uh and that that's true of demographic factors where China once had a population that was primed for productivity and now it's working age population is about to fall off a cliff in the coming years that's true of Economic Policy where you had the reform and opening period following 1978 but but that reform program has been stalled and perhaps going in Reverse for about 15 years now it's true of the political system where you you had to move toward a more responsive agile authoritarianism after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 the political system has been moving in the other direction over the past decade under decision ping and ways that have serious implications for economic growth it's true in terms of the availability of resources China was once a country that was nearly self-sufficient and a lot of the inputs it needed for economic uh growth today it's running out of arable land it's running out of usable water it's heavily dependent on expensive imported energy and need and other inputs and it's true of the fact that the world simply is no longer nearly as welcoming of Chinese growth and expanding Chinese influence as it as it once was you can see this in the way that um the United States and other countries are throwing up barriers to Chinese participation in key aspects of their economies 5G telecommunications to give you one example and of course you can see it in the way that more and more countries are banding together in more and more ways to push back against the assertive um uh expansion of Chinese power and you can see this and the things that countries are doing individually Japan is doubling its defense budget over the next five years because it's terrified of Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific you can see it and the things that countries are doing together whether that's uh the August partnership between the US the UK and Australia uh the quad partnership between Japan Australia India and the United States the way that the U.S Japan Alliance has been transformed of some fairly fundamental ways in recent years and years and and so on and so forth and so basically the argument that Mike and I make in this book is that China's best days are behind it in terms of its ability to grow economically its growth rate in the coming years won't be anywhere near what it was coming into covet let alone what it was prior to 2008 and it's a country that's going to be facing more and more strategic resistance to its power and so China is best thought of in those respects as a peaking power rather than a rising power it's a country that has grown quite impressively and all the key aspects of its power but its best days are behind it the challenge though is that countries don't peak in all Dimensions at once and so it takes time to translate economic power into military power for instance and you can continue plowing resources into your military long after your economy has peaked this is what the Soviet Union did um for about 15 years after its economy peaked relative to the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s and that's exactly what we see with China today and and so even if you buy my thesis our thesis that China is peaking economically it's not peaking militarily and it won't Peak militarily for for probably another decade or so under relatively generous uh assumptions and so what this creates is a relatively dangerous window of opportunity and we focus here in particular on the Taiwan Strait and so um China's uh sort of it's the balance of power will be most favorable in a military sense to China and the Taiwan Strait we would say in the latter part of this decade that's when China's current round of military reforms is slated to fluid in that round of military reforms involves a lot of things like joint operations that would be relatively important in the Taiwan contingency it is before a lot of the military modernization programs that countries like the U.S Japan Taiwan Australia our undertaking will begin to bear fruit most of those programs are still oriented towards the early 2030s although Japan is a partial exception in this regard and actually in the late 2020s U.S military power on the Western Pacific is kind of going to go like this because the United States has to retire a bunch of old ships planes and submarines that have reached the end of their service lives or will soon reach the end of their service lives and so if you're Xi Jinping and you have made annexing Taiwan a very important part of your personal Legacy and you worry that Beyond let's say 2030 2035 that's going to become harder to do because of Trends in Taiwanese politics because of Trends in the military balance of power because China is facing growing resistance abroad as its economy struggles but you have a very attractive window of opportunity to do it in the late 2020s might you become more risk accepted more willing to roll the dice and to make that sort of move and so that's really the argument that we make in terms of saying that U.S China relations are approaching a danger zone and that while it is not wrong to think of the U.S China relationship as constituting this long-term competition the superpower Marathon the most dangerous part of that competition may actually be in the next you know five seven ten years so that that's the argument we make with respect to U.S China relations so let me let me pivot now to the other side of the world and talk a little bit about Ukraine um I guess the the point I'll make here is maybe twofold and the first is that uh I wrote an article that came out maybe two weeks ago essentially arguing that the Ukraine war especially in its early days and weeks was a much closer run thing than we actually realized that we've just simply forgotten what a close run thing it was that it wasn't for ordained that Putin's Army would fail in the way that it did but that failure was um it hinged on three or four key factors all of which were quite contingent all of which could have gone in the other direction and that while we have come to see the war in some ways as strengthening the Western world as strengthening the cohesion of the advanced democracies and the liberal order had it come out differently the effect could have been very much the reverse and so in some ways the argument that I would make about the first year of the Ukraine war is it simply a reminder that kind of there is no natural Arc of History The Arc of history is simply the result of decisions that people in Moscow give and Washington in this case made under the pressures of Crisis and that this will be continue to be the case that we shouldn't assume that the the subsequent trajectory of the war is written in stone simply because the war has gone a certain way up to this point and so just to unpack that a little bit um if you think about what Putin intended to achieve in this war he he wanted to conquer you know most of Ukraine at the very least essentially extinguish it as an independent state probably force it into some sort of Union treaty under a public government with Belarus which had been de facto occupied militarily by Russian forces and the run-up to the war and Russia he was hoping to create a fundamentally new situation along the Eastern front of NATO and so if Putin was able to achieve his AIMS in Ukraine he would have had additional vectors to apply pressure uh on on NATO particularly it's it's more exposed Eastern members uh he certainly hoped that this would make it appear as though kind of the Eurasian autocracies Russia and China in particular had the global momentum and it was meant in a way to build on that remarkable joint statement that Russia and China put out about three weeks before the War Began and basically it was meant to shift the Arc of the International System in a way that was fundamentally more favorable to Russia all of that can was contingent of course on Russia achieving a quick and decisive victory in this war and in many ways there were a lot of Western observers who thought that this was actually what was likely to happen if you remember the Ukrainian government particularly the civilian leadership did not appear to be taking the threat of invasion particularly seriously until about two or three days before the Russians actually invaded we now know that the Ukrainian military was taking it more seriously than the civilian leadership was but but even there there was some uncertainty about what might be coming um it was widely assumed that the Russians would perform better than they actually did and there was not a lot of certainty about what the U.S and Western response would be if you recall um in a press conference about a month before The Invasion President Biden himself said you know if the Russians do something less than a full-scale Invasion we may just end up bickering amongst ourselves about what to do about it and exactly the way that happened after Putin took Crimea in 2014 and the U.S and its European allies spent months years even arguing about whether to provide very very modest lethal assistance to the ukrainians and for for a period in the opening days of the war it appeared that Putin's theory of Victory might actually pull up and so the theory of victory was that you would basically conduct sort of Thunder runs down key axes of advanced uh particularly into the capital that the Ukrainian government would collapse or be overthrown or perhaps zolenski would be assassinated that Ukrainian Elites would then flip they would basically decide to make their piece with the Russians and that would bring about the collapse of the Ukrainian State um we weren't that far from having that happen in the first few days of the war if you remember there were a number of people of zelinski and zielinski's Inner Circle who were urging him to basically flee the capital a day or two into the war Russian forces Iran Ukraine's outskirts or even pushing into the city a little bit there were reports of you know dozens or perhaps hundreds of Russian operatives uh scouring him trying to find zielinski and assassinate him and at one point it's been widely reported uh the U.S government actually asked salonski if he was planning on staying or or leaving and and so if you it wasn't sort of predetermined that the Ukraine would be successful in resisting and there were certain parts of the country particularly in the South where something like what the Russians envisioned actually did happen we had a relatively unopposed advance and some Ukrainian Elites did switch sides early in the in the fighting so why did this um you know plan not come off in the way that Putin expected I I think there were really three three or four key factors that are worth highlighting one one is just the degree to which the Russians underperformed and underperformed even relative to the standards of what one would expect from an increasingly personalized autocratic system this this was everything from you know not telling key units that were going to be involved in the assault that they were doing something other than a training Mission until 24 or 48 hours before the assault as has been widely reported uh in in the media to having a plan that involved probably too many axes of advance that were not mutually supporting as opposed to concentrating Russian forces in one area or another um to Simply you know not giving Russian Commanders so the time or the latitude to prepare the sort of tactical tactical logistical plans they would need if they encountered Fierce resistance as as they did and so there are a lot of reasons why this happened but I think even a modestly better Russian approach to the war would have paid major diffidence for Moscow the second factor of course was just the degree of Ukrainian resistance that was encountered again this was not inevitable um you know zielinski not not to be too cute about the point look looked a little bit more like Ashraf ghani than he did like Winston Churchill on the run-up to the war it was only once the War Began that he he really started to display the qualities that he has rightly become come to be renowned for uh over the past year you had in many cases under strength Ukrainian units that simply put up heroic resistance on key lines of Russian Advance sometimes augmented by Ukrainian civilians or territorial Defense Forces that showed up to augment those under strings uh units and you had a Ukrainian military that simply had improved more than I think a lot of Western observers gave it credit for and was able to mount a fairly creative and effective defense uh and and key areas particularly north of the capital so that was the second factor and the third Factor was simply the complete turnaround in U.S and Western policy toward the conflict and and so again it's worth underscoring you know the last time Russia had invaded Ukraine U.S policy did not look anything like it has looked like under the bind Administration for the past year there was a a very strong reluctance to give Ukraine anything that looked like lethal support for fear of escalation there were sharp divisions between the US and many of its European uh allies and so on and so forth none of that was true this time around you had a European response that was um surprisingly strong from the outset and you had a U.S response even before The Invasion started from what's been reported uh in the media that was incredibly vital to sustaining Ukrainian resistance in areas from the sharing of information to the provision of anti-take weapons and that relationship became even more important as the war became more protracted and it helped ensure that Putin simply couldn't batter or trit or escalate his way out of the conflict and so if you put all those things together that helps explain why the war went the way it did in its opening phases and why a war that Putin very much intended to weaken the Western order had had the opposite effect now we're a year into the war at this point and I think this is probably a less controversial statement now than it was a couple months ago when I Was preparing the article but it's not at all guaranteed that the war is going to continue to go Ukraine's way if you look at the mobilization of Russian forces if you look at the pressure that Russia has been able to put Ukrainian forces under um not just at Mahmoud but at other places uh if you look at the way that Ukraine is having to ration artillery for instance because Western arsenals simply are not sufficient to keep it supplied at the level its commanders might like to use there is real uncertainty about the way that the war is is going and so we shouldn't take away the message we take away from the first year of the conflict isn't that Ukraine has done well today so Ukraine is guaranteed to continue doing well over the next year of the conflict I think that's very much up in the air and I'll just connect the two subjects that I've talked about briefly by talking about the prospect that China might become more deeply and more directly involved in the Ukraine conflict U.S officials have been talking about this Prospect publicly over the last couple of weeks I don't know anything beyond on what I read in the newspapers about this but you know I think that this if China does become well let me back up I think China is reluctant to become more deeply involved in the Ukraine crisis because Chinese leaders understand that that would expose Beijing to um punishment from U.S sanctions it would have a very disruptive effect in sino-european relations at a time when Beijing is eager to make sure that China doesn't that Europe doesn't follow the United States down the path of at least partial decoupling but what Beijing cannot afford to have happen is for Putin to lose this war or for Russia to emerge from the war so weakened that it is no longer able to consume significant amounts of U.S and Western attention uh in the western part of Eurasia as China does so in the eastern part of Eurasia and so I think this is the Dilemma that Chinese policy makers are likely wrestling with if China were to get more directly involved particularly by providing either lethal assistance to Russian forces so China has a lot of artillery ammunition it could provide to Russia for instance or even by you know sort of going up to that line of lethal assistance without actually going over it providing you know drones for civilian use or something like that it could potentially have a significant effect on the battlefield as this war turns into something more of a protracted slug Fest in the months and potentially years ahead it would also have an incredibly divisive effect globally it would essentially globalize the implications that the war has had so far it would lead to a significantly higher level of sino-american tensions um you know for the current month for the coming months and Beyond it would deepen the divide that have already emerged between China and many of the advanced democracies and it would make the balancing act that a lot of developing countries have tried to have tried to maintain essentially choosing not to choose in the context of the Ukraine or harder to do because the United States would presumably be going after Chinese entities that are aiding the Russian war effort with sanctions it would essentially be globalizing the economic punishment campaign in a way that would lead many other countries with with much reduced scope for this sort of balancing act so I can't say what the probabilities are that China will get more deeply involved but I can say that if they do it could have significant implications both locally and globally so um I I have tried to cover a lot of ground there so why don't I go ahead and stop and I'd just be happy to have whatever sort of discussion people would like to have that's very good thank you our internet crashed but we're back in Action now look let me start with a question uh about uh Ukraine which was a greater surprise so the Valor of zelenski or the good sense of President Biden well I I would say it was probably zielinski's performance was was the greater surprise um in part in part because they're you know unless you knew what to look for there wasn't a huge amount in zielinski's background to make you think that this guy had successful War leader written all over him um you know he he obviously came from a non-traditional background which is not necessarily a bad thing but often leads people to underestimate you um he had been elected really as a peace candidate rather than a war leader he he had made the argument that it was time to end the war uh with Russia through some sort of peace deal and really only veered away from that once it became clear how unpopular that position was with much of the Ukrainian uh electorate and I think this is why this is the primary reason why I think zelinski's performance is more surprising than Biden's you know the by demonstration had been signaling for about oh I don't know four months before The Invasion started that it was taking this thing really seriously right it had been signaling that by declassifying intelligence and releasing it publicly it had been signaling that by saying in no uncertain terms that there would be severe consequences for Russia's relationship with the outside world uh if it went ahead with this Invasion and it had been signaling that by um uh quietly but but not in a confidential way or anything accelerating shipments of supplies and lethal Aid Ukrainian forces you know even in late 2021 even in the months running up to the invasion and so while it wasn't inevitable that Biden would react in this way you you could see clear signs of the path that the Biden Administration was on in the run-up to February 23rd and February 24th with zielinski you really couldn't uh and so you know zielinski had had in many ways been at odds with the Biden Administration and the run-up to the war he had complained publicly that the United States was talking up the prospect of invasion in a way that um would basically help the Russians destabilize the Ukrainian economy by causing Capital flight uh for instance for whatever reason he really seemed quite reluctant to accept the warnings that were reportedly coming that this was going to be a full-on Invasion aimed at the conquest of the country rather than at most a big operation in the East and that was actually one of the reasons I think why many Observers in the West uh did not think that the invasion would be as massive and ambitious as it was because clearly if this thing was coming the Ukrainian leadership should be more worried about it and zielinski didn't seem more more worried about it and so you know what whether zelinski was um you know deliberately downplaying the threat because he didn't want to tank Ukrainian economy um whether he did not trust the warnings he was getting I can't say but simply you know sort of from the perspective of somebody who's observing this publicly his turnaround in the first few days of the invasion I think is the more remarkable because it was much more of a 180 degree turnaround than Biden's was I care thank you yes I'll moderate some now um Avi and then Manuel uh you uh you talked about two uh subjects and I've got a question on each one with regard to China you talked about the high level of risk that we were apparently approaching toward the end of this decade uh and the question I guess is what should we do about it what should the strategy be to if we are aware of that and if your hypothesis is right what should be our kind of strategy I guess to either avoid conflict or at least avoid the expansion of Chinese hegemony on the Ukrainian front the implications of your remarks uh uh are that we should try to find a way out and that of course talks about some kind of negotiated settlement I don't know if anybody has a strategy I've heard discussion of the uh the Austria treaty I think it was 1955 or maybe off on that at a time when the Soviet Union and the United States were vying for control of as much territory as possible and there was an agreement that Austria would remain neutral and that worked I don't know if that anything like that would work in Ukraine because I don't see how you handle Crimea can't imagine either side giving up Crimea so I don't know if they use a neutral Ukraine is actually part of the formula I'd be interested in your thoughts sure so on the first question um the simplified version is is I I think we should be trying to close the window of opportunity as as best that we can and and so if you're thinking about the prospect of a war in the Taiwan Strait for instance the the good news from an American perspective certainly from a Taiwanese perspective is that I I don't think Xi Jinping can achieve the subordination of Taiwan through anything short of a full-on Invasion and occupation because I just don't think pressure short of that will be sufficient to get Taiwan to give up its de facto sovereignty it's it's de facto Independence there aren't there aren't a lot of cases of that in in history so and the further the good news is that um if Xi Jinping actually wants to conquer Taiwan we're talking about one of the most complex ambitious military operations anybody can imagine right it's a large-scale amphibious assault across a fairly big body of Fairly choppy water it's it's attacking a Target that has really good terrain for defense and so there's only a small number of beaches at which an invasion force can land on on the western side of taiwan's the side that's closer uh to China you know once you get Inland you've got mountains you've got jungles you've got dense Urban Terrain there's not a lot of scope for sort of offensive maneuver Warfare and and so if Taiwan and its friends adopt the right posture they ought to be able to make the island a pretty tough nut to crack and if you can make the the chances that an invasion or other attack on Taiwan will fail look pretty high you may be able to discourage even a risk acceptance Xi Jinping from taking that sort of gamble because he has to understand that if he takes that Gamble and he loses he may very well be endangering his own hold on power not because of anything the United States would do but simply because you know dictators who are defeated in Wars always have to worry that that will be the result even if it is not always the result so what what does that mean in practice um you know in the book we lay out about I think five or six different steps but but basically it means uh hardening Taiwan as best you can and hardening the U.S defense posture in the Western Pacific as best you can in the next four five six years mostly using capabilities and tools that are already available right and because if you think that the critical moment is the late 2020s then you know you really don't have huge amounts of time to mature and develop cool new capabilities that that nobody really knows about yet you're basically working with what you have now now the good news is that that actually ought to be enough and and so what you basically have to do is be able to turn you know any Chinese invasion of Taiwan into kind of a bloody Nightmare and you can probably do that simply by loading up on Shooters and sensors in the Western Pacific you can do it by Distributing the US military presence there a little bit more so that it's not so susceptible to be knocked out in a Chinese first strike you can do it if Taiwan loads up on anti-ship missiles and sea mines and mobile air defenses and other things that can simply make a Chinese Assault very costly and very protracted you can do it if you try to knit together the various countries that have an interest in preventing this from happening countries like the US Japan and Australia more tightly and the good news actually is that some of this stuff is already happening right and so if you look at U.S Japan defense planning and defense cooperation those two countries are doing a lot of the things you would hope to see to make a Taiwan assault harder um and and they've done a lot of it over the past couple of of years if you look at the way that Australia and Japan are cooperating more closely on defense issues and you look at the Strategic declaration they put out last September it looks a lot like sort of a tacit pact to resist Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific and if you look at the moves that Japan is making with this defense program and so so on and so forth there are still some pretty serious challenges that remain though I'll just I'll flag one just for reasons of time you know if there's csis the think tank down the street did a good report on the state of the U.S defense industrial base uh and how that might play out in a U.S China war a few weeks ago and the basic answer is that it's really bad like we start running out of Munitions we start running out of um things we would need for that contingency very quickly with with no real way of surging production to meet them on an emergency basis and and so that's a clear weakness it's a clear case where we're going to have to dramatically ramp up our efforts in the coming years and I simply don't know whether that will will happen or not last point I'll make on this um this is a case where analytical differences really do produce differences in policy prescriptions and so if you believe you know me and Mike that the sort of the most dangerous period is the late 2020s then you might agree with a lot of the stuff that we recommend but if you think that we're wrong and that the the period of peak dangers in say the late 2030s you might say that we're way off base on the prescriptions because if you are spending lots and lots of money on procurement and Military construction and less money on research and development well that may be an optimal strategy for a conflict that occurs or could occur four or five years from now it's a sub-optimal strategy for a conflict that would occur 15 years down the road so so the analytical difference actually makes a difference in terms of policy as well um on the Ukraine issue I I honestly don't really have a clue how this war is going to end and I'm not sure that anybody else does either and and so the message that you are increasingly hearing from the US government in public is that it seems unlikely that either side can fully achieve its military and political objectives it seems unlikely that the Russians will be able to conquer you know all of eastern Ukraine um to say nothing of the other territories that Putin annexed back in September uh it seems unlikely uh that that Ukraine will be able to retake every inch of its territory including Crimea you know let alone achieve secure reparations from Russia and war crimes Trials of Putin and his henchmen and so on and so forth and so what you increasingly are hearing is that you're going to have sort of sequenced offensives over the next six to eight months the Russians are running one right now the ukrainians will launch one at some point this spring presumably and that after that happens both sides will have exhausted many of their capabilities on the hope is that at that point either the intensity of the conflict will diminish and so you get sort of in India and India Pakistan and Kashmir type situation where there's not really a peace deal but there's not a huge amount of activity along the line of control on a daily basis or perhaps at that point the two sides get into a more serious peace negotiation I'll just say I'm I'm skeptical right I'm skeptical because the Ukrainian political leadership has been very clear on what their aims are and I don't see a huge Prospect for the Ukrainian political leadership walking back those AIMS in the period between now and Ukraine's next presidential election which is about a year and change from now Putin has given absolutely zero indication that he is willing to fundamentally roll back his War aims and so you I think it's entirely plausible that you could get a conflict that sort of Ebbs and flows where you get relatively quiet periods as the two sides try to ramp up their military capabilities and then you get periods of more intense fighting I I don't know that it I would you know bet a dollar on whether we're going to get some sort of settlement between now and the end of this year because the two sides just appear very far apart now that that's not a great situation to be very honestly I mean it's terrible for Ukraine in the sense that the country is just getting pummeled as the war goes on it's not great frankly for the United States if you think about the way in which um the War has exposed shortcomings in the U.S defense industrial base and Western defense industrial bases more broadly if you think about um the toll in attention and bandwidth that's taking from other priorities while I don't agree with those who say that you know we've got to end the Ukraine war tomorrow so we can focus on China I think the distraction cost is is real to a certain extent and so um I don't necessarily think that you know the theory that you hear about how the war will end will be borne out but I don't have a better one for it right right now and and some something more fundamental will have to happen on the battlefield whether a higher degree of exhaustion or a chain a fundamental change in the fortunes of one side or the other I think to get them to a point where their War aims or what they would accept as a peace settlement starts to converge because right now they're still very far apart thank you I have a quick follow-up question uh is there or you just mentioned it as an aside so you don't think there's a direct conflict in the uh the material the depletion of material stockpiles between being prepared for China and um supplying Ukraine and my second question is do you think as a counter factual that this um the scenario that so many people I think have foreseen that it will just end up in some decades-long stairmate of sorts that there could have been avoided either by going all in for the ukrainians at the beginning or by by basically planning for long-term guerrilla warfare from from the beginning and not supplying all these weapons I I don't think the latter scenario I don't think the latter outcome would have been preferable because uh you know that we we now just simply on on moral grounds we now know that you know everywhere Russia has occupied territory in Ukraine it has committed horrible crimes verging on genocide in some cases and and so if you were sort of playing for the Insurgency you're also exposing much larger portions of Ukrainian territory in the Ukrainian population to that sort of punishment and and I would have a hard time I'd have a hard time endorsing that on strategic or or moral grounds um you know there is there is a different school of thought out there which is the one you reference as sort of your first counterfactual scenario which is that the thing to do was to give the ukrainians everything in April of last year so that they would have Incorporated it already um when Russian forces were at their weakest say in the late summer and early fall and perhaps Ukraine could have brought the war to a successful conclusion then um I I am I'll I'll try to give a nuanced answer here I I am sympathetic in some ways to the critique that what the United States has often done in this conflict is provide Ukraine with the capabilities it wants and needs only after repeatedly saying that under no circumstances will it provide Ukraine with those capabilities and so there's been a long lag but I think there's two things that have to be kept in mind what one is that you know only at extremely irresponsible U.S president would have just blithely waved away the risks of nuclear escalation in a way that a lot of American commentators seemed inclined to do and and so it made a certain amount of sense to go slow in testing Russia's red lines um and and see what the United States could get away with and the answer is we can get away with quite a lot I mean we can get away with um you know support for Ukraine that has had the effect of killing tens of thousands of Russian uh service members but you know could you confidently predict that that would happen without the Russians escalating in a more dangerous way back in March 2022 I I don't know I I couldn't have confidently made that prediction the other point I'll make there is that um you know I I need I need to go back and refresh my memory on the timing but uh I don't I can't remember when the May the first sort of you know 40 billion dollar uh Ukraine supplemental came through but you know it wasn't on February 28 2022 right it was later in the year and so the question was like what money were you going to use to and what authorities were you going to use to provide Ukraine with with all this equipment on such an expedited basis at a time when in many cases the ukrainians were still operating on kind of old Soviet standard weaponry and so what they really needed like in the spring of 2022 it wasn't 155 of ammunition it was you know 152 ammunition because they were still using the the Soviet stuff and then once they sort of exhausted that okay let's transition you over to Western Standard stuff um in terms of the other question you asked about you know whether there is a zero-sum trade-off between Aid to Russia I'm sorry Aid to Ukraine and uh Aid to Taiwan I think it really depends on the capability and so you know the way the way I read it just looking at this from the outside is that the United States has been willing to provide Ukraine with with lots and lots of stuff that it doesn't necessarily think would be absolutely critical in a Taiwan context artillery ammunition for instance um it has not been willing to provide Ukraine with capabilities that are more finite and perhaps would be more critical in the Taiwan context atacums for instance uh harpoons maybe right things like that those of you have been given in a smaller quantity or or not at all there are some capabilities that kind of straddle the line between these things there's a debate over whether um you know gimlers sort of the shorter Range High Mars round are useful in a Taiwan contingency or not I I think they are as long as they get to Taiwan before the the shooting starts other people disagree um the United States appears to be willing to assume you know some risk there but not huge amounts of risk if you look at the limited numbers of high Mar systems and gimlers rounds that the United States has provided so so the way I see it is that in many cases there has so far not been a zero-sum trade-off there has been a zero-sum trade-off in some cases where that's the case I think the Administration has been more cautious when you start talking about some of the capabilities Ukraine might need in the coming year I think the trade-offs will become more significant and so I'll just be interested to see how the administration handles that you are outstanding and answering questions thank you so much it's incredibly good Emmanuel hi uh thanks I I the two questions one is just a quick follow-up on on Anna's uh Point uh uh what you may make perfect sense to buy Biden I think actually it's done a fairly good job in a gradual testing of Russia's limits and I hate to think what might have happened if Trump had been president during this crisis I can't really decide whether it was a nuclear war or end of NATO or something like that but uh so it's very good but is still is there some uh way we should be going further or be still too hesitant on the attack Ms on the uh planes that they've been asking for maybe that won't actually do Ukraine any good I I'm not decided on that but uh uh so so that's one question if we do and if we do that uh which if China supplies military on the other side could we still Prevail in other words is that enough could China just really uh uh shift the balance overwhelmingly against us no matter what we provide Ukraine without the us being more directly involved in terms of uh that we went along we went y cross one and and the second question is just if you could say a bit more on on uh the domestic situation in China meaning this that uh uh a rising middle class uh uh trade liberalization the theory was the despotism would weaken and of course that hasn't happened in China and then Russia also despotism seems to have a pretty enduring hole so you know kudos to despotism so the question is uh uh uh do you foresee uh uh those systems uh uh a good chance that those systems would there would be some kind of domestic upheaval a political change in either of those countries puren obviously if he loses Ukraine that it seems to me likely something could happen but I don't know if that means a change away from that position but China as our main enemy uh is there indications that this is a mistake which is doing and that that system uh uh you know he'd be forced to invade Taiwan maybe to show up support without it's losing support with kovid as one argument or the other argument is that the state's been very successful propaganda machine is great and so forth so that's that's gonna remain so okay um two two super uh challenging questions on on the first one um I'm gonna I'm not trying to dodge it so I think I think there are things the Biden Administration could have done better over the last year and so I'll give you one one example um the bind administration's declaratory policy uh on Ukraine was very sloppy for the first couple of months sloppy in the sense of Biden you know publicly undercutting his own efforts to deter Putin by talking about the difficulty that the U.S might have in rallying International response um Biden's saying some you know fairly strange things about nuclear deterrence early on in in the conflict basically saying you know the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory but under no circumstances will we fight in Ukraine because if we fight in Ukraine that'll be World War III with Russia well if you're defending NATO territory against the Russian assault that's also World War III with Russia so right if thing three is true then thing one can't actually be true uh as as well to their credit I think they've actually cleaned that up quite a lot and and further you know as a mitigating Factor let's bear in mind that you know the last time a U.S president had to manage a great power military crisis with a significant nuclear dimension wasn't like 1973 right so it's been it's been a while and so it's not entirely surprising that we're a little bit out of practice as as a country on this stuff I I think the the number one thing that I would like to see happen that hasn't happened is just sort of a much expanded uh much expedited uh bid to strengthen the U.S defense industrial base and and and so you know if you think about the run-up to World War II the United States didn't really hit Peak mobilization during World War II and kind of late 1943 early 1944. the only reason it got there two years after Pearl Harbor was that the United States had actually started preparing for war first in 1938 and then more seriously in 1940 so we met you know U.S defense spending and the year prior to World War II I think was 11 of GDP or something like that which is about three times uh what it is today in terms of a percentage of GDP and even that was only possible because in 1940 the United States had a mass manufacturing economy that had huge amounts of spare capacity because we're coming out of the Great Depression right so you had lots of factories that were operating on one shift that could easily go to three if if you could just find the money for it to perhaps to happen none of those things are true today by by the way right and so if the United States does heaven forbid find itself involved in a shooting war with Russia or especially China I mean our ability to replace stuff that we use or lose right whether we're talking about long-range Precision Precision strike Munitions or you know ships that get sunk It's it's very very weak and we have an opportunity actually to invest in a much more significant way in our ability to recapitalize those capabilities in the same way that Lind lease actually sort of helped stimulate the U.S defense industrial base in the run-up to World War II right so Ukraine war has alerted us to the problem it's given us an opportunity to start producing some of the things we might need in a much larger quantity and so I I would very much like to see kind of a big initiative focused on on that um on the second the second question you raised um I'll answer this in a way that I hope doesn't sound glib and it is I'm I'm fairly confident that neither of these systems can endure forever but unfortunately that doesn't do us any good in terms of making policy right because I can't I can't give you a confident guess that you know forever is three years or 30 years or 300 years I I think it will be difficult for the CCP to you know maintain the current political status quo in in China as growth slows as social problems multiply and so on and so forth or maybe the CCP even as it confronts more domestic unrest and opposition will simply decide to use whatever repression is necessary to stay in control right um Putin may come out of this war weekend politically but also we have to keep in mind that the obstacles to Collective action to unseated dictator are potentially exorbitant in this sort of regime and so let's say you know let's say you and I are kind of second-tier Russian officials and we decide that Putin has to go you know it's one thing for us to think that in our head it's another thing for me to tell you that I think that because I'm sure that you're reporting to Putin on me and vice versa and so as soon as I do that I may end up dead and and so you know we shouldn't underestimate the ability I said earlier that every despot has to fear that if they go to war and lose they'll be overthrown that's true it's also true though that some despots have managed to survive losing Wars like look at Saddam Hussein after the Persian Gulf War in 1991 we assumed he would be overthrown after that conflict and he was not he hung on for a number a number of years after that so uh it's you know it would be great maybe if Putin were overthrown and a more Humane regime uh took power especially if that gave us kind of a shortcut out of the Ukraine war but I think our ability to understand when that is likely to happen let alone to bring it about is so limited that we simply can't plan or make policy on that basis thank you Tom Palmer uh hi um I if you said how you think we um what our capability is currently in America versus China um I missed it that is vis-a-visa an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China or our own um security given that they are doing these supersonic weapons and space force things and things that we I you know if you read the if you know as little as I know you think we may be behind on um and and and that leads me to my related question is if if isn't there an opportunity for China to go after Taiwan right now that there won't be that it will decrease increasingly it will decrease from now on so um in terms of sort of overall military power in a global context the United States is still far far ahead of of China and there are things that the United States can do that the China simply has no way of doing even even things that might seem surprising and so um I very much doubt for instance that any other country in the world including China could pull off the sort of um evacuation operation that the U.S military staged from Afghanistan in August 2021 it's simply beyond the capabilities of anyone else I would think uh to do that and and that pertains to a lot of combat capabilities as well but you know as you sort of averted in your question in some ways that that's not actually the relevant issue the relevant issue is how do the two sides match up in a conflict over Taiwan or a conflict elsewhere in the Western Pacific where China is able to deploy a larger share of its overall military power than the United States is and where geography favors China and some fairly fundamental ways I'll simply say that you know expert assessments are pretty sharply divided on this question I I have heard um I think how to pray this phrase this people whose military expertise is unquestioned saying they think the United States would win such a conflict as long as it had a bunch of attack submarines in the Western Pacific able to you know sink Chinese transports and shoot cruise missiles at Chinese vessels I've heard other people who you think are who I would think are very expert on this question say they worry that this is sort of a coin flip at at best there are various war games that have been done by think tanks whose results are available publicly that you can look at the caution I would offer is that um war games can say whatever you want to make them say right and some often oftentimes the US government will run war games under adverse conditions we we want to lose in a sense because it shows us what our weaknesses are that we would have to correct in order to ensure that we don't lose when the thing actually happens and so you shouldn't read too much into these reports saying that you know the U.S has lost 27 consecutive War Games over Taiwan like that that's kind of the point um there was one series of games that was played last summer and fall um the results were made publicly available by csis the think tank I mentioned uh earlier this is coming coming to sound like a plug for csis but it's it's I don't mean it to be but I thought this was a pretty interesting game um some of the assumptions I thought were questionable and so there's an assumption for instance that the war ends after a certain period of time but many of the assumptions I thought were relatively fair right and how a war game turns out depends heavily on what assumptions you make about the conditions that that will pertain when the conflict starts and the results of the game were basically you know good news the good guys win so the Chinese aren't able to conquer Taiwan they get a lodgement there but have to withdraw after a certain period of time uh the bad news is that it cost the United States two aircraft carriers a number of major surface combatants and about half of its Global inventory of combat aircraft and so this is you know a butcher's Bill unlike anything the United States has seen in decades you know really going back to the Korean War if not the world wars and so that and that's kind of a relatively a relatively um optimistic scenario I believe that game was played you know in a future happening a few years from now the the final question you asked is kind of like why doesn't China just do it now my sense is that they don't necessarily think that they are ready and and so you know Xi Jinping has has reportedly told the pla um this is according to what um you know people like the director of the CIA have said publicly that she has told the pla to be ready for a Taiwan contingency by 2027 that doesn't mean that he's ordered it but he simply told them to be ready for it right which indicates that there are still things that the pla is working out that it would want to have in better shape before a conflict begins one example of that might be you know there's a big debate over whether China has sufficient amphibious lift capability to invade Taiwan um you know do they have enough ships to get stuff and people from the mainland to Taiwan under combat conditions different people think different things about that but that's an example of an area where the pli might not be ready um the pla would presumably like to have some more time to rehearse the types of very intensive joint operations that are necessary to undertake this sort of campaign because China hasn't done anything like this in the history of the People's Republic and the last time China fought any sort of war against Vietnam in the late 70s it was kind of a bloody mess from From beijing's perspective and and so my sense is that the Chinese military modernization program is impressive but it hasn't fully matured to the point where Xi Jinping would feel confident about his ability to Prevail there are still things by the way that could convince him to go sooner rather than later so if Taiwan were to declare independence tomorrow I have very little doubt that Xi Jinping would use Force to try to prevent that and so there are things that could catalyze a quicker move toward Taiwan but I think all things equal he would prefer to wait a little bit and and beyond that sorry let me just add one thing beyond that he would prefer to bring back Taiwan without the use of force right because he knows he knows it's a risk and so right now China's strategy is about trying to shift the trajectory of Taiwanese politics through coercion short of Wars through Gray Zone tactics for instance I don't think that's going to work all the evidence indicates that Chinese coercion is simply hardening taiwan's resolve to maintain the status quo and so some ways the more dangerous moment will come when Xi Jinping realizes that his current strategy has failed and has to answer the question of well what now thank you um here's a question um Hal um for the United States now to improve its military preparedness what would you think of Shifting the resources presently devoted to the environment to that goal the environment is the environment of the entire globe the planet as people often say but in fact the globe or the planet isn't capable of acting as a unified Force is divided as a invasion of Ukraine shows us so there's a difference between being a professor of international Affairs and of being one of global affairs if if the premise of the environment policies requires that the globe be able to act with one voice with one in One Direction isn't that no longer the case and therefore shouldn't we deal more frankly with a divided globe so I I'll agree with the premise that I think it will be difficult for the United States to get Global cooperation on environmental and climate issues because the economic impacts of the that cooperation would be significant and would be differentiated between various countries so of all the reasons that make Collective action difficult um in in many cases would certainly pertain here that said I I I'm uncertain and I'm not I'm not saying this as a matter of skepticism but simply as a matter of uncertainty what level of resources the United States is committing to the search for Global cooperation on environmental issues and and so there are certainly resources that are being spent in the effort to slow and mitigate the effects of climate change right that's that's indisputable but those resources are being spent you know many cases because the United States through its political system is rightly or wrongly made the decision that we think it is to our national advantage to spend those resources I think there is and again I'd welcome being corrected if I'm wrong here it's not a field I spend a lot of time thinking about I think there is less sort of expenditure of resources Beyond time and energy in say trying to get China to align with our view of how to deal with climate change issues they're they're gonna there are some you know American officials who spend a lot of time and energy on that so the cost of them is significant but the resource cost seems Seems lower um you know there is some money in well there is a fair amount of money in the dod budget that is being spent on matters other than procuring military capability right and that that's everything for money that's being spent on health care for service members to money that's being spent on um you know converting to Green energy in some cases if you're looking at money that's being spent on green energy and sort of environmental stuff within the D budget my sense is that the amount of money is it you know it's not trivial for people like you and me but in the grand scheme of Pentagon spending it is probably not sufficient that if you were to take even all of that and say we're going to spend this on defending Taiwan to to get you there and and I will um you know just to be an equal opportunity offender here I will also call out and say that I I think it's a Canard to argue that the U.S you know can do all of the things it needs to do in a national security context if it just stops spending money on the woke training programs for the military this is sort of the argument you hear from uh you know the Heritage Foundation and some other folks I think that that's a total Canard there's not a whole lot of money there I think the amount of you know sort of wokeness in the military has been grossly uh overstated so um I don't I don't know if it gets you there in terms of achieving the things that you want to achieve it's just um talking about distraction distraction from China to Ukraine or crime to uh you from Ukraine or from China to Ukraine to Ukraine um but doesn't the environment pretty much constitute a major distraction of our thinking of our energy of our sense of purpose I suppose it depends on you know how significant you think the the threat that is posed by climate change and environmental degradation is right and and so if you agree with um you know the estimates that are sort of in the uh the you know the upper 50 sort of the 51st percentile and op in terms of how grave they are then you might very well say well we're not spending enough to deal with the problem if you think that the correct estimates are those and you know percentiles 1 to 49 or 1 to 50 you might think that we're spending way too much I I don't have the technical qualifications to assess that that really is one where the analytical underpinnings are critical to the policy prescription I will say I I think it is absolutely true that there are trade-offs between you know the degree to which you can prioritize let's say cooperation on transnational issues and geopolitical competition and I I think the buying Administration has been running into some of those trade-offs head on over the past couple of years and In fairness to my Administration I I think it has actually changed its view of the relative prioritization of these things and so if you were to look at the interim National Security uh strategy document that was released back I think it was in March or early April 2021 it is clearly a climate and coveted first document right the the Leading Edge of that document is dealing in a Cooperative way with transnational challenges if you read the National Security strategy the finished one that was released in October September October 2022 it's clearly a geopolitics first document the the climate issue hasn't gone away right the transnational challenges piece hasn't gone away it's still very prominent but I think there was clearly realization by the Biden team that the most grave issues they confronted at least in the near term were primarily of a geopolitical and ideological nature so I think the trade-off that you identify is is very real and you can see some evidence that U.S policymakers are grappling with that and changing their views on it thanks Andy I wanted to ask you about our allies and what we've learned in the last year and how that affects your thinking both from the Vantage of China and Russia and also about the military our experience in the last couple of decades in Iraq and Afghanistan not so much the retrospective judgments about Afghanistan and Iraq but simply the experience of the military and how that affects our preparedness versus for example the Chinese all right um so on the second one I I think it is an advantage for the United States that you know our military has conducted quite a lot of combat operations in difficult environments over the past 20 years in a way that the Chinese military has has not right and so we we have at least tested some of our practices some of our capabilities in Wartime setting in a way that the cease in a way that the pla has has not and so if I were a U.S policy maker in part for that reason in part because you always have to be a little bit skeptical of what military commanders are telling you about their capabilities in an authoritarian system I I would have more confidence as a U.S policy maker and my military's ability to do what it says it can do than in the pla's ability to do what it says it can do that said I don't I don't think we should make too much of this because let's be really honest the U.S hasn't done anything like what a U.S China war would look like in a in about 80 years right I mean not not even like Desert Storm measures up to this in terms of the intensity and the challenges of of the combat and and so you know the fact that the US military did counter Insurgency in Afghanistan as as difficult and um as that was and as much sacrifice as it demanded it it doesn't necessarily tell us that much about how the U.S military would fare in a conflict that's waged primarily by you know the the Air Force the Navy with some help from the Marines uh in the Western Pacific on on the subject of allies um it's a big question I guess I'll say two things I I am generally heartened by the trends that we see in defense decisions uh and National Security citizens that our allies are are making so you know I mentioned that I think there's really been a sea change in Japanese thinking about the Chinese threat over the past few years which has resulted in a fundamentally more serious defense program coming out of Tokyo uh you see similar things happening in Australia if you think about the size of the Investments That Australia is going to have to make um to build these August boats they're quite substantial and they indicate that Australia really does believe that the security environment is deteriorating in a way that will take major Investments to redress and I think you see both countries thinking a lot more seriously about what they would do in the invent of a conflict over Taiwan uh for instance so so I think that's that's good news I I think that there's a lot of good news coming out of Europe as well whether that is you know Poland's decision to spend upward of three percent of GDP on defense and develop a very capable military whether it is Germany's you know more halting strategic transformation which is sometimes frustrating to watch but is still headed in the right direction or whether it's the way that Europe has gotten off Russian energy or is in the process of getting off Russian energy far more completely than anybody thought possible a year ago and so uh you know pretty much wherever you look I think there are encouraging signs I think there are questions about whether it's going to be enough right whether it's going to be enough for Japan to spend two percent of GDP on defense as opposed to one percent of GDP uh on defense whether Taiwan is moving quickly enough to implement its overall defense concept which I think if it was implemented would make the island fairly tough to conquer but is running into bureaucratic and political uh resistance so there's always questions about whether our allies are doing enough but but let's be fair and say that you could ask the same questions about the United States right you could ask the same questions is the United States doing enough to prepare itself for the challenges that are that are coming as as well and so while we shouldn't um sort of be pollyannaish or or you know assume that uh you know out relations with allies are all about you know buying each other ice cream and things like that um I think in general we should understand that we're more likely to get there collectively if we take the approach of okay let's all try to do more together let's all put more skin in the game and see where we can get I think you've answered much of this um but I also want to ask how much the last year or year plus has affected your thinking about the overall questions of preparedness and our allies yeah I think um in in some ways look it's a good news bad news scenario so so the bad the bad news is what we've talked about right so so the war has revealed um you know deficiencies and U.S ability to resupply itself and its allies in a conflict and those deficiencies are multiplied when you talk about sort of European Defense Industries the the good news is that and this this will sound a little bit callous and I suppose it is it's it's better to learn that lesson from somebody else's War than from your own war and so it's it's good that the United States has been able to learn that lesson in a war on Ukrainian soil as opposed to a war on NATO soil or a war on the western uh Pacific is as painful as that war is and tragic as that war is for Ukraine itself the other piece of good news is that it reminds us that last year reminds us that our adversaries have lots of problems as as well right and and so um you know the Russian military underperformed relative to its own standards in the UK in the Ukraine war but surely it's true that a lot of observers in the United States and I would include myself in this indictment simply overestimated the capabilities of the Russian military particularly the Russian army to begin with and so that provides us with a little bit of reassurance but I know I don't want to take that one too far because you know the we shouldn't take away from that the lesson that because Russia struggled in Ukraine China will struggle in the next conflict because for one thing the cases just simply may not be comparable and in fact there are reasons to think that they may not be comparable and so one of the reasons the Russians struggled in Ukraine is that Ukraine is not the war that the Russian army trained for and it is not the war that the Russian military indoctrinated for right they trained and indoctrinated for a war against nato in Eastern Europe which is why Russian Force structure looks the way that it it does and so when they were told okay go occupy Ukraine that was something that's like wait do do what you know with what infantry and and so on and so forth and and so the Russian military was likely to to have difficulty there that's not true in a Taiwan scenario right and so the Taiwan scenario is absolutely the war that the pla trains for and the war that it indoctrinates for so the pla may have lots of problems in a Taiwan context but that won't be one of them thank you Adam please hey Hal um two questions one where does India fit in the middle of all this with respect to both China and Russia uh in the short run and the long run um and if you have still time after that I'm curious um what sort of 10 years from now will we look back and think if only we'd have been able to focus more on today right um well we're focusing on China and Russia uh what's most likely to be the sort of surprise geopolitical problem elsewhere uh 10 or 15 years from now I want to get my investments in order now yeah uh all right let me let me start with the first one if I come up with an answer to the second one while I'm talking I'll answer that one as as well um so you know look in India fits awkwardly here it is increasingly a close U.S partner not Ally but partner when it comes to the competition with China um and you see that geopolitically you see that technologically you see that in a variety of different respects but the the fit is awkward in a variety of different ways and so one is that um you know India's China problem is very different than our China problem India's China problem is on the line of actual control in the Himalayas it's not in the Taiwan Strait and so the fact that you know India wants our help in dealing with their China problem does not mean that we should expect India's help in dealing with our China problem in the Western Pacific I think it's an open question what the Indian government would do if say China were to attack Taiwan or to attack Japan or something uh tomorrow the second piece of awkwardness of course is that India has a much much closer relationship with Russia than we do uh and closer than we would like India to have in the context of the current war that that's understandable in a variety of respects they get a lot of Russian energy and a lot of Russian arms and they use Russian arms to help defend themselves against China now that strategy is itself becoming kind of awkward for India as Russia and China move into something that looks closer to an alliance and as Russia becomes more dependent on China in the context of the war and so if if your defense strategy is based on the idea that you're going to get rapid resupply of russian-made equipment during a conflict with China like that may not happen that may be a really bad strategic bet and so it's it's possible that India will diversify its options strategically over the coming years which will make it less dependent on on Russia but I think India is always going to hesitate to kind of embrace the sort of relationship the United States has with treaty allies for historical reasons for ideological reasons for geographical reasons and there's sort of another point which is that you know ideologically India is kind of an awkward partner as well you know yes the world's oldest democracy in the world's largest democracy and so on and so forth but you know India leads the world in internet shutdowns as far as I'm aware the current government has had some some pretty troubling Tendencies when it comes to freedom of expression and and civil liberties you know does does Modi see himself more like Joe Biden or more like Xi Jinping I don't know right and and so there is going to be a certain difficulty in U.S India relations in the coming years we'll get through a certain amount of that because the you know shared strategic interest in preventing China from becoming the dominant power in Asia is quite compelling but I think there'll be lots of lots of bumps along the way thanks Hal so David Epstein please welcome thank you hi Hal hey David good to see you and very interesting talk I have two questions one is how you think strategically about the use of U.S economic leverage we've already decoupled a bit in order to constrain China's technology but presumably the threat that we could do more is a restraint on their supplying arms to Russia and it's also a restraint on their attacking Taiwan so how do we keep the right number of arrows in our quiver while still using some of them second question is you referred to The Divided opinions about the Taiwan military balance one of the opinions that I remember was your co-author Mike Beckley wrote in his book unrivaled really quite an optimistic account in which Taiwan could almost certainly or could almost defend itself without U.S help so I wondered whether uh things have changed in the last few years or he changed his mind or you changed his mind uh or how you would view that assessment over okay um on the second one I uh I probably I should probably shouldn't speak for Mike on on this this point um because he can give whatever the answer is better than I can I and I honestly don't know to what extent he would say his piece which I think was published in what 2018 is isra is not still congruent with his views on on the naval balance I mean my my own view is that the geography of the region is in many ways an advantage for the United States and its allies in the sense that China is sort of hemmed in behind the first island chain in the sense that it's hard to project you know decisive amounts of military power over large bodies of water and so if the US and its allies develop sort of the mirror image of China's anti-accessary denial strategy they ought to be able to create a reasonable military balance in in the region and I guess people can disagree on whether how close they think we are to doing that on the economic leverage uh point I mean you you've asked the fundamental question um I don't have a perfect answer to this I I would say I guess there are a handful of areas in which the United States is probably going to have to use its leverage more aggressively than it has you know over the decade prior to say October 2022 simply because if it doesn't do so it risks falling behind or losing its lead and key capabilities that are important for the balance of Economic and military power and so this this I think was the rationale behind the semiconductor sanctions and Export controls that were rolled out in early October that this is an era you have to use because otherwise China is going to continue to Avail itself of inputs from the United States and other Democratic countries while shielding its own markets and that's going to have um because you know semiconductors are so foundational to economic military power that's going to have Downstream effects that said I think that I I do not want a situation of kind of broad scale decoupling between the US and China because I think it takes away a lot of the threatened pain the United States can inflict in a war and so it's actually an advantage that China is so dependent on trade with the outside world um on you know everything energy Imports exports of all sorts of goods because it means that in a conflict between the United States and China while the U.S catches an economic cold China gets pneumonia so to speak and and the damage is much worse decision ping and it fundamentally undermines his theory of how China becomes the most powerful country in in the world right and so one of the things that would deter XI Japan attack in Taiwan is if he thought that even if he were successful it would derail China's economic and the Strategic Rejuvenation and so I guess the the this is a long way of saying I think the way to strike the balance is focus very tightly on those capabilities or on those areas where constraining China's potential is critical to maintaining leads in the competition as opposed to going broad on decoupling and taking you know some gain in autonomy but you're losing a lot of Leverage in a crisis has it been gamed out what the damage to the world economy would be worst case if this became a real global conflict well if it has been it was David's office that that did it but uh you know my my view is that we have just very rough approximations very very hard to say I mean there was a study 10 years ago that said that you know usgp would contract by five to ten percent and China's would contract by 25 to 35 that was before anybody was thinking about you know semiconductors and technological Supply chains and the way that they would be ripped up in a conflict it seems that that would be deterrent enough alone but I guess it's not um I think one more question Tom Palmer has a quick quick follow-up thank you could you just talk a bit briefly about cyber warfare I mean Russia's powerful or at least their bad boys are North Korea's powerful China is powerful Israel's powerful but not a bad actor where I I get the impression we're weak at least offensively maybe defensively I don't know do you can you put us in this is not a subject of my expertise I mean I would say I don't think the United States is weak I I think that you know I take U.S policy makers that they were when they say that our offensive capabilities are better than anybody else's offensive capabilities I I think that you know Democratic societies tend to be porous right they have a lot of vectors where adversaries can't attack and there are some challenges related to the fact that you know so much of U.S critical infrastructure is essentially in private hands and so it's not necessarily defended by NSA or cyber command or DHS um and so the U.S present an attractive Target in a lot of respects we've seen some interesting stuff in Ukraine by the way just about the way that kind of State and non-state actors can work together to mitigate cyber threats there's been some interesting reporting on the way that you know Microsoft and other tech companies essentially have used you know their various platforms as sensors that help us understand where Russian threat vectors are coming from and then we can help the ukrainians at least that's what's been reported in the media but but I won't claim to know much more about it than that thank you well how um it's time for us to stop this has been a very good discussion but that's thanks to your terrific performance thank you well thank you very much for having me I really enjoyed the conversation and it was it was good seeing everybody

Channel: Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard

Views: 177

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Id: YhnKULMPWnA

Length: 86min 33sec (5193 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023