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- [00:00]
Jordan
John Zinn of Brookings, formerly with the IC and Biden nsc, is back for our now quarterly check ins on US, China and all things in between. John, happy New Year.
- [00:13]
John Zinn
Happy New Year, Jordan. Thanks so much for having me back on.
- [00:16]
Jordan
It's been kind of quiet, hasn't it? A little unnerving, perhaps, how quiet it's been. I mean, it's like the world hasn't been quiet like we were abducting folks. We're gonna bomb Iran next week. But I mean, you know, us, China, like, very placid.
- [00:32]
John Zinn
Yeah, yeah, I think. And surprisingly so, I would say. Right. I mean, and that's not what I necessarily would have expected. Right. I thought that whatever kind of accord we had reached between the two sides back in November when the two presidents met, that there would have been something, Right. Some kind of stray voltage. And as I was saying to you before, as we rounded the corner to the holidays, I was ready to add to my Advent calendar another meeting between Scott Besant and host Fung in some European capital and a Christmas market in between. But now it's kind of the strange moment, right? Like, with everything going on in the world and what's going on domestically in the United States, you know, it's like the beginning of one of those Western movies where they say it's quiet, too quiet. Or, you know, or for me, as the parent of young children, you know, I kind of fear the silence more than the noise. It's like, what is going on? Why are we not. Why are we not hearing more? Right. Is there something, like, really dangerous going on just beneath the surface? I don't think that's the case, to be clear, but it is kind of an interesting moment and it's kind of one of these rare fallow moments in the bilateral relationship, which makes it a good time to talk about how we got here and where we might be going. Yeah.
- [01:41]
Jordan
So let's diagnose this. I guess I still remember in the early few months of the Trump administration, we had Mike Waltz, who was still around, and we had this thought that this was going to be like a center fulcrum of Trump 2.0, which is what we got towards the end of Trump 1.0, which is some, like, real loud and proud China hawkishness. And I've since done shows about the death of the China hawks. But, yeah, maybe start from the, from the US Side on, like, what was like, where did we get this appetite for having things kind of calm.
- [02:19]
John Zinn
Yeah. And it's interesting now that you say that if you rewind the movie to exactly a year ago. In some ways, we were kind of in a similar position where I think all of us were geared up for the return of the Trump administration, Anticipating Trade War 2.0 with China and kind of a more, I don't know, pugnacious approach towards China. And in the first two months of last year, we kind of didn't get that. In January and February of last year, as we had the first two tranches of tariffs against China for fentanybol, or ostensibly for fentanyl. I was calling it the phony war period, where there's some diplomacy, there's some skirmishing, but this was just the opening act. The real fight didn't really actually get underway until Liberation Day, of course. Right.
- [03:04]
Jordan
So then we have a real shot across the bow, and we have these two rounds of rare earths and de escalation, and then the US Re escalates and then rare earths again. And then, you know, here we are in our phony War 2 stage, or just our, you know, like, armistice, our Korea armistice, perhaps.
- [03:28]
John Zinn
Yeah.
- [03:28]
Jordan
John, walk us through the rest of 2025.
- [03:31]
John Zinn
Yeah. I mean, I think obviously there was Liberation Day, and you get this dramatic tit for tat escalation. And it was very interesting because I happened to be with a bunch of Brookings colleagues in China for Liberation Day. We were in Beijing the day before the tariffs dropped, and then we were in Shanghai and Hangzhou in the days afterwards talking to the business community, which was really interesting. And I would say across the board, even though there was some variety, as you talk to government officials or the business community, there was a sense of preparedness, not just a sense of preparedness in the sense that, you know, as we've now seen, China had a game plan and a policy plan for responding to a Trade War 2.0, but there was an emotional preparedness. Right. I expected, you know, what I didn't detect when we were in Beijing last year. There was kind of neither anger nor anxiety, and it wasn't quite resignation, but people were like, we know this is coming and we'll deal with it. And it was a very similar message from the business community, too, that we don't like this. We'd rather not have to deal with this, but we will figure it out, because we've done it before and we have no choice. Right. We just kind of need to see the way forward. And I think that was important in terms of Beijing's resolve going into the trade war. And I think it actually went much Better than they anticipated. Right. I don't think they were expecting it to go to embargo level tariffs, but the rare Earth card worked better than they could have expected, I think, than they could have reasonably expected. And you did have this walk down, I think, from the Trump administration and I thought was interesting after that moment, right after.
- [05:02]
Jordan
Let's stay on the China psychology thing for a second because, you know, comparing this to Trump won and the tariffs and the impact, I wonder if like almost the experience of COVID and kind of living through what like actual economic, like, you know, crazy dislocation means, like, you know, trade war, Trade War 2.0, whatever, one, one and a half percent of GDP, like it's, it's. You had Xi talking for so long about like Trudeau, John, like we got to get, get ready for like a long struggle. And then when you actually, once you actually do some real struggle, like having to gear up for like less than that, maybe, maybe ended up being less of a, of an ask from the government. I don't know. I'm totally making this up, John.
- [05:50]
John Zinn
No, it's an interesting point and I think there's probably something to that, right. Like, I still very much have Joseph Turigian's excellent biography on mind, right. That this kind of suffering in Xi's mind is salutary for the public. Right. And for and for the polity. And I think there's probably something to that. And I think the other advantage that they had on the second go around is that they had had a first go around. And to my mind, there is a real contrast between how they behaved during the first trade war and how they behaved during the second trade war, because I think it was palpable during Trump 1.0 that Beijing was caught flat footed and that they were really kind of groping and fumbling around for some kind of adequate response option. Right. What I called it in retrospect was that their approach was no concessions, no escalation. That's what they were trying to do during the first trade war and they didn't really know what to do. But I think if you fast forward to the second trade war, I think the shoe's been on the other foot, right where Beijing had all this time to kind of frankly go back to the gym, pump themselves up as Evan Medeiros and Andrew Polk and others have talked about, kind of come up with a toolkit of retaliatory measures that they could employ and deploy in this circumstance. And I think they were ready for it. And I think for the US Side, I think what happened was that there was a real misapprehension about the nature of what was going on in Chinese politics, but I think more importantly about the economy. Right. And I think there were a couple of things that fed into this. I think what was most salient was that you did have a lot of Trump alumni who came back into government and their experience would have been that they included for the president, that they saw China was fumbling around and didn't have a good response during the first trade war. Right. And then I think in fairness to them, if you look at what happened during the Biden administration, I would say Beijing's responses were pretty mild. Right. And I think that was because they were also caught flat footed by moves like the October 2022 export controls. Like, yes, they complained about it, they fetch, they always fetch about it. But there was very little in the way of substantive retaliation, I think, until we get into the middle of 2023. And then a real acceleration, I think, during the transition, right, where they were responding with much greater alacrity to the things that the Biden administration was doing on its way out the door, especially on the export control front and I think putting some chip on the table for dealing with the Trump administration. But I think there were two other things going on too, that kind of fed into the Trump administration's misreading of China. The first one is if you go back to that moment that you were just talking about, about the end of zero Covid, what was striking to me at that time with all these analyses, I think especially coming out of Wall street that were saying, yes, there's going to be a lot of death and disease for the next six months or a year or so. But I think what they anticipated was that there would be some kind of V shape or W shape, you know, or some letter of the Alphabet that ends with an upstroke recovery in China. Right. And that's what Goldman Sachs and I think a lot of others were anticipating. I think they were just kind of mapping on the US UK Western experience onto China. And I don't think that was ever realistically going to be the case for a variety of reasons. Right. That you didn't have the same kind of revenge spending. The zero COVID policy had, you know, diminished the government's ability, ability to pursue the same kind of stimulus packages that we saw in the West. And I think what happened was when that rebound didn't materialize, I think a lot of people then they didn't really have an appropriate expectation. But then they lunged in the other direction and it became super bearish on China. And I think what happened here in Washington in 2024 is that you kind of have a confluence of two tributaries. You have that happening in the business community, which Scott Bessem would have come from. And then on the other hand, in the strategic community in Washington, D.C. you would have had this peak China idea. Right. So if you combine the experience, kind of the zeitgeist that's going on in the business community and what people are thinking in the strategic community, you know, that's kind of the frame of mind, I think, that the Trump administration had. And I have this theory, I don't have any evidence to prove this, that, you know, whoever briefed Trump on China's economy at the start of the administration, if they really wanted to appeal to his instincts, they would have led with the fact that China's real estate sector was the locus of so many of China's economic problems. Right. Which you could only imagine him gravitating to that and saying, yeah, I've really got these guys over a barrel. I mean, they're blowing up perfectly good buildings. Like, what. What's going on here?
- [10:19]
Jordan
Yeah. And then, so the. All right, you know, this is a, this is a bit of a different thesis that we've had before because we've had past guests kind of like beat up the Trump administration for saying, like, why wouldn't they have known about the rare earth? Like, of course, like, China's been talking about it for a while and on one thing, they have been talking about it for a while, and on the other, we have had, like, from, blah, 2017 through 2024, like, lots of things that could have potentially triggered a sort of Chinese negotiation response. Not of like, okay, we're just going to do everything we can to, like, slowly walk away and, you know, turn the, turn the temperature down. But this kind of confidence to do a more like, escalate, to de. Escalate type of, type of approach. So I think, on the other hand, like, it is reasonable to say that, as you alluded to, embargo level tariffs is something different qualitatively than Trade War 1.0 or anything you really saw out of the Biden administration. But that's true. We do have Xi having a pretty long track record of kind of not really wanting to go there or give the other side a sort of an excuse to turn the temperature up even more.
- [11:33]
John Zinn
Yeah, I think the other element of it too is that, and I think this gets to kind of the next phase in the bilateral relationship over this past year is that the Trump administration came in wanting to clobber China. And then I think what happened after that post Liberation Day walkdown is that they then swung towards trying to mollify China. Right. And I think you see that in a variety of ways. Right.
- [11:56]
Jordan
In sort of confluence with personnel changes. And I think the personnel is not something that should be under, under oriented on, I guess. I mean, you know, to a certain extent it comes from the top, but just when there are fewer people in the room every day who are arguing A instead of B, like B is going to win out more then A given that we have a president, which is, which is who is clearly so influenced by like the people who are the last ones to talk to him. And like there is, there has also been in him this sort of like, I mean, let's not forget Trump 1.0, the trip to Jongnan High and the forbidden, the Forbidden Palace. Like going to China is something he thinks is really cool. It's like, yes, it is a cool thing, but.
- [12:44]
John Zinn
Yeah, yeah. And it's both. It's kind of reinforcing. I mean, your point's well taken. There's the old saw in Washington, Right. That personnel is policy. And I think there's an element to that. But I think it's also the case too, like Trump wants to engage with cnn. I think he does want some kind of deal. So, you know, the personnel changes are as much maybe a cause of the direction as a symptom. Right. And you know, my colleague Ryan has this great line like Trump is his own China desk officer. Right.
- [13:13]
Jordan
But, but the, the Waltz one in particular, it does feel like, I mean, the, like, it does feel like a kind of random role. The fact that the signal chat happened and you know, we've had so many, like basically everyone else has stuck around, which is kind of remarkable given the sort of, I don't know, let's say generously middling performances, but also just like given the amount of heat that a Pam Bondi or Pete Hegseth have gotten, not just from the New York Times, but also from, you know, from the, you know, more rightward eco ecosystems that like, maybe if Waltz hadn't started that signal chat, like, he would have ended up gaining more favor and being able to keep more China hawks around and then the kind of center of gravity ends up being somewhere different than where it ended up being in 2025.
- [14:07]
John Zinn
No, it's a fair point. I mean, I think you're Right. Fewer characters are being defenestrated in this episode of Game of Thrones. Right. In this particular season so far. The only thing I was going to add too, about the way I think about the administration's approach and the way it evolved in the first six months. It was kind of a see saw effect. Right. We're going to come in and we're going to start by saying it's clobbering time, basically. Right. And then we have this switch over by the time you get to May and the initial contact between Bessen and Holy Fung in Europe to this approach toward mollifying. And I think the, I think about it, the way I contrast it with the Biden administration's approach, was that there was more of a balance. I think part of the reason why we didn't have as explosive a Chinese response was because our diplomacy was concerted in a certain way. The export controls dropped in October 22, but there was also a meeting between Biden and Xi in November of 2022, right around the same time. So I think we went from this kind of balancing model and trying to figure out how to keep the two in tandem, manage the competition, to use the phrase that was in vogue at the time, to more of the seesaw effect. Right.
- [15:16]
Jordan
Yeah. And I think the Trump 2.0 model for foreign policy is almost like stir up some shit, declare victory and move on to the next thing. And the sort of ability for this administration to focus on more than one foreign policy thing at once, I think is as low as maybe it's ever been in, in modern American history. Especially when the amount of principles you have, like the, the concentration of work that falls on the principles and like the fact that we have one less than we should have just ends up, ends up leading to them wanting to kind of like move on from this thing to the next thing. And it's easier to declare victory than it is to like, you know, fighting, you know, fight a rear guard action or what have you. I mean, we're kind of seeing this in Venezuela now. Right. And you know, Iran is like enough of a baddie that there was never going to be a, like, oh, we're just going to like be friends with them afterwards. Right. But I think there's, there's, from the, from the Chinese perspective, there is like enough on the other side of the ledger that, you know, you can talk yourself into the upside of pursuing a more or a less aggressive of tint in the relationship.
- [16:37]
John Zinn
Yeah. And I think that's basically what happened right And I think there was an acknowledgment that China did have a lot of leverage. Right. And I think, you know, I think the best argument the administration has been trying to make or that they want to make is that they do still want to focus on China. I think you saw this in some comments from Peter Navarro just last week, that this is just the test board they have to deal with now. Right. That they have this leverage and we kind of need to pause and refurbish ourselves before we can continue pursuing that competition. I mean, I think the real issue with that is the timelines that they have laid out for doing that, that this is somehow going to be resolved. This rare earth issue in the next year or two seems very optimistic. Right. Just given the realities of how long this can take. I mean, it's good that they're doing it. I mean, I think they are doing some worthwhile things on this front, but I'd be surprised, and I'm not a mining expert, if this is a this year problem or even this administration problem.
- [17:36]
Jordan
Well, and it's not just this. Right. It's like these are two giant economies that trade with each other a lot.
- [17:43]
John Zinn
Yes.
- [17:44]
Jordan
Like, there will be ways for both countries to inflict economic, serious economic pain on each other for the foreseeable future. Even if we did end up having 150% tariffs, like, there's enough that kind of like routes in and around that if China wanted to squeeze, they could do it.
- [18:03]
John Zinn
So.
- [18:04]
Jordan
So, yeah, like, the leverage is not going anywhere anytime soon. But let's turn to the Chinese side of the equation. Well, what do you think Xi is working towards currently?
- [18:13]
John Zinn
I think their game plan is basically just to string this along through the midterm elections. I think that is probably an important focal point for organizing their thinking about this. And I think what they're betting on is that the closer that the US Side gets to the midterm elections, the more leverage China is going to have and the more Trump is going to want some kind of deal or something to show for his eff. And it's not, because I think, you know, the China issue has particularly high salience in American politics, especially not right now with everything else going on. But I think there will be that impulse from the Trump administration and from the Chinese side. You could see why they would think that, especially mapping from the first trade war. Right. Which ultimately concluded with phase one, of course. But the way that came about was Trump ultimately lost patience and leaned on his negotiators to say, we want we want some kind of deal. Just let's get something done and then we can kind of bracket some of the more difficult problems for later. And I think that's the game that China's playing. There may be some affirmative things that they want out of this, but a lot of the demands are coming from the US side. So I think China is happy to play this game of negotiating away some of the pawns that it has on the chessboard. Things like TikTok buying US soybeans. Again, I think this is part of what's happened with the conversation too, is that the trade war on the US Side was originally animated by these, these deep strategic economic concerns about the trade imbalances and the nature of the relationship. And I think what China has effectively done in these negotiations is whittled down the conversation. Right. It's a question of scoping. Right now we're talking about particular sectors or particular products like soybeans or particular firms like TikTok. And we're not talking about those big macroeconomic imbalances. Right. Some of which are idiosyncratic to the Trump administration like the current account deficit, but some of which are really long standing concerns going back to the Bush administration or the Clinton administration, even about China's non market unfair trade practices. But we're not talking about any of those things, at least as far as I can see from the outside. Right. We've kind of gotten whittled down and it's, I've called it before, they've got the administration playing this game of whack a mole and I think that's kind of the game plan for the coming year.
- [20:24]
Jordan
Okay, I was going to ask like, all right, but how does this all go to shit? Is there anything else you want to talk about before we go there?
- [20:33]
John Zinn
Yeah, just one other thought. I mean, this had been my operating model after the Post Liberation Day walk down, that the name of the game was just stringing Trump along for the Chinese side. And then that's why I was so surprised by what happened, or I thought it was so telling what happened in the weeks before the meeting of Busan, where China dropped these expansive export controls on not just rare earths, but the whole supply chain. Right. And I know you had the two Chris's on to talk about this at the time, which was really useful. And to me, as somebody who's watched Xi Jinping for a long time, that felt really different. Right. And it was something that I was trying, trying to get my mind around to and explain because that really felt Like Xi Jinping switching from being reactive to US Policy to being proactive and taking the initiative and really going from playing defense to playing offense. Right. Like there was all this talk on the time with China being overconf. Did they overplay their hand? I don't think that was the case. I think they took a calculated risk and thought that maybe they could get away with it with impunity. And I think they basically did. Right. The administration kept the meeting on the glide path and I know that they walked it back, but I kind of think that was always the plan. Right. Because when they did the original announcement on the first day, they said, well, this won't go in effect until December. Right. So I think they intentionally left themselves the leeway to. And when we're sending an obvious signal that this was going to be up for negotiation. And I think they played it very well. Right. And it's not because, you know, they think in terms of dynastic cycles, I mean, it's a one year deal, Right. It's going to expire, you know, sometime potentially just days before the midterm elections. Right. And I think what they were betting on, they just looked at their outlook calendar and figured Trump's not going to want this to unravel just days before the midterm election. Right. So this will provide more leverage and more incentive for the Trump administration just to keep things quiet a year from now.
- [22:29]
Jordan
It's so funny. It's like the Republicans, the Democrats arguing like, how long should the crv because does it like land on, does the renewal of the budget land on terms like favorable to us or favorable to them? But what you're saying, John, about the idea of this being like the Xi as an escalator in the US China dynamic is a real, is a really interesting one because like, you know, before that we had this BIS role which was pretty expansive and would have like snagged a lot, a lot of new firms. And that was a big thing. But doing the big thing back, not doing like 50% of the thing and then seeing if we can kind of, it's just, it shows that they have, they have now understood that they can play a different game than what Venezuela can play or than what Iran can play. And that has shown to be really powerful because, yes, the Trump administration backed down and has moved on to other adventures and more sunny locales.
- [23:39]
John Zinn
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. And the way I've heard one of my Chinese colleagues put it is that it's not that the US Side doesn't have leverage. As you indicated, there is this interdependence and both sides can weaponize it. It's that they don't think we have the stomach to use it. That's what they've learned from the past year. Right. That there's not the willingness to have a follow through and make it an expensive Christmas during a midterm election year. Right. For US consumers.
- [24:06]
Jordan
So my kind of 2027, 2028 counter consensus thesis is say we have a House or a Senate that's Dem and Trump is increasingly frustrated and angry and getting all these subpoenas and you know, there's all this oversight, no bills are passing. Like anything domestic politics all of a sudden becomes incredibly not fun. And this sort of ability to like lash out at things and do stuff in the foreign policy realm is just like oodles larger than trying to do crazy stuff with ice domestically. When like you have Democrats who are like just going to defund ice or something, I don't know. And I can just see like a, an 82 year old man who's angry and frustrated. Like the nice thing, the like giving respect kind of like come down that you get after the escalate to the de escalate from the Chinese side ends up kind of working less well. And the psychology of it coupled with the frustration at home may lead to a cycle which would be more aggressive than you would otherwise think based on the past year of data points.
- [25:29]
John Zinn
Yeah, it's a good point and I think it's a fair observation. I think that's the downside risk for China even in the coming year. Right. Is that yes, they want to string Trump along, but the, that what they have to avoid, what they have to do I think is give him just enough to keep him invested in the process and think that he's getting enough wins or quote unquote concessions from China that he doesn't just blow the whole thing up and get frustrated. But in terms of your broader point about Trump focusing on foreign policy because he feels roadblocked at home, I think he's kind of there already. And it's not necessarily because he feels roadblocked at home, but one of the things I've been really struck by over the past few months is that in all the ways, for all the ways in which Trump is very unconventional, he's kind of a conventional second term president in the sense that he's spending so much time focused on foreign policy. Right. I mean, to the extent that some of the maga voices and people on the right are complaining about it and dissatisfied and worried about, why aren't you focusing more on affordability and some of these other issues? And even things like the big beautiful bill he bequeathed the moniker. But it seemed like from the press reporting, he was not really super invested in the process itself. Right. He's spending a lot more time, or it seems like, thinking about dealing with, like, Venezuela, I don't know, pursuing Greenland, trying to get some kind of deal with Putin or Xi and these other big foreign policy issues. And I think it's all born of the similar impulse. It's not necessarily just being blocked at home. I think it's about an older gentleman thinking about his legacy. Right. And where are the biggest. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, what is going to be my role on the world stage? And I want to be a world historical figure, not just a US Figure.
- [27:15]
Jordan
Some guy who did some domestic cut entitlements or whatever. John. Okay. Other theories for how this could all go to shit over the next few years?
- [27:29]
John Zinn
Yeah. I mean, there are some things even in the run up to April that could start to get a little bumpy. Right. And I think both sides might expect this. Right. Like, as we said at the top, I mean, it's been quieter, I think, than I would have expected. Right. But there is the pending Supreme Court ruling on the IPA tariffs. Right. So if the administration is put in the position of having to reconstitute the IPA tariffs under different authorities, I think it'll be very telling how China handles that. Right. Do they say that's okay and they don't want to blow up the rapprochement with the United States, or do they say, no, no, no, no, these are new tariffs and different tariffs, and if you reconstitute the tariffs, we're going to reimpose the rare earth expert controls. Right. And it seems like even though things have settled down a little bit on the trade front, I mean, I don't know that the Trump administration is done unburdening itself of all the trade measures that it wants to pursue. So there's an open question, of course, about do they exempt China? And then what kind of questions does that raise if you're accepting China, but not some of our closer economic partners. Right. So I think those are some of the ways in which things could get a little bumpier, barring some kind of of exogenous shock here.
- [28:44]
Jordan
Well, let's talk through the Chinese side a little bit. What could cause Beijing to rock the boat?
- [28:52]
John Zinn
I think something like that I think they would want some kind of pretext. I don't think they're really into doing bolt from the blue, even if they manufacture a crisis. I think they want something that they can point to. And I made this point about Xi shifting from defense to offense. But I think the main way that that's really materialized in the last few months is not directly tete a tete with the United States. I think it's manifested in the way Beijing is approaching our allies and partners. In particular, this whole dust up at the end of last year with Takaichi, which does not seem to have impinged upon the US China rapprochement. It does not seem like the Trump administration was moving very quickly to try to reassure Takechi or to try to bolster her position. And I think that's kind of going to be the game that China plays. Similar dynamic with Europe. Right. I've been very struck by this, that right after Liberation Day, because the trade war encompassed Europe, I think a lot of people expected there to be some kind of charm offensive from China that didn't materialize. It seems like instead China's approach was to try to intensify the pressure on Europe rather than alleviate the pressure and show they don't have great. They don't have great options and that therefore they should be more amenable to China's perspective or China's way of doing things on a variety of issues. So you could see that even in the run up to the China EU summit, I think last July, where they were pretty rude with their European counterparts. Right. And you had Wang Yi saying the quiet part out loud that they don't want to see Russia lose the war because then the west will just refocus on China and the Indo Pacific. So I think that has been underway. There are things that they could do toward the United States to rock the boat. But again, I think they will want some kind of pretext. So if the US Side is able to avoid some of these things or navigate some of these things, I could see them keeping it on the Chinese side, keeping it on cruise control. The other thing that jumps out to me too, that's a data point about all this is what happened in Cross Strait Dynamics at the end of last year, where you had this blockbuster $10 billion ARM sale from the Trump administration to Taiwan that was announced that honestly, I give them a lot of credit for it. It looks like it was a good package. It was very extensive. And then China responds, but it's not by laying into the United States they did another giant military exercise, of course. Right. And I think there were probably multiple reasons that they were doing that. I think they wanted to send a signal to Japan. I think they probably wanted to send a signal to us. But I think more than that, I think they wanted to send a signal to Taiwan that the US Isn't going to back you up on this. Right. And I think this gets into a question more about kind of short term, long term trade offs in terms of the Trump administration's China policy and approach to Taiwan, where you announce this massive arms sale, but then when there is actual coercion and squeezing, there's kind of a meager State Department response, and that's really it. Right. But I think China went forward down this path because I think they weren't concerned that it was going to upset the bilateral dynamic. Right. I think they had good reason because. Right. But the last thing they did right before Liberation Day was do straight thunder a. Right. They did a big exercise right before them. They've elicited very little response from the Trump administration. You know, but like, what are you going to do? I mean, there are ways where you can, you could, you can, you could protest more, right? You could, you know, maybe this happened.
- [32:19]
Jordan
You know, every exercise an extra $3 billion in arms sales. I mean, you just set it up like that or something obnoxious. I don't know.
- [32:27]
John Zinn
Yeah, I mean, there's things, there's a variety of options you could do. I mean, this is something, you know, we, you know, we obviously dealt with a lot during the Biden administration, Right. Like we had the Pelosi visit go down and, and I think that is the real question, okay, like then, then what do you do about it? Right? You can have, I mean, there was that statement, right. There was a multilateral statement about this and Taiwan expressed its, its thanks afterwards, and we were noticeably absent from that. Right. So there's kind of minimal things you could, you could do at least. And the absence of it, I think, sends an unfortunate signal to China. If you don't do those things, it's going to get interpreted or misinterpreted by China.
- [33:04]
Jordan
John. So in a dream world, how would you see an American president responding to what you saw over the past few months with respect to Japan and China?
- [33:15]
John Zinn
Yeah, I thought it was an opportunity. Honestly, my own perspective would have been that we should have embraced what Takaichi said. I mean, I know she got put on the spot and in Parliament, but we should have said, yeah, this is just a recognition of the Reality, right. That some kind of Taiwan contingency is going to impinge on Japan's national security interests and we're going to cooperate more closely with them on it. Right. And then when there was retaliation, try to find ways to support it. Right. And I think from the top, you know, having some kind of presidential statement, but also I think having some kind of policy to say we're going to support Japan on this or we're going to raise this issue, instead it seemed like the reverse happened, right? And the reporting, I think in the Financial Times and in the Wall Street Journal, where it seemed like what happened was Trump talked to Xi Jinping and then he gets off the phone and talks to Takaichi. Right. And we don't know exactly the details of the call, but that seems to be what happened, right. That Xi is using the relationship to lean on the Japanese. And I think that's probably the exact opposite of what the approach should have been. I think this gets to something broader. There's a tactical question just real quick on, there's kind of two ways to handle Beijing. There's the inside out approach where you deal with Beijing first and that becomes your ordering principle for your diplomacy in the region. Or I'm biased because this was more the approach in the Biden administration, outside in approach that Beijing is recalcitrant and difficult to deal with and doesn't follow through too often. And so what you do is you try to change the environment around them. So I think what we're getting is two very, very different approaches, right? They're kind of mirror images of each other.
- [34:57]
Jordan
And what the really frustrating thing is is like the whole Elbridge Colby, like even like broader MAGA thinking. It's like the allies gotta step up. It's their problem. Okay? You have a Japanese Prime Minister doing the exact thing that you want them to do, saying, yeah, this shit is our problem too. And we're gonna, we're gonna have to take responsibility and step up for the fact that. For the fact that like, yeah, a PRC owned Taiwan would really suck for Japan and okay, great, you have a leader who's doing the thing and then they get kind of like, like China gets like annoyed by it and then what are you going to do saying, oh, wait, actually, we don't want you to be saying the thing that we've been asking you to do for like both 30 years as well as like explicitly like the court, the ostensible cornerstone of American foreign policy. I mean, it's just, it's a weird intellect, intellectual Disconnect where as you said, John, I think that's the explanatory thing is like if the main thing you're worried about is the vibes between Xi and Trump, then yes, she has a lot of agency about like what the vibes are going to be. But if you are, what you're worried about is like the balance of military power or like how she is perceiving what the balance of military power would be in a Taiwan conflict, then like, like this is the best thing that has happened over the past, you know, over the past few years is like this broader Trend Starting from ABE2 and going all the way through Takaichi of Japan, you know, re militarizing in a way that was very uncomfortable for this, for their system for decades and decades.
- [36:38]
John Zinn
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. You did have arguably our closest ally in the region step up, up and say what the reality was. And instead of embracing them for it, they're getting hung out to dry. Right. And this gets something that's been on my mind too as I try to, as I've been digesting the arm sale again over the holiday. Right. Because I could see where people, the administration would either argue or tell themselves that we're not going to get caught up in this kind of day to day tactical stuff or this gray dome stuff or these diplomatic spats. We were really going to focus on the long term game with China and we're just going to focus on things like these big arms sales which really change, will have an impact over the long term over the military balance and not just get caught up in this day to day churn on South China Sea or some of these other issues. And it would be almost as though this is something I've been thinking about, is the Trump administration really speaking softly and giving Taiwan a big stick. But that seems, it's hard to say that that's actually the case just because that's so uncharacteristic of them. Right. To do that.
- [37:48]
Jordan
I think it's just like you just got a lot of different people paddling in different directions and this is like, okay, there are some staffers who know their shit who are just trying to kind of keep it under the radar and trying to do the right thing. And that'd be my hypothesis.
- [38:05]
John Zinn
That's right. Then that's probably more where I lean to kind of a mosh pit theory of this. Right. That this is how there, you know, occasionally you get some guy who gets the body served to the Stage, Right. Yeah.
- [38:15]
Jordan
Like something breakthrough, really. Like pining for the. The, like the arm sale to Taiwan. Like, I don't think he could give two shits, but maybe.
- [38:26]
John Zinn
Yeah. You know, but it's interesting.
- [38:28]
Jordan
Welcome on the pod. I'll talk you into it.
- [38:31]
John Zinn
But it's. It's got to be interesting what the president's perspective must have been on this, Right. That, you know, how this good business would. It. It's good business. That's. That. That would have been my.
- [38:40]
Jordan
We don't want the CEOs making any money. So I don't know.
- [38:45]
John Zinn
Yeah.
- [38:47]
Jordan
Other, like 20, 26 things.
- [38:50]
John Zinn
Other 2026 things. So one thing I wanted to. To talk about a little bit is, you know, is. Is about, you know, what's been going on in Venezuela and Iran and elsewhere and how it does or does not tie to the China dynamic. Right. Because I think you've got some people making the case that, that what happened in Venezuela actually bets the administration's efforts to compete with China over the long term. Right. And that this is just shoring up your own backyard. And this is what great powers do when they start to get overextended, that they retrench. But I'm suspicious of that argument. Right. I mean, I think as splashy and frankly impressive as the operation was, I think from Beijing's perspective, again, I think this is really on the periphery of their strategic thinking. Right. And so there's also this school of thought out there, and I don't want to just poke at Strauman, but I have seen people making this case that this clearly shows the capacity of the US Military, which it does, and our vim and our vigor under the Trump administration. But when you have that softer approach toward the other great powers, I think it diminishes that toward China and Russia. And I think for Xi Jinping, I think he already recognizes Trump's penchant for kind of unpredictable acts of violence. Right. And like, what I was thinking about over the holiday is if you rewind back to 2017 during Xi's. Xi's meeting with Trump at Mar a Lago, we're over the big piece of beautiful chocolate cake. Trump tells Xi that they just launched strikes on Syria. Right. So I don't think this really upsets their fundamental equation. And even as far as Venezuela goes, my understanding is the relationship was already kind of in Russia shape between China and Venezuela. Right. Venezuela wasn't paying its bills. It was kind of troubled anyway. And I don't know. I think the real open question is what kind of impact does this have on China's foothold in the broader region? Right. Because a lot of this is about can you compete with China economically in this hemisphere? And it's not clear that's the value proposition that this administration is bringing to bear. Right.
- [41:02]
Jordan
And even then, it's like, okay, is the ability to export cars to Mexico and Brazil going to be the thing that saves the Chinese economy or determines the 21st century? I don't think so. I mean, we also heard this other theory, John, that cutting off Iran, regime change in Iran plus regime change in Venezuela means China doesn't have any oil. That's more new leverage.
- [41:31]
John Zinn
I mean, not so much I'm suspicious. I think it makes it more expensive. But I think that they can deal with this. Right. They're not happy about it, but I think these are problems that they can manage. Right.
- [41:48]
Jordan
There, I think, was a debate for a little while on this to what extent this is like a new norm that would. Encourage folks in Beijing to say, ah, you know, maybe we could make. Maybe we could pull off this sort of thing. In Taipei, of course, we have this famous kind of like, layout of downtown Taipei and Parliament, like, it's like a whole six blocks where everyone has fun and, you know, does their, like, coup cosplay.
- [42:19]
John Zinn
I don't know.
- [42:19]
Jordan
John, what's your. How much do you believe in this narrative?
- [42:23]
John Zinn
I think it's unlikely for a couple of reasons. One, I don't think that China puts much stock in some of these norms. Right. So these things that happen that change the precedent, I don't think it really matters that much to them. Yes. Maybe it gives them a little bit more rhetorical space if they want to do something. And then just operationally, I don't think that this is an appealing template for Beijing because even an extremist, if they were to try to do something like this and actually pull it off and they kidnap or something like that, like something really wild, the Taiwan government and polity is stable enough where there is a line of succession. Right. You would have kind of what you're having. The regime would still be in place. Right. You'd have a similar conundrum to what the administration is facing now. Do you try to collaborate with the regime that's there or with the government that's there? I should say. And so I don't know that it really solves their problem. Necessary. And I don't know how appealing that necessarily is for them. Right.
- [43:25]
Jordan
I hear you. I hear you, John. Yeah. Like in a functioning democracy or In a, like, kleptocratic Venezuelan regime, just taking the top person off of the chessboard may not actually give you what you want.
- [43:38]
John Zinn
Yeah.
- [43:39]
Jordan
And I mean, I would imagine also, like, if that happened, like, the. You know, what happens to Taiwanese politics the day after a leader gets abducted.
- [43:49]
John Zinn
Right. Does it have a catalyzing effect? Right. Kind of the way Russia's invasion had a catalyzing effect in Ukraine. But all of this gets to this bigger point about the strategy and this argument that this is somehow part of a deeper, longer play vis a vis China. In my view, it's not the long game. It's the wrong game. If you really are serious about competition with China. This is not what you do if you think of it as a chessboard. This is playing around with the pawns that are on the side of the board rather than focusing on, okay, I need to control the center of the board and develop my big pieces, like Japan and like these other pieces that we are kind of neglecting, I would argue.
- [44:28]
Jordan
Yeah. All right. Any recommendations to take us out on John? Anything you've enjoyed recently?
- [44:39]
John Zinn
You know what I did start reading last year that I thought was very good? I know Ezra Vogel's biography of Deng Xiaoping got a lot of attention a few years ago when it came out, but I started reading the Pants off and Levine biography of Deng Xiaoping. And for my money, I would say for anybody who's interested, I think it's much better because I think one of the real shortcomings of the Vogel biography was that it deals with the first 50, 60 years of Deng's life in the first 50 or 60 pages of the book. So it doesn't talk about his time as political commissar of the 2nd Field army in the Huaihai campaign and what his role was during the Mao era. And the pants of the book really gets much more into that. Right. Like, where Dung is just an underling, a michu in the party, and then he gets sent out west to Guangxi Province early in his career. And all this stuff that I think is novel and super interesting and almost cinematic about Deng in his early years and how he became the man he became and the leader he became.
- [45:40]
Jordan
I found the Pants Off Chiang Hai Shek book a little boring, I think, just like. Cause like, Chiang Hai Shek is a little boring. He's just kind of this, like, more straight edge dude who's, like, trying to be, like, rectify himself all the time. And it really does very little post 49. But their Mao book, man I mean, I think that's the best one volume Mao history, as you said, it is like well rounded, is grounded in real sources. It's not like the Jun Chong book. I mean for like a, okay, for a taste, The Jonathan Spence 100 page one is like a great little like Mao entry point. You just, you get kind of Mao's energy. But if you really want like a meaty history of the man, I think that's still my go to recommendation.
- [46:35]
John Zinn
Yeah, yeah. And then like I said, one of the books that really stood out to me last year, especially as somebody who follows Chinese politics was Joseph Turgean's book on Xi's dad. And I'm, I'm very impressed and happy it's gotten the attention that it has because there's a lot in there. Right. But I think what really comes out in that is that you can tell, especially like when Xi Jung Shun during the uncertain politics of the 50s and then when he's back in power again in the 80s, it's just very much a guy trying to make his way in the world and just trying to figure it out on a day to day basis. And I think that sense is lost sometimes. Right. When you talk about these big kind of these almost larger than life figures and Chinese politics aren't any polity. Right. But these are still guys who make mistakes, find themselves on the wrong side and don't know why. And I think for all of them collectively, especially in the 80s, they didn't have a roadmap for how to do reform and opening up. Right. They were really truly just figuring it out.
- [47:34]
Jordan
I mean on the figuring it out thing, I just want to come back to Trump for a second. Yeah. Think over the course of 2025, it feels like he's rolled a lot of double sixes where especially I mean the tariffs ending up not really being that big a deal. Sort of like even the things where his, where his instincts are the worst sort of not manifesting in like all that much downside impact. And he does have this like. And I think part of this is like his skill of Teflon ness. But like there, you know, there is nothing like, like the chances of a Chinook getting shot down over caracas were probably 25% and it just happened to not happen. The chances of no one dying when you are in firefights with like people, I don't think he can keep this up the whole time, but maybe he can and maybe like everything will end up working out and the US will somehow be in a really.
- [48:41]
John Zinn
In a.
- [48:41]
Jordan
Better place relative to the rest of the world and relative to sort of like a national power competition in China. But I feel like this country's gotten a lot of breaks. And I don't know if it's just like a law of averages thing, the fact that this could keep up anytime soon seems.
- [49:00]
John Zinn
No, it's a really great point. And it reminds me of two things. First, something that a buddy of mine said to me when I went over to the White House to join the nsc said, well, you know, John, what my PA always said, it's better to be lucky than good. And number two, there's this great old quote from Bismarck where he has this line, you know, God smiles on fools drunkards in the United States of America, right? And even for Trump himself, I mean, they were, you know, Trump and his team were saying this right after Election Day, right? That this is one of the most improbable comebacks or the most improbable comeback in US History, right. For him to come back and be the first president since Glover Cleveland to have a non consecutive presidency is remarkable. But I think there's a bigger point here, too, that I wanted to make, which is I think it's a real problem for institutional Washington, right. That Trump does these things that have a very high chance, 25 to 40%, just to pick random numbers, chance of total cataclysm. And then he does them and the sky doesn't fall, right? He does tariffs. It doesn't. Doesn't provoke a recession. Right. And has kind of a limited effect, as far as I can see from economists talking about it, on inflation, right? The sky doesn't fall. And you can even see this from his first term. He kills Soleimani, right? Sky doesn't fall. There's no World War Three with Iran, Right. And even with the Iran strikes earlier this summer. And so he keeps doing these things that could end in disaster, but they don't. And I think part of what's happening with Trump is that the more that that happens, that, that he does these things where everybody in Washington is clutching their pearls and saying, this could be a total disaster, and the sky doesn't fall. It ends up discrediting institutional Washington, right? And it's not because there's no risk there, but because people are like, well, it hasn't totally upset everything.
- [50:56]
Jordan
Yeah. It's two things, I think. On the one hand, I remember I had a little riff in the conversation with Jake Sullivan where he was like, look, Biden administration risk tolerance was on the low Side, and that comes from the president. At the end of the day, when you're making the biggest calls on this stuff, it's going to be. It comes down to how the president feels about downside, risk. And maybe just for the past, I don't know, when did we last have a president who did crazy shit like since Nixon, we've had presidents who were sort of worried. And perhaps what Trump has shown us is that that calculus has been overtuned. But the other thing is once you get on a hot streak, you start doubling down. And even though the calculus, even though we may have been calibrated in playing our poker hands too tight, you go all in enough times in life like, I don't know, you may not hit anything on the river.
- [51:58]
John Zinn
Yeah, yeah. It's like being in Atlantic City and you're at the table and you're on a hot streak. Right? Yeah. But I think you're right and I think there's something to it. And I do think there it's, you know, you made the point about when was the last time we had a president who was willing to gamble like this? And I think the obvious one is George W. Bush with Iraq. Right. And I think part of what was squandered in that moment, but did it.
- [52:19]
Jordan
Even feel like a gamble at the time? It's like we'd already invaded Iraq before. It just.
- [52:27]
John Zinn
I think it was, and I think people knew it at the time. And it ended up going very poorly. Right. For all involved, including the United States. But I think this is in addition to the blood and the treasure and the top leadership attention that was wasted and squandered in Iraq in those ensuing years. I think one of the other things that Bush squandered was the American public's appetite and willingness to take risks in foreign policy. Right. Or to use the title of my colleague Michael Hanlon's new book, to Dare Mighty Things. Right. That went away. And I think that was a big part of the Obama foreign policy. Right. I mean, he did do some very bold things like taking out bin Laden. Right. But there was a preternatural caution, I think a big part of Obama's approach to foreign policy, I think self consciously was to be a corrective to this kind of haphazard, high risk approach toward foreign policy that we had seen under the George W. Bush administration. I do think it's worth bearing in mind, I think for a lot of the people who then were in the Biden administration, that was the milieu they grew up in. Right. Was during this period where there was a sense that we need to run a disciplined, thoughtful, calibrated approach towards conducting foreign policy not unreasonably. Right. And now what's kind of happened is you have Trump, right. And the amplitude has gotten much, much wider. Right. But this gets, I think, to a different question about kind of the long. I think so much of Trump is a long hangover effect from the Iraq war and a lot of the decisions and a lot of the gambles that were taken then earlier in the century. But I think that's one of the most germane ones. The last thing I'll leave you with is I've been toying with this observation because people have pointed out that Bush, Clinton and Trump were all born in 1946. Right. And it is striking on me. Yeah. I mean, I have boomer parents, so I don't want to rag on the boomers. But it is kind of striking to me for a generation. And I'm thinking about this as a leadership analyst almost now. Right. For a generation that grew up with so much social and political ferment that, number one, these are the three leaders that came out of that generation, and number two, they're all kind of chaos muppets. Right. Clinton was known for kind of making a lot of big decisions over pizza late at night with his fellow Rhodes scholars and having these late night sessions. And it wasn't necessarily a tightly run, disciplined process. Same thing with Bush. And then you kind of have the maximalist version of that under Trump right now.
- [55:02]
Jordan
Another piece of that Iraq hangover is even what, when Trump gets read out, like the worst case scenario of Venezuela, it's like dozens of people dying, not thousands. I think, you know, regardless of how adventurous Trump is going to be, the idea that he would put thousands of troops at risk seems to me to be like, like absolute zero.
- [55:31]
John Zinn
Yeah, I think that's right. This is more like the Robert Pate book, Bombing to Win. Right. Like we're just going to do it through air power, right?
- [55:37]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [55:38]
John Zinn
By remote control. Yeah, yeah.
- [55:42]
Jordan
But, yeah, it's interesting. They didn't, you know, they could have just killed him, you know, Maduro.
- [55:48]
John Zinn
That's true. That's true.
- [55:50]
Jordan
It's like a whole thing. It's like way risky here to try to grab the guy. Like, I don't know how I would. If I, if I was willing, if I was willing to do this, I think I would have just. I would have just bombed him.
- [56:06]
John Zinn
Yeah, right, right. I mean, this is the debate the Obama administration had about bin Laden Right. Do we just flatten the whole building? Do we go in and grab him to make sure we have the right guy? Like, do you. Do you lock him up? Do you shoot him?
- [56:21]
Jordan
But, like, Maduro. Maduro's not gonna.
- [56:23]
John Zinn
Like, he's a far ahead of me.
- [56:24]
Jordan
He's a martyred icon. Right? No one likes this guy.
- [56:28]
John Zinn
Right.
- [56:31]
Jordan
It's a curious. Curious thing we got going on here.
- [56:35]
John Zinn
Washington. Stranger than fiction. Okay.
- [56:39]
Jordan
All right. Let's call it here. John, thank you so much for being a part of chinatalk.
- [56:44]
John Zinn
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Jordan.
- [57:00]
Sam
30 years preaching from the magma. Allies gotta carry their weight. Step up to to the Creed l bridge, Colby's doctrine, the gospel we decree stand strong, o your pain. That's the iron deed. Then Takai rose up, did exactly what we pressed. Taiwan's our problem too. We, we'll carry the heft. The partner we dreamed of. Our ultimate test Trump called Beijing first and left Tokyo bereft. It's a Tokyo two step. One forward, two back. You beg for their courage, then you cut them no slack. You wanted a partner, not a puppet on string. But when the moment came you left Tokyo to swing. That's a Tokyo two step, the dance of the damned. You build up your allies just to abandon their stand. 10 billion in hardware, a beautiful sale. While China does war games and our ally turns pale. It's quiet, too quiet like a showdown at noon. But the sheriff's done packing up and fled the saloon. The cornerstones cracked and the foundation's gone.
- [59:04]
Jordan
Weak.
- [59:08]
Sam
When you won't even back up the words that you speak. Inside out, outside in, it's all just a game. When the only real world winner is the Middle Kingdom's game, It's a Tokyo two step. One forward, two back. You beg for their courage, then you cut them no slack. You wanted a partner, not a puppet on string. But when the moment came you left Tokyo to swing. That's a Tokyo two step, the dance of the dam. You build up your allies just to abandon their stand. So here's to the doctrine we left in the dirt for a moment of peace that can't heal the hurt. When your friend does a job that you begged them to do. Don't be shocked when they stop taking cues from you. Sam.