John Bolton | The U.S. vs the China-Russia entente

[Music] [Applause] [Music] my name is tom switzer i'm the executive director of the centre for independent studies and it's great privilege and pleasure to welcome our guest speaker here this evening john bolton as many of you know has been a leading foreign policy figure in washington for more than three decades going back to the reagan era and among other official positions john has served as the u.s ambassador to the united nations in the george w bush administration and of course more recently in 2018 2019 he served as the national security adviser to president donald trump he's also author of several prominent books including most recently the room where it happened a white house memoir i first met john 25 years ago when we both worked at the washington-based american enterprise institute and we've been friends ever since now some might say that john's temperament is the antithesis of the conventional diplomat he is a man of extraordinarily strong views some might say is also intense and driven and not someone who you go to for small talk which perhaps explain why john bolton has been such a great critic of the united nations and with that it's a great pleasure to welcome the 2022 john bernathan lecturer john bolton well tom thanks very much and thanks for uh for inviting me uh to australia thanks to all of you for uh attending uh this evening and uh i can tell you as a as an alumnus of aei as tom said the support that people give to think tanks independent think tanks even if sometimes the scholars there write articles that are not exactly what your point of view is that's what you're paying for if you don't have independent thinkers the orthodoxy is never going to get challenged and if you believe in freedom you need to give space to the people who believe in freedom to express views even if they're not entirely congruent with yours so it's a tribute to all of you for supporting cis and and i hope i hope you see ways to help contribute in the future because the battle for ideas is ultimately what determines success in politics and democratic societies i want to talk tonight about the the state of play in the world so you'll forgive me if i go quickly because there's a lot of ground to cover but i think that in many respects uh understanding of the evolving international situation particularly with respect to china has proceeded further in australia uh than it has in the united states i think we're catching up in many respects but it it really was uh in in in recent governments in in this country that many of the problems with china that are now more under more well understood uh across the uh industrial democracies began here but my my emphasis really is to try and help people understand that while the threat of china is very real the world still remains complicated and part of what we have to do here is deal with what i have called a china russia on time not a formal alliance not yet an axis of any kind but the old french word that indicates a certain uh congruence of interest and values that are being played out around the world and it's understanding that i think especially in the united states that's going to be important going ahead so let's just take a little bit of history here with respect to china in particular but also russia because history informs what the current government in beijing is doing even though ideologically over decades it's gone through transformations fundamental perceptions of chinese interest haven't changed so you know after the communists came to power the the party was uh decidedly stalinist in its view of the world and uh when khrushchev took power they began to get unhappy and uh and and things began to change but the the some of the fundamental aspects that confronted china uh were were evident right at the beginning in the middle of the cold war uh the 1958 bombardment of kimoy and matsu little islands right off the coast of china almost brought confrontation with the united states then it's an amazing tribute to dwight eisenhower that that we stood by chiang kai-shek at that time resisting this chinese effort to take these offshore islands which if any of you have ever been for example the kimoy as i've had the pleasure to do you can see china you don't need to be on sarah paralyn's front porch you can see china uh across a relatively narrow strait and after months of bombardment china came away with nothing nothing now thing things moved on fairly quickly uh uh uh mao zedong was also uh pursuing a policy of starving his own people which is what the great leap forward was helped distract the people from the defeat in effect at kimoy and matsu only 20 to 50 million died as a result of the great leap forward uh didn't slow the the chinese communist government down at all but right after that came the cuban missile crisis of 1962 obviously a confrontation between the soviet union uh and uh and the united states and while it was going on as example of what we should have understood better as the sino-soviet split in publications in china uh beijing accused khrushchev and and the soviets of adventurism of a policy that was too dangerous to pursue to try and put offensive missiles in cuba so a public criticism of their senior partner in the alliance between the two of them as it stood then and then although we know more about this denouement now than we did then when khrushchev appeared to have backed down the chinese accused him of capitulationism so you know you damned if you do and you're damned if you don't but the point is the chinese saw something they thought was too forward-leaning and they criticized uh the the inevitable consequences the appearance of defeat that khrushchev suffered ultimately leading to his uh downfall within the soviet union now events moved forward obviously mao zeitung uh with his second brilliant idea the cultural revolution that destroyed thousands of years of chinese culture and and brought the uh country to near chaos until uh after a few uh sort of interim rulers deng xiaoping came to power in 1982 and this is a seminal moment the consequences of which we're still feeling in western relations with china deng xiaoping broke from communist orthodoxy introducing market-oriented reforms into the chinese system he famously said it doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice and and the consequence of moving from orthodox marxism to more more market-oriented policies was a substantial growth in wealth across the chinese economy uh we we see the continuing effects of it it was dramatic and it had a dramatic effect on the international economy as well but from this early success uh in in this introduction of market-oriented reforms the west as a whole drew two uh conclusions that have formed the basis of american foreign policy and really western foreign policy vis-a-vis china since then uh both of them have turned out to be a hundred percent wrong the the first uh foundational conclusion was that that in the international sphere this increase in wealth this increase of chinese interaction with the rest of the economy would would take place in what my friend bob zelik once called a peaceful rise of china and that china would be a responsible stakeholder in world affairs that in increasing economic connections would bring increased compliance with international norms and the economic sphere and the political sphere as well so that the growth of chinese wealth would make it a more responsible international partner and not a threat but really growing toward something like the economies of the of the asian tigers in their behavior the second premise was that this increase in wealth would lead to increasing democratization across china and i remember well hearing people say you know i just heard of an election out in some village in some province in the middle of nowhere in china and to compete for the head man position in the village there were two candidates and and that's going to spread and other villages will will have elections and and then you'll have democratic elections at the provincial level and then you'll have democratic elections at the national level because as you get a middle class in china they're going to act like the middle class everywhere and we will have democratic government so the combination of these two theories principles was that uh china would begin to look a lot like the rest of the world and what could go wrong really uh well here's here's what started to go wrong um the fact was that china did not become a responsible actor in international economic affairs the history is now incontestable that china's economic advance has been fueled in substantial part by the theft of intellectual property on a sustained and systematic basis without consequences through most of the industrial democracies there have been repeated forced technology transfers is a condition to invest in china there's been sustained discrimination against foreign traders and investors obviously the main capital allocation decisions in china in in domestic capital have remained in the control of the government and the communist party and after being admitted to the world trade organization which was a development that was supposed to guarantee that international norms would change behavior in china we see that what china has done has taken what should be a free trade organization and turned it into an instrument of chinese mercantilism all the while we've just watched it happen uh and so the the first uh uh premise which was this increase in chinese wealth would make it a more responsible actor internationally has failed on the second the idealism of of china becoming a democratic society has turned about to be the exact opposite xi jinping is the most powerful chinese leader since mao zeitung his thought has been elevated to the equivalent of marx lenin and mao zeitung he is re-centralizing political and economic authority in the center we should expect to see that endorsed later in the year and so the the the second prediction has has been 180 degrees off just as the first china has not become more democratic if anything it's become more authoritarian uh and in terms of its uh non-economic policies uh around the world the extent of chinese militarization is unprecedented they have across the full spectrum of military capabilities been engaged in a sustained buildup at the nuclear level ballistic missiles launching a blue water navy for the first time in 600 years developing area denial and anti-access weapons capabilities to push the united states and its allies back from the western shores of the pacific anti-satellite weapons to uh take our uh capabilities out of the earth orbit in any kind of conflict or run up the conflict the development of one of the world's most effective cyber warfare programs uh this is not the mark of a country engaged in a peaceful rise now what has happened is uh was predictable for those who were watching china carefully i don't do not include myself in that number because i i was optimistic about this as well what we failed to recognize was something that deng xiaoping said right at the beginning of his rule which is slightly longer but i'll condense it he said hide your capabilities and bide your time and a lot of people in the west who saw that said what a moderate policy that is to say deceive your enemies and wait for the right moment that's moderation obviously this was part of our failure to understand exactly what was going on in china i don't think xi jinping really is anything other than the uh final manifestation that hide and bye is gone and instead of hide and bide we've got wolf warrior diplomacy that reflects what the real feelings inside beijing are now this is where at at in the period in the last 10 years where this growing russia china on top becomes significant in the first days of the people's republic of china obviously it was the soviet union that was the senior partner in the relationship that is completely reversed today russia is obviously the junior partner except in certain important areas like nuclear weapons capability and sophisticated weapon system but the size of china the proximity of china to underpopulated areas in russia the economic relationship that the china and russia have all make russia a lesser partner i have talked to russian officials about this and said you know this this may not turn out very well for you and i can tell you in in complete candor i had no impact on them whatever they they see this uh on time as entirely beneficial to russia or that they have no alternative in a perfect world in the west we would be trying to find ways to split them away from china but i think we're likely going to be unsuccessful and so the russians and the chinese have a division of labor russia worries about europe and the middle east china worries about its periphery along the indo-pacific and the middle east and they work together to advance their interest we can see this in a in a in a variety of ways i think the the war in ukraine today is a good example of this there are people in the west who say china's so put off by this invasion of ukraine that it's such a terrible thing that they regret how close they've come to the russians that's utter nonsense uh you can guarantee that russian financial institutions that are the subject of western economic sanctions are finding ways to launder their money through the opaque chinese financial system that china would be more than willing to increase its already extensive purchases of russian oil and gas and take it across pipelines across their border rather than lift gas and oil in the persian gulf all of all of these circumstances have helped contribute to making russia more of a junior partner to china and by the way given the performance of the russian military in ukraine all those russian troops that are still stationed along the chinese border now constitute even less of a security threat to china than they did before because the chinese have seen up close exactly what russia what russia's forces are really capable of doing there are a variety of other examples iran being the most important currently where china and russia support iran although for different reasons china supports it as a purchaser of oil and gas russia supports it as a member of a new cartel where these two two nations both heavily sanctioned can work together now what are the what are the conclusions that we can draw from from these examples and many others about what the direction of western policy ought to be the first is that the american declaration originally during the obama administration but repeated endlessly since then is that the united states has to pivot toward asia pivot toward asia it probably sounds good in australia i'll give you that but the united states can't pivot the united states is a global power we as we like to say have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time and when we pivot away from europe i mean really europe's kind of a secondary theater right who cares about that or pivot away from the middle east who cares about israel who cares about the gulf arab oil production uh we we can pivot away all we want toward china they're going to pivot right into the areas we've pivoted away from so it sounds very stylish but it is completely devoid of substance misses the reality that china being the existential threat of the 21st century is going to confront us where we are and where we're not and if we don't adopt a global approach to this we're in we're in deep trouble now what it also should say to business in the united states in europe uh here all really almost everywhere is that political risk is back uh globalism was supposed to have brought the end of all these troublesome things like borders and all that sort of thing and and there was if you didn't want to invest in the united states if you didn't want to put a plant in central america go ahead and put it in china really so what a little bit higher transportation cost lower labor cost what what could go wrong with that we are going to go through a very substantial period of difficulty in the relationship and businesses that don't attempt to mitigate the effect of political risk are going to face consequences that's not to say that we need as some people in the united states advocate a new industrial policy to unwind from china other than in some selective national security related areas i don't think that's necessary but i think it's happening already when companies consider potential new capital allocations why put it in china when you can put it someplace that's not going to steal your intellectual property you're not at risk of nationalization and maybe your supply system is a little bit closer to home i think all of that is going to increase and i think the sooner we get about it the better we're going to be and i think that it's important for the united states maybe not so important here important to resist this idea that because china is so important we can give up on europe we can say you deal with ukraine it's not our problem we can say you deal with iran that's not our problem we can say let's withdraw from afghanistan really what what difference is that going to make all of these are steps that weaken the united states internationally not just in the confrontation with china but in in the larger picture and i think this debate is very important to have no nobody likes to be told that history has returned and we're still suffering from the hangover the collapse of the soviet union when people declared the peace dividend really everything's fine now we can dramatically reduce our military expenditures we're still suffering from that even after the attack on 911 we haven't built our defense expenditures back up people say but you spend so much on defense and these other countries don't spend enough the combined budgets of russia and china don't come close to the united states well that's their reported budgets okay everybody knows more than they should about our military budget we don't know a lot about russia and china and and the budgets are not comparable would you like to be paid as a member of a service member in the united states or as a member of the people's liberation army think about that for a minute if if you if you took out factors like salary and benefits which our service members deserve deserve at higher levels than they get and compare them to what our adversaries pay you can see what a difference it makes but the fact is because the united states is a global power we have to be in a position to defend our interest in multiple theories multiple theaters at the same time not not 25 years ago we still believed we had to be able to fight two wars simultaneously and have the capability to do it right now we can barely fight one more with a hope that the contingency of a second war doesn't occur it's not a luxury that we can continue and i think that if uh if we hadn't uh drawn enough conclusions from the russian invasion of ukraine we've got plenty of lessons ahead of us from china's intention uh vis-a-vis taiwan and really all around the its periphery in the indo-pacific a lot of people have said that uh uh that that the united states has been in some respects uh unduly provocative uh toward china that somehow nancy pelosi nancy pelosi is a threat to the security of china and and we shouldn't have done it we should have we should have um persuaded her not to good luck with that uh the the fact is uh this was a teaching moment for many people in the united states when they woke up and said what do you mean the chinese are telling us where our officials can go who who gave them that authority uh we don't tell them where their officials can go we know where they go they go to places uh that are adversaries of the united states they buy oil from iran uh at uh contrary to the sanctions they're not at all cooperative on that look at what they're doing with russia but the chinese response to the pelosi visit was something that was very important for people to see this was not some new escalation by china this was the very picture of what they've been thinking for a long long time and it says that uh to to the to the nations in the indo-pacific uh in particular that that threat is manifest right now and we are not collectively prepared for it now on taiwan i think there are two levels of response one is to try and deter a chinese attack in the near term by providing taiwan with sufficient support that we change the cost-benefit calculus in beijing that the cost of taking taiwan is far too high for the chinese to bear i don't think the chinese want taiwan to be a heap of smoking rubble i think they've seen the use of force in ukraine it doesn't appeal to them they want taiwan's enormous productive capability intact and besides as you may have noticed taiwan is 110 miles away across some pretty choppy water it's not like walking across the border as the russians did they couldn't even do that very well this is this is not something china is going to provoke in a military sense but what it will do is create a crisis by pretext and try and create a situation that challenges the united states to come to taiwan's side throw a blockade around the island maybe they'll call it a quarantine as we did in the cuban missile crisis but they will basically say this is ours and you're not coming back so if the united states fails to stand up to that the chinese have uh have followed sun tzu's philosophy they've achieved their objective without the use of military force they will have hegemony over taiwan and annexation will follow on the other hand if the united states stands up to that kind of uh provocation as i have to say in full uh candor bill clinton did in the late 1990s when beijing threatened taiwan and clinton sent two carrier battle groups steaming toward taiwan and threw the taiwanese straight and the chinese backed down now times are different the chinese military capability is greater but the political issue is exactly the same this the second thing we need to do and to do it urgently is to build taiwan into part of the collective security structures we need to develop in asia uh it we do not see in the indo-pacific the kind of dense alliance capabilities that we have in western europe with nato and elsewhere uh we're in a very primitive stage in that sense but it seems to me inevitable if the for the taiwanese if this remains a china versus taiwan competition ultimately taiwan loses if this becomes a china versus much of the rest of the indo-pacific periphery then taiwan is safe as are the other countries that join with us so in terms of the way ahead i have to say uh respectfully australia once again has led the way along with japan and it was really shinzo abe's idea to create this quad india australia japan and the united states it's still in a very early stage of development it's not yet a military or collective defense alliance it has a long way to go but it's an amazing creation that five years ago even after abe proposed it it was going nowhere this is something we can all follow up on and i think australia at a time of what i would call uh inadequate uh presidential leadership in the united states australia can be very creative in in in making suggestions about how to proceed the second is august uh which i am still amazed the biden administration agreed to and congratulations to whomever in australia managed to get it through our bureaucracy this is a stunning development it's a fantastic idea for australia that increases your security uh well beyond uh the the immediate territory around australia projects it into the indian ocean it's a huge investment for the future it's a major uh victory really for policy making in australia it has the added benefit of bringing britain now independent finally of the european union back into playing in in the pacific area and the more they do the better and for the united states as we are in budget challenges to have adequate military spending to have 810 whatever it might be nuclear-powered submarines uh under the australian flag is is is simply incomparable the the paradigm that august represents uh has enormous potential across the region japan i've got to believe is saying themselves nuclear-powered submarines count us in and and maybe for more than 10 maybe for 20 or 30. plenty of other countries in southeast asia are thinking about how they can benefit from closer cooperation i think it's important that we not hold up to try and find the perfect paradigm that covers all of the across society challenges that china is posing to us i think we proceed in a burkian fashion we we do it from the ground up organization by organization partnership by partnership we'll get to where we need to go uh and and i think the opportunities are all there so this this challenge that uh that the china and russia in their untaunt pose for us is going to be very very difficult to overcome there's no doubt about it but it's also the case that once we are alerted and you in australia have been alerted before the united states and others once alerted this is for us to lose and i don't think that's going to be the result thank you very much for decades cis has been a fiercely independent voice working hard to promote sound liberal principles to be notified of our future videos make sure you subscribe to our channel then click the notification bell we rely solely on the generosity of people like you for donations to advance our classical liberal cause check out the links on screen now to see how you can get involved [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Centre for Independent Studies

Views: 39,356

Keywords: Centre for Independent Studies, CIS, AusPol, Australian politics, On Liberty, Classical Liberalism, Liberal Policy, Classical Liberalist, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan, China, USA, US Politics, Republican, John Bolton, Russia Ukraine War, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, US Foreign Policy, Australia US Relations, Pacific Nations, Iran, Fatwa, Xi Jinping

Id: J5cOK-8TwxA

Length: 31min 46sec (1906 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 15 2022