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The Lawfare Podcast
Lawfare Archive: Michael Beckley and Arne Westad on the U.S.-China Relationship
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- [00:00]
Arne Westad
We will answer your call as soon as we can.
- [00:03]
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Isabella Roya
I'm Isabella Roya, intern at Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare archive for November 2, 2025. On October 9, China's Ministry of Commerce announced major new export controls on rare earth technologies. The controls were the latest retaliatory move in the trade war between the US And China, which has also seen China meaningfully expand rare earth export controls. In April, shortly after President Trump announced Liberation Day tariffs in response to the October export control announcement, President Trump pledged on Truth Social to set a 100% additional tariff on Chinese imports. On October 26, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant announced that China would delay implementing the October 9th export controls for a year, and the 100% tariffs on Chinese goods would not go into effect between 2020 and 2023. The US relied on China for 70% of its rare earth imports, which are critical for defense, auto manufacturing and chip making. For today's archive, I chose an episode from July 18, 2024, in which Michael Beckley and Arne Westoud discussed how economic and military dimensions of the US China relationship compared to great power dynamics immediately prior to World War I, the merits of focusing on engagement versus security, competition, credible deterrence over a Taiwan invasion, and more.
- [03:37]
Matt Gluck
It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Matt Gluck, Research Fellow at lawfair, with Michael Beckley, Associate professor of Political Science at Tufts, and Arne Westad, the Elihu professor of History at Yale.
- [03:50]
Michael Beckley
The American President has said no less than four times that if China attacks Taiwan, the United States will respond militarily. The Taiwan Relations act makes it American law that the US Is supposed to help to fend off threats. It doesn't say the US has to directly respond, but it has to maintain the capacity to help Taiwan resist any threat to its way of life.
- [04:12]
Matt Gluck
Today we're talking about coordination and competition in the US China relationship. Arnie, you explained in your Foreign affairs piece that the US Is trying to maintain some cooperation while it competes with China, but that the opportunity for cooperation has has largely been lost because the competitive interests are so entrenched in the US China relationship. First is a fair read of your assessment, and if so, how can the US productively move forward in that difficult strategic environment?
- [04:48]
Arne Westad
I think it is more or less an accurate assessment, certainly of what I wanted to get across in the former first piece. Look, I think we are in many ways at the watershed moment now. I mean, it seems to me that the various conflicts in the Sino American relationship are becoming so entrenched and so conflated that it's very hard to break out of the downward trend overall. And it's very hard to make policy, I mean, on either side under these kinds of circumstances, because in order to make effective policy, one has to be able to disaggregate, at least to some extent, the challenges that one is facing with regard to the bilateral relationship and other kinds of situations that exist with regard to Eastern Asia and the Pacific in this case, and that's what I warn against in the piece that I just wrote in Foreign affairs, is that this looks to me very much like the kind of downward spiral that we found in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century that led to the First World War, that neither side, in that case Germany and mainly Britain, were able to disaggregate the issues that the two clashed on and out of that produced a road to war that no one in the end could stop.
- [06:13]
Matt Gluck
Mike, you wrote a foreign affairs piece a little less than a year ago on related issues, and you argue in that piece that engagement, including in the US China context, can breed rather than prevent conflict. So could you put that argument on the table for us and explain how you think it's been borne out in the US China relationship?
- [06:35]
Michael Beckley
Yeah, so I'm certainly not against engagement. Diplomacy is necessary to resolve disputes. But the point of the article was that it's insufficient that unless you have a clear balance of power such that both sides are deterred from using force, all the happy talk in the world is not going to be able to paper over those cracks. And there are certain cases where it can be destabilizing if you make big enough concessions that cause the other side to doubt your side's resolve to stand up. And so there's historical scholarship. If we're going to talk about World War I, there's suggestions that Britain pursued something of a detente towards Germany around 1911, and some German policymakers interpreted this as well, maybe we can keep Britain out of a continental war. There's obviously the famous Munich Agreement. But even in the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union, both sides pledged peaceful coexistence in 1972. And then that quickly broke down in 1973 as they squared off on opposite sides of the Yom Kippur War. And then there was a proxy conflict in Angola, then the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and then a bunch of nuclear crises. And what we now know about that is, you know, detente is often interpreted by each side in a very advantageous way to itself. So the Americans thought they had sort of solidified the status quo, and the Soviets thought they had been recognized as a superpower, which gave them the right to spread revolution and to start throwing their weight around. And so I'm all for diplomacy, various forms of engagement. But when it starts to go from engagement to moves, for example, some people just want to give up Taiwan to China. I don't think Arne is in that camp. But some people want to make major concessions from the US side to China. And you just have to be careful that you're not opening yourself up to further exploitation, because the history of world politics suggests the more often than not the other side will seize on that concession to enhance their strategic position.
- [08:34]
Matt Gluck
Mike, could you give us a few more examples of kind of where you draw that line? Because sometimes it can be hard to tell where engagement ends and giving up your strategic priorities begins.
- [08:47]
Michael Beckley
Sure. So I actually think when I look at the US China relationship today, I worry very much that the US has its sequencing wrong, because I see the US Getting very tough on China in terms of economics. All these tariffs and investment restrictions really signaling that the United States is trying to choke out China's economic rise, and then pairing that with diplomatic tough talk over Taiwan, but then being very slow about building up the military deterrent in the Taiwan Strait or in the South China Sea. And to me, that's the worst of all worlds because you're actively provoking China in economic and diplomatic areas while lagging militarily. I would like to see that reversed. And so it's not so much engagement or containment, but there are smart ways to say, look, there are very high costs to massive aggression, but there are also benefits to continued a resumption of engagement and good relations. I think it's striking that balance and getting the sequencing right rather than lapsing into this sort of dichotomous engagement containment debate is the right way to think about it.
- [09:49]
Matt Gluck
Arnie, you argue that China's industries can't keep growing at others expense because it won't be sustainable for the global economic order. But it seems to me that unless China decides to stop growing, which seems unlikely, how is that growth supposed to stop without what you view as dangerous U.S. actions and those with U.S. allies?
- [10:15]
Arne Westad
So let me say first of all that Mike and I actually have much in common with regard to some of the approaches. I mean, one of the points that I made in the Foreign affairs piece this summer is that deterrence has to be a very significant part of this. And I fully agree with what Moike said, that the lack of effective deterrence, particularly from the British side, was one of the reasons why we ended up in a global catastrophe in 1914. So being clear and capable in terms of what deterrence means is an essential part of keeping the peace. This is true in the Pacific and in Eastern Asia today as well. And when it comes to Taiwan, for sure, making it clear that the United States will try to assist in building up a capacity on Taiwan in order to make a Chinese invasion of the island or even an effective embargo of the island more difficult. That's a very important part of that kind of deterrence. That's what we didn't have prior to 1914, and it contributed to war. On the other hand, though it should be said, when we think about the 1970s parallel here, and I'll get to trade and economic issues in a moment, that what we saw was that it was the mix mainly from a US perspective, but also to some extent from a Soviet perspective of deterrence and reassurance that actually helped us keep the peace. So you can't have one without the other. And what we managed to do during the Cold War, I think quite effectively, at least at most times, was to avoid the kind of conflation that we now seem to be heading into with regard to China, where everything that China does from a US Perspective is taken as evidence of not just a long term but even a short and medium term set of aggressive intents. So on the economic and trade relationship, and this is another area, by the way, where I think the parallel to the early 20th century is very, very striking. Of course, we cannot maneuver ourselves in a position where we are telling ordinary Chinese that their economy has to stop growing for the welfare of the United States and the world at large. It would never work. It didn't work with Germany prior to 1914. It won't work with China today. Because in both of those cases there was a lot of catching up to do in terms of industrial development. What one has to try to do, for instance, with regard to the tariff situation and the trade situation overall, is to negotiate and to try to come up with a fairer kind of approach to these issues than what has been the case up to now. I mean, as I say in the article, I have absolutely no doubt that China has been able to get a lot out of the current trade regime, while the United States have gotten relatively little out of it. Which is not saying that the United States hasn't gotten anything out of it. It's also been a very significant part of US Growth. But one has to be able to negotiate, for instance, on issues of tariffs. So it's not that China shouldn't be able to export to the rest of the world or build its own domestic industries, but they have to do that in a way that doesn't undercut industrial development or economic progress elsewhere.
- [13:34]
Matt Gluck
So how does the US Operationalize that?
- [13:38]
Arne Westad
I think first and foremost through tariff negotiations. I think there are many ways in which you could see the imbalance in current trade relations between the United States and China being dealt with. One proposal that's been coming up more and more often is to set an upper limit for tariff free goods going in either direction, which could be set relatively high. But you know, anything above that would then be taxed, be set tariffs for according to the decisions made by either of the two parties. I mean, would the Chinese be happy with that? Of course they wouldn't. But if that is the price they have to pay to stabilize a trade relationship and overall economic relationship with United States and allow exports to go ahead, then I think they would be willing to talk about it. What we mustn't do is to be seen as targeting particular Chinese industries not for strategic, strategic reasons or security reasons, but for reasons of simply trying to keep those parts of Chinese economic growth down in order to individually favor our own industries. That's the kind of unleashing of unending tariff wars and trade wars that contributed to a real war back in 1914.
- [14:59]
Matt Gluck
Mike, you explained in your Foreign affairs piece that in the decades where the US was supporting Chinese development, many within China viewed US Efforts to work with Beijing with deep mistrust and as a form of US containment. So how does the US toe that line between working with China sufficiently so as not to escalate the economic and broader relationship while also avoiding this sense of mistrust in Beijing?
- [15:37]
Michael Beckley
I think the very American centric answer would be to say, look, you make a basic offer. If China refrains from hostile aggression and trying to conquer its neighbors, then there's no reason why we can't have an open trade relationship and get back to the business of having diplomatic exchange. That's obviously very self serving from the American point of view. And this is why I'm ultimately quite pessimistic in the long term in terms of US China relations. Because from a Chinese point of view, I mean, there are parts of the status quo they have made very clear that they despise. They don't like the way the borders are drawn. They don't like the fact that American companies control a third of global wealth and more than half the profits in high tech industries. They see the US as having this insurmountable lead unless China is able to use subsidies and other things the United States wants to rule out with with trade rules. They don't like the fact that many of their neighbors have turned to democracy and are seeking integration with the West. And they certainly hate the Western finger wagging about human rights and what they view as an essentially a hypocritical application of international law. They look at the UN Law of the Sea which outlaws their territorial claims in the east and South China Seas and they say, wait, well the United States hasn't even ratified that. And you're telling us that that is somehow the law of the land and that we can't take back what we view as our historical territories. So I think their view is delusional and wildly expansive. But I also respect the fact that China gets to determine its interests, and this seems to be the way that they've set them. And so I don't think there is a way to really bridge that gap. And this is why I think the best case scenario is a sort of cold war standoff, which when I look at the broad sweep of history, I sort of see as like the best case scenario for great power conflict. You can have a cold war or a hot war, or one side can completely capitulate to the other. I don't see either of these two sides capitulating. So that leaves hot war and cold war. And it seems like a cold war. As Arnie said, if you can find some way to manage it, then you can get through it until you have that shift in the balance of power. And in the meantime, it's just making sure that you have the military deterrent so that no side can do a sort of smash and grab operation and rock the boat, and then avoiding unnecessary diplomatic provocations like the ones I mentioned over Taiwan, for example, that I think are purely symbolic and don't really enhance Taiwan's defenses, these congressional delegations and what have you, while building up the big stick, you would need to actually have a credible deterrent in defense of Taiwan. It seems like that's. There's. There's very little things that we can say to the Chinese or vice versa that are going to somehow mend these ties. I see it as not a misunderstanding, but just a clear conflict of interest between two very powerful states. So I'm just hoping to kind of hold on for the, for the near term so that we can maybe get to a better long term when eventually the balance of power will shift in some way that can cause sort of a. A restatement of the bargain and a revision of the bargain.
- [18:36]
Matt Gluck
So Arnie, Mike writes in his Foreign affairs piece that the issues most central to US China competition are primarily zero sum issues. So do you view it that way? And my sense is that you see that there's more daylight than Mike does. Correct me if I'm wrong, that's my understanding. And so if there is more daylight, if there is more opportunity to work through issues together, issues that are not zero sum, where are those opportunities in the relationship?
- [19:06]
Arne Westad
I think there are some of the bilateral issues, which is possible to deal with, but it's only possible to deal with them if we are in a situation where we can avoid conflating everything that's happening on both sides and create an image of an implacable enemy that we eventually would have to confront, because we know that that kind of confrontation could turn out to be deadly for all of us. I mean, that's the biggest lesson, perhaps, from the world in the early 20th century. So we have to try to disaggregate some of these issues. I think the ones that stand out are probably trade. It won't be easy, but I think there are a lot of people now in the United States on both sides of the main political divide who are thinking quite seriously about how we can avoid giving ordinary Chinese the impression that we are out forever to try to prevent China becoming a rich country. So China still has enormous problems with poverty in parts of the country, poverty of a kind that we haven't seen in United States and in Europe for many, many generations. So it's essential that the Chinese economy is capable of growing. If it gets the impression that if the ordinary Chinese and the Chinese elites get the impression that there are no areas in which China's expansion economically will be accepted, then I think we are really heading down a very, very dark path. On the other hand, I do think it is important that we try to make clear in security terms with regard to Eastern Asia and with regard to the Pacific, very much along the same lines of what Mike has said, where US Interests are and what the United States is willing to do to defend them. So if we, again, use the historical parallel, which I unfortunately think is much more apt looking at the early 20th century, rather than looking at the Cold War era, which was many ways more manageable because of the bipolarity of the system, then I think we find a situation in which, you know, it is possible to build a believable deterrence. But then one has to also make it clear that this would have to be, from the US Perspective, a national aim. There is nothing in the period before the First World War that was most more damaging in fanning German plans for a war in Europe, or indeed fanning Chinese plans for a war against Taiwan today, than the image of American irresolution and division, even on key foreign policy issues and key issues with regard to military preparedness. So I think one has to be aware of how these things come together. We'll have to try to disaggregate some of them. What we can't do is to let everything fall into lockstep in terms of how we deal with the Chinese, in terms of a negative perception on everything. Because at the end of that could lie a confrontation that neither side, at least in terms of the overall preparations and their overall policies seem to be seeking.
- [22:13]
Matt Gluck
Mike, you make the argument in your piece that, and this comes from Dale Copeland's scholarship that interdependence can generate conflict. And so it would seem to me that if that's the case, then we really shouldn't even be trying to find some areas for cooperation. Because when we're in the competitive relationship, when the US is in the competitive relationship that it's in with China, this might make conflict even more likely. So could you describe that argument and what it means for how the US should approach its economic relationship with China?
- [22:49]
Arne Westad
Yeah.
- [22:49]
Michael Beckley
Dale Copeland and others have shown, I think convincingly that interdependence can fuel conflict when you've already got a condition of geopolitical rivalry. So among. Among friends, trade is great, your business partners too, but among enemies, suddenly that becomes mutual vulnerability. It's terrifying to rely on your adversary for a critical technology or for access to oil or food or medical devices or PPE or rare earths or whatever. And so what you typically see is a fierce commercial competition where each side is trying to gain self reliance for themselves and then dominate what the Chinese are calling choke points in the global economy, Whether it's access to a critical sea lane or access to vital materials or the primacy in certain strategic industries, and then lord that over the other side as a form of leverage, it's easy to see how this generates what Copeland and others have called a trade security spiral into conflict. Meanwhile, scholars including John Lewis Gaddis and others have said, you know, actually in the Cold War, the fact that the Soviets kind of had their own economic fiefdom and were sitting on a mountain of natural resources and walled itself off from the capitalist world, in some ways that was sort of stabilizing because you didn't get this trade security spiral to the same extent. So I. In a perfect world, the United States and China could do some kind of conscious uncoupling just of their strategic industries, I think T shirts and toys and all that kind of stuff, totally fine, totally on the white list. But somehow, if you're able to walk back and reduce the dependence, the deep economic dependence the countries have on each other, that might actually be stabilizing. The problem is that even if that's good in theory, that endpoint, getting there, I don't know how you do that in any kind of stable way because basically the way it's going to evolve is not this nice conscious uncoupling, but a trade war and a tech war and a bunch of investment restrictions that signal to each side the hostility that they have for each other. So this is yet another one of these examples where I can imagine a stable end state, but the problem is getting there. I think Arnie's suggestions are probably the best we can do, frankly in terms of, and should be tried, but I'm under no illusion that it's going to really abate the degree of hostility between the two countries.
- [25:06]
Matt Gluck
So Mike, just following up, but would trying those suggestions for cooperation, might that lead us into the dangerous territory of interdependence or why not?
- [25:19]
Michael Beckley
Well, I mean, I think we're already there. The two countries, some people called it Chimerica for a long time because the two countries were so economically intertwined and now both countries are assiduously trying to pursue self reliance. I mean, if you read Xi Jinping's dual circulation gambit or you read the industrial policies the United States is, is floating out. I mean these are all about trying to insulate your respective economy. So it's not a question of can we get there and would that make things worse since we're already in this highly mutually vulnerable economic situation and you know, it's very hard to unwind in a, in a slow, steady way. That said, we've been talking a lot about economics. I really think that economics is, it's not a sideshow, but it's not the main event, it's not the main area of competition and it's not going to be the ultimate decider of how this rivalry ultimately unwinds itself. I think that has a lot more to do with power, security and the historical role that each of these countries thinks of itself and seems to be driving its ambitions in the world. To me, these old school geopolitical factors are so much more important than, than the level of trade between the two countries.
- [26:30]
Matt Gluck
So Arnie, you, you explain in your piece that the U.S. or you argue that the U.S. should reaffirm its acknowledgment that there's only one China and that it won't support Taiwanese independence under, under any circumstances. And on the other hand, China could say that it won't use force until Taiwan takes formal steps toward independence. So first of all, how, how likely is it that the US on the one hand and China on the other hand will take these steps that you think would make conflict less likely. And second, what order would, I was thinking as I was reading it, how so how would those operate? Is it more likely that the US would do this first and then China might follow? How would that work?
- [27:14]
Arne Westad
So this is what I call the Shanghai plus initiative. I mean, in reality it's not saying very much more than what both sides have indicated very clearly so far. So the secrets of diplomacy when very successful. Henry Kissinger was among those who reminded us time and time again about this is not to state something that is obviously new and a breakthrough, but it's to restate positions that both countries have some kind of resonance for in a new format and within a framework that is seen as being collaborative. And I think that's what's worth trying. With regard to Taiwan, is it likely? No. Is it possible? Yeah, probably. I don't see that China in the current situation, particularly with the economy being in trouble also for reasons, by the way, that have very little to do with the relationship between the United States, but with the mistakes in economic planning that the Chinese Communist Party itself has made, that it could be a reason to try for a while to stave off further intensification of the conflict over Taiwan. On the other hand, there are people arguing equally plausibly that with an economic downturn there is more of a reason for the CCP to emphasize its nationalist chops by putting more pressure on Taiwan and that therefore would not be interested in, in this kind of solution. My point is that we haven't tried. I mean, we let the situation with regard to Taiwan slide for much too long without trying to see if there are possibilities for some kind of bilateral dampening of the overall relationship with regard to Taiwan. I completely agree with what Mike Jo said about the security issues being by far the most important here rather than trade. I think on the trade side it is in a way curious to say, kind of low hanging fruit within this overall very, very dark scenario and it wouldn't be enough. Again, Copeland's work is excellent on this. Even a temporary, significant, temporary change in a positive terms in terms of how the two countries see each other in economic terms is probably not going to be enough to change the overall relationship, but what we must avoid, and again, Copeland's work is important on this. If we are in a situation where there is a very high degree of trade and economic integration and I don't think we can avoid that in the relationship between China and the United States, we'll have to find some way of attempting to manage that. Because if not, and it seems to me this goes to what Mike, you said, that then everything becomes about conflict. I mean, if more trade, if more regulated trade, better trade conditions for both parts is also part of the overall conflict scenario, well, then we are in a situation where we're entering in, it seems to me, into a very dark tunnel of which the outcome could be absolutely disastrous because you're not just here talking about stability a la decode. I think the possibility of getting that in the US China conflict is very limited. What I see much more of in terms of how the world is developing overall in a much more complex direction is the kind of situation that we had in the late 19th and early 20th century. And if that ends up the way it ended up back then and ended up again in the mid 20th century, not in a cold but in a hot war among great powers, then we are in real, real trouble.
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- [32:25]
Matt Gluck
Mike you discuss a concept in your piece called the Stability Instability paradox, according to which excessive faith that the other country won't use nuclear weapons may contribute to more belligerence in the conventional arena. Recently we've seen some in the US Calling for the United States to threaten nuclear retaliation if China invades Taiwan. Is this a sign that the paradox you describe is fading away, or is it still very present?
- [32:58]
Michael Beckley
I just think there's no guarantee that this sense of mutually assured destruction will prevail or keep tabs on what both sides could think. This is a limited conventional war and we can unload on the other side with our conventional arsenal because they would never dare to escalate to the nuclear realm. And the Chinese might say, yeah, the Americans are saying that, but they would never actively risk Los Angeles for Taipei. I just worry that, first of all, our understanding of the history of the Cold War strategic standoff is perhaps a bit too sanguine. The more I read about those 1980s nuclear crises, frankly, the more I'm surprised we're all still alive. Lots of things can go wrong, and maybe we just got lucky. But when I look at the United States and China, they both seem to assume that there is a limit past which the other side would never go across. And, you know, I've read Mike Clausewitz, and he says there's no logical limit to the application of force here. And so, for example, the Chinese seem to assume that they can perhaps even obliterate US Bases on Okinawa, and they wouldn't have to face the prospect of US Strikes on the Chinese mainland, on their mainland bases, or certainly not even escalation to nuclear use, because at the end of the day, the Americans care a lot less about Taiwan, and they'd be worried about nuclear escalation. And conversely, I know there have been defense concepts in the US that do call for massive strikes on the Chinese mainland early in a conflict and sinking China's navy within 72 hours on the assumption that the war will always just stay conventional because China would never dare challenge US Nuclear superiority and will be deterred by the US Nuclear arsenal. So, obviously, we don't have a lot of data points to know if this is the type of thinking that would ultimately prevail. But just the main point I wanted to make in the article is sometimes people say, oh, there's no prospect of a US China war. It's very low likelihood because each side has nukes, and so they know that war would be suicidal. And in my mind, I read the documents, the defense plans from both sides, and they both suggest this. Almost too much faith in the other side's unwillingness to escalate and use the ultimate option or even to abstain from certain high intensity conventional options. I think it's a very dangerous mindset if that's what's truly prevailing.
- [35:12]
Matt Gluck
So let me propose a different reason as to why conflict may be less likely. So some have argued, and I'm drawing here on the work of Steve Brooks and Bill Woolforth, that China's potential for revisionism is quite limited, perhaps to the first island chain, because China lacks the command of the commons that the U.S. possesses. So Mike, what does that mean for the U.S. security relationship with China? Is it possible that because it's the most significant security relationship, we think it's, we focus on it a lot and we think it's quite dire, but that actually the U.S. the stake, the geopolitical stakes for the U.S. in its security relationship with China are less significant than, than many make them out to be. What do you make of that argument? That that China's limited potential for revisionism might mitigate some of the security concerns?
- [36:12]
Michael Beckley
The American president has said no less than four times that if China attacks Taiwan, the United States will respond militarily. The Taiwan Relations act makes it American law that the US is supposed to help to fend off threats. It doesn't say the US has to directly respond, but it has to maintain the capacity to help Taiwan resist any threat to its way of life and the way things are running on Taiwan. And so Brooks and Woolforth, I think are correct that the United States commands the commons. I think the United States is at a global level, militarily dominant. And you could have a debate in the United States where eventually Americans say, you know what, Taiwan is just not worth risking World War 3 or a massive war with China over. And so we are going to tear up the Taiwan Relations Act. We're going to walk back all of President Biden's statements and whoever wins this next presidential election could literally on day one, just say we're no longer going to arm or defend Taiwan? I disagree with those arguments, but I think there are perfectly understandable arguments that it's just not worth courting conflict and that China would have a very tough time consolidating control over Taiwan and then, I don't know, attacking the Ryukyu's and Japan or blockading the Philippines and shoving them around. But at the same time, as current policy stands, the United States has said it's going to intervene. I think the Defense Department has been gearing up for this conflict for a very long time. And the Chinese themselves, I think, assume that the United States is going to be involved and therefore have developed war plans that some of which call for essentially Pearl harbor style strikes on US bases on Okinawa, perhaps even on Guam. They have a Guam killer missile, as they call it. And so the way that a technically limited war over Taiwan could start, that is with Chinese strikes on American soldiers and sailors, that completely changes the equation, I think. Then it's on and the United States is going to be in. So I just, you know, I think Brooks and Woolworth are correct about the overall balance of power. I don't think it necessarily means the United States is going to abstain from a war over Taiwan.
- [38:17]
Matt Gluck
Arnie, what do you think about how the balance of power might affect a potential conflict over Taiwan?
- [38:23]
Arne Westad
I think on most of this, Mike is absolutely right. My biggest fear, as I said already, is that for some people on the PLC side, there will be this idea that the United States is not really going to stand up for Taiwan or indeed stand up for its other friends and allies within the region. I mean, that's a minority view within the CCP and within the People's Liberation army at the moment, but it's there. I saw it very clearly when I was in China a couple of months ago, and it's worrying. I mean, this is another of the parallels that I see with the early 20th century world is that the kind of. Very much along the lines of what Mike said, the kind of war fighting strategy that the PLA now is developing with regard to Taiwan seems to have many things in common with the German Schlieffen plan from the early 20th century, which in its very nature, in terms of how military movements and strikes are going to be carried out, would ensure that the other major great power would get involved in a war against them. Even if there were other possible strategies that would make that less likely. That's not the road adhered to. And that's one of the most frightening aspects of what we're looking at at the moment. Of course, in addition to the point, and this is another problem I find with the Cold War analogy here is that, you know, Taiwan is not Cuba. Taiwan is not the kind of possession that is relatively far away and outside the formal jurisdiction of both great powers. Taiwan is much more like Alsace before World War I. That one of the two powers claim it as an integral part of its own state, of its own territory. And I think that influences the kind of military planning that's put into it as well. So this is another reason why we need to make sure that there are other aspects of the US China relationship that we would be able to work on. Not necessarily to begin with with much success, but in order to avoid that it's these kinds of doomsday scenarios that would become the only game in town. I do think that there is a relationship here. There's a link between how general policy and strategic military planning is carried out. And that might be one of our best hopes with regard to the overall situation. But Mike is entirely right that what we are looking at the moment is downright frightening.
- [41:03]
Matt Gluck
Arnie, Mike writes in his piece that achieving a thaw in relations between the US and China would require either Washington or Beijing to abandon its red lines in the competition between the two countries. So first of all, do you think that's right?
- [41:23]
Arne Westad
No, I don't think it's right overall. I mean, I think of course this all dependent on how you define red lines. But going back to what I say in my piece about a Shanghai plus kind of toning down of conflict with regard to Taiwan, I can see that as being perfectly possible without either of the two sides in any dramatic fashion having to change its approaches. What this really comes down to is the degree to which you accept or do not accept the premise that these two countries are locked in a never ending conflict. Well, at least, I mean, to be fair to Mike's arguments, it would take a very, very long time for any kind of diffusion of tension, never mind the tante to be possible or whether you think there are steps that can be made now in order to at least try to reduce some of the temperature in the conflict. And on that I'm in the latter camp. I mean, I do see, however incremental, however complicated, some directions that we could be taking both diplomatically and in terms of trade and in terms of other things to reduce that overall tension. Will it be enough for us to avoid an outright Sino American conflict? We don't know. But what I'm pretty sure about is that if we do not try, we will end up in exactly the same kind of conflation of various forms of conflict and amities in which both sides, both United States and China, might see no other way out to resolve the relationship between the two of them than war. And given the circumstances, that's exactly what we have to avoid.
- [43:04]
Matt Gluck
So does trying in that context, does trying to change the relationship to lower the temperature, does that mean abandoning red lines or something else?
- [43:15]
Arne Westad
So to me it doesn't mean. I mean, it'd be interesting to hear what Mokas would say on this, it doesn't really mean abandoning red lines. For instance, if we could get some kind of restatement of what has been effectively the policy of both countries on Taiwan since the early late 1970s, I don't think that would mean abandoning a red line. I don't think, for instance, on the US Side, that providing more assistance, more military assistance to Taiwan is for the Chinese crossing over some kind of red line. This has been going on for a very long time. The Chinese leadership knows that through the increased pressure that they are putting on Taiwan, there would be an American response. So thinking about this in red line terms to me is, unless we can specifically identify what these red lines are, I don't think is particularly helpful. Politics is much more complex than just to talk about red lines. So I think we should rather think about what is it that it's possible that we could do. We might be disappointed in attempting to achieve that. But still, was it possible we can do from our side rather than being too concerned thinking about red lines from our own side or from the Chinese side? Sino American normalization in the 1970s would never happen if both sides had focused on red lines rather than trying to reduce the tension between the two.
- [44:43]
Matt Gluck
Mike, save red lines for us as a conceptual matter and explain why they matter matter well.
- [44:52]
Michael Beckley
So red lines in terms of vital interests, I think you can tone down tension without abandoning red lines, but you're not going to get some kind of standing, lasting settlement between the two sides. And I also think as long as each side retains its current proposal of vital interests, there's so much conflict between those two that it's very hard to even have peace on other issues. So if you take something like Taiwan, you know, absent either the United States completely abandoning Taiwan or absent China renouncing its claims over Taiwan, at the end of the day, it can either be ruled from Beijing or from Taipei. And the problem is, for China, Taiwan increasingly seems to be going its own way. We just had this recent election that I see is essentially an epic display of. Of defiance because the Chinese used every trick short of war to intimidate the Taiwanese people. They threatened that the vote for the DPP is a vote for war. And Taiwan's people knew all that, and they went in the booth and a majority pulled the lever for the DPP anyways. And so this is a perfect example of a case where unless one side is just willing to adopt the other side, there's no, like, what can the United States say to China that will ultimately reassure it in the Long run here. You know, I don't think the Chinese are content to just kick the, the can down the road on Taiwan indefinitely, as much as the Americans might like that. So if we just say, oh, we don't support independence, well, the fact is there's a party in power right now that says the only reason we don't declare independence is because we already are independent. And meanwhile, the Taiwanese people are becoming more and more Taiwanese in terms of their identification. Taiwan is building up its military. The United States is belatedly building up its defenses there. And so at the end of the day, what can talking really do to settle this type of situation? So the point I'm making about red lines, I don't know how we got down this sort of rabbit hole is one line from the article. But the point is just that when you have this clash of vital interests, unless you have one or both sides that are willing to step away from that definition of interests, there's very little that these confidence building measures can really do. Because again, it's not a misunderstanding. The sides perfectly understand the other side's position and they hate it for logical, understandable reasons. And that's what makes the use of force more tempting. Because if one side feels like things are not going our way, I really think the status quo is not working for Beijing in the long run over Taiwan. Its attempt to use carrots to lure the Taiwanese back has clearly failed and has backfired. So that leaves sticks. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that China's going to launch a war tomorrow, but it certainly means the risk of war is growing vastly. And unless the United States is just going to completely write off Taiwan, that kind of leaves deterrence as the last bulwark at preventing this war from breaking out in the first place. So I think we just have to be realistic about that. I don't think anything Arnie has said is deviates necessarily from that, but I don't really know what it means to defend red lines. It's just one, one word from, from the thing. I think it was just more, it was a reaction to. I remember last, last fall there was a lot of talk from Biden administration folks and people in academia who are buddies with them all talking about we need to put guardrails on the relationship, we need to clarify our red lines, we need to have more student exchanges. And I was just sitting there thinking like that. That does not solve the fundamental problem. And you're deluding yourself if you think China is just going to say, oh, I guess we won't move on Taiwan anytime soon because the Americans said the right words or sent some students over and established these so called guardrails. I just think that all will be eviscerated by events that are taking place and that have taken place most recently with Taiwan's election.
- [48:37]
Arne Westad
Right.
- [48:37]
Matt Gluck
The reason I'm. It's a fair point that it's one line in your case, the reason I'm focused on it is because it seems like this is a tension between your piece and Arnie's because Arnie seems to think that we can make more progress at the margins, whereas you think that it's kind of a deeper issue where those marginal gains will have less benefit and could be dangerous in some contexts.
- [49:03]
Michael Beckley
I guess I would just. The only thing I would dispute about that view is just instead of the word progress, I would just use like maintaining or just kind of keeping a hold of the situation. I don't see much realm for actual progress towards a much more sanguine kind of relationship anytime soon just given the stark geopolitical conflicts that are going on. So if we're willing to change the word progress to just kind of trying to keep a lid on things that then I think there is room for the kind of overtures that are made because it at least signals that the United States is not hell bent on completely dismembering Chinese territory, but in terms of actually changing China's long term plans. You know, Xi Jinping is currently presiding over the kind of military buildup we haven't seen in peacetime since Nazi Germany. And I don't think there's a lot that there's so much momentum built up behind this big surge and then, I mean, we haven't even talked about. I'm very bearish on China's long term economic prospects. And so I just worry that China is going to be in a situation where its long run ability to generate wealth and power is going to be slowing down substantially. But it has this favorable but finite local military balance advantage in the Taiwan Strait. And just historically, I mean, we've talked a lot about Germany and something like the Schlieffen plan. You know, the Germans had been rising, but I think a lot of their impetus for moving in 1914 was if we don't move now, things are only going to get worse for us because the Russians are building up their forces, France is extending conscription. We don't know what the British are going to do, but they're building this gigantic navy and things. If we don't move now we may not have a better opportunity. And meanwhile our ally Austria, Hungary is disintegrating. So we got to make use of them while we still can. I mean, it's this kind of perception of future fear of decline, I think is probably the most disruptive force in geopolitics. And when I look at China, I think they have good reason to be in that kind of mindset. And so I just worry that that will ultimately push them over the brink in something like Taiwan.
- [51:04]
Arne Westad
Just on that, Mike, if I may jump in, I mean, on the, on the issue of the value of talking. So I see what you said. I mean, this is the scenario that I'm probably most worried about in everything that we are discussing today is this sense in Beijing of what the Germans back in 1914 called a maximum moment, that things are not necessarily going in our direction, that things are not going to be better. If there is to be a global conflict, it could as well be now. That's the most frightening scenario that I can think of with regard to the parallel that I tried to draw up between the early 20s, 20th century world and now. Part of the reason why that led to war was the lack of channels of communication that would have enabled us to buy time. I completely agree with what you're saying, Mike, about the very unlikely scenario that some of the more complicated conflicts between the United States and China will be resolved, at least anytime soon at the negotiating table. But what talking does is that it buys us time. I mean, that's what we saw during the Cold War as well. Attempting to identify some areas which are not totally subsumed to conflict, particularly bilateral conflict between the two main powers, is something that can help us postpone that conflict, which in your image of it, and it's not incorrect, seems overwhelmingly likely. So that's the very short stated reason why I think this is so important, that we need to find some areas in which we can continue that kind of conflict. Not because we think that the overall situation between the United States and China will be resolved therewith, but because it buys us tug.
- [52:55]
Michael Beckley
Arnie. I think this is another good example of the two of us being put into a debate where we end up agreeing with each other almost in total. Because I also agree, I mean, I think, think it's worth, worth a try to do all of these things because we want, I can't remember as Kath Hicks or who said it, we want every day that Xi Jinping wakes up to think I have more time to take care of this kind of situation, and that's why I become so alarmed at a lot of the rhetoric we're using over Taiwan, et cetera, and the erosion of these, these links. And so I think everything you propose is totally worth a try if it buys time. My only worry, and I don't think you would disagree with this, is just it's not completely within our control. And so, you know, the Taiwanese are going to do their, their thing. I mean, they're a democratic society. And so the kind of signals that are being sent, say from that recent election or the Philippines, you know, wanting to defend its territory and inviting opening up new bases on the US I mean, for the US I mean, these are all things that send signals that may override the kind of messages that American diplomats will send in Beijing. And I thought it was very instructive that there was this Wall Street Journal article where they interviewed Nick Burns, you know, the U.S. ambassador to China. And he's been a long proponent of talks and confidence building measures. And he seemed totally exasperated in this interview because he said the Chinese are, they literally pulled the plug on certain events that the US Was trying to hold to build links between the two societies and weren't really participating in all these different exchanges. And so again, it's not a call for just adopting full scale hostility, but it's just, I guess I'm just a pessimist by nature. And so I'm erring very heavily on that side.
- [54:34]
Matt Gluck
Let me just push you on one, on one thing, Mike, and then we'll wrap up because so you say in your piece that over the years, China has viewed US Efforts to work with Beijing with mistrust. And those efforts have sometimes even been viewed within Beijing as a form of containment. So my sense is that as China goes through this demographic decline and economic decline that you cataloged very well in your Danger Zone book and why that could generate conflict, why wouldn't these measures, these attempts at some cooperation, lead China to feel more threatened by the United States?
- [55:14]
Michael Beckley
So I don't think I'm arguing that it provokes Beijing to reach out. I think the point I was making in the passage you're referring to is that so in the 1980s, 1990s, in the 1980s, the United States and China were essentially allies against the Soviet Union. And after the Tiananmen Square massacre, the US imposes sanctions. But George H.W. bush sends a very friendly letter to Deng Xiaoping where he says, let's get the relationship back on track. You know, we don't want hostility and we value you. And we know now that Deng Xiaoping believed that the United States was partially behind the, the uprisings around China, that it was part of the John Foster Dulles treatment of trying to peacefully evolve the Chinese Communist Party out of its monopoly on power. He called it a smokeless World War Three. And then in the 1990s, the United States obviously is paving China's entry into the wto. There's lots of investment going back and forth and it really, I think, peaks in 1998 when Clinton goes to Beijing and he becomes the first American president to articulate the three nos on Taiwan. So no independence, no two Chinas, no membership in international organizations. And we now know a few months later, Jiang Zemin, the Chinese leader, gave an internal talk to essentially the foreign policy bureaucracy of the CCP where he said this so called American engagement policy has the same motives as a containment policy where they're trying to absorb us into this liberal order in a way that's going to cause our system to unravel in the same way as happened to Gorbachev and the Soviet Union. And so we have to be realistic about that. And he called the United States China's number one diplomatic adversary for the foreseeable future. So the point I was trying to make is that the kind of concessions and engagement the United States was doing in the 80s and 90s, transferring technology to China, including military technology in the 80s and all the open investment and talk of one world, one dream even then bubbling under the surface, the Chinese had a very dim view in part because, I mean, if you're a, a one party dictatorship, it is kind of threatening to be existing in a Western dominated liberal order. There's lots of threats to your regime there. And especially if you have these very ambitious aims, as China does, of redrawing the map of East Asia, the US military is the main thing that's preventing you from, from doing that. The US military is the main thing preventing Taiwan's reabsorption back into the mainland. So it actually makes a fair amount of sense. And especially having watched what happened to the Soviets, their mantra in the CCP is to prevent anything like, like that from happening in China. And so it just makes me very pessimistic that the more modest kind of outreach that we're trying to do today would really have much more an effect on China's very dim view of American intentions or of their ambitions, of China's ambitions to try to make big moves in East Asia.
- [58:06]
Matt Gluck
I see. So you see, you see that engagement though, as different from the more limited measures that that aren't is putting forth.
- [58:13]
Michael Beckley
Well, I see what we tried to do in the 1990s is way beyond what could realistically be done today politically in the United States. I mean now we're down to student exchanges and trying to re establish military communications so that we don't all start shooting at each. I mean these seem like basic common sense things and even that, I mean the Chinese, I think that's actually a good example. So the military communications that from an American perspective this is a way to have a so called managed competition. And I think from the Chinese perspective, they don't want to have a nice neat little managed competition because then the stronger side is going to win that they need. You know, if you're the little guy, you need a little advantage. You need an asymmetric advantage. You want there to be uncertainty in the other side if you think your resolve is higher over something like Taiwan. And so they have said, look, you're, you're trying to essentially ratify the status quo, the territorial status quo by locking us into these military confidence building measures. And so they held out for a long time on that and tried to use it as like some kind of bargaining chip. And so like even something as simple as that was a struggle to even get the Chinese to talk about. So unless I see evidence to the contrary, I just don't see anything that really gives me much faith that there's going to be a breakthrough. And so the best I can hope for, as Arnie has said, is, you know, we're trying to tamp down tensions and just kind of get, you know, wake up again tomorrow alive and then do the same thing again. And to me that's, that's perfectly reasonable and frankly that's a lot of great power politics. So we just have to get used to that and be okay with that.
- [59:42]
Matt Gluck
Okay, we will leave it there. Arnie, Mike, thank you so much for joining me.
- [59:47]
Arne Westad
Thank you for having us on.
- [59:48]
Michael Beckley
Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Arnie.
- [59:52]
Matt Gluck
The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfair material supporter through our website, lawfairmedia.org support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for other podcasts including Rational Security, Chatter, Allies and the Aftermath. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series on the government's response to January 6th. Check out our written work@lawfairmedia.org the podcast is edited by Jen Patya and your audio engineer. This episode was Noam Ozband of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. As always, thanks for listening.
- [60:46]
Arne Westad
Change isn't coming. It's already here.
- [60:49]
Michael Beckley
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