The Recent U.S. Policy Towards China Is Productive

[Music] he said he was going to be tough on China and guess what if tough means talking tough if tough means tariffs if tough means even a slight tango with Taiwan a lot of t's there then Donald Trump is being tough and if the goal overall is to fashion a coherent response to China's increasingly assertive stance in the world militarily and economically well then how are all of these t's playing out in response to the choices we're seeing coming from the administration whether they represent continuity with the previous administration or disruption is China actually coming around in a way that is conducive to US interests well we think in all of these questions we have the makings of a debate so let's have it yes or no to this statement the recent US policy towards China is productive I'm John Donvan and I stand between two teams of two who are truly experts in this topic who will argue for and against that resolution as always our debate will go in three rounds and then our audience here in Aspen Colorado will choose the winner and as always if all goes well civil discourse will also win let's meet our debaters first on the team arguing for the resolution the recent US policy towards China is productive please ladies and gentlemen welcome Michael Pillsbury Michael welcome back to intelligence squared you debated with us before back in 2007 our second season you are the director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute you're a distinguished defense policy adviser you're a former high-ranking government official under Reagan and Bush Senior and President Trump called you the leading authority on China do you accept that designation no too modest too modest okay Mike Michael thanks so much for joining us and Michael your partner is Cory shocky ladies and gentlemen Cory shocky Cory this is your fifth time debating with us we think that potentially is a record so welcome to the five timers Club you are a deputy director general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies before that you were at the Hoover Institution and you were the director for defense strategy and requirements for the national security council under george w bush Cory it's Oh Glade gret good to have you back here for time number five thanks very much ladies and gentlemen team arguing for the resolution the recent US policy towards China is productive now let's meet the team arguing against this resolution please welcome back Graham Allison Graham I say welcome back because you've debated with us before and it's great to have you here again you're a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School you directed its Belfer Center you're a leading analyst on national security and you worked under President Clinton and President Reagan you also noticeably brought to prominence the phrase the Citadis trap I'm sure that's going to come up tonight and not just from from you because it's become part of the currency of the conversation Graham thanks so much for joining us and you have a partner as well Jake Sullivan Jake you are the only first-timer on this stage of welcome to intelligence squared so you also worked in public service you were the national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden the director of policy planning at the State Department and now you're a fellow at my alma mater Dartmouth College and a visiting professor lecturer at Yale Law Jake it's great to have you here so here they are ladies gentlemen our four debaters ready to get started and so on to the debate let's start with round 1 round 1 our opening statements by each debater in turn they will be six minutes each speaking first for the resolution the recent US policy towards China is productive here is Michael Pillsbury director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute ladies and gentlemen Michael Pillsbury seems to me a good way to start will be to define with examples what are productive policies toward China my own bias is to look at things through the Chinese point of view to have empathy with China to be meetings with government officials including presidents in which I say something like this is how the Chinese see it so from their point of view what is productive we use our empathy to understand how they see what has been productive you have to begin with the very first most important what the Chinese call the foundation of us-china relations and there was an incident during the Trump transition that I'll tell you about that tested this foundation it's usually known as our one China principle or our one China policy it was worked out in great secrecy through a series of meetings with Henry Kissinger was in the second phase there was even an earlier phase and the idea generally speaking was to recognize Beijing as the only China and to turn Taiwan into a non country now you may not know what a non country is it means you cannot visit the United States on your own Passport if you're a military officer are coming here to train you can't have on your military insignia there's a long list of things that we're done to start the one-china policy the Chinese made it clear if you don't do this there'll be no relationship you can have no embassy in Beijing and we're not going to have an embassy in Washington and we're prepared to wait one of the quotes involved said a hundred years till you come around and dr. Kissinger knew that Barry Goldwater would sue if he agreed to this and that's in fact what happened so there's a lot of issues we don't have time to get into that are all under the title of one China policy part of the deal is we would not transfer Taiwan to China there non-country but China cannot have them cannot claim sovereignty over them and the Chinese vociferously said we can never agree to that so the compromise was both sides would never mention it again and that's held since 1972 until the president of Taiwan quote-unquote members and non country so she's a non president she called up to congratulate Donald Trump he took the call he was on a list it's not a call sheet of many many other so-called heads of state assembled by some young staffers he had a long chat with her eight minutes they put out a press release in Trump Tower I just spoke for eight minutes with the president of Taiwan you never can imagine the Chinese reaction so to make up for that the president said I'd like to meet Xi Jinping one-on-one and mar-a-lago soon the sooner the better so the second great productive policy was started one-on-one meetings again Kissinger pioneered this have a small staff have one-on-one meetings don't tell the rest of the US government what you're doing have things conducted one-on-one and kept very secret president Trump bought into that idea then at mar-a-lago in April of 2017 he at the request of the Chinese he terminated the entire us-china framework that had been in place for 10 years the framework was created by Hank Paulson the basic idea was half of their cabinet ministers half of our cabinet ministers would meet every year or so and do business that way Kassel from now on to cabinet ministers would meet two others they would channel all business through those cabinet ministers much more effective much quicker very effective for the Chinese to be told yes by Donald Trump you can see that was product that's the way things have been running since 2017 third thing direct telephone conversations and meetings between she and trouble again this was established by Nixon in the beginning continued must say by Jimmy Carter long meetings with Deng Xiaoping when he came to Washington extended by Ronald Reagan but the idea was the rest of the government is not involved it's a president to president dialogue about the most sensitive matters in the world covert action security cooperation this became the fourth example to me anyway of productive policy toward China the CIA was authorized to buy two billion dollars that's billion with the be of American weapons and transfer them into CIA covert action programs the CIA and the Chinese work together to expel the Vietnamese from Cambodia you might have seen this into James Bond movie it was true so security cooperation became the topic between the two presidents and their intelligence services I think President Trump has consented to continue this however something that I think very productive that you might not think of is the Obama administration if you look carefully in the last two years of the Obama administration they began to change their views of China I first saw it as Tony blinken speech the Deputy Secretary of State the return of great power competition and before Trump arrived in the White House I believe at least 10 of our great departments of government State Treasury commerce defense certainly USTR staff all began to realize our earlier policies toward China had not been productive Michael Pillsbury I'm sorry your time is up but you can continue your thoughts in the middle part of the conversation I bet our suspense up may be thanks very much Michael Pillsbury our next debater will be speaking against the resolution he is Graham Allison professor of government at Harvard ladies and gentlemen Graham Allison so good afternoon and let me begin by thanking the organizers for hosting the discussion and say what a pleasure it is for Jake and me to participate with two distinguished colleagues from whom we've learned a lot over many many years for debate about China I know that the purposes of debate but this quartet on the stage is an odd quad since we agree about more than we disagree so what specifically what do we agree about first that China is not just an issue on the foreign policy agenda but the issue the defining issue for as far as in the eye can see secondly that the rivalry between a meteoric Li rising China and a ruling US will test the presumption that most Americans now take for granted as if great power wars were obsolete and third and most importantly that America's success or failure in mounting an effective response to this challenge will be decisive in shaping the future not just for Americans but for the global order so what then do we disagree about we disagree in one line about whether the Trump administration's policy is succeeding not just in Michaels terms in beginning to engage but in fact in mounting an effective response to this reality in the words of the resolution whether the Trump administration policies toward China has been productive so the key word here is productive and to avoid a demonic semantic debate we went to the dictionary to clarify its meaning according to Webster's productive means producing beneficial results so in this context producing results that advanced American interests so ask yourself has what the Trump administration is done in relations with China over the past two and a half years successfully advanced American interest or in terms that are more familiar most of us in our own lives if a member of your family were sick and went to the doctor is this doctors prescribed treatment working so it's all the vital signs shalt know it's understandable that Mike and Cory will try to shift the focus of the debate as a debate manual counsels when the facts support your case pound the facts when they don't change the subject so in preparing for this debate I actually I read their writings in general but I reviewed what they've written recently among China experts whom the Trump administration listens to no one has been clearer in sounding an alarm about the dangers of recklessly in a bold earning Taiwan as Michael was just mentioning or acting in ways that lead the Chinese to conclude that we believe that there are enemy than Mike Pillsbury as he said the speech last week and I quote if Beijing perceives the US perceives America is treating it like an enemy it would fuel nationalistic fervor and the response would be much harsher measures from China and then he goes under warned down that road lies a certain risk of war to whom is he issue doing this warning among the four of us who's offered the most stringent critique of the Trump administration's foreign policy including their policies towards China Reid Cory Shakti's article in the current foreign affairs after giving Trump credit for quote poking holes in piety and asking questions about long-standing principles she concludes and I quote his answers to those questions have been self-defeating at best and dangerous at worst so self-defeating and dangerous and uncho specifically she says Chinese economic and military power has significantly expanded so given what their what they've written my suspicion is if the organizers took a secret ballot here in the resolution before the four of us at least three on the stage would vote no and maybe even four so so to conclude let me identify five questions that all of us have to answer to make a serious assessment of whether the Trump administration of policies toward China or advancing American interests questions that Jake will say more about first security first is America safer than we were before the Trump administration began administering its treatment has the erosion of a military advantage than the Pacific slope has the risk of a third party action that drags us into a war we don't want been reduced aren't we stumbling into a new version of Cold War 2.0 as some members of the administration put it without understanding how different the world is today than in 1950 second the long-term economic competition with China as a man has the American balance sheets strengthened indeed when what Trump's made the central issue the bilateral trade balance during the Trump administration has a different trunk third on the geopolitical chess board have the ties between us and our allies that align countries of the week crucial in building a correlation of forces that China has to respond to strength under weaken and there's two more questions with Jake we'll break up after let me just include we wish dearly that the answer to the answer to answer to these questions was yes because we care about the answers they'll be decisive I think if you look at the facts they're stubborn and they answer no thanks grand mal Athena and a reminder of what's going on we're halfway through the opening round of this intelligence squared us debate I'm John Donvan we have two teams two to fighting it out over this resolution the recent US policy towards China is productive you've heard the first two opening statements and now on to the third arguing for the resolution we have Cory shocky deputy director general at the International Institute for Strategic Studies ladies and gentlemen Cory shocky so as Graham pointed out I am NOT the administration's strongest advocate but I do believe the policies the approach they are taking to China needs to be taken not in its specifics which as Graham said I'm quite critical of and but the United States has had the right policy towards China for roughly the last 30 years and it was best said by Robert Zoellick which is that what the United States is seeking to do is have China a prosperous powerful China be a responsible stakeholder of the International order that's what we wanted that's what we want now the problem is that over the last 30 years quite a lot of data has accrued that that's not what China wants so they are Xi Jingping stood in the Rose Garden and publicly promised President Obama that they would not militarize the islands they were building in the South China Sea they have militarized the islands they built in the South China Sea they are behaving in a predatory way towards their neighbors many of whom are American allies they are not honoring their promises not to hack American businesses they are forcing Communist Party commissar Zhan to the boards of American businesses that operate in China thieving and intellectual property from American businesses threatening American allies what has changed in American policy and I would argue it would have needed to change whether President Obama continued whether President Clinton had been elected whether President Trump was that China's behavior argues for a different a sharper edge de merican approach and President Trump is right to take a different and sharper edge approach the second thing is that what does the United States need if we are actually having to confront a rising China that's rapidly growing more prosperous and rapidly growing more aggressive we need allies willing and capable to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us we have those kinds of relationships but we have allies who over the last thirty years have allowed more and more of the responsibility for our common security to migrate to the United States right the United States constitutes almost 80 percent of NATO defence spending and the South Korean military is strong and broad-shouldered and capable and that is not how they view themselves and they're not cooperating with Japan our two closest allies in the region and so while I would not advocate the needless antagonism of America's allies that President Trump has engaged in the fact that allies are worried about whether the United States will honor our obligations to join in their defense has caused a strong uptick in activity by those allies in policy fronts in defense spending fronts so the Government of Japan for example is cascading Coast Guard ships to the Philippines and to Vietnam to help those countries strengthen their ability to defend their fishing waters from the Chinese the Australians have just an a military training program that they're going to train Pacific Allies forces you begin to see the middle powers of the international order take more responsibility for outcomes I wish they weren't doing it because the United States was unreliable under President Trump but in the long run we can fix the reliability problem with a different president the improvements in capability actually are again for the United States and managing a rising China and the third thing that the president has chosen to do which other American presidents have also chosen to do I personally think it's a mistake but as Mike pointed out the Kissinger approach of not leaning on American values not pressing our support for those brave young men and women in Hong Kong because they are yeah they deserve it from us I agree the United States government has made a choice that with a rising China growing so much more powerful so quickly we need to prioritize making that relationship work because as has been pointed out we have a lot of work we have to do in cooperation with the Chinese on climate change on many other issues so the president's approach is cost inefficient and it pains me to see that he's not doing it in a way that where we can play team sports and work build a common front with countries that share our concern about a rising China being brought into playing by the rules but what the president is succeeding at is driving up the cost to China of not playing by the rules and resetting China's sense of how it needs to engage the international order and that's actually a productive American policy Thank You Cory shocky one more time the resolution is the recent US policy towards China is productive and here making his opening statement and our final debater doing so in the opening round it will be speaking against Jake Sullivan former national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden ladies and gentlemen Jake Sullivan thank you so those are three tough acts to follow and I'm an IQ squared rookie so I'm hoping for some moral support from the audience over the course of the next six minutes I'm not above it I want to return to the resolution as Graham laid out the recent US policy towards China is productive and basically what you heard from Cory over the last six minutes well it was first of all damning the Trump administration's policy with faint praise for sure but what you also heard was essentially a single argument and that argument was because Trump has gotten tough it is therefore a productive policy and what Graham and I are arguing is that is not good enough to win this debate and that is not good enough to guide us policy getting tough is not in itself productive and that that by the way is not some grand lesson of geopolitics that's something that we tell our kids and our grandkids every single day so what we have to look at is what productive actually means it means as Graham said getting results that advance America's interests and values and on this front the Trump administration has failed time and again and I want to talk about four areas where the administration's policy has not just been unproductive a counterproductive now in debate normally you're supposed to only have three points but unfortunately the Trump administration didn't confine itself to three shortcomings so I'm stuck arguing for four the first of these is that the single most important thing the United States could do to have a productive approach towards China is invest in ourselves in our sources of national strength and here the Trump administration's record is severely lacking no investment in infrastructure massive proposed cuts to our science and research budget while the Chinese are racing ahead and have in fact surpassed us on research and development we spend $1 for every three the Chinese spend on clean energy and when it comes to investing in perhaps the greatest source of American strength immigration the United States is putting out a not welcome sign to the talent of the world and thereby squandering perhaps our greatest advantage over China and as long as our immigration policy is broken it's very hard to see how our approach towards China overall can be can be considered productive so we come to this competition with fewer tools and resources the second area which Corey mentioned is that a productive approach to China leverages our friends our allies and american-led institutions and partnerships now Cory argues well we're beating up on our allies but that's good because now they're stepping up and doing more nevermind the fact that actually the reason NATO is doing more is because of what happened with Russia and Crimea in 2015 and it started long before Trump but to take an example she offered Australia she said Australia is now stepping up as Corey herself wrote in the Atlantic a week ago they are stepping up by excluding the United States and pursuing a strategy in the region that is pushing the United States out the question for us is why wouldn't we be rallying 1/2 to 2/3 of the world's economy which is all of our like-minded friends and Democratic partners around the world to step up and challenge China on its trade abuses why are we going it alone that to me seems like a fundamentally unproductive approach so what is the Trump administration done instead of that they pulled out of the trans-pacific partnership which was our effort to write the rules of the road in the asia-pacific they declared our own allies and national security threat over steel Canada and they've come to the point now where in Germany more Germans believe China is a trustworthy trading partner than the United States how do you square that with arguing this approach been productive even beyond that though when it comes down to it the rules of the road on all of the important questions facing us today from technology to trade to the future of the Internet are going to be written and they're going to be written in institutions the United States used to lead we have walked away from those institutions and guess who's filling the gap China so that leads me to the third issue which is that we're not in some kind of battle to the death over ideology with China far from it however we are in something of a contest of models China is presenting an alternative model to the world and if more countries followed them it would be adverse to American interests and values so I ask you in terms the American approach to China as the last 30 months made democracy as a model look better or worse as America presented a more or less appealing face to the world a recent poll showed two things number one the China's leadership is now more respected globally than Americas and number two that for the first time in a long time America is actually seen more unfavorably than favorably across the Asia Pacific this is at a moment when we're trashing our Democratic friends and allies and embracing every dictator that we can find giving more voice and more support to China along the way and then finally a productive US approach to China necessarily necessarily has to balance competition and cooperation we've completely thrown cooperation out the window in turning China into an enemy and pursuing a self-defeating struggle and on the single most consequential issue facing not just the United States but all of humanity climate change we have to work with the Chinese and the Trump administration's approach on this has been the very opposite of productive cutting off the channels of cooperation indeed even denying it exists in the first place so I will close with a simple proposition a productive US approach would not just be all anti China all the time it would be pro US Pro investing in us in our values and our allies in our sources of strength that would be a productive policy that's what we should be pursuing instead thing Thank You Jake Sullivan and that concludes round one of this intelligent square G less debate where our resolution is the recent US policy towards China is productive please keep in mind how you voted before the arguments began you're going to be voting again at the end of the program and again I want to remind you it's going to be the difference between the first and the second vote that determines our winners now we move on to round two where the resolution is the recent US policy towards China is productive we have two debaters arguing for the resolution that the policy is productive Michael Pillsbury and Cory shocky they talk first about the issue of process they say that that there's now because of this style of President Trump there's now actually a kind of President to president dialogue taking place that there is a communications protocol in place that sets the grounds for engagement creates the circumstances for better outcomes so on the issue of just process they're saying that the recent policy is productive and promises to be more productive but they also argue that if Trump is being tougher on China that's because China has asked for it that China is a predatory power it's predatory in its trade practices its predatory geopolitically in its region that China's policy and behaviors require a sharper edged approach and Donald Trump is delivering it they also say that if it turns out that the president appears to be an unreliable ally that there's a silver lining to that unreliability that it's making our allies just a little bit jittery and they're coming around to the program and that might not be such a bad thing the team arguing against the resolution Graham Allison and Jake Sullivan they point out at the very beginning that all sides here agree that China is the issue of our time and I think that that's true all four panelists agree with that but they say that productive means something else that productive means producing results that can be very specifically enumerated beginning with is the US safer is the US trade balance stronger and some that we didn't actually even get to hear they played a very interesting tactical move by quoting some of their recent writings of their own opponents which is also always a very effective debating tactic but I think we're going to hear their opponents battle back against that they also say that what we're seeing in the world is a contest of models and that China and the US are in a competition for the most attractive best productive model and that democracy as a model because of the practices of Donald Trump and the recent administration is being corroded so that's some of what divides these two sides there's a lot to dig into there and normally we start this portion by looking at the big picture disagreements between the two sides but I want to do something a little bit different and just go to a specific example that is in the news and that we can all relate to and that's the u.s. interest in having a denuclearized North Korea and China has a critical role to play in that so I want to put two Graham Allison first is the recent US policy towards China productive in bringing about any sort of move towards denuclearization of North Korea that's a good question answer is no and yes so it's complicated it's no yeah that's gonna get very very murky i I don't think that everything that Trump has done does is wrong just because he doesn't ayah point out the people in Cambridge Massachusetts that sounds exactly what Cory does make this a broken clock is correct twice a day so the fact that somebody said something doesn't make it necessarily incorrect if the if the resolution before the house were the Trump administration's policy towards North Korea has been productive but it's I would be I'd be wiggling there the the Trump administration policy towards China has made it more difficult more difficult to deal with the North Korean issue so it's been essentially no but the Trump administration has tried very hard and Mike compared the Secretary of State who has his hand has tried very hard despite everything else that's being done to China to explain to them that because they have been interested they do nuclearization of North Korea they should be cooperating with us but they're cooperating less than they would if we were taking this as joint problem okay any problem that goes to the framework in which I was asking the question let me take Corey shock to your response to that well the Acting Secretary of Defense last spring Pat Shanahan I thought actually did a really useful thing to try and get the Chinese to be more cooperative on North Korea he handed his Chinese counterpart a book full of pictures of Chinese ships violating the UN sanctions on North Korea and using the tools of free societies to force the Chinese to play by the rules I think is one of the best most cost-effective strategies that we could be undertaking and that's a good example how as Graham says like the president's so obstreperous that it's hard to ignore him but on China policy help it every American administration has tried to get China to be more helpful than they are on North Korea frankly I don't think the Chinese care they think it's great that North Korea is absorbing so much of our time and effort and becoming a threat to us in our alliances in the region because that advances China's interest it it detracts from us being able to focus on them and so they're in favor of it I think the way that the administration has appointed a special representative in the form of Steve vegan who's an excellent negotiator on these issues that the Defense Department is pushing strongly for the Chinese to have to be accountable for what they are doing in breach of sanctions is also really helpful so I don't think I don't think it's as bad as it sounds gentlemen do you want to jump in sure when I served in government we would have meetings on North Korea in the Situation Room an agenda item one was the experts coming in and making presentations and everyone would start the same way they'd say North Korea is never giving up its nuclear arsenal and China won't make them and then agenda item number two was how do we make China make North Korea give up their nuclear weapons I actually don't believe is a metric for whether our policy towards China is productive North Korea is effective because the fact is his quarry was just saying Democratic and Republican administrations including the current one have not been able to move the Chinese in a material way to produce a real vision of denuclearization right I think I should be looking at so I'm sorry Steve begin whom Cory mentioned is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group which is often bid just a shout out for the locating so so let's take that off the table because I think all four of you are saying that as you put it it's not a good metric for talking about China's role so let me go then Jake I have to interrupt you for a second the Chinese after the mar-a-lago meeting they agreed to two UN Security Council resolutions fall of 2017 that were tougher than ever before in history the North Koreans were astonished by this so were a number of other countries so we can't just imply that China's not helping but they also agreed to the two toughest UN resolutions in history in the Obama administration and every time they will go a little bit further and a little bit further and you know the same argument was made during the Obama years look what we got the Chinese to do at the UN at the end of the day the net result is the same that's the way my definition of recent US policy includes the last two years of the Obama administration all right well I'm glad you liked my question Michael but I'm gonna pretend all of that didn't happen and I'm gonna I want to zoom back then to the issues that were laid out in your opening statements in Jake Sullivan I want you to take on Michaels argument that the president's establishment of a kind of president to president dialogue isn't itself a productive thing not only does it lay the groundwork for productive results but it's productive in itself well I would start by saying that no process is productive in itself it is only productive insofar as it is actually generating results and noticeably absent in Michaels presentation was the results of those conversation and I start but I think can I stop you there and because it just put a challenge to you did not actually produce results is that a flaw in your argument I did there's quite a few I didn't have six minutes there's not very long okay but can you list all that 20 reasons the president Trump following Obama's beginning of all this the last two years of the imamat what are some of them well one of them has been Chinese agreed to come to the trade talks mm-hmm I'm accusing you let's say it burglarizing my house and murdering my wife would you please start some trade negotiations with me they did not accept the charges against them but they came to the talks and they drafted a hundred and fifty pages of detailed agreements they would provide okay greatly Louie's trade but you have an exam what I'm interrupted you mid-face because I think this is actually also larger than just the lack of results a president to president channel works only if the president is speaking for a unified policy on a given issue and the problem with our approach to China policy is that there are about six or seven different China policies in this administration so that President to president Channel isn't all that useful one day Huawei is a threat to national security then many people with Huawei is whywe as the Chinese telecommunications companies seeking to build infrastructure in other countries including the United States so one day it's a national security threat the next day it's a bargaining chip at the at the table at the trade negotiating table one day Mike Pompeo was saying we stand in solidarity with the protesters in Hong Kong the next day Donald Trump is saying that's China's issue and we don't have anything to do with it one day the president is set questioning the one China policy the next day they're pulling it back so having this channel has not actually even inherently been productive let alone the results that it's seeking to quarry shocked again to respond to that I do think that the president's erratic behavior has caused the Chinese to wonder whether they are taking the right approach to the United States do you think it's calculated I think I'll stop there right I I agree completely with Cory that the Chinese government finds Trump mystified mystifying the way many Americans do I've had conversations in Beijing with people who work directly for Xi Jinping and they say we have a extremely difficult time understanding who this person is and what he cares about we have a conversation and then there's a different conversation we hear different noises from the administration as we one day princess gives a speech that the clear cold war 2.0 the next day there's a phone call that says we didn't really mean that then pence sets up a speech that these could have attacked Chinese for their activity in Hong Kong all of a sudden he's not giving that speech this week maybe next week maybe the week after so I think there's a considerable amount of confusion the way there is in fact in all of the foreign government strike none but your opponent's what your foes are saying that that's kind of a good thing say what your opponent is saying is that's kind of silver lining well I think had it if the purpose that was as Corey said to poke some of the piety sand to raise some questions and to get people to think about more fundamental questions maybe maybe but if it looks like you're dealing with that an erratic party with whom you're not even sure you can reach an agreement and if you do the agreement has changed by tomorrow in relations between great nations that's extremely dangerous I mean if I go back to the Thai one case I think Michael has played a very constructive role and I've talked to him about this for a long time in trying to explain to the administration in embolden ink I wan to imagine that it can take stronger steps towards independence they are running the risk of another assassination of archduke at Sarajevo that would produce a spark that could create a information it's extremely dangerous and the idea that well we go this way one day we go through what that way the next day we keep them confused there if well actually if it were producing results I might even have some respect for it but I think first it's not producing results and second I think it is as confused as it looks what would be a result what would a goal that a result would be for example trade deal that in the South China Sea the example that Corey mentioned he or she simply agreed that they were not militarizing the South China Sea then they proceeded directly to serve the Trump administration has been dealing with them about the South China Sea but with Corey venture that I looked back here at what her organization I I guess s said about what's actually happening in the South China and it says just we're between Victorian 2018 the PLA instead of intensifying its effort to fortify these instead is intensifying its efforts to fortify these features by building infrastructures and the range of military structure so basically it's gotten worse all right let me take that to Michael Pillsbury because you were we just heard from you through your opponent so you're Michael coach well no Michael I the larger point that I want to bring to you from Graham is that he's he's talking about all kinds of stuff is not happening that should be happening that could be happening because of the policy and position from the Trump administration and he's describing as erratic and confusing to the Chinese can you respond to that sure in terms of the South China Sea context well a lot of Jake's and Graham's points I think are very good they're very well taken I admire good ideas when I hear them but there are a couple mistakes that they've made that I need to correct and they're relevant to the South China Sea and the mistakes are actually could be tragic if Jake and Graham aren't more careful when you say and there's a letter by a hundred scholars saying President Trump treats China as an enemy and this is counterproductive I searched through 200 documents speeches of the Trump administration the word enemies never been used in fact you have the opposite we had the applause for the Hong Kong demonstrations here's the president he didn't say students demonstrate more he sided with President Xi so but when the Hawks in Beijing who I write about so much in my book when they hear Jake when they hear the hundred scholars say Oh Trump treats China as an inmate you know what they think well maybe he must treat China as an enemy this fuels the rage in China against the United States and it's simply not true but if there are things what Graham mentioned when he said Oh Mike Pence made this speech it was at our Hudson Institute and he said this cold war 2.0 actually pence did not say that no one's ever said it in the Trump administration and there isn't any cold war 2.0 but when the Chinese who criticized President Xi for being too soft when they hear Graham and there's been many others have said this again it causes our own policy that dates back many decades to become far more difficult to enforce the PLA now thinks aha the PLA now thinks it was able to fool President Obama just for the layperson tell us what the PLA stands for PLA is the Chinese military there's a group of what I call the Hawks they have their own name they call themselves called Ying back in PI's the Eagle so they're the ones who have said in the South China Sea we've got to close it with military deployments let me let me take your response to the which is quite dangerous to your your opponent's lay down challenge that they don't think the Trump administration's policy is leading to a good outcome for the US interest in the South China Sea that was your opponent's response to it Jake what is your response to that response well I'd say two things first of all if I said Trump said they were the enemy I your point is very well taken I don't mean to imply Trump has ever said that I don't believe he has what I was saying was the approach of the administration has closed off the avenues to cooperation including on critical issues like climate change and widened the avenues for a kind of self-defeating competition that I think is deeply dangerous and that you yourself have warned about your land expansion in talking about a totality of steps that move us towards China becoming an enemy but on the point this this question of whether results have been produced in the South China Sea Graham said it well China has intensified its militarization of the South China Sea not decreased it it has increased the degree to which it is modernizing its military and closing the gap with the United States not closing it and part of the way that it's done that is because while we're investing in legacy systems like aircraft carriers they're investing in asymmetric capabilities like missiles that can kill aircraft carriers and for every 10,000 dollars we spend on an aircraft carrier they spend $1 on a missile that can destroy that aircraft carrier that is the kind of counterproductive investment from a military perspective that is allowing China to close that gap and allowing them to keep flexing their muscles in the South China Sea and elsewhere and it's another thing that I think is deserving of some correction as we go for Cory shocky so I agree that China is growing more aggressive more dangerous more predatory towards American interests and America's friends in the region but that's not a function of Donald Trump being elected or Donald Trump's policies it's a function of a rising China believing it deserves to have greater weight it deserves to have in their minds a a region of influence that we back away from and they have been for 20 years building the coronary capabilities to do that so it's not new and the Trump administration is actually countering that pretty assertively for example yesterday was the day that the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty ceased to be operative between the US and Russia and a major reason for the u.s. not sustaining the treaty first of all the Russians had not been in compliance for years with the treaty and those of people like me who who favor the agreement could never figure out a way to bring the Russians back into compliance but the second reason the driver for us withdrawing from the treaty now was that we need to build the conventional range missiles of exactly the kind Jack was just advocating in order to counter China's threats to our allies in the region Cory let me bring in something that is arguably more a result of President Trump being elected tariffs yeah tariffs are are the tariffs of the president has been slamming against China productive so I do believe a policy that imposes enough costs on China that they begin to play by the rules of the international economic order rather than just taking the benefits of partial participation partial opening of their markets partial access for others I I think in the long run that could be useful how long but but no I mean the president not only can't do basic math he doesn't understand that American consumers are playing the tariffs people in the administration who favor the terrace the youth people in the administration who favor the tariffs though make a decent point that us accepting near-term risk to reset the rules that China plays by is a near-term loss that brings us long-term gain and I think okay testable proposition so you're saying there's a rational reason for the tariffs and it time will tell time will tell you're not saying how much time necessarily very wise move but I want to take that to your opponents give you if we're when we're trying to make the case for tariffs being effective in producing results I'll give you one for your side thank you sectioning Canada when national security grounds for steel imports has done more to lift the confidence of the Canadian defense forces than any action in history they now stand like ten feet tall Canadians never thought they could be a national security threat to anybody but now well in behold the terror that Trump administration has has as enacted are basically promiscuous we've been as vigorous in prosecuting with tariffs our advert our allies as our adversaries and if the objective is Jake said were to get the Chinese to play by a set of rules the TPP would have had 40% of the global economy negotiating with 18% of the global economy that's China well that's the correlation of forces in which you might get somebody to agree in fact if the TPP had been linked up with the Atlantic negotiation was going after on at the same time so if this set of allies and a line we're dealing with China the you've got 60% of the world's GDP so the chances get larger but in the way the Trump administration has got about it has lost that leverage and the consequence is the results that we see not the only candidate who will said they were very Clinton nobody I want to go to audience questions now sir you'll go first I'm Jeff Falk very simple we talk about North Korea the largest proliferator of nuclear weapons I believe in that region is Pakistan as the Trump administration approached to China and his us interest in Pakistan yes as a matter of fact you might extend your question by ask you why does Pakistan have nuclear weapons okay whereas China who gave them the design and China's never acknowledged this but the whole world says so so one of the areas where the US and China can work together and have successfully China no longer transfers nuclear weapons designed to other countries they're quite supportive in the non-proliferation effort this is not something new with President Trump but remember I don't think we're here to have a 20/20 Biden versus Trump debate in Aspen Biden will win 100 to 1 this is a debate about China policy in the effectiveness of China policy so in the area of non-proliferation China and the US have cooperated quite extensively it's very impressive I think let me let me agree with Michael on that point what his answer said correctly is in order to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons for decades the US and China have worked together positively not always but positively therefore that helps us understand that if we don't find a way to work together about things that really matter that the two of us like proliferation or like climate we go backwards in terms of the results we carbon you made that point really well you just shouldn't have started it was saying I agree with him because you'd actually didn't agree with them definitely okay I'm sorry your policies okay if you could stand up again please thanks Stuart Aven I wonder if any of you could come whether you think the tariff policy the Trump administration has resulted in the reduced GDP growth rate in China currently and whether you think the tariff policy will continue to cause a diminution and that growth rate and also is that a good thing is that a goal it is a good thing and it's been cut by about 0.5 percent according to a Barclays Bank study which is online it's a micro economic study the Chinese are very worried about this president Trump has in some ways encouraged they're worrying because he said six times now on different TV shows that if Hillary Clinton had won China would be surpassing America now during her term and that this is not going to happen on my watch when he says this to 70 or 80,000 people in an auditorium there's no vote for Biden there there's a massive applause that's that stopping China from surpassing America what could be higher stakes than that Jake I guess I'd make two points one is but going from 6.7 GDP growth this year last year to 6.2% China GDP GDP growth this year if that's your measure of reproductive policy we are going to lose over the long term because at the end of the day while we are imposing these tariffs and American farmers and consumers are paying all the costs while China lowers its tariffs for everyone else we are focused on steel soy coal China's focused on quantum computing ai biotechnology they're not thinking about their growth rate in the next quarter they're thinking about their growth rate in the next quarter century and for me a tariff policy they may have gone this this road is not ultimately going to generate a positive outcome for the United States and I would finally say that it's all fine and good to think about how to slow China down but I believe that the most unproductive policy of this administration has been to not make the investments that would make America run faster and win the economic competition kori do you want to correct their question I would just maybe I'll add one point which is I don't think the point five percent diminution of growth is a is a big problem for the Chinese economy but if the uncertainty associated with tariffs as a bludgeon and with economics as a major tool of statecraft continue you are going to see the divergence of supply chains and that will be an enormous problem for China and its continued growth I agree with Jake though that we should actually want a prosperous China we should just want a prosperous China that plays by the rules that's what President Trump says by the way sorry Gramps exactly what justice China that plays by the rules so just two facts so fact one the deficit that the trade deficit deficit the bilateral trade deficit with China has grown or has shrunk under trump it's grown by eighteen percent so it's it's successfully expanding the deficit secondly with respect to the growth that Trump likes to talk about the China is overtaking the US I've studied this very carefully the Chinese in the period since Trump became president have closed the gap between how tall we are and how tall they are by 14% so they're continuing to grow at 6.2 percent we grow at 3% all of us can do the math look and see how that that so it has not stopped and it's not going to be prevented President Trump likes that line and it sounds good for Americans but it's not true the hard fact I mean we just do the arithmetic there's four times as many Chinese as there are Americans if they're only half as productive as we are they work hard they're pretty smart they would have a GDP twice our size so that's in the cards if you look at it as a big picture now that doesn't mean they have to be the smartest if we do a good job of recruiting talent from all over the world as we've done then we can be the smartest if you look and see who runs and who's built the high-tech firms that have been the source of American greatness over the past generation these are people born in Iowa seriously yes this is filibustering I just gave you two numbers I'm gonna move on to another question World Bank publishes something called purchase power parity in which China surpassed us three years ago it's the largest economy in the world this see yes they publishes the same numbers and with the same results I'm gonna I move in some way to measure there's a head can we have a mic down the front right if you could stand up and tell us your name my name is Kevin and when it's cut McNulty and I had a question which is that it makes sense a lot of the analysis over running through is more macroeconomic nature because that's a lot of what is actually happening but I was curious about whether you think immaterial part of your assessment of this is the tail risk of an actual conflict whether proxy or direct if so how do you size that and price that has that factory indecision great things about a chaotic thanks Christian let me have that go first to Corey or Michael toss-up between the two of you be brief just to be brief I was simulated a lot by Graham Allison's book on this exact topic and if you've read his book it's called destined for war he addresses in great detail the results of the Harvard study project about how war could break out between the US and China and that the how what the case is that it may well happen in the beginning he sort of says well the chances are low but by the time I got to the end of the book I was pretty scared so that's that's the answer to your question Reid grand mollison's book destined for war kortnee scared jumpin on there too so there aren't that many there's only one case of a peaceful transition between great powers between a rising power and a dominant rule giving power and that's Britain to the United States in the 19th century and the reason that transition happened peacefully is because the two societies were similar enough and you had civil society links and that created the space for governments to make comp in crises and there aren't those kind of linkages there aren't the similarities of values between this Chinese government and the United States there may be I think they're very likely to be between the people of China and the United States and we should be fostering those because that will be stabilizing or losing that tail risk you're worried about tied that to the resolution that the president's policy the recent US policy towards China is productive does does the situation you're describing support your position the resolution or hurt you well my sense is that we should be pressing harder on the values issues many American governments choose not to but my favorite but the values issues you mean human rights and I mean human rights I mean civil liberties I mean individual dignity representative government within which the president is not doing which the person is not doing and many other American presidents have chosen not to do in order to preserve the relationship with the leadership but the best expense of your tax dollars on China policy in the last 15 years has been the Obama administration's ambassador in Beijing putting the air quality index on the American Embassy website because for almost no money it forced the Chinese government into accountability on something it's public cared about that the government didn't and you can see the increasing attention that the Chinese government pays to climate change issues as a result of that Graham Allison to Britt to bring to bring the conversation back to what the question was about the potential for military conflict between our two nations in your opening statement you asked you know is the u.s. safer is that goal being achieved so can you address the audience members question in the context of that framing that you put in the opening well thank you and thank you to Michael for a shout-out for destined for war so yeah and by the way Corey's wrote a book about why Britain and the US and that book is called safe passages and it's a great book that tells about the story that she just mentioned and there's a Michael Michael this book on the and and and I have not written a books in my book I cite Michaels book so there's more agreement here than you might suspect but to your point so in rivalries historically between a rapidly rising power and a ruling power you get what through Siddha T's taught us about a through Siddha T and dynamic and there's the pricing power I'm bigger I'm stronger I deserve more saying worse way the current arrangements were put in place before I got here so things need to change I'm a disruptive upstart and the ruling power thinks what the hell is going on here we're used to prerogatives and positions that we've become accustomed to and you're trying to change things and actually not just change things the way they they are has been a great international order it's allowed you to grow up so why don't you be grateful and become a responsible stakeholder take your place at our table that's normal the way worst often happened is some third parties action a provocation or even just an accident occurs and what are the other of the competitors feels obliged to respond and they get into a spiral at the end of which they get dragged into a war that nobody wanted in my book I have a good chapter on but you can't study it too often and in the China case if you think about Taiwan if Taiwan makes a move towards independence like it made in 1996 we're gonna have a very very dangerous situation in 1996 I was in the Pentagon the Taiwan made a small move towards independence President Clinton decided to send two carriers into the area force China to back down drove the PLA crazy from that day to this they've been building up a military capability to prevent that ever happening it's a very important point you're making and the missiles that they've deployed that they call carrier killers and forced their carriers out of that if I was at the Pentagon today and the same scenario happened I would not recommend in bringing up the carriers so now you're gonna have a situation in which China will either traverse Taiwan if that were to but 96 over again or the US comes to their rescue and I just want you to relate this to the resolution about the recent US policy towards China making it the situation more or less dangerous the the US policy the this get her to say something nice about Mike Mike has been what are the resistors to this but the US policy has been embolden Inc I want to feel more ability able to take these moves the president of Taiwan for the first time ever came and spent four days in the US last week in a week before never before was a taiwanese president allowed to spend any time here the national security adviser goes and visits the national security adviser we just made a big arm sales to Taiwan so when Taiwan where the election is going on right now one or two of the candidates are thinking about appealing to the population by we could be more independent we don't want to be dominated by by Beijing I understand that Sinemet very well but if the if if acting on the basis of that dragged the US and China into a war that would be catastrophic for everybody and okay and really crazy but it was crazy what happened in 1914 I mean I would just put a very fine point on it when it comes to the issue of Taiwan thirty months later it is more likely that the United States gets dragged into a war over that issue than it was thirty months ago and that fundamentally is not productive hi I'm Jane Harman great debate really applaud you all a topic that Jake raised that no one has come back to his immigration and there were applause for that I you know I I personally think Trump's immigration policies are flawed but I want to ask about Chinese students studying in the United States I think there are 350 thousand of them they pay full freight so universities love it my view is that they become ambassadors for the United States when they go home and my question is are Trump's policies on immigration and students productive what a good question okay who would like to take that take that one of course the short answer is no but there is a legitimate concern about Chinese students and Chinese scholars getting intellectual capital that gets fed into China's military program in a way that if you think there's a risk of war with China and we're actually going to have to fight the Chinese military that they're not wrong to be anxious about that but as with so many other things instead of having a precise policy that solves the specific problem they're big and sloppy and it's damaging but the great good thing the saving grace of our sweet provincial country is that the federal government isn't actually mostly what people know about us or even have the ability to take action on a whole bunch of things my favorite example of which is that despite withdrawing from the Paris climate accords agreement despite the overt hostility of the federal government despite many states rolling back regulatory regimes antonio guterres the UN secretary-general announced about three months that the first country that is going to meet its Paris climate Accord goals is the United States of America because state's actions civil society groups self-interested business decisions my mom wanting the place to be habitable for her great-grandchildren all of those things work and on immigration that's what's saving us that people still want to come to American universities they still think if I become an American my kid can grow up and run the country and they don't think that in Beijing so we still do have a dynamic on immigration jakey's floors I think the broader Trump immigration policy lands squarely at the feet of the President and it is putting a not welcome here sign out to so much talent from so many parts of the world and that comes at great moral and strategic costs to the United States but I think on the specific question of Chinese students there's actually some blame to go around I think too many Democrats in Washington have joined with Republicans in going overboard on pushing these legitimate national security concerns into territory that says if you're coming from China you must necessarily just be a tool of the PLA and I don't think that's right in part I don't think that's right because most of the work done at universities is open source it's published for everyone to see so most of the work that these Chinese students are doing is not some secret thing that they get access to because they paid tuition at Dartmouth College or anywhere else they could get it anywhere so what we are losing in the talent and ingenuity of those students and by the way half of the billion dollar startups in this country were founded by immigrants many of the great innovations in all of the areas where we need to stay ahead or get ahead of China are coming from immigrants including Chinese nationals who come here many of whom stay so this is a bipartisan problem and we have got to get the balance better than we have right now because we're moving into a territory I fear of a new Red Scare and I think that is fundamentally unproductive for the United States okay since since no one seems to want to be the vessel of the question that I want asked I do want to put it out there it was a major part of Jake's opening statement to make the argument that one of the harms he feels is being caused by the present policy out of the White House in regard to China is that China is already had been but is gaining even more ground as an attractive model to various other states around the world as an authoritarian model one that engages and encourages surveillance of its population etc lack of human rights and that the that this is at the expense of the model that the US has promulgated since the Second World War from which it has benefited and that I think many would agree the world has benefited and that that's a bad thing Corie sake do you want to take that one sure I while the disgraceful spectacle of American politics right now is certainly not advancing brand America in the world it's it's also not wholly bad because the the open discourse we have as a society the way that people care desperately about solving these problems or arguing about these problems that too is an example and it's not terrible even though it's sometimes distasteful the two real things that as much or press it seems to me possibly more than president Trump's behavior that have made authoritarian capitalism as as the Chinese practice and exported what the Chinese say is that America's mistakes after the September 11th attacks in particular the war in Iraq and the 2008 financial crisis show that the the American model is just too difficult to handle right the the vacillations of fortune are too much the predictability of the Chinese model is what you should trust and that does have some appeal but we are living through the great test of Hegel's philosophy that as people grow more prosperous they become more demanding political consumers and while the Chinese government is trying to stamp out that notion it looks to me actually like the Chinese people still get it and if the Chinese government genuinely didn't think Hegel was right they wouldn't have to build a surveillance state to control their own population but they did Jake do you have a response to that I guess just to elaborate a little bit on what I was laying out in my opening is that we need to be able to make the case to countries around the world that a democratic free market system can deliver for them and that there is an appealing kind of quality a moral authority to that system that is superior to this fusion of authoritarianism and technology that China is selling and I just don't believe that if you look at the record of the last 30 months you could argue that our appeal our moral authority our capacity to make that case to people around the world has gotten better rather than worse and for me when it comes to the approach of the u.s. towards China that is a huge own-goal a huge own-goal it's not all about trump I'm not arguing this is all about Trump but I think that the current approach his approach in particular of dividing this country and of undermining a lot of the fundamental things that we stand for has perhaps provided the lion's share of the reason for why people in Beijing right now we're thinking hey this ain't so bad they're tarnishing their model all on their own Michael that to me is a big prop last word to Michael I just want to agree with Jake as a matter of fact the Chinese I have a chapter in hundred-year marathon shameless he hold it up I have a chapter about how they've got a 12 billion dollar budget for soft power activities around the world their own international network of TV stations radio stations are buying in Texas that upset senator Ted Cruz it's a massive onslaught the part of it starts in Beijing where they demonize America not Trump they demonize America it's gotten quite bad in the last two weeks and today there's a Jane Perlas story in The New York Times that cites some of the really nastiness nasty comments in the last two weeks come out of China we don't really have a response for this and the organization that used to do this for us the United States Information Agency in charge of public diplomacy shut down by Jesse Helms frankly and others as a cold war agency well if we think about the challenge of China it seems to me if you look back in 1947 the challenge of the Soviet Union we created the Joint Chiefs of Staff by law created the CIA created the National Security Council gave some metrics for how to measure how we're doing we've done nothing in terms of our government organization about dealing with China debaters that concludes round two of this intelligence squared us debate where our resolution is recent wise policy is productive now we move on to round 3 round three will be closing statements by each debater in turn these statements will be two minutes each making his closing statement in support of the resolution the recent US policy towards China is productive Michael Pillsbury director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute thank you let me begin with my just description or my definition of recent US policy I repeated several times Barack Obama started going down the right path toward a tougher line toward China I didn't get a chance to mention something he did in the South China Sea he began to send US Navy warships through excessive Chinese territorial claims and in one case his team knew that if you do acts of war inside the territorial zone the other side could get quite excited but President Obama had the courage to do it anyway in September 2016 he said a US Navy destroyer that zigzagged its way through a Chinese island claim this is the beginning of showing the China is not going to get away with it in the South China Sea a United Nations related body ruled against China's claims this gets back to the liberal world order that somehow the Chinese government has got to be dissuaded from these policies so Obama starter did trumpets continued it it's not nearly enough we seem to all agree and I would just try to close and get your vote by saying how much are we going to have to do to bring China around to what we all thought China was going to be 30 years ago free markets some kind of democracy pro-pro American Samoan and appreciation and gratitude for all we've done to build up China that's that's the question of our debate and Cory and I think we're on the right track now apparently Graham and Jake are just a negative minded guys you can't see anything but thank you Michael Pillsbury a resolution again the recent US policy towards China is productive and here to make his closing statement against the resolution Graham Allison professor of government at Harvard so to John's pain with there's been more agreement than disagreement but with respect to the bottom line I think if these constitute results that are good for the US advancing our interests then I would vote for the resolution but I simply think the facts don't speak to that and let me go very quickly the economic competition President Trump has added additional two trillion dollars to the American debt imposed tariffs on virtually everybody interrupted supply chains as Cory said in ways that make people worry about the reliability of us as a supplier or as a market so that certainly is weakening our balance sheet in the long term competition on the security front as the Chairman the JCS said recently he's not wrong China's erosion of US military advantage continues just on the same pace and in stumbling towards a Cold War 2.0 which is the way at least some members of the administration talked about Vice President pizzas speech we are basically missing the necessity to cooperate with China in areas like non-proliferation that Michael mentioned where cooperation is essential by attacking our allies with as much enthusiasm as when we're attacking our adversaries and communicating such unambiguous disrespect for the leaders of other countries that we've got to assemble if we're gonna have a coalition of allies and aligned to create this advantageous correlation of forces for dealing with the Chinese we're basically going backwards that's not enhancing our strength but weakening it as Jake said the American brand has fallen faster under this administration than ever before in the history of polls the pew poll finds 70% of the yamir of the international community now expresses no confidence in the trumped global leadership and as Gallup found for the first time ever more of the world supports China than America's leadership in Asia which seems to be just incredible so to return to the resolution I can't help but think of a medical analogy from America's first president George Washington was sick he had a fever called the doctors they came to the Mount Vernon they put leeches on him it got better for a couple of days and then he died Thank You Graham Allison the resolution the recent US policy towards China is productive here making her closing in support of the motion Cory shocky deputy director general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies so Jake Sullivan raised a really important challenge which is why aren't countries rallying to our side too to contest China's breaking of the rules as it rises and he asserted that president Trump's reckless disregard for our allies and general rudeness and cost imposing strategies on our allies was the sole reason for that and I'm sympathetic to the argument that the president is needlessly antagonizing our friends but that's not the only reason countries aren't rallying to our side and in particular it's not the reason the country's closest to China geographically and most imposed on by China insecurity the ones who have the most to lose if China is able to reset the rules of the international order such that power determines outcomes the reason that those countries are not rallying to our side is they currently have the very advantageous circumstance that they do the majority of their business with China enriching themselves and enriching China and they have security guarantees from the United States that if China gets out of line that we will protect them the prime minister of Singapore in May scolded the American defense secretary that you shouldn't make us choose between our security and our prosperity and that would be a beautiful world if they didn't have to choose but if China continues to chip away if it continues to raid the waters of the Philippines to sale military forces through and harass Philippine Coast Guard ships the Philippines are not going to like the international order that results from that and so countries it's the free-rider problem countries want the ability to have us solve their problems and that's also why they're not rallying and I wish the president found more constructive ways to engage that but you do begin to see countries in the region take more responsibility for their outcomes and ultimately that will be good for us because when a more dignified and and polite president one who plays team sports get selected you can rebuild that sense of sameness but you will have additional capability the rules of the order really matter my friends sake I'm sorry your time is up thank you very much and here to make his closing statement against the resolution Jake Sullivan former national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden you know when your argument that the policy is productive is contingent on electing another president to change the policy it does raise a real question about how productive the law now if I were on if I had been assigned to the other side of this debate and the resolution was the current u.s. approach towards China is productive I think I would have asked John because it just says productive it says doesn't say productive for whom if I could have argued that it's productive for China because I think I could have won that resolution hands down and that I think is the core challenge with the argument coming from the other side if you think about what China has tried to achieve over the past many years undermine US alliances the Trump policy has helped them with that reduce American influence in international institutions and increase their own the Trump policy has helped them with that reduce the innovation edge of the United States Trump putting a budget forward to the Congress that slashes research and development while China races ahead has helped them with that undermine the appeal of democracy and enhance the appeal of authoritarian capitalism the Trump strategy has been productive for China in that respect and then of course on perhaps the most fundamental question our ultimate trump card against China the ability to have a demographic dividend from immigration that they have never been able to have squander that and the ballgame is going to be over long before it ever really starts and if all of that is not enough we have closed off the avenues for cooperation on the single most consequential issue facing our country today climate change Graham and I only had to prove that this set of policies was not productive I believe we have demonstrated in fact that this set of policies was counterproductive so we have actually gone above and beyond what we were asked to do in this president and as a result I'd ask those of you who voted for us to stick with us those of you who weren't with us in the beginning to join us in opposing this motion thank you thank you Jake Sullivan and that concludes the final round of this intelligence squared us debate now it's time to learn which side you feel has argued the best I want to ask you again to go to your phones to your mobile devices and you will have the chance to vote a second time to tell us which team you has found the most persuasive during the course of this argument I say this at the BET and a very debate our founder who's here tonight Robert Rosencrantz he set this thing up in 2006 in order to foster the kind of exchange that is exactly what took place on stage tonight were four people who who actually fundamentally made clear that they agree on some very core values nevertheless see disagreements and implementation and at the margins and that they were willing to come on stage and and clash about that in a in a way that required thought and and and just persistence of argument and critical thinking but to do so in a way that was civil and friendly and the end of which they can actually shake hands the four of you did that in such magnificent fashion I just wanna thank I wanted to ask the four of you question we've been talking about China and sometimes we like to go to outside the topic that we're debating once the competition is over since we have four smart people on the stage to talk about something else just the chat it's not competitive at all but since we've been talking about China as the issue you all agreed to that and stipulated to the beginning what do you see as the what besides China what what other is what other national security threats do you consider say number two Corey want you to first yep I would say the national debt is number two and I agree with a lot of Jake's argument that if we strengthen the core the core principles that made our free society successful in the first place that we actually won't have to worry very much about a rising China because if we do what we do well right we'll be fine okay thank you Jake doing it take a crack at that question well I agree with Cory on the general direction though I don't think it's the debt I I think it is making sure that our system actually can deliver for everybody and sort of whether you're on the right or you're you're on the left whether you're a trump supporter or a Democrat it seems to me that there are some fundamental adjustments that need to happen in our economy and they relate not just to our tax system and to competition policy and so forth but also to this fundamental question of what is going to happen with the fourth Industrial Revolution and this has economic consequences it has political consequences it has social consequences both in the United States and around the world one thing that we didn't really get into in this discussion is the whole question of what happens when gene-editing gets to a point where we're faced with genuine ethical dilemmas and the US and China may have very different views on those or for that matter facial recognition or virtual reality or artificial intelligence and I think solving that set of questions for me is so profound and it cuts across basically every other foreign policy and national security issue that we face thank you Michael you went take a crack at that related issue which is hard - it takes a new vocabulary to describe it but it we've taken for granted for a long time the idea of a liberal world order goes back to League of Nations even goes back to the Westphalia settlement of 1648 it's gotten very detailed in terms of specialized agencies there's just a huge structure my first job was in the United Nations Secretariat actually and I saw this whole structure going on forever I didn't understand technological surveillance capacities the desire of China to first penetrate and then turn the structure to its own interests and then other or authoritarian regimes doing the same thing so I don't have a good bumper sticker for this problem but it's the erosion of the liberal world order for taking it for granted and for the failure to find some way to counter this technology that is making cradle to grave surveillance every day so that if you do something your government doesn't like you can't buy a plane ticket you can't buy a train ticket all kinds of sanctions you get put on you and all this was unthinkable back in 1945 no okay I think all of the issues that have been mentioned are big ones in the conclusion of my book I imagined something I use in my classroom some done that a Martian strategist who's watching what's going on on the globe comes down and I imagine she comes down to Mary lago and there's trump and she's sitting there and she says i just have a couple of points to make he says first each of you have problems that you're probably going to be unable to overcome secondly most of those problems are inside your own border you have problems between you but you have even bigger problems inside your own border you see you're trying to have AI to revive an authoritarian basically live in this meandering state that Lee Kuan Yew told you is trying to take a 20th century operating system and patch on 21st century apps it's not gonna work and you Tom are trying to run a dysfunctional democracy DC now ik stands for dysfunctional capital it's not working and if you can't reinvent a way for your society to govern itself as a democracy the rest of the story is could have followed pretty directly thank you all okay it's it's time to end the suspense I I now have the final results again the resolution the recent US policy towards China is productive on the first vote from the audience here in Aspen twenty six percent of you agreed with this resolution 51 percent disagreed 23 percent were undecided those are the first results again I want to remind you it's the difference between the first results and the second vote that I'm about to announce that determines our winner on the second vote the resolution recent US policy towards China is productive the first vote 26% the second vote for the four side was 15% they lost 11 percentage points for the other side to side arguing against their first vote was 51% their second vote 83% they pulled up 32 percentage points that makes the team arguing against the resolution our winners against the resolution that the recent US policy so China is okay congratulations to them thank you for me John Donvan and intelligence squared us we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Open to Debate

Views: 110,464

Keywords: Intelligence Squared, IQ2, IQ2US, Intelligence Squared U.S., debate, live debate, I2, nyc, politics, conservative, liberal, war, Foreign Policy, Trump, populism, China, China Trade, Xi Jinping, North Korea, Trade, Protectionism, Tariff, South China Sea, Chinese

Id: HZ57Uz0EDmU

Length: 94min 56sec (5696 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019