U.S. Presidential Election-The Clash of Great Powers: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Primacy

welcome to the university of chicago francis and rose ewan campus in hong kong for the third episode of our fall un lecture series program the u.s presidential election my name is mark barnico and i'm the executive director of the university of chicago francis and rose ewan campus in hong kong the university's premier location in asia representing our values of free and open discourse rigorous debate and the exchange of ideas we're streaming tonight's event live via zoom facebook and youtube and you can submit questions through the q a tab by first registering on zoom also for the latest uncampus news and events please check out our website www.uchicago.hk or follow us on the uchicago uncampus facebook page now is a time when tensions between the world's great powers are high that the university of chicago and other leading academic institutions must continue to communicate and maintain important dialogue between each other and our peoples tonight's program is especially meant to facilitate that conversation as our expert focuses on the u.s china power dynamic and potential threats this evening we have one of the world's most distinguished political scientists professor john mirsheimer joining us for tonight's program the clash of great powers china's rise and the challenge to u.s primacy this program will continue for 90 minutes and will begin with a lecture by professor mirsheimer followed by sufficient time for audience questions now let me introduce our very special guest professor john mirsheimer is the r wendell harrison distinguished service professor of political science at the university of chicago where he has taught since 1982 he graduated from west point and then served five years as an officer in the air force following his service he received a phd in political science from cornell he's written extensively about security issues and international politics including six books the most recent of which is the great delusion liberal dreams and international realities professor miersheimer's writings have appeared in popular newspapers like the new york times and academic journals like international security he received the clark award for distinguished teaching when he was a graduate student at cornell in 1977 and he won the quattrell award for distinguished teaching at the university of chicago in 2003 he was elected to the american academy of arts and sciences and in 2020 he won the james madison award which is given only once every three years by the american political science association to an american political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science please join me in welcoming dr john muirsheimer thank you very much mark for the kind introduction uh and for inviting me to be here today to speak to the audience on the rise of china and its implications for great power competition in the world and also say a few words about the presidential election and how that relates to this big issue about the sino-american competition in the early 1990s it was becoming increasingly clear that china was rising impressively and that that rise was likely to continue uh for the foreseeable future and the united states was faced with the question of how to deal with a rising china the overwhelming consensus among both democrats and republicans was that the united states should concentrate on engaging china and what this meant was we the united states should go to great lengths to integrate china into the international economy integrate china into the existing international institutions mainly economic institutions but not exclusively economic institutions and in the end china would not only get richer or more prosperous but it would turn into a democracy and once china was a democracy it would never fight with the united states there would be no intense security competition with the united states because a prosperous and democratic china would get along very well with a prosperous and democratic america so this was the basic operating assumption regarding china that informed american policy in the 1990s and i would argue throughout the first 15 years of the 2000s on the other side of this debate were people like me who argued that if china continued to rise economically it would turn that economic might into military might and it would try to dominate asia the way that the united states dominates the western hemisphere uh and that the united states would not tolerate uh a china it was a hegemon in asia we'd go to great lengths to prevent that hap from happening and the end result would be you'd get this intense security competition with a serious chance of war but again the conventional wisdom at the time was that this realist view that people like me put forth was wrong-headed and that really what we had to do is engage china and help china grow economically and uh integrated into institutions and we would all live happily ever after i think if you look at where we are in 2020 those people who were in favor of engaging china have proved wrong in fact what they have helped to do is create a potential peer competitor for the united states we are in real trouble today and i'm talking about the united states in the sense that we have moved from the unipolar moment where the united states was by far the most dominant power in the world to a situation where we are facing two other great powers russia and china we're now in a multi-polar world no longer in unipolar world and in that multi-polar world the key dyad is the u.s china dyad and uh if you look at relations between the chinese and the americans today it seems quite clear to me uh that we now are facing an intense security competition and a very dangerous one and my argument is that going forward from today the situation is likely to get worse it's not going to get better that idea that we could make china prosperous and live happily ever after has been proved wrong and there's no reason to think the situation is going to turn around in the decades ahead my argument is that if china continues to rise in the next 30 years similarly to the way it rose in the past 30 years the trouble only gets worse this of course is all related to the uh presidential election on november 3rd in that lots of people are talking about what effect a new president will have on this relationship and what will happen if donald trump is re-elected and at the end of my talk i want to address that issue and the argument i'll make there just to give you a sense where i'm heading is that it doesn't make much difference whether joe biden is in the white house or donald trump we are doomed to have an intense security competition so let me lay out my argument for you the argument i've been making for many years about why we should expect trouble as china rises and what i'll do is i will lay out my basic theory of international politics in very simple terms because that theory explains my thinking on this issue you have to know the theory uh to understand why we're in trouble now and why we're likely to remain in trouble in the years ahead and then i want to talk about u.s foreign policy since 1783 when the country gained its independence and give you a brief sketch of how the united states has behaved over time just to show you that american foreign policy over time fits quite neatly with my theory and then i want to talk about what i expect china to do in the years ahead and in a very important way i'm telling you what i think china's doing today and then i'll talk about how the united states will react to china over time and then finally talk a little bit about the election and the consequences of both the trump and the biden presidency after january 2021 okay here's my theory my argument is that the international system the structure of the international system is in large part responsible for dictating how states behave and the key to understanding uh the structure of the international system is to recognize that it is an anarchic system it's a system where there's no higher authority if the state gets into trouble and dials 9-1-1 there's nobody at the other end of the phone call it's an anarchic system it's not hierarchic furthermore those states that comprise the principal actors in the international system cannot know the intentions of other states it's just no way that the united states can know what china's intentions are for sure in the year 2025 or in the year 2030 there's no way that any state can ever know what the intentions of its neighbors will be and what i'm saying here is you can't know whether another state will have malign intentions towards you this is not to say that you can know for sure that another state will have those malign intentions towards you it's simply to say you can't be sure and of course when you move away from talking about the intentions of states and you talk about their capabilities it may be the case in the international system that you as a state are dealing with another state that has a remarkable amount of power and malign intentions towards you and if you get into trouble with that state there's no higher authority that you can turn to to protect you or to pull your chestnuts out of the fire it's really a self-help world international politics and it's a self-help world because there is no higher authority it's an anarchic system and again just to repeat in an anarchic system where you cannot be certain what the intentions of other states are those intentions are very hard to know because intentions are in the heads of policy makers and you can't you can't get inside someone's head and see what he or she is thinking it's impossible and furthermore even if you think you could figure out what a state's intentions are today october 15 2020 you can't tell me what they will be on october 15 2025 or 2030 so intentions are ultimately unknowable you can never know another state's intentions with a high degree of certainty and again as you all know in the international system there's some remarkably powerful countries the united states is one china is one and if we go back in history they're countries like the soviet union nazi germany imperial japan and so forth and so on so for any state that is interested in its security that's interested in survival the question becomes what's the best way to survive in this anarchic system where you can't know state's intentions and the answer is that you want to be the most powerful state in the system you want to be as powerful as possible you want to maximize your relative power because if you're really powerful it's almost impossible for another state to pick a war with you think about the united states today the united states has canada to its north mexico to its south fish to its east and fish to its west it's a remarkably powerful country in the western hemisphere no country in the western hemisphere would dare to pick a fight with the united states why because it's so powerful well the central message here is very clear the best way to survive in the international system is to maximize your relative power it is to be in my lexicon a regional hegemon that's my argument the best way to survive is to be a regional hegemon and furthermore to make sure that no other state in the system is a regional hegemon and the united states of course is a regional hegemon in the western hemisphere uh it's the only regional in modern history now you're probably saying to yourself i can understand why you would want to be a regional hegemon but the question is why is it important that no other state become a regional hegemon in its region of the world in other words to get ahead of myself why is it important to the united states to make sure that china does not become a regional hegemon in asia well the answer is that if you are a regional hegemon you are free to roam around the globe with your military power most americans in fact most people around the world never ask the question why is the united states wandering all over the planet interfering in the politics of virtually every country in the world why does the united states have military forces here there and everywhere the reason is that the united states faces no security threats in the western hemisphere we are a regional hegemon as i said to you before there's no country in the hemisphere that would think about attacking the united states so we don't have to worry anymore about our security in the western hemisphere and we are therefore free to roam we are free to roam into others other neighborhoods other regions of the world which of course we do what we don't want as a regional hegemon is for another country to be free to rome because our great fear then is that country would roam into the western hemisphere it would roam into our backyard that's the last thing we want what we want instead is a balance of power a number of great powers in all of the key regions of the world so that those countries have to concentrate on each other mainly and they are not free to roam we want china to have to worry about japan we want china to have to worry about russia we want china to have to worry about india from china's point of view the best situation would be if the united states broke into two parts if there were a red united states and a blue united states two countries in the western hemisphere that had to worry about each other that would limit our ability to roam so again what i'm saying to you in short is that in an anarchic world a world where there's no higher authority that sits above states where you can't be certain of the intentions of other states and there may be really powerful states someday that have malign intentions the best way to survive is to be a regional hegemon number one and number two make sure that there is no other regional hegemon on the planet so that's my basic theory in a nutshell now what i want to do is give you a synoptic view of american history since 1783 and try to convince you that if you look at how we have behaved over time we meaning the united states it's quite clear that we have behaved according to the broad outlines of my theory and what do i mean after the united states got its independence in 1783 it went to great lengths to establish hegemony in the western hemisphere first of all we marched across the continent from the east coast to the west coast as you all know the united states started out as 13 weak colonies strung out along the atlantic seaboard the founding fathers and their successors marched westward over the course of the 19th century conquered huge amounts of territory acquired other pieces of territory like the louisiana purchase and created this really powerful state in the process we murdered huge numbers of native americans we stole their land we stole what is the southwest of the united states today from mexico uh we created a really powerful country we wanted to conquer canada and make canada part of the united states and if it wasn't for the slavery issue the caribbean would now be part of the united states the united states had its gun sights on the caribbean but the northern states would not allow us to conquer territory in the caribbean because they feared that we would add more slave holding states to the union but absent that issue the caribbean would now be part of the united states and as i say if we had been able to conquer canada which we were not we tried in 1812 but we failed um we would uh have canada as a series of states in the united states we had a voracious appetite for conquest and we were basically in the process of creating a regional hegemon a really powerful state the second thing that we did was called the monroe doctrine the first part of the policy which i just described was usually known as manifest destiny but we also were concerned with the distant great powers and here we're talking mainly about the european great powers uh in the 19th century and what the united states wanted to do was get those great powers from europe out of the western hemisphere and keep them out this is what the monroe doctrine is all about the monroe doctrine was of course enunciated in 1823 by president james monroe and in effect what monroe said is that the western hemisphere belongs to us and we don't want any european great powers in this hemisphere and we're not strong enough to throw you out now but we will eventually throw you out and when we throw you out we don't want you ever coming back uh it's the monroe doctrine so vis-a-vis manifest destiny and the monroe doctrine what the united states did was turn itself into a regional hegemon over the course of the 19th century so that by 1900 the united states was by far the most powerful state in the western hemisphere this was the result of conscious policies that were designed to create regional hegemony and we succeeded now i told you when i laid out my theory that a great power has two missions one is to create regional hegemony and the second is to make sure that no other state achieves regional hegemony during the course of the 20th century there were four countries that tried to achieve regional hegemony and the united states played a key role in putting all four of those countries on the scrap heap of history the first is imperial germany the second is imperial japan the third is nazi germany and the fourth is the soviet union the united states entered world war one in april 1917 and i would argue played the critical role in finishing off germany and making sure that germany did not win the war and become a regional hegemon in europe the united states single-handedly defeated japan imperial japan in world war ii uh and although the soviet union played the key role in defeating nazi germany in world war ii the united stealth the united states helped uh in profound ways so we played a key role putting both nazi germany imperial japan on this grand peak of history and of course you all know that during the cold war the united states played the key role in containing the soviet union and then helping to usher it down the toilet bowl after the cold war ended in 1989. uh so the united states the historical record makes clear it does not tolerate peer competitors there were four potential peer competitors in the 20th century again and none of them became regional hegemons the united states the only regional hegemon in modern history as i said before so i think that the american case fits neatly with my theory now the question is what do you expect china to do as it becomes more powerful and my argument has long been that china would imitate the united states and and my argument is the chinese would be foolish not to imitate the united states the united states is incredibly secure because it's a regional hegemon the same logic applies to china china would be much more secure if it were a regional hegemon let's just take the issue of how powerful china is relative to its neighbors the chinese understand full well that it is imperative for china to be the most powerful country in asia the chinese remember full well what happened to them when they were weak they call it the century of national humiliation the chinese understand that when you're weak other great powers take advantage of you they push you around they conquer territory that belongs to you you don't want to be weak in international politics you want to be really powerful the chinese want to be much more powerful than japan much more powerful than russia and india it makes perfect sense furthermore the chinese don't want the americans on their doorstep the chinese do not like the idea that the american military is sitting right off their coastline that the american military is physically located in countries like south korea japan so forth and so on the united states has the monarch doctrine as you all know the monroe doctrine says no distant great powers are allowed in the western hemisphere i'm old enough to remember the cuban missile crisis when the soviets tried to put missiles in cuba the united states went ballistic this was unacceptable this is the western hemisphere the soviet union is not allowed to move its military forces into the western hemisphere and then later the soviets talked about building a naval base at cienfuencos in cuba the united states told them in no uncertain terms you're not building a naval base in sienfuegos haven't you heard about the monroe doctrine was my mother taught me when i was a little boy what's good for the goose is good for the gander if we have a monroe doctrine why shouldn't the chinese have a monroe doctrine i could tell you something if i were running national security policy in beijing i'd want the americans out of east asia i would not want another great power in my neighborhood it's how i think as an american why wouldn't i think that way if i were chinese so what i'm telling you is that as china grows economically over time and this is what i was arguing in the 1990s and certainly throughout the early 2000s as china grows economically what it's going to do is turn that economic might into military might and it's going to try to dominate asia the way we dominate the western hemisphere it's going to want to make sure that it is the most powerful state in asia and number two it's going to go to great lakes to push the americans out beyond the first island chain and then out beyond the second island chain makes eminently good sense from my point of view uh made amer eminently good sense for the united states i think it makes eminently good sense for china but there's a fly in the ointment and that has to do with the united states and the question you have to ask yourself is what is the united states likely to do in response to china's efforts to become a regional hegemon and as i told you before when i laid out my theory it's very important for a regional hegemon to make sure it doesn't have a peer competitor and this is another way of saying it's very important that the united states not allow china to become a potential to become not a potential but become a real regional hegemon that's what the theory says and as i said you before if you look at the 20th century the historical record is clear here we went to great ways to check the four countries that could become regional hegemons imperial germany imperial japan nazi germany and the soviet union so i would expect us to do exactly that with regard to china you all remember in 2011 hillary clinton when she was secretary of state enunciated the pivot to asia the pivot to asia was the first major step that the united states made to contain china and since donald trump moved into the white house in january 2017 the situation has only become more pronounced the united states is balancing against china just the way it balanced against the soviet union nazi germany imperial germany and imperial japan the united states does not tolerate pure competitors and of course there are a whole slew of countries in east asia that live in fear of china they don't say that loudly because they're afraid of offending china and damaging their economic relations with china and i fully understand that but they live in fear of chinese military power as they should and what you see happening in east asia is that a balancing coalition is beginning to form against china uh countries are aligning themselves militarily with the united states even though that's likely to have significant economic costs for them moving forward so what i'm saying to you is that we are in the midst of a security competition between the united states and china it has hardly anything to do with the fact that china is a so-called communist state where xi jinping is in charge or donald trump is in charge in the united states this is not what's driving this train what's driving this train is the structure of the international system the structure of the international system creates very powerful incentives to maximize your power to gain as much power as you can to become a regional hegemon and to prevent other countries from becoming a regional hegemon this is a structural argument and there's no way of avoiding it and this is the reason i have long argued that if we if we saw china rise economically it would translate that economic might into military might and we'd have the competition that we're now looking at today and if anything it will only get worse as china gets more powerful now let me say a few words uh about uh the election and the whole issue of whether it matters whether we have a president biden or president trump after january 2021. as i just made clear to you over the course of my talk and i emphasized a minute ago i have a structural argument and i'm basically arguing that states are prisoners they're in an iron cage and they just don't have a whole heck of a lot of maneuver room as we say in political science they don't have a lot of agency but nevertheless i'm not so wedded to a structural argument that i don't understand that states do have some agency and that leaders do matter somewhat and i think it does matter somewhat it matters on the margins whether we have a president trump or a president biden the argument in favor of president biden the argument that he would do a better job of of managing this goes like this first of all the trump administration has a very bad habit of slapping its allies around the trump administration has done a poor job of putting together a balancing coalition to deal with china and this is most apparent with south korea and japan the united states has all sorts of complaints i should say the trump administration has all sorts of complaints about trade relations with japan and south korea and the united states has played hardball with the south koreans and the japanese and furthermore the united states has not done much to ameliorate tensions between japan and south korea which are quite profound these days and if you're going to put together a balancing coalition that can contain china it's very important that we have good relations with our potential allies or future allies in asia especially in east asia and the argument can be made i certainly believe that the trump administration has not done a good job of dealing with allies and i would note you can even go to places like australia and singapore and you get a you quickly get a sense that that people in those countries have real reservations about the trump administration how it deals with allies i think another problem which is related to the matter of allies has to do with the trans-pacific partnership the trans-pacific partnership was basically an economic institution that excluded china and was designed to combat a rising china and the trump administration foolishly pulled out of the tpp as soon as it took office and this is not a good thing one could argue uh and i think it's true that the biden administration would do a much better job of dealing with allies and there's a good chance that they would try to resurrect the tpp in some form and one could argue that this is all good for purposes of dealing with allies furthermore one could argue with regard to the trump administration that its policy towards china has not been terribly coherent it's rather health or skelter that the administration has not done a good job of explaining what exactly our policy is and again this is important for getting allies on board it's also important for dealing with the chinese it's very important here given that both of these states the united states and china have nuclear weapons that we not wander into a crisis that turns into a war that escalates to the nuclear level so we want to make sure that on both sides of the equation we have highly competent people in charge who are conveying what their policy is to the other side and are fully capable of managing a crisis one could argue that the trump has done a less than stellar job in that regard and that a biden administration would do a better job so i think this is just my personal view but i think and a lot of people i know think that um if we have a biden presidency uh that there will be a more competent management of the competition with china from the american side the argument against biden and for trump is really limited to one issue but it's a bigger issue and there the argument is that the democrats and this is especially true of joe biden have historically been deeply committed to engagement with china this is where i started my talk and i pointed out to you the democrats and republicans alike bought the engagement argue meant throughout the 1990s and early 2000s the bush administration bought into engagement every bit as much i should say both bush administrations bought into the engagement argument every bit as much as the clinton obama administrations did so one could argue that the democrats are addicted to engagement they don't want to they don't want to contain the chinese in a really hard-headed way and that joe biden is emblematic of this policy the person who really changed things was donald trump he he is the first president that got really tough with the chinese and there are a number of people who believe that if if biden is elected that his engagement mentality will take over and the united states will fail to contain china not because of incompetence in fact the biden administration will be more competent in terms of dealing with allies but it just won't be hard-headed enough so that's the argument uh that um we'd be much better off uh if donald trump got re-elected my view is that whether biden is in the white house or trump is in the white house the united states is going to play hardball with the chinese this is my iron cage argument coming into play biden just has no choice engagement is dead uh we are in containment mode and whether donald trump is in the white house or joe biden it's not going to make much difference on that count and with regard to managing the alliance i think a powerful case could be made there that all the trump although the trump administration has not done a good job so far on that front that if trump is re-elected uh the imperatives of the situation will force him and his lieutenants uh to come up with more coherent policies and do a better job of dealing with their allies so all this is just a way of saying that regrettably i see no way to avoid a serious competition serious security competition uh between china and the united states in the years ahead and i also think it's going to take a lot of hard work to make sure that that security competition doesn't end up in a war over the south china sea or the east china sea or over taiwan we in the united states and leaders in china as well are going to have our hands full trying to make sure that this competition remains a cold war and does not turn into a hot war thank you very much it was a great overview of the situation we're facing in in the region um one of the questions we've had many questions we've had over 100 questions come in since you started talking and but one of the things there are multiple themes in the question so i'll try to organize them in a way that that makes them easier to address but i wanted to start with this whole idea that i hear a lot in asia of china peacefully rising based on its long history of confucian culture and i would also add that you know taoist and buddhist beliefs play into this way of thinking um the us and china have had you know over 40 years or nearly 40 years of prosperity between the two countries so um gene asked why why can't we continue to peacefully co-exist and this is a a question that a number of of um audience members uh asked and then the the kind of the follow-on on that is are we only looking at china through a u.s western view of containment and domination is that just purely a western way of thinking and is there a merit in looking at things a slightly different way uh with regard to the question of whether we're looking at this through western lenses and there's an asian view that would tell a different story uh i would say that the argument that there's an asian theory of international politics or chinese theory of international politics is a bogus argument uh i have gone to china a number of times and sometimes when i start my talks in china i say that it's good to be back among my people now i don't speak one word of chinese when i'm in china i have a very profound sense that i'm in a foreign culture but when i say in my talks in china that it's good to be back among my people what i'm saying is the chinese are basically realists and it's good to be back talking with realists because they're not many realists in the united states but they're many realists in china china is a thoroughly realist country if there's any country in the world today in my opinion that acts according to realist dictates down the line it's the chinese so i think that uh the argument that there's some asian way of thinking about international politics that's different from the way americans or europeans have traditionally thought about these things is simply wrong the chinese talk in terms of the basic international relations theories that americans and europeans talk in terms of so i don't buy that argument now your first question actually dovetails with your second question because the first question had to do with this idea that there's a confucian culture right and this confucian culture is what causes china to be a law-abiding peaceful state unlike a lot of these western states that are guided by the dictates of real politique i don't buy this argument for one second i think this confucianism argument is a lot like american exceptionalism countries tell themselves a story all the time about how they're peaceful how they're wonderful and how all their adversaries are the bad guys this is what we do in the united states all the time the united states is never responsible for any of the problems in the world it's always the other guy it's called this is called american exceptionalism we are the city on the hill we are peaceful others cause trouble so forth and so on the confucianism line of argument makes that same basic point that china has historically a peaceful country and it's countries like the united states the japanese and the europeans who have been the aggressors my final point on this is if the chinese are peaceful uh and they're happy with the status quo then they ought to accept the fact that the united states is the dominant power in asia that we basically provide security in asia uh but they don't accept that uh you know i i've gone to china a number of times and i've posed this question to my interlocutors in china i said starting in the early 1980s you began to integrate in a serious way into the international economy that the united states had created and in the process you've become incredibly rich if you look at china today it's a remarkably prosperous country and it's done this by integrating itself into this western-led or american-led international order so what i say to them is why don't you just accept the fact that we the americans run the world that we provide security for everyone in east asia and just sit back relax and let us continue to run the world we're not threatening to conquer you or anything and just continue to get richer and richer i have never met a single chinese who is willing to do that in fact all the chinese i have talked to want china to become the dominant power in asia and they don't like the idea that the united states is the principal provider of security in east asia they are offended by that and they want to change the status quo the chinese want to change the status quo and the chinese have made it clear they're willing to use military force to change the status quo if that's necessary all you have to do is look at chinese rhetoric on taiwan now i want to be clear here i'm not being critical of the chinese this is the way the world works this is the way the americans behave i don't see chinese behavior as being fundamentally different from american behavior or any other great powers behavior great powers are ruthless they use military force when they think it's in their interest they care about the balance of power and they'll pursue ruthless policies to gain power at the expense of other countries i would expect china to do that i think the united states does it and i expect the united states to do that in the future so the idea that this is an atomistic united states up against a pacifistic confucian china i think is an argument that people like to make because it makes them feel good but it's just not the way the world works great thank you so much one of the other uh questions that's repeated throughout the questions from the audience is and you you alluded to it in your last answer is just de-escalation how can the u.s and china de-escalate um the answer you previously gave was that china just acquiesces and lets the us basically run asia are there any other ways to de-escalate the situation between the two countries well let me just say mark that when you talk about de-escalation you're talking basically about freezing the status quo in place and the americans would love to de-escalate and freeze the status quo in place the united states likes the status quo because the united states is the big enchilada given the status quo it's the chinese who want to change the status quo the chinese want to change the status quo vis-a-vis taiwan vis-a-vis the east china sea vis-a-vis the south china sea vis-a-vis their border china's border with india china is a revisionist power it doesn't want to de-escalate it wants to escalate it it wants to change things and the americans of course and the indians for their part don't want china to change the status quo so what you really have here is basically a zero-sum game china's gains are america's losses and vice versa so i see no way that you can de-escalate this crisis at this point in time or in the foreseeable future you know the book that i wrote that lays out my basic theory and where i first made the argument that china cannot rise peacefully is entitled the tragedy of great power politics and the key word in that title is tragedy this is a tragic situation this situation makes me sick to my stomach many people think that you know i'm happy about the fact that we're now seeing a security competition because it's what my theory predicts that's not really true uh i think it's terrible that we're in this situation with china and it's terrible that it's going to get that i think that it's going to get worse i don't feel good about this at all i love going to china i have lots of friends in china but my argument is as you know a structural argument and when china arises economically uh in my opinion that's guaranteed to lead to big trouble thank you so on the other side of that um we had a number of questions related to escalation and specifically many people asked about what are the triggers that could escalate the situation into a into a conflict well uh let me say a couple words about that um first of all there are really four potential flash points in east asia and in addition to that there's the india china line of actual control flashpoint but let's leave that one aside the india china flashpoint and talk about east asia first of all there's the south china sea secondly there's taiwan third there's the east china sea and then there's the korean peninsula and let me say a few words about each the chinese basically believe that the south china sea should be a giant chinese lake uh they want to control the south china sea they view it as basically their property and they want to militarize the south china sea the americans simply don't accept that nor do their neighbors in east asia and the americans are going to great lengths now to make it clear that they will not accept china taking over the south china sea and making it into a big chinese lake it's not not going to happen say the americans that's a serious flash point you asked me where it's most likely that we will get shooting a real fight between the united states and the chinese moving forward i'd say it's the south china sea then the second flash point one could argue is even more dangerous over the long term is taiwan i have never met a single person from china who is not profoundly committed to making taiwan part of china to reincorporating taiwan into china and at the same time as this security competition has heated up the american military commitment to taiwan has increased uh the united states simply cannot allow china to conquer taiwan if taiwan were to peacefully uh become part of china if the taiwanese people were to decide that they wanted to become part of china the united states wouldn't stand in the way in my opinion but that's not going to happen the taiwanese want their independence the taiwanese do not want to be part of china so in that context a growing american commitment to defend a piece of real estate that matters enormously to chinese national identity is a prescription for really big trouble uh and as i said i think as time goes by our commitment to taiwan grows and i think it becomes increasingly difficult for us to walk away from taiwan so that's a second potential flash point third potential flash points obviously the east china sea where you have these rocks that the chinese call the diago islands and the japanese call the senkaku islands and again it's a zero-sum game they're either chinese rocks or japanese rocks and even though these are just rocks both the chinese and the japanese really care about these rocks and uh one can imagine shooting breaking out uh over those rocks and then finally there's the korean peninsula the united states is joined at the hip with south korea we have many thousands of american troops and their dependents physically located in south korea china and north korea are also joined at the hip as you know well mark in the fall of 1950 when the united states crossed the 38th parallel and went into north korea and started moving up towards the yalu river which is the border between north korea and china the chinese came in and most people don't realize this but the americans and the chinese fought a bloody war the americans and the chinese in korea between 1950 and 1953. china is not going to let north korea fall under south korean which means american control so china is deeply invested in north korea the united states is deeply invested in south korea and you can imagine a plausible scenario where you get a korean war that drags both the united states and china into the fight i don't think that's likely but i think it is possible so those are the four possible conflict situations and i would not argue that you know you are going to get a war over one of those flash points i i wouldn't make that argument but i think you can tell plausible stories about how you get shooting between the united states and china in one of those four scenarios many of our audience members tonight have raised the taiwan question and um are wondering whether uh taiwan is vulnerable now right now while the u.s is distracted with the pandemic and with the election do you have any any insights into that or thoughts into whether that is a a risk at the moment well i i think arguments about about the pandemic in the election distracting the americans don't hold much weight the pandemic doesn't matter that much and the election doesn't matter that much [Music] so i i think the interesting question is simply one of what the balance of power looks like in asia today vis-a-vis taiwan let me start with a general point i think it's important to understand that if china continues to grow in an impressive way economically and it translates that economic might into military might that the balance of power between the united states and china shifts over time in china's to china's advantage so in a very important way if china continues to grow time is on its side so the chinese are better off picking a fight with the united states in the year 2040 than they are picking a fight with the united states in the year 2020. this was deng xiaoping's basic argument long ago that china should just you know keep a low profile and continue to grow with that background how do i think about the situation today vis-a-vis the situation moving forward i think the chinese would be remarkably foolish to pick a fight with the united states over taiwan today i think if you look at the military balance in east asia today i think it's almost impossible for the united states to lose taiwan for china to take taiwan with military force the balance of power is not uh sufficiently shifted in china's favor so that it can do that i think as time passes and here we're talking about you know 20 25 years 30 years out we may reach a point where it's almost impossible for the united states to protect taiwan the fact is the united states is physically located 6 000 miles away from taiwan we are far away from taiwan and we have a huge power projection problem china on the other hand is right next door to taiwan it's quite remarkable you have to do is look at a map see how close taiwan is to china for the united states to defend taiwan is not an easy task especially in a scenario where china continues to grow economically and therefore its military becomes more powerful so i think we are likely to reach a situation uh maybe in 30 years uh maybe 25 years who knows for sure how long but in a couple decades we're likely to reach a situation where the united states simply cannot defend taiwan anymore with conventional weapons now you could argue we could defend taiwan with nuclear weapons i find it difficult to imagine us using nuclear weapons to defend taiwan but that's a possibility but i think conventionally over time the balance will shift against us on taiwan but for the moment for the foreseeable future for the next five ten years i think the united states will be able to deter a chinese attack on taiwan who would you say are our most steadfast allies in the region that we're at risk of losing at the moment that we really need to maintain because i my sense is that there are many countries in asia pacific that speak out of both sides of their mouths they're friends of the us and their friends of china and it's coming to a point where they might have to make a decision about who they're going to side with could you just elaborate on that point a bit yeah uh well just for background purposes the reason they speak out of both sides of their mouth is that almost all those countries in east asia have very close economic ties with china and their prosperity depends on a continuation of those economic ties at the same time their security is linked to their relationship with the united states just take south korea for example as i said before the united states has joined the hipaa south korea the united states has many thousands of troops in south korea our nuclear umbrella is over at the head of the south koreans so for security reasons the south koreans are closely linked to the united states but for economic reasons they're closely linked to china so you have this real trade-off between prosperity on one hand and security on the other hand and these countries are sort of pulled in two different directions and that's why i think they do to use your rhetoric mark speak out of both sides of their mouth my argument is that when push comes to shove states will privilege security over prosperity they'll do it grudgingly and they won't be happy about it but security matters more than prosperity uh but to get to your initial question there are a number of countries uh in east asia that will be with us i think axiomatically uh japan is one of those countries i think the vietnamese are another one and i think the australians are another example but there are a few countries where i think the united states has to be very careful i think the philippines is one case the philippines have been flirting with the chinese the chinese you know uh have had an outreach policy towards the filipinos and they'd like to get the filipinos on their side of the ledger so i think the united states has to be very careful with the philippines i think ultimately we have to be very careful with south korea and i think we have to be very careful with singapore and this is why i said at the end of my formal remarks that there are many people who think the trump administration has not done a good job dealing with their allies and putting together a balancing coalition and one advantage of abiding administration is that it may do a better job on that front and i do think it's important that we do a better job whether trump is reelected or biden moves into the white house in his place but this really matters because a number of countries are i don't want to say they're wavering but they are on the fence for the reasons uh that i elucidated and we have to go to great lengths to win them over i would just note to you mark that there are a couple interesting cases myanmar is one pakistan is another and russia is a really interesting case but the united states has tried to woo myanmar away from china and the chinese have gone to great lengths to have very close relations with myanmar so that if we do get this intense rivalry in east asia myanmar will be on china's side or hopefully from our perspective with us so to speak and if you look at india and pakistan there's no question that india will be alive with the united states but what about pakistan pakistan is expected to be allied with the chinese because china and pakistan have quite close relations but i wouldn't be surprised if the united states goes to great lanes to try and woo the pakistanis away from china or at least weaken the bonds between beijing and pakistan whether they succeed is another matter and then finally there's the russians the united states has foolishly driven the russians into the arms of the chinese but there are a lot of people who argue that russia and china are natural opponents natural adversaries remember they fought a war or what was almost a war in 1969 and the russians today are very nervous about the chinese belt road initiatives in central asia so you can imagine a situation where there's a falling out between the russians and the chinese and the americans change course and go to great lengths to woo the russians away from the chinese so i'd say russia pakistan myanmar are three cases that are that bear watching but then i think with regard to countries like north korea cambodia it's pretty clear that they'll be with the chinese and i think countries like japan ultimately south korea the philippines singapore will be with the united states i'm glad you brought up russia and north korea because as we know trump is cozy with vladimir putin and he tried to get close to kim jong-un and i was wondering you know whether there's some method to trump's madness with some of these relationships even though they're not articulated as strategy are they in effect strategy and then i'll go one step further and ask about the trade war that we were in the midst of before the pandemic and whether that again um there was some method to trump's and his administration's madness in initiating that trade war as a means of slowing down and damaging the chinese economy fitting nicely again into your theory of a stronger china creates the possibility of hegemony in the region if we if we damage the economy of china it takes away that that possibility okay uh let me start by talking about north korea then go to russia then talk about trade um with regard to north korea uh i think that trump's strategy was smart in the sense that he ameliorated tensions with north korea that looked like they were going to boil over and lead to a war possibly a nuclear war when trump first came to office and the north koreans were testing those ballistic missiles and moving towards testing an icbm many people thought there was a serious possibility of a war involving the united states and north korea or north korea and south korea appeared to be a very dangerous situation and trump thankfully turned that around the policy that he's pursuing and that the united states is pursuing before him and this will be true even if biden is elected uh doesn't make any sense and the reason american policy towards north korea doesn't make any sense is that the united states wants north korea to give up its nuclear weapons and it tells the north koreans that if they give up their nuclear weapons they will survive they will be fine the north koreans of course have those nuclear weapons because nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent if you're a state in the international system and you want to maximize your chances of surviving having nuclear weapons is the way to go that's why the united states has nuclear weapons that's why israel has nuclear weapons that's why china has nuclear weapons you don't see any of those countries giving up their nuclear weapons do you well north korea is a much weaker country than the united states and it has nuclear weapons and they are the ultimate deterrent they almost guarantee your survival so you're saying to the north koreans give them up but at the same time the united states has a policy of regime change the united states runs all over the planet toppling regimes and we use military force to do that and there's no question the united states is going to remain interested in regime change in north korea the united states as you notice is interested in regime change and iran if i were an iranian decision maker i'd go get nuclear weapons if i'm a north korean decision maker i'm not going to give up my nuclear weapons in the face of the united states which has a policy of regime change with military force not going to happen and you know colonel gaddafi who used to be the leader in libya was told that if he gave up his wmd programs he did not have nuclear weapons but he had a program in wmd programs we told them give up your wmd programs and we guarantee your survival we won't threaten you he gave up his wmd programs and you know where colonel gaddafi is now he's buried in the ground six feet under and you know who played a key role in putting them there uncle sam so the north koreans are not going to be foolish enough to believe anything the united states says and therefore they're going to keep their nuclear weapons they'd be crazy not to so again president trump has been pursuing you know a foolish policy he's tilting at windmills and joe biden will surely go down the same road and he'll be tilting at windmills uh north korea in my opinion is not giving up its nuclear weapons they'd be crazy to do so uh but nevertheless i think it was all for the good that president trump fell in love with north korea and uh that uh we've ameliorated the tensions now what about russia i personally think that trump had the right instincts with regard to russia i think the united states should have good relations with russia the united states should want to have something of an alliance with the russians against china if you believe that the united states is going to form a balancing coalition against china you would want the russians with you not against you so i think trump's basic instincts on russia were correct but the problem is that trump's relations with the russians were inextricably or let me put it differently are inextricably bound up with american domestic politics because trump's foes believe that the russians helped put trump in the white house and they think that trump is basically putin's poodle so the country the united states has developed a profound sense of russophobia the russians originally initially wanted to see trump in the white house because they understood that trump wanted to improve relations between moscow and washington and the russians wanted to see that happen i was in russia about two weeks before the 2016 election and there's no question that the russian elites wanted to see trump win they'd be crazy not to given what trump was saying however i think now that trump has won they wish he hadn't won because relations have gotten worse again in large part because u.s russian relations are inextricably bound up with american domestic politics and the opponents of donald trump right lambaste the russians who they blame for helping to put trump in the white house so i think trump had the right instincts on russia but it has not worked out well at all in fact a bad situation has gotten worse with regard to trade let me make a couple points there uh i think that the united states with the trade war and also with the technology war i think they're really two wars taking place here they're somewhat related the united states is trying to slow down the chinese economy uh just to go to huawei for a second which is all about the technology war the united states is trying to destroy huawei just important to understand that this is not simply a containment policy this is a rollback policy this gets to my point the great powers are incredibly ruthless you do not want to underestimate what the united states will try to do to china to win this security competition so we're trying to wreck particular industries in china because the united states wants to stay on the cutting edge technologically it does not want china to become the leading technological state in the world it wants to remain in that position and with regard to trade what we're trying to do is slow down chinese economic growth and in terms of relative growth make sure that the united states does better than china because relative growth matters for the balance of power so we've initiated this trade war and we've initiated this technology war the 64 thousand dollar question mark is whether or not it will work in other words does the trump administration have a coherent policy on trade or on technology that is likely to produce positive results and i can't answer that question i've tried to figure out what the answer is but i just don't know i've been to huawei headquarters in china i've talked to the founding father of huawei and i've spent you know many days traveling across china and i i think from my personal experience this is a remarkably impressive country that has the ability to develop its own technology and if it can't develop chips now it certainly at some point will be able to develop chips of its own and therefore it's hard to see how the united states runs the chinese economy into the ground or damages its technological capabilities over the long term i mean that's my gut sense there are people however who say that we have the ability to permanently damage the chinese economy uh that we can do permanent damage to their technological capabilities maybe they're right maybe they're wrong i don't know it's just impossible to say but there is no doubt that the united states is trying to slow down if not roll back chinese economic growth thank you as you know and our audience knows the university of chicago has a campus in hong kong where i'm sitting today and many of our audience members maybe some of them who are who are living in hong kong today and others who might not be are asking about the role of hong kong how this clash you know between the us and china could affect hong kong just many questions about hong kong and i think we should address that as best we can according to your theory well i mean people often ask what's the difference between hong kong and taiwan and they tend to think of the two cases as similar there's a big difference and the big difference is that hong kong is now part of china and taiwan is not the chinese believe that taiwan should become part of of china but it is not yet and as i said before the united states is deeply committed already to taiwan and it will get even more deeply committed over time in my opinion it's a fundamentally different situation with taiwan taiwan is part of china we're not trying to protect taiwan excuse me protect hong kong from china they own it we are very upset with the fact that we thought that we had a commitment from the chinese to allow hong kong a great deal of independence uh political independence inside of china you know one country two different systems uh that obviously has not worked out and what's happening here is that the chinese are going back on the deal that they made and going to great lengths to reign in those tendencies towards independence or independent behavior that's a better way to put those tendencies towards independent behavior inside of hong kong i find this regrettable but i don't find it surprising and the reason is that as this competition heats up between the united states and china what invariably will happen is that the chinese will worry more and more about western influence in hong kong it's very important to understand it's hard for americans to comprehend this but the united states has a rich tradition of trying to spread liberal democracy across the planet this is what i was telling you about north korea and regime change the united states has a rich history of pursuing regime change and during the 1990s and in the 2000s the united states was interested in turning both russia and china into liberal democracies it's very important to understand that we were talking talking about regime change if you go to russia and you talk to the elites there they they viewed american policy during the unipolar moment as a threat to the regime's existence remember we had the color revolutions in eastern europe the orange revolution in ukraine the rose revolution in georgia the russians believed that we were going to try and affect a color revolution in russia itself which meant toppling putin if you're xi jinping and you know the americans are pursuing a policy called engagement engagement which is designed ultimately to turn china into a liberal democracy then you're going to be very nervous you'll be very nervous about anything the americans do you're going to think that the americans are interested in fomenting civil war fomenting pernicious ideas like liberal democracy into your body politic now from an american point of view we think this is a wonderful thing wouldn't it be terrific if china became a liberal democracy just like us but you can rest assured that's not the way they think about it in beijing or in moscow so when you have this enclave called hong kong which is very western in all sorts of ways the chinese are going to be wary and when they see protests breaking out in a place like hong kong rightly or wrongly they're going to automatically think this is this is the cia this is the west at work and what they're trying to do is cause trouble they'll do it with tibet they'll do it with the wakers they'll do it with hong kong they're trying they're trying to win this security competition and this is one way of doing it so i think what's happening here is that hong kong is caught in the middle of this security competition and the united states is going to beat the chinese over the head every time they enact harsher legislation or take harsher measures towards hong kong because the united states depends on rhetoric in part for waging this security competition with china and for purposes of getting the australians the singapores the japanese the taiwanese the south koreans on america's side it makes sense to put up in bright lights what the chinese are doing in hong kong so hong kong is going to get a lot of attention moving forward but that's not going to work to hong kong's advantage because what it's going to cause china to do is impose even harsher and harsher measures because the chinese are constantly going to be fearful that the americans are doing things to foment revolution to cause trouble and weaken the regime in beijing we have time for a couple more questions one of the questions that's come up is related to both china and the us looking inward and some people have talked to me about china becoming a little bit more like iran in terms of its um closing to the rest of the world and closing oneself while also trying to become a regional hegemon seems to be contradictory to me i was wondering if you could comment on that and then also talk about because we've had some questions about the belt and road initiative and that triggers me to ask the question about soft power and the importance of soft power in this whole international dynamic between the u.s and china with regard to turning inward surprisingly i have a number of friends in east asia there's not in china but in east asia who believe that the united states is isolationist at its core these days and that we're going to withdraw from east asia i think there is no evidence whatsoever that this is happening or going to happen we've already seen the trump administration in action for the past four years despite people occasionally saying that donald trump is an isolationist this argument is ridiculous the united states is involved around the world today as much as it was when he took office and with regard to the biden administration basically if joe biden gets elected he's going to bring in a bunch of retreads to run national security policy it's going to be the same people we saw before trump moved into the white house and these people are not prone to retrenchment they want to run the world so the united states is not going to withdraw within its borders and and become isolationist in any sense of that term in my opinion with regard to the chinese i see no evidence that the chinese are hunkering down it is possible that one of those countries or both of those countries could face catastrophic economic circumstances in the years ahead in which case they turn inward but absent that i think you're going to have a uh a really serious uh competition and both countries are going to be outward looking with regard to iran which was the analogy let me make two quick points there one is with the united states will ultimately try to do with china is make it look like iran the way we're wrecking iran the united states is purposely trying to wreck iran for purposes of regime change by the way and i think if the united states could do to china what it's doing to iran it would do it again you never want to underestimate how ruthless the united states is despite all the fancy rhetoric that we deploy uh to cover that up we'd like to turn china into a giant iran but that's not going to happen in my opinion but also just on iran there's no evidence that iran is pulling its horns in iran is as involved as ever outside its own borders and the united states continues to complain about that very fact so i think no matter what the united states does to china china is going to be an active player on the international scene for the foreseeable future with regard to soft power the very interesting issue i think in effect what i was saying about the trump administration before is that it's not very good when it comes to soft power uh and i think that's true uh i think president trump does not do soft power uh he he's uh he he's uh uh just not interested it's not his style i think if biden is elected biden will be much more effective he's really good at soft power now let's talk about the chinese it's a more interesting case i think the chinese have done a very poor job when it comes to soft power this wolf warrior diplomacy was a prescription for big trouble from china's point of view i think from america's point of view i like wolf warrior diplomacy because it works to america's advantage it cancels out the fact that trump is not good at soft power but i think the chinese as i said before grow more powerful with time and if you're going to emphasize hard power it makes more sense for china to wait and exercise that hard power 10 20 30 years down the road did not do that now and now is when you want to put the velvet glove on that growing male fist now is when the chinese really want to emphasize the soft diplomacy remember mark you pointed out that most of the countries in east asia are torn between china and the united states they understand their prosperity is inextricably bound up with china and their security is inextricably bound up with the united states so they're sitting on the fence well from china's point of view the best way to woo those countries to pull them away from the united states and get them on your side i mean there are limits to what you can do but soft power goes a long way toward achieving that end and if you look at how the chinese have behaved in australia where they have used lots of wolf warrior diplomacy it's backfired on them the australian people are terribly angry at the chinese for the way china talks and behaves towards australia the chinese would have been much better off employing soft power again i want to be clear here i'm a structural realist who believes that material power hard power is ultimately what matters the most soft power is of secondary or maybe even tertiary importance but even if it's only of tertiary importance it's of some importance and it matters and i think the chinese have not done a very good job and the americans have not done a very good job and again i think that possibly uh that situation situation will change in the american case if biden is elected uh now just a word or two about belton road which is the final subject that you brought up uh belton road is very interesting because what building road tells you is that china is not just going to be a regional power it's going to be a player on the international stage remember when i laid out my theory i on a number of occasions said that i thought that china would imitate the united states and my discussion was largely restricted to talking about regional hegemony i said that what the united states did was it worked hard in the 19th century to establish regional hegemony and that china is in the process of trying to establish regional hegemony that was my argument but i believe that china will try to imitate the united states in another way it will try to develop huge military power projection capabilities in other words the chinese are going to develop military capabilities that allow them to project power into places like the persian gulf the chinese will tell you behind closed doors that they plan to build the blue water navy that can protect their sea lanes of communication between the chinese coast in east asia and the persian gulf so they have to come down through the straits of malacca into the indian ocean into the arabian sea and then on into the gulf as most of you i'm sure know the chinese are now forming close relations with both iran and with saudi arabia china is deeply interested in the persian gulf and they are deeply interested in developing the military capability to project power into the gulf just like the united states of america right they are going to build the chinese a blue water navy they are going to build power projection ground forces just like the united states has they're going to end up stationing chinese forces in other places around the globe this is just the way great powers behave we should expect this now how does this link to the belt and road the belton road is all about projecting chinese political and economic influence outside of asia it makes perfect sense it's exactly what the united states does so belton road will be inextricably bound up with the development of chinese power projection military capability these two things go together so all i'm saying to you here is if you look at what china's doing across the board it bears remarkable similarity to what the united states has been doing for a long long time but the problem is that international politics especially when you're talking about great power competition is effectively a zero-sum game there's only one country that can dominate the world's oceans there's no way you can have two countries by definition to dominate the world's oceans it's either one or the other or you have two navies that can test the oceans that compete over the oceans and what the united states is gratefully is is is greatly fearful of at this point in time is that the chinese right are going to be in a position to challenge us on the high seas and of course the chinese are going to be in a position to do that if they continue to grow and this takes me back to where i started again you want to understand that america's foreign policy elites were fools they were fools the united states foreign policy elite was filled with fools these were people who created on purpose a country that has now morphed into a potential peer competitor these were people who paid no attention no serious attention to the possibility that the united states would turn china into a potential peer competitor they thought that if they helped china grow it would become a liberal democracy and we would all live happily ever after that was american policy under george h.w bush bill clinton george w bush and barack obama that was their policy and what's the end result the end result is we are now in a situation where we are facing a serious security competition between the united states and china and there is a real possibility that there'll be a war between those two countries well professor mirsheimer thank you so much for your time i know i appreciate it and i'm sure our audience appreciates it based on the number of questions we've been getting during the program i really appreciate your insights into u.s china relations and the u.s presidential election i hope we can have you back again soon and to our audience i want to thank you for joining us tonight as well please join us again 8 30 p.m thursday october 29th just five days before the u.s presidential election for the program burning the house down 2020 election eve reality check with uchicago's professor william howell and professor terry mo from stanford university good night and please stay safe

Channel: University of Chicago Yuen Campus Hong Kong

Views: 23,939

Rating: 4.6724138 out of 5

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Id: MOFhJeCkaWU

Length: 99min 51sec (5991 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Rapsberry]

Note: published in mid-october 2020, so before the election

[u/KnG_Crow]

This is such a great find thanks

[u/quakeroats91]

Johnny boy!

[u/arealdiplomat]

do people still isten to this fraud? He never had any position as adviser whatsoever - for a reason. no democrat and no republican wants to have anything to do with him. one of the few "pop stars" of the strategy/IR field which only screams and never delivers.

[u/australiano]

Is it perspective of realism, idealism or constructivism?