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Charles L. Glaser, "Retrench, Defend, Compete: Securing America's Future Against a Rising China" (Cornell UP, 2025)
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- [01:35]
Eleonora Matiacci
sci welcome to the New Books Network. Hello, welcome to the New Books Network. I am your host, Eleonora Matiacci, an Associate professor of Political Science at Amherst College. Today I'm here with Professor Charlie Glaser, who's a senior Fellow in the MIT Security Studies Program. Professor Glaser's new book is called Retrench Defend Securing America's Future Against a Rising China. The book was published in 2025 by Cornell University Press in their Cornell Studies in Security affairs series. Professor Glaser, thank you for joining us and welcome.
- [02:20]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
- [02:22]
Eleonora Matiacci
Professor, your book starts in a striking way. You write, quote, china's rise presents the US with difficult foreign policy and defense policy choices. This is not evident, however, in the overwhelming majority of US discussions and analysis. End quote. Wow. Tell us what suggested to you that this was the case and what's the moment that made you think someone needs to write this book?
- [02:54]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Great question, or thank you for asking. It gives me a chance to lay out the basics. So as I watch the US China debate, what I see is basically on the US side, the implicit but not explicit assumption that we need to protect the status quo. We need to protect all of our interests and achieve that essentially by more competitive US military and now economic policies. Yet when you think about a rising power, we should ask ourselves, this is a major inflection point, big change. So should we actually be protecting all of our interests? And is the best way to protect them through competitive policies? And by asking that way it is sort of provocative. It suggests maybe we should be making concessions, which in the book I argue we should. But it also raises the question maybe we should pursue a more competitive policy. So I just wanted to go back to basics and ask questions that I think are not on the table.
- [03:50]
Eleonora Matiacci
And I want to talk now about the argument in the book. You write in your book, quote, I argue that the US should engage in partial retrenchment, end quote. What is partial retrenchment and why is partial retrenchment the way forward for the us?
- [04:08]
Professor Charlie Glaser
The place to start here, I think is to make the distinction between retrenchment and appeasement. Appeasement is a well known concept. I think retrenchment less so. So appeasement is the idea that you make concessions and then you with the goal of an expectation of satisfying an adversary that has limited aims. After the concessions, the adversary is satisfied and then there won't be war because now the adversary is essentially a status quo power. Retrenchment is quite different, although it might sound the same, which is you make a concession, but it's not with the expectation, at least not necessarily the adversary will be satisfied. What you're doing is you're making a concession to reduce conflict over that specific issue. There may still be other issues of contention and in that case then you would be committed to defending those issues and you might well be able to do it more effectively. You freed up resources from the point of major conflict or a point of major conflict, and you can shift resources and you may be more secure if in fact what you've done is eliminated the major point of conflict, which wouldn't always be the case. Partial retrenchment is what I've described, which is eliminating one point of conflict by making a concession on it, by keeping other commitments. Full retrenchment would be eliminating all commitments that are in contention between you and an adversary. My argument is for partial retrenchment and I think we'll get into this. Specifically, what I'm arguing is we should end the commitment to Taiwan, but we should keep our commitment to all of our other allies in Northeast Asia. For various reasons, this is an option that is not on the policy agenda in the United States, but it's also not really in the IR theory grand strategy debate, which overlooks it.
- [05:53]
Eleonora Matiacci
Why is partial just a follow up question? I want you to elaborate a bit more on this partial retrenchment. Why is it the way forward as opposed to full retrenchment, for example, or no retrenchment at all?
- [06:03]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Yeah, yeah. So this will get us unavoidably into the argument. But in theory terms, if there was one point that was especially dangerous and other issues were less dangerous, then it might make sense to make concessions on one and not all. So specifically in the US Case, I'm arguing that Taiwan is especially dangerous and also partly because of China's determination, partly because of the relative military feasibility, which is, I think the United States has good prospects but still a very hard mission. But then if you look at other commitments which are ally treaty commitments because Taiwan is a partner, we don't have the same kind of treaty commitment. But if you look at Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and further away, Australia, for example, one, and I think most important, China does not want to conquer them. We have no reason to think that China does. China does not think of them as part of its homeland. In sharp contrast, China does think of Taiwan as part of China and is deeply committed to unification. So two things point toward Taiwan as being distinctly different. One, and I think most important, China, it doesn't say it wants to use force. It says it actually doesn't want to use force, but doesn't take force off the table and is increasingly capable of using force. It has no similar claims to other countries in the region. Now, of course, that could change and therefore the United States needs to be prepared to defend these allies if it wants to keep those commitments. So the argument is we would be reducing what a commitment on a spot that's on an issue that's especially dangerous and less important to us in terms of core interests, in terms of basic interests than our alliance commitments. Not unimportant, but less important. So it would be a kind of reasonable, not compromise with China, but compromise within our own balance of interest. Why not leave it all as a harder question and maybe if we have time we can get into that. There is an argument for leaving the United States, East Asia completely, which I think is actually a strong argument. I'm not in favor of it. But the United States is an incredibly secure country and quite arguably, if we, we would be secure and could prosper economically if we didn't have allies. So you get into this hard question, why do we have our allies at all? And this is an ongoing debate that started pretty much in the, with the beginning of the, right after the, the Cold War ended. There's a really good piece on Come Home America. We don't need to have our alliances anymore. And I argue against that in the book. But I argue it is also, it is an analytically very strong argument. It's a close call for me.
- [08:48]
Eleonora Matiacci
So just now you said we should compromise, not so much with China, but with our own balance of interests, which is a striking sentence and leads me to my next question. I want to ask you about the people you are talking to with your book. So in other words, when you talk about partial retrenchment, who are you arguing against and who is the most likely to push back?
- [09:19]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Okay. My experience is that virtually everybody pushes back. It's just a question of degree. But so most importantly, I'm pushing back against US Policy. The United States, and I think quite understandably and with good reason for a long time has had a long standing commitment to come to Taiwan's aid. It's important, I should say. It's an ambiguous commitment. It's not like our commitments to our allies that we'll, you know, basically under the certain circumstances, if China were to invade or blockade, that we would consider the use of force and understand this as a threat to our important interests. But it's often understood, I mean, it's understood as ambiguous, but there's a very high expectation, I think, that we would come to Taiwan's aid, although I think that maybe that's a little bit more up for grip. So in a sense, I'm arguing against what is current US Policy. And there's been no change even under the Trump administration. So President Trump has changed, not officially changed, but has changed our U.S. commitment to our allies by shedding, you know, questions about how committed we'll be to any of them. He hasn't taken Taiwan on, especially compared to the rest of our partners and allies. So any event, I'm still, I'm currently against, you know, basically that our policy when I talk to experts and we'll get into this a little bit more, when we talk about Taiwan, people are sympathetic. Yes, it's dangerous. But for A variety of reasons, and it's a long list. Very few people are on board. I think the spectrum is from sympathetic but against to like strongly against. So it's pretty much with a few exceptions that I can point to. But, you know, very few people in writing or in discussion have made this argument and want to stand by it. I think that if you look across time, for instance, the commitment in the Biden administration was maybe stronger than even earlier administrations. President Biden said a number of times, well, of course we will come to Taiwan's defense. His staff walked that back. I don't know if that was him speaking freely or whether it was a very clever strategy, Right. To sort of increase credibility without officially changing US Policy. But the point is I'm pretty much an outlier on this question, which I want to, I stress to people, particularly when it's people who don't know the issue, because I don't want to fool anybody and make it sound like it's less controversial than it is. I think it will be a hard thing to do and we'll talk about it more. I think it's a little bit more dangerous to do now under the Trump administration than actually than it would have been previously.
- [11:56]
Eleonora Matiacci
So let's talk a little bit about the way in which you came to sort of what you just defined a controversial statement. In part one, you give us a thorough overview of potential explanations. You work through realism and state level factors to explain both the dangers posed by China's rise and China's motives. It almost feels like you're stress testing multiple frameworks. Which one ended up doing the most analytical work? And was there one that surprised you by how little it explained?
- [12:40]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Thank you. A good question. I want to answer it in a way that's not the way it's framed. They both did tremendous analytical work. I'm not going to choose between them. I'm known to be a realist. I am in many ways. You know, I've worked very, very extensively on it, on unrealist and sort of rationalist theories. And I believe they can, you know, they bring a tremendous amount to the table. But I've never sort of seen it necessarily, as one approach necessarily kills off another approach. But my interest in this subject did start with my work in realism. And in fact, as I wrote a book that I finished in 2000 and this question, I write about it in the final chapter. And the question is, how dangerous is China's rise if when you think about major power competition. And so I had written a book about started a book on major power competition when there was no other major power to compete with, but it seemed like one. A fascinating question, but also not unlikely that there would be another competition. And even then, and then I worked. My inclination was or not. My application was then. And I worked through it in much greater detail in the book. If you just think about it in the broadest terms or the highest level terms, China's rise should not be dangerous to the United States. And I've already alluded to this when you think about, you know, structural realism deals with the major powers, not the details of regional issues. So why would China's rise be in a threat to the United States? And somebody might say, well, it's a pure competitor. And I would say, but how does that. That's interesting, but that doesn't tell me much. How does China's rise threaten US Security? And the argument from a structural realist point, and actually very intuitively when you step back, is hardly at all. First of all, it's incredible. It's very far away. Invasion of Hawaii or the United States is virtually impossible, even without the, you know, the advent of more current weapons that make it harder to, to attack across distance and water. But now with precision guided weapons, very good intelligence. It's unclear that China can cross the Taiwan Strait. How's it going to cross the Pacific Ocean? So invasion was not a serious possibility. That was true even for the Soviet Union if it conquered Europe in the Cold War, I think so, you know, you couldn't really invade. We have a tremendous navy. So you couldn't, there's, you know, couldn't blockade us and there's no, like, choke point like the Strait of Hormuz. And then in addition, we're an overwhelmingly capable nuclear power. So you've got a state which is incredibly wealthy. No matter what the adversary does, it can respond at waste lower cost to its nuclear or conventional forces and protect its homeland. And when we talk about this is the key issue for states, the structural realism is telling us the United States is incredibly secure. So China's rise, even if it becomes more economically capable than the United States, is just not a threat to the US Homeland. And if that's true, then why do we even have allies? And that's the question I get to. But allies are where we primarily have allies for the purpose of security, maybe secondarily for economic reasons, but that's much larger, more complicated arguments. So China's rise just does not seem on his face to be a major danger. And then I engage in the book More carefully, like, well, what about a rising power? There's power transitions and the Thucydides trap. But the power transition in this case isn't dangerous because what you have is a country that's becoming militarily more capable, but totally not capable of attacking the United States. So what would the transition danger be? Yes, there may be some arms race, but it should actually peter out because China doesn't have any real prospect of gaining an extensive capability. So I can go on and on, but the point is it led me to think this is not, you know, this rise should not be seen as dangerous. So the dangers therefore were in the region. And that raises two critical questions then. One, why do we have allies? And two, what other reasons does China have for pursuing its interests in the region? Because it, like the United States, would be incredibly secure as it rises, much more secure than it was. And I think that's true even with the United States forward deployed in Japan and in a much more limited way in South Korea. So the case isn't quite as strong for China, but it also is incredibly secure. So, so it comes down to alliances, choices on the United States side and regional interest on China's side. So that brought me then to unit level interests. Like what does China want beyond security? We can tell from structural realism on the security side. And so then you start looking at China. And I knew, I've known for decades that China places great importance on Taiwan, but I didn't know very well why it placed, why that interest was, or what the source of the depth of that interest was or is, and what its other interests might be. So I learned more about the importance of Taiwan. And it turns out that it's, it's more important than I thought. I looked at a number of sort of unit level factors, so I looked at nationalism where I like national identity better. How does a state think about itself? I looked at status and prestige. How does a state, how is the state concerned about how other states view it? And does it think that they respect it and include it in ways that are appropriate to its position and standing? And then I also looked, although it's not quite on this issue, I looked at regime change to try and assess the danger posed by Taiwan in terms of decision making. And what I see, I don't want to go on and on, is that like Taiwan is incredibly important. Partly. China's national identity is deeply tied up with unification of Taiwan. China, as it rises and returns and not becomes, but returns to great power status, sees its national rejuvenation as the thing that it wants to achieve, most importantly to achieve its national identity. And that rejuvenation includes most importantly, regaining lost territories. And most of those territories have been regained, but Taiwan is the exception. And so Taiwan is essential not only because it used to be, you know, not only because it was part of the civil lost in the civil war, but it's central to China's rise and China's sense of itself as it rises and achievement of its return to great power status. When you look on the status side, Taiwan, there's also an issue on Taiwan which is great powers expect some amount of deference and respect. And yet from China's perspective, the United States is involved in a continuing and unresolved civil war. It sees it as a great power that the United States should defer to its internal affairs and should defer to it on something as so important to it and so much less important to the United States. And so it's an affront to China's understanding of itself and therefore an affront to China's status that the United States is involved in opposing it in Taiwan. And I should say to be careful, the United States has not said that it opposes unification, but what it does say is it opposes unification by force. So in those ways I came to understand that this is an even more difficult issue that doesn't tell us necessarily that China will use force in the near term. That's a very controversial issue. By looking at these issues, I also got a better, somewhat a better understanding of what was for me a great puzzle, which is why did China use force not heavily, but lightly to assert itself in the South China Sea? I mean, the international repercussions seem to be way out of line with potential interest. And I actually think they are. It was a mistake, but it does turn out that China has a long standing sense of its role or an importance and control in the South China Sea. And that includes many of these contested territories and the nine dash lines. So it's not just some random thing. There is an important narrative about the importance of the South China Sea, which I think makes concessions there harder. But I would still think maybe not impossible. And I can go on, but those are the so in assurance at two levels, like when you look at the structural level, there's no real danger. But then when you look at the unit level or the state level, I mean, Taiwan just looks to be extremely important, which we know. But even maybe more important once you start to understand that the depth and variety of reasons that China cares, so
- [21:20]
Eleonora Matiacci
you really Sort of. You gave us an idea of how you sort of journeyed through all these different explanations as you were faced with different questions by the cases at hand, which was great. But I think now the time has come to talk about this Taiwan chapter, which we've been talking a little bit over over the course of the interview. Of course, I had two questions about this, and I'm combining them into one, the Taiwan chapter is the most explosive. So question number one, are you proposing that the United States abandon Taiwan? And question number two, you write, my conclusion is that the US Best option is, is to end its commitment to Taiwan while retaining its alliance commitments to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. I dub this deep engagement minus, end quote. What does that look like specifically? And how can the US Pull these off? So two questions. Should we. Are you proposing that the US Abandon Taiwan? And second question, what does this deep engagement minus look like in practice?
- [22:41]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Okay, so I don't think I say abandon, because that's even more provocative. But I do say we should end the commitment. But I agree that it is abandonment. And so the way I would see this is that the United States would actually declare explicitly that it will not come to Taiwan's aid through the use of force. It doesn't mean we couldn't support it in other ways, including sanctioning China. I don't think that would be useful. You know, that would not deter China, but it would be symbolically useful and so forth. So we would declare that we would not use it, and that would be a radical change in our policy. As a result, we would not size or practice. We would not size our military forces or exercise them. For a Taiwan scenario, we would choose, you know, we would focus them on our other alliances, which would be similar, you know, maybe in many ways similar forces, but not nearly as necessarily as large and not nearly as challenging. Now, some people have said, how would you make this convincing? How would China ever know? And I think there, that actually sounds like, yeah, that's a big problem. I think it's actually a silver lining, which is that what I would do is we would end the commitment. China might still need to worry about it. That's fine, because then it would be somewhat deterred by the residual possibility. But the reason to change it and not to bluff like a common argument is, well, why don't we just bluff? We'll keep the commitment, but then not use force. And I think in an ideal world, that would be the best option. But my concern is that we would be very likely to not be able to operate that bluff. You know, if China attacks Taiwan, if we've been sizing our forces for that operation, if we've continued to say, well, yes, it's a very, you know, it's a goal that we will, you know, size our forces for. And if the expectation is that we might or likely would come to Taiwan's aid, that actually a president would actually decide to come to Taiwan's aid, would face tremendous domestic, you know, pressure to do so. And there's a whole variety of arguments he might get. There are a variety of wrong arguments that he might be told, but that they sound good and we could talk about those. So I feel like bluffing is not a good strategy because it would continue to be too risky. If we could do it and for sure do it, that is the best strategy. Although there's one downside, and I think this is, you know, this will sound like overly optimistic to many listeners, but I do think that Taiwan is the only very important point of disagreement between the United States and China. And as long as we have that commitment, the relationship will never be very good. It will not even be good. I think that if we end the commitment that over time we can resolve all of the other issues, or now if we resolve them, that we can reach an equilibrium in which the relationship doesn't seem very dangerous and we can go through what those are, but none of them rise. Not that we'll be like best buddies, but if you say Israel, if we look out decades, is there a likelihood of a major war that know that it's been eliminated and that we can actually cooperate on a large variety of issues? That's contentious. I. I'm not saying that's it's officially contentious. So I'm not saying that's the reason to break the commitment. I think the reason is the one I've already mentioned, which is the risk is. Is high enough and too high. Given that this is a conventional war, it would be a very large conventional war. It's not like the war in Iraq. It's not like any of the wars we fought in recent history. And it could escalate in a variety of ways to nuclear war. And we've never had a large conventional war between two large capable nuclear powers. And that's why I say the risks are just too large. So I would break it. I wouldn't bluff. I would be explicit. I wouldn't align our forces with that mission. And I would try to make it convincing domestically. I would try to really put up a barrier to eventually joining because There is a danger, right? The downside danger is that we make this commitment to not do it and then we join anyway. And in that case, we've lost some of the deterrent value because China will be less likely to think we'd intervene. Our forces are less well matched to the mission and so forth. And so that's sort of the worst of all worlds. So if we're doing this, we really need to build an expectation in the body politic, in the foreign policy elite, in the military, that we're not going to come to Taiwan's defense. Now we go then to the next question, which deep engagement? Minus. So the major debate in the US grand strategy debate, and I'm greatly oversimplifying, is between a strategy that I already mentioned, which is isolation and NEO isolation, where we have no allies, and deep engagement, which is in one way or another been US Policy since the early Cold War, which is where we have commitments to come to defend our major power and major economy allies. And I think there's a strong argument for actually leaving for the reasons I've already given you. If you think about the structural realist argument, we barely need allies. But there is the concern, like with Taiwan, that if there was a major power war, we would get drawn back in. There is the complication of allied proliferation if they're no longer under the US Nuclear umbrella, and a variety of other reasons that we can have these allies. I don't think, you know, I think that they are good arguments. I can make the opposite argument, but in the book I say it's a close call, but I'm in favor of keeping the alliances, but I'm not in favor of maintaining the commitment to Taiwan. So deep engagement is basically the strategy of having our major power alliances in Europe and Asia. I don't deal with the Euro questions. So when I say deep engagement here, I mean for Asia. And it is different than what some people have called liberal hegemony, which is actually much of the US Policy during the post Cold War era, where we not only had our alliances, but we were engaged in a variety of very costly wars for other interests, most importantly Iraq and Afghanistan. Now not quite as large, but still significant war in Iran. And so those were wars that were fought for other reasons. So we can get into that, but they're not the reasons we had our major power alliances. And so my argument is have the major power alliances, which is deep engagement, but not Taiwan, which is the minus.
- [29:10]
Eleonora Matiacci
Oh, it makes sense. It makes sense. So you explained to us what deep engagement minus Looks like. So what basically your recommendation for the United States. But let's think now about the scope conditions of your argument. What would have to be true about China's behavior or capabilities for the argument to fall apart? In other words, what's the scenario that most worries you about your own argument?
- [29:39]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Yeah, so in the case, in a certain sense it doesn't worry me, it would please me because the thing that would have to really change, I think is for a quite significant change in China. And the change would have to be that China decides that yes, we want to unify with Taiwan, but we've decided we're not willing to use force and we will definitely not use force to achieve unification or slightly differently, that we will not use force to achieve unification so long as Taiwan does not declare independence. So right now China says we will use force if Taiwan declares independence, but it also reserves the option to use force if unification by peaceful means becomes infeasible. And the worrying is very important and I don't have it precisely, but I think that's the gist of it. So if it became the case that China said we definitely won't use force and Taiwan has to really explicitly declare independence, then I would say, well, now the risk has really gone down. And now our key challenge is actually to ensure that Taiwan does not declare independence. And we actually have, you know, to some extent our willingness to protect Taiwan gives us some leverage also over Taiwan. I mean, not by that we would use force against Taiwan, but to the extent that they want to maintain that protection. So that would be the key thing. Now that's it turns out I've said it in a rather like black and white way. It turns out that it's not so clear. So there would still be dangers like how it's unclear what steps that China would consider to be moving too close to a declaration of independence. There's one thing that actually the leadership declares it, there's another that the leadership prepares to hold a referendum on it and even it's of a non binding. So it's still a gray area and the commitment would still be so. I mean, even then I would be leery of the commitment, but the main point is that I don't think that we will be able to maintain such a clear capability to defeat China that China will be certainly deterred. I do want to say that I've looked at a lot of the war games. I'm not a pessimist at all on the US ability to defend Taiwan. I think that the prospects for the United States defeating an invasion are actually quite good, but there is a range of conditions under which the United States would do less well. And you can imagine a briefer telling President Xi that these conditions exist and the prospects are good under these conditions, or exaggerating China's prospects or so forth. So I don't feel confident at all that even though our deterrent capabilities are quite good and our denial capabilities are quite good, that China won't invade. And that's the danger, that's the problem. But I want to be clear. I mean I, I think that China's prospects right now are not good now of course it may not start as an invasion. A much more likely route in my mind is that China imposes some sort of blockade and then either Taiwan is not successfully coerced or the United States decides to break the blockade, which is a much less risky operation for us than, than engaging in a. In awarded a feat across crossing of the street. But nevertheless, then we're fighting China and China may not back down. And there's a variety of paths by which that war could escalate. So another reason for concern is that China doesn't have to take the big leap all at once. It doesn't have to start the war as in full invasion. And these other paths make the prospect and the probability of a war more likely. Now, I just want to say on the Taiwan issue that I, you know, I talked, I'm not a China expert. I should have said that at the beginning. I'm an interlopering policy analyst and IR theorist that's learned a fair amount about Taiwan and China. I've lost and I've talked to a lot of China experts and most do not. Most. There's a spectrum I should say on Taiwan and many believe that China will wait a very long time in a, in a timeframe that is long enough that we should continue to keep our commitment that the probability is low that China will invade Taiwan and others say no and within a decade we think it's not likely, but not so unlikely. And so I'm sort of leaning in that direction. I'm partly not even making a choice though. However, I'm saying if you just look at that spectrum, the danger is pretty large because some number of people make that estimate. I tried in the book. I hope you got this feeling. I try not to overstate. I don't really know what the probability is. Nobody knows. I've tried to consult expert opinion on a variety of issues, including for instance, how determined China is to push the United States out of east, out of East Asia. But on Taiwan, I think it's, you know, it's just too risky.
- [34:42]
Eleonora Matiacci
So, so you told, you told us
- [34:44]
Professor Charlie Glaser
a lot about
- [34:46]
Eleonora Matiacci
using force and, and not using force. And in fact, there's a whole section in your book when you address US military strategy, both conventional and nuclear. Can you tell us what changes are required in US Military strategies to meet this US Commitments that you talk about?
- [35:09]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Yeah. Good. Thank you. Yes, I'll start with nuclear. I grew up in the Cold War working on US Soviet nuclear. So this is familiar terrain for me. And to some extent I think that these arguments will apply whether or not we have the commitment to Taiwan. So I was thinking for military policy, I wanted to analyze it. I don't think we're breaking the commitment to Taiwan anytime soon. They would work either way. But particularly for the conventional chapter, it is about assuming that we need to protect Taiwan. So I argue in the nuclear chapter that we should radically change our nuclear policy. And this is an argument that is not new to the China debate. It's a debate that was a Cold War debate about our US policy towards the Soviet Union. In the broadest terms. The United States can basically accept its vulnerability, retaliatory vulnerability to a very capable nuclear adversary, leaving us in a world that's referred to as a world of mutual assured destruction capabilities. Or it can compete very intensively against the adversaries nuclear forces and try to destroy a very, very large fraction of them to produce an outcome that would be less bad than if, than a world in which the adversary uses an assured destruction capability. There's a, you know, intuitively it might seem, well, of course we should try to protect ourselves. But one of the most important things about nuclear weapons, once again, this is highly contentious, but in my view is that against a capable adversary with a very large nuclear force, and China may well be more capable than the Soviet Union was, which was actually not as good as we thought. It's very, very hard, verging on impossible, I would say infeasible in this case against, to actually gain a significant amount of protection. It doesn't mean that you can't destroy a lot of the adversary's forces. What it does mean is that you can't destroy enough of the adversary's force that the outcome will be significantly different. Because if the adversary has arguably 50 warheads against critical targets, it can do such high damage to your country, not that everybody's killed, but that the state is essentially destroyed as a meaningful political entity. I mean, there's all sorts of more subtle arguments, but that's the big choice. Should we try to protect ourselves as a meaningful political entity and prevent the destruction or not? And so there's two or three reasons against pursuing this competitive strategy, even though it would have some advantages if achievable. First of all, there's a tremendous amount of nuclear deterrence. Even when you're massively vulnerable. A nuclear war could go nuclear in a variety of ways. Even you know, sometimes assured destruction or MAD is, is caricatured as being an all or nothing option. You launch all your forces or not. And in that sense it would be very hard for either side. It would be completely irrational for either side to use nuclear weapons if we're losing a conventional war because it would really be truly suicidal. But you could use nuclear weapons in a limited way in the theater of conflict. You could use launch a limited strategic nuclear attack and not against the city. It could be against an isolated industrial site. In other words, there's a lot of room for bargaining and controlled escalation in a world of mutual vulnerability. And that sort of controlled escalation is something that the adversary would have to worry about. There's also the possibility in a variety of ways that we don't have time to go into. But I can indulge you if you want to ask further questions about how war could go nuclear in ways that were unintended. China may plan to launch its ICBMs on warning because the United States is threatening them. But it might also then get false warning and launch them by what we would call accident. Not that it would accidentally push the button, but there would be an accident. In a sense it was pulling for information. So it's. So the point is it's very hard to do. And I've slipped into my. And I think we can't achieve it in the China case. I've already slipped into the second argument, which is it's dangerous one. You could have these exit. You could have pressures for accidental war. The United States might mistakenly launch an all out war because it's planned for that contingency. Even if it wouldn't succeed, it will strain US China relations because this is a very competitive military policy compared to one that could actually be rather relaxed if we accept mutual vulnerabilities. So this is I think what we should do. Lots of academics over the years have made the argument I'm not in the lead on this, but I was a participant in the 80s. I'm back making that argument now, little publicity. I have an article In a couple issues down international security, on the current nuclear debate. And so I would make that change. Now, earlier you asked me who am I arguing against on this one. I'm arguing against the established long standing U.S. doctrine. And people in the government and work, who work in the government strongly believe this is the right policy. I have friends that were in the Biden administration who believe it's the right policy, believe strongly that it's the right policy. And we have every reason to believe it's the policy of the Trump administration. So on this one, I think there's more support for the more restrained and accepting vulnerability position among academics than there is on the Taiwan question. But it's still quite controversial. The conventional argument is more complicated. Conventional forces are always more complicated than nuclear. And here there's not as simple or clean a solution. But there are arguments about how we can protect Taiwan while posing a relatively smaller threat to the Chinese homeland. So some arguments have us attacking quite deep into China because there are important command and control targets there or there are important missile targets there. And people who are way more expert than me on conventional have argued that we don't really need to attack those targets. We can attack a variety of targets, mostly at sea, because the key to winning this conflict is simply destroying ships that are coming to Taiwan. But in addition, there are some ports at other targets that are right on China's periphery that we would probably want to attack. And so we would be targeting the homeland, but in a much less provocative way. And it would be quite clear that we're not trying to impose regime change, to sway the leadership, interrupt command and control, undermine China's nuclear command and control at the same time that we're fighting the conventional war. So I would be in favor of doing all of those things. And then there are complicated questions about how we should actually what platforms are most useful. And right now most of the platforms that we would use are in the Northeast Asian theater. They're carriers that would move into range but need to be relatively close to to China and forces based in Japan. And so as China has built a better and better missile force, an increasingly accurate missile force, there is an argument that we need to attack from distance. And there are increasing options with long range cruise missiles, both precision for land, but also anti ship missiles that we may want to launch them from the United States from Hawaii or from, from Konus on bombers, and that we would basically fight this theater war from distance, which is now possible given reconnaissance and precision.
- [42:46]
Eleonora Matiacci
I'd be foolish to have you on this podcast and not ask you again about realism. As you know, realism has a complicated reputation. What role do you see for realism today?
- [42:59]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Thank you. It's a pleasure to always have the opportunity to address this subject. So first, I think it's really useful on this podcast, but also when I talk to all audiences to separate sort of the academic view of understanding of realism from the way that it tends to be used in the more popular press, which is often realism is thought to be willing to avoiding not engaging in so called liberal missions, but also very willing to use force. And so it's a very hawkish view. Many, many realists, and in fact I would say the dominant strand of realists, and there's a big divide even within the dominant strand of struct, are quite cautious about the use of force for a variety of reasons. First, they tend to focus maybe too narrowly, but certainly narrowly in a way that I've already suggested I do on security, drawn pretty specifically as homeland and maybe your allies. And so great skepticism about the use of force for other missions unless it's not very costly. So many of the leading critics of the war in Afghanistan, but even more, so much more so Iraq and now Iran are realists who are saying these are not vital interests. We should not be draining US resources, military resources, but also just our economic resources because fiscal solvency is very important for a state's military capability. And realists are sensitive to the importance of maintaining military capabilities for most important interests. And now maybe very importantly, we face, unlike in this cold war military, a much more economically capable and I think in the long term military capable adversary than the Soviet Union. So anyway, so realists are cautious that way about the use of force for less than vital interests. They're not necessarily against it and would not necessarily even be against the use of force for humanitarian reasons, but with the caveat that it can be done at reasonable cost, relatively low cost, given the importance to not be involved in the forever wars. Then within realist I think there's a divide. But here again I'm telling a rather optimistic story about China. So I'm in the league of defensive realists. So here we have to get into a little bit of a disagreement. So I wouldn't mention his name except he's so famous otherwise, but also a good friend, John Mearsheimer, famous offensive realist who said there's going to be unavoidable and intense competition and not high likelihood of war between the United States and China because of the rise of its peer competitor and the need for the United States to prevent China from gaining regional hegemony. I'm strongly disagreeing with that. And I'm saying, yes, there's not a really, we don't need to have intense competition, or at least we certainly don't need to, because the most obvious point of contention is Taiwan, which doesn't even fall into realist arguments. Right. It's barely there. It's not there as a major power ally. And then in the book, I got into a chance to talk about some, about status and whether China wants a sphere of influence and whether we have to. We don't have time to go into those now, but I would say then, so realists are divided, but arguably they're actually a moderating voice in the foreign policy debate, certainly for the use of force, for anything but protection of vital interests. But like I say, I want to caution, not against all things. And then many in the realist camp, which I'm in of being, seeing this as China's rise as less threatening than sort of the conventional public views. Certainly then less threatening than, you know, it's very natural to say, wow, we now have a peer competitor, that's really dangerous. We need to compete with that peer competitor because it's a competitor. And defensive realism is saying, no, peer competitors maybe aren't so dangerous, maybe not so threatening, maybe. So I think we can be and should be and are hopefully a moderating voice, but we're not the only voice in the realist camp. And so, yeah, I mean, if you want to follow more, follow up on that. But I think those are the basics.
- [47:08]
Eleonora Matiacci
I think this is great. So the role you see today, I mean, you started with this distinction between academic realism and perception of realism among the public. And you explained why you think. But the role for realism today is as a moderating voice. And you even sort of treated us to a bit of the debate within the realist paradigm about, you know, between offensive and defensive. This is, this is great. Thank you. You know, the book. This is the final question about the book. The book is 300 plus pages and it is immensely rich. There is a theory, there's a theory part that is very thorough, where you go through all the different frameworks, then there's a rich case studies analysis in the middle, and then you talk about U.S. military strategy. So you look at this issue from all sorts of angles. Even so I have to ask this question. Is there a question that this book forced you to leave open or a question that your book generated for you? In other words, what is the thing you are hoping the next scholar picks up.
- [48:22]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Great, thank you. I'm going to give you three answers, but I'll do them each briefly. So I struggled. I mean, a very important issue is what does China want beyond Taiwan? And there is a debate, and I sketched it in the book, about at the one extreme, I don't mean extreme position, but on the spectrum. People who believe China really wants global hegemony wants to be really the dominant power. I think they're a clear minority. But there are many who believe China wants a sphere of influence in East Asia, which means the United States would have to leave and we would have to end our alliances, which is very different than what I'm recommending. And then there are many who believe that China might like to have a sphere of influence but isn't willing to pay much for it, which means that with effort the United States could stay and it would not be very conflictual. And I had to look far and wide to sort of put that debate together. There's actually been an article since then that's had some light on it. But this I would, I would like to see a really in depth debate and all sorts of back and forth and like trying to narrow the spectrum or at least get a weight, like how thick are the tails, how deep, how wide, how high is the center? Because we need to know. I don't think we'll ever resolve it, but it would be very, very helpful to know more about that spectrum in terms of what the risks are for staying in the region at all. You can make a case that if China really is determined to push us out of the region, as willing to fight us out of the region, then we should leave, we should retrench fully. I don't think they're likely to do that, but I would like to know more. So I tried to, you know, I looked at that. What I thought was the spectrum, the weighted probability distribution of views. China experts could tell us more about that. That would be really helpful. Once again, it won't resolve it, but like with, you know, for all the things that you know, I'm way more interested in that than what's going to happen at the next coming summit or what's going to happen in and I'm not saying people don't do this and it's a hard and unresolvable question, but it's a little different under Trump administration. I've argued that before Trump that we could break our commitment to Taiwan but maintain our credibility with our allies. And one of the strongest arguments against was no, our allies will panic and the alliances will dissolve. And I made a variety of arguments about why that was wrong. I think under President Trump it's more likely because he's cast so much doubt on our alliances, even though we still have them. I think that will be harder. But I would like to have people, I'd like to hear more from area specialists because most people told me, no, the Japanese would be so scared they're not going to be able to survive an ending of the commute to Taiwan. Yeah. My view is they might not like it. They may tell you they would hate it. But can you really work the question for me whether that would end the alliance and there's so many reasons under previous Trump conditions that it would not have. So I would like to have just seen a full analysis of that. That would have been very helpful because it's one of the most common arguments I receive about breaking the commitment. And I always thought it was wrong and I can explain why in IR theory terms it's wrong. But you know, I'm not an area specialist. So. And the final one is I'm really, I am fascinated by the question about how we should fight the war to protect Taiwan and where we should base anti ship missiles and whether they should be in the region or whether they should be on carriers with longer range cruise missiles or whether they should be based from conus. And I think people are working on that. But I would, I mean, I think I not for the book, I just left that as an open question. But I would, you know, I just like to see that I'm not, I can't do the military technical work, but I think that would just be really good to know and it'll be very controversial because right now, you know, the Navy is a major player in our ability to fight that war. It could be that it should be the Air Force. And that will not be an easy change. It doesn't mean the Air Force wouldn't have a role, but it could be dramatically shifted and the Air Force has a role now. So I mean, I think that would be interesting analytically, but I think that would also be like a really be a very hard change to make. That takes quite a, require quite a transition.
- [52:35]
Eleonora Matiacci
So it sounds like you know exactly what you want for scholars to move forward the debate. This is great. Thank you. Thank you so much. You want to see the receipt as people say. Professor Glaser, we've taken enough of your time today. Our usual last question is always what are you working on next okay, so
- [52:57]
Professor Charlie Glaser
I've already alluded to one. So I'm still very interested in this old debate and it actually has evolved and it's a debate over whether we should pursue a damage limitation capability or accept mutual vulnerability. Over the last decade or now it's getting a little more than a decade, a few scholars have argued that we should accept or at least we need to be much more open to that possibility. And then can you, there's a little
- [53:20]
Eleonora Matiacci
bit of jargon here. Can you unpack it?
- [53:23]
Professor Charlie Glaser
Yeah. So a damage limitation ability is what I've referred to before, which is where you would attack the adversary's nuclear force and its command and control with the purpose of being able to protect yourself or reduce the damage to yourself in an all out war so that your state would survive and to save some and to save lives. The most important argument for that is probably maybe or maybe not the most. The other argument is not really so much to change the outcome but to enhance your deterrent capability because the adversary knows you have that capability and they don't have it, then they might think that you're more likely to. The United States is more likely to risk a nuclear war and therefore that could help contribute to the deterrence of a conventional war. So and they said the strongest case for this would be over Taiwan actually because that's where we have it. We're at a bargaining disadvantage because China's interests are so large and people have made the case, if nothing else, we need this kind of advantage for Taiwan. But I've reengaged now rather fully that whole debate. And there was what's called the theory of the nuclear revolution, which was developed in the 1980s, given a set, actually the 60s through the 80s was given that label by Robert Jervis, really preeminent scholar of IR and nuclear. And then this recent scholarly debate has been challenging the so called theory of the nuclear revolution and whether we should pursue a damage limitation capability. So in this paper I actually try to lay out what my own understanding of the theory of the nuclear revolution is and what it should be and try to clarify some. It was sort of a theory that developed, was developed by many people and they give it a label. And so it's not a single statement. And then I engage the critics arguments and give some ground but argue that basically the theory in broad gauge still has, tells us what we need to know about U.S. nuclear policy. So that's one. And then I've got a very different project that I'm working on with a colleague which is on greedy states. States that want to. Yeah. States that want to change the status quo for reasons other than security. And I'm not sure whether that one's going to bloom or not. You don't always know we're in the early stages, but that's something I've always been interested in, sort of, you know, where they come from, how different are they, how do you deal with them, things like that.
- [55:38]
Eleonora Matiacci
Those are great. Those are great projects. And as I understand it, the first one will be forthcoming at International Security and the second one is at its earlier stages. But if either both become books, you must come back and tell us.
- [55:52]
Professor Charlie Glaser
You may regret that invitation because I think actually on the nuclear one, I am thinking about writing or with a colleague who's on the other side of the debate, a book that encompasses the debate. So that may be. Maybe have something that happens. I don't know.
- [56:09]
Eleonora Matiacci
That would be great. Thank you so much, Professor Glaser, for taking the time to talk with us today. My guest has been Professor Glaser. He's the author of a new book, Retrench Defend Securing America's Future Against a Rising China. The book was published in 2025 by Cornell University Press in the Cornell Studies and Security affairs series. I'm your host, Eleonora Mattiacci. Until next time, thank you for listening
- [56:38]
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