Henry Kissinger and Graham Allison on the U.S., China, and the Thucydides's Trap

according to Harvard class rules the class if you remember such up to nine minutes after the hour so it seems to me it's been nine minutes and so stragglers we'll just have to straggle in but today is a fantastic opportunity to have a conversation with America's leading statesmen on the world stage today and I'm especially grateful for a teacher colleague and friend that is arranged for us to have this conversation which I'm looking forward to so in my recently published book deston of a war can America and China escape lucidity strap I asked the question what is the cardinal challenge the cardinal geostrategic challenge for the u.s. today and for as far as any eye can see and I think the answer is clearly unambiguously the impact of the rise of China on the US and the international order that the u.s. constructed in the aftermath of World War two and has maintained and that actually accounts for the fact that these are seven decades without great power war which historically is an anomaly so if we ask the second question which is of of the approximately seven and a half billion people with whom we share the globe today if you could have just one person to talk to about this issue and to listen to I think the unambiguous answer is Henry Kissinger so I regard this as a as a treat now Henry's not just an American national resource he's a he's a a global or resource in that he's a strategic compass for all serious leaders were trying to make sense of a crazy world tonight where their presidents of the u.s. from China or Russia or of others and has been sung for now almost six decades so his only competitor in this business was another person whom I had the good fortune to know Lee Kuan Yew and whom I wrote a book about with BA black hole on the the grand master of strategy but Henry and week when you recognized each other as in effect soulmates and actually hidden wrote the foreword from that for that book but I would say in the world today there's only one great strategic compass and we have a good fortune to talk to him today so what most of you won't know is that Henry has been my teacher my professor for now more than five decades and since I enrolled in a course called Gov 180 which some of the others argue probably to fit Harvick in the fall of 1965 and I then became Henry's course assistant for the years after that and have been taking tutorials from him annually since then now that seems a little puzzling and I think Henry's explanation is that Graham is earnest but he's a very slow learner and my explanation is a little more charitable to me I would say that just about the time I think I've learnt the lesson he keeps coming up with new ideas and new insights but in any case about the topic today we have a fantastic opportunity so on the plan for the day is that Henry value will start out with a conversation about the book destined for war can America and China escape lucidity strap and the arguments in the book will then widen that a little more broadly to the major questions that the book raises about China and the relations between China and the US and the prospects for peace and for war and then we'll be open for a general conversation for comments and questions and discussion so we were testing this as a as a seminar more than as a conscious top country or press conference which Kinley or I agreed with that we would just do it as a conversation as opposed to a speech or otherwise so can we suggested that maybe I start off by giving you the elevated version of the argument in the book very quickly and then we'll have him come in on what he wants to say about the general argument and we'll proceed from there so just very briefly this book has a big idea and the big idea is to Sidda teas trap so this was an insight captured for us by the founder of history the great historian of the competition between the two city-states in classical race lucidity and it is that when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power alarm-bell should sell extreme danger ahead in the case of Athens and Sparta lucidity 'he's wrote famously it was the rise of athens and the fear that this instilled in sparta that made more unethical in this book i look at the last 500 years and find 16 cases with a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power in 12 of the cases the outcome is war in four of the cases the outcome is not war so the proposition about inevitable is an exaggeration but if you said the odds are not good that would be historically correct so a rising China threatening to displace a ruling us with the consequences of that may bring so the subtitle of the book is can America and China escape to sanity strap and in brief my professorial answer is no no and yes okay so no business as usual in relations between the US and China which I would say is what we've seen for the last 25 years in the post-cold war period so business as usual will likely produce history as usual and in this case that would be a catastrophic war that neither party wanted and that neither party would and that both parties would deeply regret so that's known but yes as Santayana promised only those who failed to study history are condemned to repeat it so there's no obligation for people like XI or Trump or their successors to make the same mistakes that leaders made in the run-up to World War one and indeed their lessons to learn both from the failures and the successes if when we're trying to fashion a relationship between the US and China that would avoid war Henry has been most of his career at least a good portion of it for the period since 1971 when he first went to China for the opening the giant in trying to fracture in a relationship between two great powers that prevents war that avoids lucidity strap so I would say again what a fantastic opportunity for us to have Henry de Campos speak about these issues and that's an opening what would you say after hearing your kind remarks I can hardly wait to hear what I'm going to say but I want to say good work ray it's been almost the ideal professor-student relationship creme was my student it was my research assistant in my friend a screen that a loyal supporter and we've been in contact for 50-plus years and exchanged ideas as if when it's lucky one gets into a position where one learns from one student and I've learned a lot from Graham and so I was happy to accept his invitation to come here I can only redefine the issue as he put it and then I think we should have a dialogue and two questions I was very lucky that in 1971 I was assigned on to be the first American official representative to visit China and to have official talks with with Chinese leaders in retrospect the courage of Nixon in assigning somebody to this task who had never studied about China and who really that's it didn't know what he was doing except what I did but I did know is we in the Nixon administration we had the challenge of ending a war which we inherited and at the same time we felt we owed through the American people a demonstration that we had a Nodin of peace that our purpose in life was not just to fight the Vietnam War but to fit what was going on in Vietnam into a greater concept and we thought that a country of the magnitude of China and of the history of China could not be excluded from a process that could be called peace so that really was my mission whether I could get a dialogue started between China and the United States I had 48 hours in which to accomplish that that that task and I sometimes ask myself if I became Secretary of State today would I be better or less good and i truly have learned a lot in that period and from that point of view i certainly have more knowledge than I had them but I don't know whether I would have had the courage and the assurance to to act elite partly based on ignorance so and I was also very lucky that my counterpart was Troy who we both we had had no contact America Internet had no contact with each other and the we could have decided to rehash all the disputes that had occurred in the 25 years that there had been no contact and Nixon decided not to talk about the past but to talk about what needed to be done and as it happened joy and lie over Mao had come to the same conclusion and I made a opening statement of staggering profundity which had a written aidid sentence in it that said so after all these events that I had described we are now here in this land which to us is a mystery and Jo and I would have attended may I interrupt you here for a moment what is so mysterious about China I made some banal reply and you should think about it there is 900 million of us and it doesn't seem mysterious to us so maybe we should work on it's not big so mysterious to each other which happened to be a very important statement anyway that's how it started and and we have had the good fortune to continue these conversations over the whole in the weaning period with leading with leading Chinese and I just get two creams for it it is true that from a historic from the point of view of history China and the United States are almost destined for conflict the geographic location is different the history is different I the perception of reality is different and so therefore they are no objective criteria by which we can settle our disputes by saying everybody agrees that because it is indicates that everybody agrees it begins with a different conception of history for the United States history is a series of accomplishments that are almost asking to occur that in our entire history except for the Civil War we have never found a problem that was not soluble by the mobilization of resources and we never needed a strategic vision that explained the real to us because we could always dominate a situation or fail but usually we prevailed so for us foreign policy it's a solution of a series of problems which we do with good drill and for which there are legal criteria and and then that episode is finished and we go on to another episode for the Chinese history is an uninterrupted flow that has been going on for 4,000 years so for the Chinese problems have no solution the solution of a problem is an entrance price to another problem so when you solve a problem in the thinking you have to begin preparing for the next phase of whatever produced the particular set of issues so the Chinese are compulsive students of circumstances the other day the Chinese ambassador was didn't to see me and they had brought three no takers with it that's a relatively small number when you deal with the Prime Minister's level 20 no data's so it's a magical question I have to do with one note-taker why do you need three he said here is what we do the note takers after we leave you the note takers sit down and compare what they have understood and you will be amazed how rare it is that they agree completely on what they've heard and then they have a conversation about what their impression was of the meaning of this conversation and then I absorb all of this and reported a badger well it's just a totally different way of thinking so any edits to make inconceivable that when people say American president is going to make a deep impression on the Chinese president and the Chinese president therefore that sings he would not otherwise have done that in goods even they have thought through what they're going to do and what they're trying to achieve then they will address it or not due to circumstances and so we have this this problem secondly we have a totally different history to US foreign policy is based on how to manage the relation of sovereign states that are considered equal to each other the Chinese had never had a foreign ministry until the end of the 19th century because they do not have not believed that foreign policy is based on the adjustment of differences among equals they believe that foreign policy is a hierarchical set of relationships the what we call foreign policy until the end until in fact the beginning of the 20th century in China was handled by the Ministry of rituals and the Ministry of rituals assigned a standing to each country that if you find the degree of its tributary relationship to China and some could get closer to this and looking to my dear some lower but it was never a conversation strictly between evils when the first British would be ambassador arrived in China around seven in 1790 something he presented a letter from the king offering trade and offering the establishment of an embassy and the answer he received was a trade is impossible because we have everything we need but if you want to buy Chinese goods we will open one port to which you can come for six months a year and pay cash sending an ambassador is out of the question if you send somebody he will be treated hospitably but he will have to wear Chinese clothes live in a Chinese house and he will never be permitted to leave the country so forty years later the British shot their way here but this has been the conception of of itself of China for four thousand years and if you look at the ritual protocol when you cook today when you go to the Grand Hall of the people to be received by the president the arrangement of the chairs the attempt to do to create a setting that overwhelms you it's very similar ad restore to historical setting so here is a dilemma for the challenge for us the challenge is we have never had to deal with a country of equal strings on a permanent basis and for a job for a Siddhas acted designing a grand strategy that relates priorities to each other a substantive you know time is a new effort but for the Chinese also the problem is when she says the Chinese dream is that by 2040 nine in the hundredth year of the People's Republic of China that they should be the equal of the greatest country in the world whatever that is that means they have to construct its strategy which is a step down from the way they've conceived of strategy they've conceived of strategy that the majesty of the Chinese performance and the magnificence of their treatment would create a sense of order and hierarchy and they would have out from time to time by using forwards but they've never thought of conquest in the sense that first you could set something and then you explore it so for them this is also a new a new period of learning and for us I'd say we haven't even understood that it's a new period of learning because we think if we can teach them a few things itself a few problems they will join the community of nations as we conceive it which is a concept that has never existed in this way in red so his book calls attention to this challenge now right now and then I'll sir right now you've stayed there to trends in jhana there is one group of people who think fundamentally the United States has had it and it's declining and that as a declining country they will try to keep China from achieving its proper eminence and that therefore sooner or later there will be a war with the United States and that they have to prepare themselves for it and then there is what I believe to be the tea view which is probably what Graham I said is historically true but the consequences of war with weapons of mass destruction and cyber weapons are so colossal that at the end the world will be devastated so he I think it's ready to consider and a process of what I have called coevolution that we pose to our thing but try to be coordinated enough at the minimum to avoid war and that therefore we have regular dialogues in order to instruct each other but this is very hard to do because when you take a conversation between a typical American president and a typical Chinese president the typical American president has ten issues that he wants out and and hammers away at solutions the typical Chinese president has ten destinations to which he wants to get and he isn't so interested in these immediate problem so they always manage a communique that is hopeful but they have not reached the essence of the problem and so in this respect the question that Graham asked it's very serious because if you look now we talked a lot in our media about South China Sea issues those are security issues and those will get solved but then there is the Chinese notion of one belt one road now that's a huge notion that is the protection of China across Eurasia and at the end of this process well who knows they don't have to get there because they are not they don't things like that like Hitler they don't believe that others can become Chinese so so what they want is a level of respect that gives them a assured dominance in many areas and now then the question is what do we do on this road across Eurasia that it's Russia there is they are the great cultures that Iran there's turkey and at the end it's Western Europe so if you are an American foreign policy makers what would you think of us should you think about all the daily troubles or should you begin thinking on this road how do we coordinate who posed ignore what they have proclaimed they want to do and they're not announcing this as a military program I think it has a huge economic component so these are the issues so here I tell me let me take you back to the lucidity strap and the question that in Beijing I was there just two weeks ago and people are buzzing about which is they always order cover how to avoid lucidity strap and that's what Gigi brings that how now Lee Kuan Yew I in this book I black hole I put to them the question said here's a question are China's current leaders like Shay serious about displacing the US as the predominant power in Asia in the foreseeable future so here Lee Kuan Yew answer of course why not who could imagine otherwise how can they not aspire to be number one in Asia and in time the world so if this is a understandable aspiration of a rising China that is wanting to be great China again and if as you say in World Order it's in quote inevitable policy in China to keep potential adversarial forces as far from its border as possible plus one so what should the u.s. be prepared to do to adapt or adjust to these aspirations well let me take two cases let's excel China see that in the Chinese mind is a security problem they want to keep the American Navy as far away from the Chinese laws as I can and one thing that makes it intractable it's the different perceptions of history to the Chinese it South China Sea there was a Chinese emperor 300 years ago who reaching the limits of China looked at road city and said everything until the next landfall belongs to China and he proclaimed it Chinese territory not having studied their work there was no international law or policy so therefore the dotted line that you one reads about a lot that's the data side now then we come along we look at it say well the Chinese claim one thing we claim another so let's have arbitration when we say arbitration that looks absolutely reasonable to us does it Chinese it means that these guys come along and say we have to begin a negotiation by giving up something that has been ours for 300 years and so the backside spritzel with the negotiation starts I believe that it's one fundamental issue which is freedom of disease we cannot grant the Chinese the Chinese say are you worried about the sea will give you permission to go through there we have to say a passage on the sea is not dependent on your permission there isn't we have to have an international rule and if it doesn't exist in your mind you have to agree to that but I think I'm not worried about the South China Sea I think some practical accommodation will be found that sort of divided 280 islands and if every one of them becomes a crisis then we are really going to get the associative slab because one of the aspects of this rigidity trap and I have to mention it's the following if you study the outbreak of World War one it is nearly incomprehensible while that particular crisis produced a war that killed 20 million people because they have been 10 to 15 projects before that all the Balkan Wars the Moroccan crisis they were more substantial than the issue of the assassination of the Habsburg Emperor but the world had gotten so huge that these crisis would get solved that when you look at the outbreak of World War go to a won the Austrian successor get killed and for four weeks nothing happens it's not a mounting crisis everybody goes a vacation send s over on Uranus deliver an alga made in it with a 48-hour deadline and in one week the mobilizations came separate so what I'm worried about in the South China Sea it said we so talked ourselves on both sides into a pattern of day making movies and the destroyer and one of these days it gets out of hand but I am not worried about that because I am worried about the about the one belt one Road but it's no way we can stop it because it's not a military plan it is a plan that tries to create infrastructure projects all over Central Asia high-speed railways to the Europe and it sort of organically links these territories I in fact I'm in favor of joining it for the United States in order to get a voice in it we'd refuse to join it but we will it applied to reverse it because it will get int its own momentum but as it develops and the other nations get involved we will have to start reflecting about what our attitude will be that real big conceptual conceptual problem and your question is right now I think we should join it because it gives us a voice in it that makes it legitimate for us to be concerned and at this point it's no threat to anything but if the world if if Europe should think that age that China it's the place where its economy gets it's invidious and so a lot of people are thinking about this now so this is where they interested and we have to avoid it this is not like World War one none of the leaders that started World War one would have done so if they had had any idea what the world would look like there were different said 280,000 dead in the first six months of the war never would they have gone to war had they known that this could happen to them but once they were in it they didn't know how to nobody knew how to how to stop it hardly because the categories have been so large that you had to get a convent rating so this is very the question that Graham is asking it's really the a fundamental question that we need to ask ourselves about the future and so a lot of the discussions that are going on about relations with China a not relevant directly to this topic but we have to find a mode of dealing with them where the exchange of views about how one precedes down that these roads and a lot of it is going to happen anyway simply because of the evolution of the of the world economy and it is not an imminent danger it's not going to happen next year but even it's not going to happen in this administration but the perceptions now she is a tough guy and I think he is saying I would like the peaceful loved but I'm going to be ready for the other one and and so he's going to go both roads simultaneously at least enough so that if it turns out not possible to achieve a collaborative solution that he's in a strong position to assert himself so he's a formidable character I agree completely I in the in the chapter on what she china wants i I'd give her a pretty serious assessment of she taking advantage of Henry and I'm Lee Kuan Yew who knew him extremely well and who said about him this is a man who has iron in his soul and he's running currently for major reform programs simultaneously way more than anybody I could imagine trying to do all of them coming right back to him he's known in by some of her Chinese colleagues as the co e not like a CEO the chief of everything so everything runs to him and one of them is the reform of the military which he's doing at the same time when he's trying to do everything else and the mantra for the reform of military is a military that can fight and win that's their that's their mantra a military that can fight and win so I think for sure he's thinking about the downside but let me push you on to Korea because we were chatting about that before so in Beijing just two weeks ago the topic most people wanted to talk about was could North Korea drag China and the u.s. in the war and I said I mean when I wrote I have a chapter in the book on the road to 1914 I agree 100% with anything that I can find it much more plausible that the US and China should find themselves in a war today that they're dragged into my Korea then I can that the Archduke's assassination produced World War one it's still I've studied it over and over but it's still adjusting the whole story how as you said events that were much more significant before had been handled but the parties had become I think lazy they came to lack imagination it was summertime in Europe so I mean grade-a British Foreign Minister spent more days fishing then he spent trying to deal with the what was going to become basically a war so I think if I look at the North Korean case and we and I were just chatting before we came over here so one fairly senior Chinese person said to me look it's just got imaginable that a little poor isolated country like Korea could drag China and the u.s. into a war that we don't want to have so I said to mul excuse me has this ever happened before and usually Chinese are very well informed about history and Americans are pretty ignorant but it is fellow having studied this history lately and I reminded him what happened in 1950 so in 1950 a little crib squeaks attacked South Korea almost succeeded in unifying the Korean Peninsula Americans came to the rescue at the very last minute MacArthur was still in Japan this is just five years after World War two entered the war pushed the North Koreans right back up the peninsula and we're approaching the Chinese border we're upon one morning MacArthur awoke to find three hundred thousand Chinese attacking him and then another half million and pushed the Americans right back down the peninsula to the 38th parallel where the war had begun and at the end of that war five hundred fifty thousand Americans had added fifty thousand and several hundred thousand Chinese and many hundred thousand of Koreans so for sure this little country could cause a war between two parties because it already has okay the question is whether it could do this again so Henry what would you say well if you look at history you'll find that in the 1500 a Japanese army invaded Korea and marched up to the yellow and repeated the exact fate of our family the Chinese into being defeated it and it settled down to a stalemate and further down the peninsula Korea is of it's of great significance for for your question because I talked I once had a conversation with tea and he asked me whether I thought it was possible if you are leader to make an irrevocable mistake or whether you can always rectify it if you have learned that you made a mistake and I'd said this is a very good question and you obviously have thought about it why don't you give me you answer and he said yet it's yet it was possible and you quoted something from my first conversation with Joe and life where Joe in life said if we had not committed the invasion of Korea Taiwan would today be China absolutely let me just let me remind you this for for fun since I was preparing for this the weekend I got Henry's conversations which show in ly in 1971 which were top secret documents have now been Declassified so it's a public document that you can get on an air and they make for amazing reading so he went to China this is in July 1971 and have 20 hours of conversation between you and shall rely so if you look at the the depth of the conversation and compare it with the notes of presidential meetings now you this would say wait a minute this is not even in the same in the same ballpark but here shown there's no question then if the Korean War hadn't occurred a war which we did not seek and you did not see Taiwan would be part of the PRC so that's in their mind plus the fact that they can recite 50 other things that have had happened in the long history of China which were unfortunate in terms of death and their future so so there it's that's Talent now then here it eret Korea developing nuclear weapons we talked about this read when these weapons are intercontinental and can read the United States but the Chinese and Japanese and Koreans are sitting there right now and the implication is the Americans are worried only when it can read accurate but we are sitting under that threat right now so the big problem in Asia of the Korean program is proliferation of nuclear weapons because if this process goes on much longer I would say any longer then all the other countries in Asia will get nuclear weapons and the Asian countries unlike the Middle East countries have some tradition of disciplined government and some tradition of making sacrifices for their country and the impact of five advanced nuclear countries having nuclear weapons in so I believed now this is not something anybody had said to me but this is my conviction I believe that the Chinese are obsessed with the proliferation aspect of the Korean nuclear program because if that program continues the Japanese and South Koreans and Vietnamese certain to follow down the road so if one analyzes they try what the Chinese are thinking what they're thinking is they would like to have that nuclear danger removed this is not what we read what we are told and what we believe is the Chinese have not yet understood their impact and what they can do and and why don't they just cut them off and solve the problem the reason they don't cut them up and solve the problem is because they what they think that North Korea will almost certainly collapse if they are pressured to that point and then if they collapse then what will happen to all of Korea and what will happen to the non-proliferation problem so I think the Chinese have to find out how we conceived the pose collapse period all we have said officially in every administration is we have no designs for ourselves here that's not a definition of a historical process and so in my mind I suppose at a private meeting with a senior Chinese and other people and I'd said to him I said to follow into that senior journeys I can visualize three outcomes of the Korean crisis one then nothing happens because nobody can figure out what to do and that itself will keep going on second that there will be an agreement of some kind and third that some combination of factors will combine to remove the nuclear weapons from North Korea in front of foreigners that I need said I said which one of the three options would you pick he said number three and it makes sense because if you say a negotiated outcome everybody will be hugely relieved the New York Times is already pushing for it what is a negotiated outcome it the negotiated outcome is that the nuclear program in North Korea is frozen that they stop texting and do not increase it and that is achievable probably but it does not solve the Chinese problem because if you freeze the North Korean drug program every other country will claim at least the same capacity and it will therefore have exactly the impact of the Iranian agreement which accelerated the arms race rather than slow it down in in the Middle East so if you talk to an uninstructed Chinese he will probably tell you he's like an agreement if you talk to an informed and you can give him truth serum he would like to get rid of the program the problem is how are you going to do it so it cannot be done the way we are proposing that it be done it absolutely cannot be done with it Tran needs unilaterally padding of the Koreans and we say we won't take advantage of it that's the German model and in the Chinese mind it led to the expansion of NATO to the Russian border so therefore we need a diplomacy that works out a AV and East Asia with a collapse North Korea should North Korea remain an independent non US or Italian said or should Korea be unified my guess is and don't think that I said it because I know I don't know my guess it's the Chinese would prefer a unified Korea non-nuclear on the theory that they have a better shot at relations with a unified career then whether you divided Korea where they constantly have to so in the sense what is going on in Korea is of crucial importance to the question that Graham and one of the more worrisome outcomes would be a nice negotiation in which everything is frozen because said will guaranteed that it will blow up again with the same issued speed because those issues will not will not go away and I think we can achieve this that we would have to talk at a level of long-term protection that it's hard to achieve and when you think of all the pressures on an MA and an American administration right now so I'm not saying this is easy but this is my perception and this is the bed Korea is a place where the solidity strap is I judge of happening so I have at least 99 more questions but I'm going to let other folks make comments or questions I don't know Lloyd you had we said you and I have exchanged a couple of emails from some conversations you've had there lately I know if you were to say anything about your impressions it's just that it's complete I if I said to you a couple three weeks ago or four weeks ago when I was there its top of mind I think that was just before you were going because we mentioned or Michelle mentioned that you can be there and I saw the premiere and just at it was top of mind and along with the acknowledgement that it was top of mine came a long recitation of the specific examples and why they were why they didn't apply to China so it was it wasn't a casual conversation was clear that it was studied but that it that it was an opposite I mean that's all and your the feeling that they're pretty serious about trying to avoid I had a feeling that the point of view of pressuring China to deal with that that was that that was that that was silly because that wasn't that that wasn't going to happen their interests are totally at odds and their fear is totally different than our fears and you know one of the observations I'll make human of a bad party they thought that well no I think that our efforts to image to think that they won't be able to influence Korea I think are off that's my thought I'll just say that I say this and I mentioned this to you that and I think this is you mentioned this in your book the dichotomy when you talk to the economic people in China you deal with them commercially you deal with them you deal with the bank should deal with the government you finance it's like you're dealing versus you deal with the the the International side even the military side or there they are foreign ministry it's like you're dealing with two different countries and if you deal with if you talk to the same person to whom both sides report it's like you're talking to us gets a phrenic that's a very good observation that I think that probably true but it means that if it doesn't get South now it will become even more insoluble later because the dilemmas that I've described don't disappear and let's didn't look North Korean regime collapses but then the dilemmas will appear in the post collapse settlement well I mentioned when we get to one of the Chinese in Allah who said to me look this problem wouldn't exist if you were not in on the peninsula look at look at where Korea is it's right on our border and the anomaly is that the Americans are there if if this were a unified state and we're a proper tributary of China we would never allow them to have the clear weapons of course not and so I said to him well this is quite a different history then they were American stealth so American say and I think correctly North Korea your ally attacked South Korea the reason why we're there is because we came to the rescue of South Korea we've in ended up with a Korean War but at the end of the Korean War two countries were divided and one of them has now been a spectacular success story and one of them was at home so South Korea is one of the most successful countries has got the 12th or 13th largest economy this is a democracy is a very vibrant country we're very proud of South we think of it as an example of American Pat packs Asia and we're not about to walk away from that to what the answer is well and now see what less you must capture yourself you know into so I I think the different perceptions are quite strong you know please analogues to North Korea throughout history have seemed to collapse on their own because of economic reasons you look back at the Soviet Union that's probably the primary example but the ineptitude of the government North Korea is in a different league than anything that ever happened the Soviet Union then as well is probably a contemporary example of a collapse in real time why is that not happening here why is he in such control and and his power is so stable when the economy is in such shambles I don't know because North Korea you can't really call it a communist state it's a it's a family crime a crime family I mean there was one year when I was in Korea and their intelligence had been able to track the then-president for a substantial period of time and in that whole period that they could track him he never saw any person that was not a member of his family and they have a degree of control that it hasn't been seen even income in his countries every house has a radio that can't be shut off so the public and the government can't speak but I don't know what the explanation is that you have not that military rebo and all the things that have happened or Tito ISM it has not visibly happened well they have good many thing has happened there like when this current ruler came in whose school records we have from the school in Switzerland and five of the six people who were pallbearers and his father's funeral he's already had executed one of them by firing an anti-aircraft element because he said not no remnant of him should should be left certified an anti-aircraft shell in AD him todrick's blended his how can he get away with it he could collapse tomorrow and they could go on another ten years but once they collapse most of the problems that I mentioned will them have to be faced because then the question will be what happened to the nuclear weapons what assurances will the Chinese and others demand about South Korea inheriting the North Korean nuclear stockpile the problems I mentioned will be there in the conversations I had about this recently the proposition was and then there were no there was no affection for into North Korean regime this is Chinese and perfectly happy to think of changing the regime if somebody had an idea what that meant and how that could practically be done but there was also a great reservation about this lopping off the head of it as they said as you guys did in Iraq and in Libya and ending up with chaos and a mess so the transition from Kim ji-woon to whatever succeeds him is a challenging problem however he happens to die whether you fall to the you know on the tub or whether somebody shoots him so why don't we I know though Sarah do we have two microphones or okay do one here and then we'll go we'll take turns since we're all pushed this side yet go ahead I'm a little confused if what you say is true and then it's not in the interest of the Chinese to have nuclear proliferation how can this be resolved without some sort of a much better agreement than the one that was written in today's journal with secretary gates and someone along those lines hasn't America changed do we really care about Korea except that it's now a threat to us because they can law the missile to Seattle or Los Angeles so we'll be able to do so within a relatively short period of time I think most of the people in the country are not afraid we want a strong military to protect us but I don't think America has really changed its attitude the people over the last hundred years we don't really care about these places unless it threatens us or our economic welfare so isn't there a basis for an agreement that way but what would be it even be a unified Korea no nuclear weapons no nuclear weapons anyplace our guys go home and we know they're not a threat to us because the only country that has the power is China or us I am sir I'm not an expert I'm just trying to get to about how you would see what you think the Chinese want happening you know one of the interesting things and the in modern diplomacy with the connection between communications and actions is the problem of how you get an if you started I believe for example in my experience the Chinese has been uneasy about North Korea for at least five years but they have not found an easy way to talk to us about it one because our tendency would have been well if you're worried why don't you just cut them off and and secondly because they didn't want to admit that they were worried because it they they don't think of North Korea as an ally anymore but at what point would they be ready to admit this so this isn't an answer the outcome that you described which is it we can never take a position that the only two countries in the world that matter the Chinese and we and we to decide what can happen that would totally isolate us and lead to really did collapse of any concept of international order we should have it in our mind that we are the most important country but some outcome like you described which is 80 nuclearized Korea it's probably what will emerge if the bulletin spins everyone is willing to say one gets it that's probably him I think we in the Chinese could agree on that Japanese will agree to it the problem that will then arise it says well the Chinese settle for a denuclearized Korea or will they insist on a denuclearize trip and also we should moderate the issue of nuclear weapons in Japan it's best left dormant because you don't want to give an answer and you don't want to see it happen because if the Chinese become really naturalistically committed in my opinion they are building for it but they are not surfacing it and that may be the best way to heal it I'm going to UM in in the 60s it was a widely held view that the Soviet Union would overtake the United States economically by the 1980s and in the 1980s there was a widely held view that the Japanese would overtake us and then for a time there was a view that the European Union would overtake us and I guess my question is should we be so confident that we're really dealing with a rising China or isn't it worth at least exploring the idea that the China's ascendancy is going to trace the same arc as those three other countries or powers and that China is in fact we have more to worry about China as a declining power than as a rising one I guess what I'm saying is are we so certain about the premise about a rising China that we want to analyze it that way now I think it's now Roger can it sustain ders I wouldn't I wouldn't be positive but I would say that a it's integrating China would bring its own challenges to world order because it would set a whole bunch of or did some Isaac's type organizations but I don't know what would happen if it if it declined it could happen and but I don't think Graham is saying that it will inevitably I think the Chinese leaders are also torn by the specter of a of an internal collapse because they have to move 500 million people from the countryside to the cities this is an enormous techno tech Nicolle problem but it also been lesson of history is that when people move from the countryside to the cities and are exposed to different conditions of life that some political unrest follows and certainly a change in the value system and they have to manage all of this while also handling all the foreign problems because one of the reforms one of the consequences of their economic reforms now will be to create a lot of surplus capacity as they shift from to their new economic means and the one belt one road idea well first volley is the theme of Chinese history but it is also a means to take care to some extent of their surplus productive capacity and of employing of reducing the unemployment that will happen if they follow the prescriptions of economists with it to emphasize consumer goods more and so I would say to two things every first I think it's a very good reminder I quote warren buffett in the book who says long-term forecasts tell you nothing about the future but something about the forecaster so long term forecasts are hard to do in the harvard china working group that Larry Summers and I'm on Larry has been a China Bear for ten years and I've been a ball for ten years and I would say I remain bullish and a remains bearish but for ten years this has been a good bet okay so China has maintained a level of growth that never seen by any other country ever now can that can continue forever of course not and we know from the rule of a trend that can't continue forever won't but predicting that something will happen is a lot easier than predicting when something will happen so we've kind of uncertainly going forward Lee Kuan Yew's take on this and I think he was the premier China watcher and I tracked his argument he said he made it about four chances in five that China will continue growing three times as fast as the US and therefore will succeed with its 2021 and agenda which would give a China half again larger than the US measured by purchasing guarantee so that may happen that may not happen would get basically the nice thing about markets is you can go there and place your debt I think Henry's point is a very good question though so if China should falter in its economic programme which is very ambitious extremely ambitious and which is only one of 17 problems that they call their insoluble problems that they're trying to deal with all at once but if the economic program faltered would we be more or less worried about the relationship between the US and China and I think there I'm quite cautious I think normally if country's economic programs fail they don't blame themselves so they look to externalize and the only other leg of legitimacy that the party stands on for its rule is nationalism which it's been building up and eating up so I would say that could also put us off in another very troubling scenario please Graham yeah Daniel Arbus here and um as you know I've been your student for 30 years of the 50 that you've been dr. Kissinger's student but I have to admit the dog ate my homework today I haven't had the opportunity to read your book yet so I want to come back to the book from current events and ask you a little bit about the historical and theoretical underpinnings of the lucidity strap and their revel relevance to conditions today would it be fair was a couple levels of this question would be fair to recognize that a foundation of the acidities trap is rivalry among nations over limited resources over avoidance of famine starvation and the context in which I'm asking the question is having recently read Yuval Herrera's book homo deus in which he makes a very interesting argument along the lines of salmon has been reduced to a political problem now it's it's it's easily within our reach to deal with it and the focus of humanity now is on longevity it's basically a bold story for Humanity wars between nations he argues have become irrational in light of their destructiveness and then I would add on top of that dr. Kissinger and his most recent work has really underlined and paid attention to the threats that we face for non-state actors so my question is in the context of all of that where Humanity stands today the focus on longevity improving standards of life less to fight over by nations how would you fold that into your core thesis ok it's a good question it would take a long answer but let me do the short version so basically through Sidda these idea I think is as old as history itself so his Peloponnesian War you can download for free so fantastic read every page is that exciting insights in it and the proposition that when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power leave famine and others aside generally alarm bells should sound extreme danger is a very good proposition and it's actually a proposition as I discuss in the book then you can see that's rooted basically almost in human behavior or animal behavior think of even currently upstarts and incumbents or disruptors that incumbents so or think even in a family if you've got two kids at one shorter than the other and all of a sudden the shorter kid grows quickly and it's now taller than the than the first again pretty soon that table conversation at dinner changes a little bit blue talks more wary even as a discussion about whether the bedrooms have been appropriately allocated so from from a Chinese no for the Chinese point of view looking out in the South China Seas and we said I my chapter in this except the timeless China Seas China Seas so they look out from them from Beijing and they say this looks to me like a body of water adjacent to China why should the American Navy be the arbiter of events in this body of order why should you be able to determine whose island this is or who can build an island why do you even have an opinion about that that's relevant actually as a Chinese Navy guy said to me Theresa he said there would be zero chance of an unwanted crash between Chinese and American ships or planes if you were there there's there's no chance of a accidental crash between a Chinese and American ship in the Caribbean why not because there's no Chinese ships there so again very natural from a rising powers perspective it's quite natural to think I'm bigger I'm stronger I deserve more say I deserve more sway the arrangements currently were made even before I was there and from the ruling balance point of view and in this case we can see this playing out in American politics the idea of China in our face everywhere why do they want to change arrangements in the Asia order that have actually provided the best conditions they ever had for 70 years of growing out of what was before famine and impoverishment to which the answer is well that was then now I'm bigger and stronger and I think so I I have a fun chapter in the book on if she's China were just like us in which I tell the story of Teddy Roosevelt was 37 years old when he arrives in Washington as the number two person in the Department of the Navy he's been for 15 years a complaining about what he calls the abomination of the Spanish and others in our hemisphere particularly in Cuba in the decade that follows first there we sees an a mysterious explosion in the domain in Havana declare war on Spain liberate Cuba take Porto Rico pick up Guam as of spoil of war we support a revolution in Colombia that greets a new country Panama that the next day gives us a contract for canal that lets us move our ships from Pacific to Atlantic we then threaten war with first Germany and in Britain over territorial disputes in Venezuela and then finally we steal the biggest part of the fat tail of Alaska from the Canadians I mean that's just in a decade so you'd say well what about famine okay or would it be out to I would say history I would bet on history greatly I spend a lot of time internet generation our kids and my observation is they think very differently to work very differently it's not winner and loser it's like how can you get around the table use equal access to information you have to create solutions why everybody's I don't want to stop again so my question is how in the context of history do we possibly culture that's a good it's a good question it would take a take a longer will I be happy to talk about that because I think there's no question that culture changes and the consciousness changes and those offer some significant opportunities but I was just out in Silicon Valley talking about facilities trap three weeks ago and I didn't see a lot of kumbaya at Apple or Google I think they should kick other people's ass I think if you look at historical words I haven't studied them that systematically I don't believe that the acquisition of of economic means was the principal reason in in most laws and it's one I'm just running through them in my mind to seventy years war had nothing to do it had to do with it it started with it as a religious rule and then friends or friends a unified Central Europe presented the danger of all of Europe becoming unified and maybe becoming like a Chinese state at the end of the worid period so the French leaders of the 17th century conceived the idea of of evolving and central Europe that was so divided that it could be manipulated from friends by throwing its weight on one side or another so for 200 years at a minimum those words had next nothing to do with the acquisition of territory for commercial for commercial reasons said the European words from say the middle of the 17th century to the two-hour period then the classical wars were more about stages than about economics and the idea that the world I mean I I am worried about what the young people around the table thing these days because there is an absolutely none tragic conception of life in which everything is handed to you and and you it intensity of your desires guarantees their their achievement but they're very few you won't find that in China or in Japan this is a very American phenomenon and we should worry about that in my opinion so we should take one more question Cuba Peggy any more questions Peggy and then this one here and then we're going to get a break because a number of people want to say hey to Henry we have to stop by six and I should tell you do not shake his right hand he got in a fight earlier today and so he has a little bit of blood of his head but the other guy's jaw the dual blade okay good let me ask gentlemen I thank you very much for this for the for the time it was I feel like it was a privilege to be here today and to listen to you I am wondering I've been wondering as you speak when Beijing the past few years when the leaders in Beijing look at the American leaders in Washington can you give me a sense of what they see and what they worry about what changes have they seen perhaps in the past 30 years or if that's putting the question too broadly let me say that as the North Korean crisis looms and continues to press do the leaders in Beijing think that they have serious and thoughtful and and frankly worthy Co conversationalist in Washington to be discussing this making plans trying to see their way through well nobody gets spend more time talking to these folks Lou Henry well as I mentioned before the Chinese always study us with enormous intensity when I first came to China I was astonished how much of my writings and ultimately knew about me so they are always Welland and since then of course they have had many more opportunities to study us and one problem is that they cannot believe that an American leader said something that had no meaning so so they they will take a lot of things very seriously that I just said it's part of a conversation they have always been they were very impressed by next and of all the president i've known he was best prepared an edge strategic way they generally well the last two presidents have been very tough on them it did try to understand them and they didn't really be they thought Obama was condescending and when Trump came in I believe at first they were scared that this might head for a showdown I think they've now calibrated it but it camel is how do they get into the dialogue that is needed to deal with the historic process that I have described is occurring in the world and I don't think they have you found in this administration somebody with whom they can have that dialogue but they found the way to solve the immediate problems so we are doing quite well in enjoy to him immediate problems and that's not messy very you get the last question yeah what about what the one belt one road project is very ambitious and it's successful its formidable what effect if any as that is developed what effect will that have on the Chinese interest in building up more islands in the South and East China Sea and in having freedom of navigation in the area or are the two just not in any way connected the question is how a hearing aids collapse etcetera the question is how the one belt one road project will as it develops impact the sea lane proposal in effect the complementary component but that a demerit of it they have to be conceived it's part of it because of an aspect of the one belt one Road is the I mean they're linked they're they're linked together and it really is about what the essence of it is they know they cannot possibly do that alone it's a it's a concept for the organization of Eurasia with China as the leading power but whether China becomes it it's not something they would go to war over whether China it's the leading power but I think they have recognized that the order of the world as it has existed for the last 400 years has already disintegrated Europe has substantially disappeared as a shaping factor in international affairs other than its own independence and for that they need the United States so this is when when the theory of geopolitics was first developed by McKenna he wrote about Central Asia being the heartland of the strategic thinking in a way that's what this it says is an assertion that the world will have to redefine itself and it includes sea lanes now that means that everybody will be obliged to understand what this is because the sea lanes affect the Middle East and the Middle East right now is entirely open to a new evolution but we know it will not be the aegis instruction so I think the two are linked but a place where you would find interesting reflections on all of this is India because they are observing this and I have had some really interesting conversations with leading Indians on what it's all means and I must say very much along the lines that I pretended here I think that that's probably a very good place to interrupt the conversation for this afternoon let me say for on the all of our behalf what a treasure it is to have for Henry and what a great conversation to be part you

Channel: Belfer Center

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Keywords: harvard, belfer center, belfer center for science and international affairs, policy, harvard university, harvard kennedy school, international relations, international affairs, government, academia, congress, nuclear, graham allison, henry kissinger, secretary, secretary of state, china, u.s., america, thucydides's trap, thucydides, trap, trump, xi, xi jinping, donald trump, president, harvard club, nyc, new york city, belfer, hks

Id: IKI6M2UiCGk

Length: 98min 22sec (5902 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2017