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The Realignment
How the U.S. Can Deter China from Invading Taiwan in 2027 with Eyck Freymann
00:59:17
After President Trump's visit to China with his summit with President Xi Jinping, Eyck Freymann, Hoover Fellow at Stanford University and author of Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, joins The Realignment. Eyck and Marshall to unpack the Taiwan question, America's interests in the island's fate, the One China policy, and the future of U.S.-China competition. They discuss Taiwan’s domestic politics, deterrence, semiconductors, gray-zone conflict, and what the coming years could mean for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.
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- [00:00]
A
Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment. If there was a big story the realignment missed during the past month's break, it was President Trump's trip to China for his summit with President Xi Jinping. Heading into the summit, the big question was whether there would be any US China deal on resolving Taiwan's unsettled relationship with the mainland. So to discuss the Taiwan issue, my guest today is Hoover Fellow at Stanford University Eich Fryman, whose recently released book is titled Defending a Strategy to Prevent War with China. I actually recorded this right before the summit, and it should be noted that nothing changed in terms of Taiwan's status quo during or after the summit. So please excuse any future tense references to the upcoming summit. Listening back to the episode, though, I think 99% of the episode stands as an evergreen introduction to this crucial topic when it comes to determining Taiwan's overall fate, the domestic politics of the island, the choices America faces, and the overall state of the US China Taiwan relationship as X states. The next two years are going to be key when it comes to maintaining the peaceful status quo in the region. 2027 is the year, of course, that Xi declared that the People's Liberation army needs to be ready for an invasion itself. Everyone knows that we have a 2020 presidential election in the US without Trump on the bout. What you might not know is Taiwan will also hold consequential election elections where two different parties with two different conceptions of the iwan's relationship to the mainland will battle at the ballot box. If you are looking for a serious introduction to the topic or want to delve into specific areas of the factors that will determine peace or conflict, I highly recommend this conversation and the book Defending Taiwan.
- [01:54]
B
Ike Freeman welcome to the realignment.
- [01:56]
C
Thanks for having me on.
- [01:58]
B
So how about you just start by introducing the context. Why does the summit matter and what is the summit itself?
- [02:06]
C
Obviously, this is a big moment in US China relations. It's the first time a president has visited China since President Trump's trip in 2017, and the relationship has changed fundamentally since then. The good news is, but both sides have decided for domestic reasons that they want stability and they're more interested in maintaining stability than getting any particular deal. The way these things are worked out is all of the logistics. All of the agreements are dotted and signed well in advance. This is mainly going to be performative. There will be drone shows, spectacular demonstrations, signs that Xi Jinping is a good host. There will be kind, respectful words, loving statements. Probably there will be an extension of the trade truce. There could be some discussion of AI and nuclear weapons. And of course, the big question is whether the President will yield to pressure to shift US Communications of the One China Policy. I happen to think that the policy will not change. I'm pretty confident this administration understands why the policy shouldn't change. But of course it's President Trump, so you can't rule anything out.
- [03:25]
B
Yeah. And what is the One China policy? And then what are possible changes that you could see in a worst case scenario happening?
- [03:35]
C
Well, how long of a lecture do you want? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But teaching this to students, I have to say the One China Policy is a hard thing to wrap your mind around. I read a lot of this stuff in undergrad and then I read it again in grad school and I didn't really get it until I worked on the book. And that speaks to this fundamental problem, which is the One China Policy formally guided by the three joint communiques, the Taiwan Relations act and the Six Assurances. And then there's a couple of paragraphs you have to recite. Wasn't put forward in completed form by any one president. It emerged through accretion like 100 bottles of beer on the wall, every president adding an extra verse to the one that came before. And different presidents have changed the way that they have communicated the policy or they have boiled it down to its essence and described it in a slightly different way. And each time the State Department has emphasized the policy itself hasn't changed because the policy is more than the policy. The policy is a totem. It represents American resolve to resist a unilateral change in the status quo by force and American restraint that the United States genuinely does seek peace and stability. What you can explain the policy to be is the US doesn't take a position on Taiwan status. This is something for Beijing and Taipei to work out by themselves. But the United States has a keen national interest in how that issue is resolved. Because if Taiwan's future is set by force or by coercion and in a way that's not democratically acceptable to the people of Taiwan, it sends a chilling signal for the whole rest of the region. And it will affect fundamentally the future of our treaty alliances. So the United States is open to any outcome we care about the how.
- [05:33]
B
Something I'm curious about then before I ask the follow up on possible changes people could see happening is, you know, you articulated and you articulate very well in the book the history and evolution of the One China policy. But the key thing is the One China policy was conceived not only during a different era of US foreign policy, so it's in a Cold War context in the late 1970s, but. But that's also before we were talking about semiconductors and the national interest and the effect on global trade. If the Chinese somewhat how had access to TSMC and then therefore could have leverage over the US economy, this is a whole deglobalization conversation. So we kind of do have an interest in a post one China policy, Taiwan's sort of economic stance. So how does that factor change things for us?
- [06:28]
C
Well, it's true we did care about Taiwan. In fact, Taiwan was a treaty ally for more than 20 years from the 1950s on. We threatened to nuke China over Taiwan in the second Taiwan Straits crisis. And that was long before they made chips. And as the AI revolution accelerates, if you believe as this administration seems to do that we are on the precipice of some world historical shift into technology that underpins our military and our economy. And this is entirely bottlenecked by compute coming out of Taiwan. That is a reason to care about Taiwan. That is profoundly different from why past administrations cared. But the fact is Taiwan is a democracy. And if the people of Taiwan want to choose their future, we have to, we have to accept whatever outcome they choose because that's what it means to be friends with a democracy. And we will face this question in 18 months when the people of Taiwan have to choose between the KMT and the DPP as to who their next president is going to be. But I would say this. The United States one China policy is more than the sum of its parts. It's a symbol to the entire region and to China that the United States is a force for peace and for stability. I get questions at these events about what are the changes that the US can make to the one China policy. Could it shift to a policy of strategic clarity? Could it recognize Taiwan independence? And any of these options would be quite costly and potentially quite dangerous. And if the US shifted its position on Taiwan, it risks undermining deterrence or provoking one side or the other to do something desperate or ill conceived. This is not the time to be rethinking five decades of policy. The policy works. It was wise when it was written and it's wise now. The question is whether we have the resolve and the capabilities to make our deterrent creds, our deterrent threats credible.
- [08:54]
B
The thing that's interesting, I like your wording about the US as a force for peace and stability in the region. I Guess what, I wonder when it comes to both our adversaries and our allies and partners and sort of neutrals in the region, is can we, is it possible, and this seems to be what the Trump administration is attempting to do, is it possible to just look only at what happens in the Indo Pacific and not contextualize that in the context of Venezuela, not contextualize that in the context of, let's say, Iran with the operation in the U.S. iran war? Because it seems problematic to argue on how, I mean problematic in a woke sense that the US could be articulated as sort of a force for stability outside of that region itself. So I'm just curious how you think about this rhetorical tension point.
- [09:48]
C
It's a very fair observation. And as the United States acts more brazen and more hegemonically in its own region and as it uses new techniques like going after leader foreign leaders personally in countries it doesn't like, yes, it is changing the rules of the game, the norms of how great powers do competition in the 21st century. These choices have trade offs and we have seen some of the benefits. For example, the transition in Venezuela seems to be going quite well. We haven't really faced up to the other side of the ledger, which is the behavior from other great powers that we are essentially providing a permission structure for when we seize other countries oil resources, when we take out other countries leaders. And I think that some of these moves, while tactically quite effective, might be strategically quite damaging if they give the Russians and the Chinese and in the future maybe the Indians or others the permission structure to do these kinds of things. But the Indo Pacific region is different. The Indo Pacific is the center of gravity of the world economy. The Indo Pacific produces all of the supply chains that really matter, anything with an on and an off switch in our modern economy. It is the center of the world in terms of population. And the United States is increasingly dependent on it, not decreasingly. Because despite these investments we've made to make chips in Arizona, we ain't never going to make these chips in Arizona. Everyone knows that. We're going to the people who are close to this. Understand, you cannot participate at the cutting edge of electronics and technology if you are not taking advantage of these supply chains that crisscross the Indo Pacific region. So the question is a vital interest for American Statecraft in the 21st century is keeping this region free and open. That's not about fuzzy rules based order stuff. That's very practically do we have access as the United States of America to the markets in this region that produce all of this stuff and have all of this know how and technology that we need. And Taiwan is obvious. TSMC makes 90% of the chips, 99% of the truly cutting edge chips that are training the next generation of models. But Japan and South Korea, as the Trump administration well understands, are essential partners if we want to re industrialize in any meaningful way. China made more ships last year than we have made since World War II. If we want to fix our decaying shipbuilding industrial base, we need help from the Koreans because we have literally forgotten how. And if China can get to a point where they can coerce Korea not to help us, we are well and truly cooked. We will never re industrialize. It's impossible. And that is really what is at stake when we talk about these Taiwan scenarios and why we say it matters how Taiwan's fate is decided. China has a vision for achieving hegemonic control over its region that doesn't involve it invading and occupying its neighbors, but does involve using economic coercion to bring them under its domination. And the tools and techniques that it is trialing in Taiwan are replicable everywhere else. And that is why, even if we act out in other regions of the world, and you can litigate those separately, we still do have an interest, a vital national interest, an existential national interest in keeping this region free and open.
- [13:49]
B
Here's something I'm curious about, and this is kind of arguing the other side I seemed to be arguing when I pushed you on. Is the US a force for peace and stability? I'm really fascinated by the argument that a lot of folks in the sort of foreign policy and historical community are starting to make, which is that we are no longer living in a world of 20th century norms. We're not living in the first 20 years of the 21st century. No, the world of today looks much more like the 19th century where you have great powers who in many ways are either equal or near peer or superior to one another. And at the end of the day, great powers are gonna do what great powers are going to want to do. So yes, you could imagine a world where we had not taken out Maduro, where we were not fighting a war with Iran. But it's not clear to me that a world where we didn't do these things and we did provide international leadership around peace and stability, and we did sort of say the United States believes that great powers shouldn't be unilateral, federal. I'm not sure that scenario is one where Xi doesn't make an Offensive choice on Taiwan or not. Right. It wasn't like the Biden administration was invading countries. Before Putin invaded Ukraine in early 2022, we'd actually left Afghanistan. We had wound down the war on terror. And great powers, in the case of Russia, still asserted its own national interests and what it saw as its whole sphere of influence. So I'm just cur whether you think this idea that there are any international norms and that quote unquote leadership will make a difference in how great powers think about these choices. Whether that's just an outdated concept that if it were ever true is just not true. Now,
- [15:35]
C
I. Look, it's an interesting and important point and I think it's a conversation we should have because we don't discuss it enough. One of the things about norms is that you only really notice them when they get broken. But we forget that in the Obama administration, Russia and China signed up for tougher sanctions on North Korea and enforced them for a time. The UN Security Council didn't well and truly fall apart until 2022 with the full scale invasion of Ukraine, which by the way, was a failure of deterrence. When deterrence fails, norms die and then they can't be easily resuscitated. Now, I'm not advocating some touchy feely return to a liberal international order. I think that that is a sort of historically, as a historian, I think that's a sort of bunk idea. We invented the term liberal international order just really in the last few years and it was not very persuasive. But what I am talking about when I talk about norms in the region is freedom and openness. This term free and open Indo Pacific was a term that was conceived of by the Japanese, embraced by the Trump administration, then the Biden administration, now the second Trump administration. And free and open Indo Pacific doesn't have to do with global governance. It doesn't say you're going to create some supernational authority in Geneva that will have power over the United States. It's saying very practically, if an adversary can control the sea lanes and the sinews of commerce that connect every economy in this region, it's a catastrophe for American national interests. Why? Because it's an archipelagic region. And if you go to Japan and South Korea and Taiwan and these places, while they are thriving societies, they are completely dependent on imported energy. They are almost completely dependent on imported food. Their economies are completely dependent on inputs of every critical mineral, every critical, every raw material input you can think of to make the things that they make. And pretty Much any supply chain for any useful product is going to crisscross the region dozens, if not hundreds of times. And so the ability of each of these countries in the region to participate in the world economy, to know that they can use international waters and international airspace without fear or favor, to access the resources they need to engage in a global market that is existential for all of them, including for us. Those are norms that I think we need to be able to go to the map to protect. Because if we give up on those norms, what we are talking about is China achieving a hegemonic sphere of influence over all of the key supply chains that underpin 21st century technology. And if that happens, our economic future is dire. Our nuclear command and control will become insecure. China will dominate the commanding heights of AI with everything that that implies. So the Indo Pacific is different now. I think that freedom and navigation is a principle that we should, we should try to uphold everywhere. But you know, it is a challenging thing. As China grows more capable and American relative power declines, in some ways it's it. I understand why it's hard for the US to be a policeman globally and allies need to take, take note and step up so there can be more burden sharing. Because maybe it's the case that ensuring freedom of navigation through the Baltic should be Germany's problem, not America's. I think that that's fine. That's an, that's an allied coordination conversation to have. But specifically when we're talking about Taiwan and the areas around Taiwan, this happens to be a thing that we can express as a principled position, but it's really a raw calculation of material self interest. And that is why the Trump administration embraces the policy of free and open Indo Pacific, because they know that the United States in the age of AI doesn't have an alternative.
- [20:08]
B
So just to understand the argument though, if, let's say in 18 months the Taiwanese people vote in a direction that would lead to unification with China, I'm not predicting that's happening. Let's just imagine that happens. Is a free and open Indo Pacific still on the table? Do you know what I mean? So like, does it matter? Does, does the free and open Indo Pacific depend on how the China mainland Taiwanese relationship evolves in terms of whether it's peaceful, whether or whether it's coercive? Because like, let's say snap your fin, China and Taiwan unify, you are going to have a situation then where China is able to assert more control over the region. You're going to have a Situation where the tsmc, and obviously you note this in the book and it's very, very important. Like, you know, the TSMC fabs in Taiwan like depend on like critical, like US technological inputs. So it's not just like a situation where they were seized or if they were hostile. Like it kind of goes both directions. Like this is why the US and China are both unsuccessfully to this point, trying to sort of replic, you know, the Taiwanese capabilities there. But just. You kind of get what I'm saying? Because it just seems like so many. Because the thing that's very funny here is it's a very. Between our desire to have the Taiwanese democracy go the direction it wants, but then the sort of nightmare scenario. But I agree with. And we would describe a situation where China controlled Taiwan. So I want to understand what the sort of deal there is.
- [21:45]
C
Well, first of all, I think it's. It's time for Americans who weren't working on Taiwan issues before 2016, when the DPP last came to power, to educate themselves about the kmt, what it believes, what it's for. And this is just common sense. We're heading into an election season. Taiwan's presidential elections historically are very volatile. Anyone can win. And the KMT is changing. It's divided internally in some issues, but we have to understand what they, what they think. Now there's a very wide array of points of view in Taiwan and I don't want to caricature them too much, but I think I have to caricature them a little so that listeners understand basically the fair version of what the KMT stands for. The KMT's position, at least reading the subtext, seems to me to be something like this. Look, guys, we hold a very weak hand. The Americans have been using us as a pawn in a geopolitical game with Beijing and we may need to be sacrificed. The Americans could mishandle this issue and it leads to a blockade or invasion or worse. And then we're asked to become Ukraine. We don't want to become Ukraine. We don't want to send our kids to die. We don't want to live without electricity. We have to, we have to face the fact that we are a Chinese civilization. We speak Chinese, we eat Chinese food. We, you know, say prayers to our ancestors on the mainland. We have historic ties that bind us. We're not going to be an independent country called Taiwan. It's never going to happen. And the best way to maintain as much autonomy as possible for as long as possible is to negotiate with Beijing and String it along and say one. Say the words one China, even though the KMT means something different by that than the, than the Chinese Communist Party does, and essentially say to Beijing, we won't marry anyone else, but we won't marry you yet. Please wait on the theory being that that has worked so far. Now you can disagree with that. And many people in Taiwan do many people in Taiwan say Taiwan's an independent country. It always, it has been since 1949, and we make all the chips and the Americans need the chips and the Americans will come to defend us. There's different views which are based on also plausible readings of the facts. And then within each of these caricatures, there's a whole range of debates. But there is, as we enter election season in Taiwan, these two parties that have completely different definitions of what Taiwan is and what China is are going to slam each other. And the KMT will say that the DPP are crazy, pro independence lunatics who are going to drag Taiwan into a war and turn them into Ukraine. And the DPP people are going to say that the KMT are a bunch of mainland spies who are trying to hand over Taiwan's freedom. And we have to understand that this is part of the normal, the, the normal play of politics in an electoral democracy and be able to see through the talking points and understand actually the positions of each side and that in many ways they're much closer together than the political performances makes out. Taiwan, basically no one on Taiwan wants to become Tibet or Xinjiang, and that's their fate. If they accept a bad deal to unify with the mainland, you know, hundreds of thousands of people will be sent to the Gulag. Everyone in Taiwan is fully aware of that fact. So the job of the United States is to give Taiwan the confidence that whether it chooses diplomacy or not diplomacy, it doesn't feel that it is forced to the negotiating table with a gun to its head. But we are all going to have to educate ourselves a bit more about these debates because that's what it means to be a partner with a democracy. And the idea that we could somehow topple Taiwan's democracy and replace it with a pro US dictatorship, if that were on the table, the time for that sailed long ago.
- [26:03]
B
Something I'm curious about, and this is why in many ways the personalization of the US China relationship in the figures of Trump and Xi is both kind of a caricature in of itself, but also kind of useful here, which is that obviously what happened in Hong Kong during the late 2010s and early 2020s is going to play a role here. And this is also why I was always confused about why Xi and the CCP decided to crack down on Hong Kong the way they did, the way they seem to sort of break the quote unquote deal that was made. Because it would seem that what you would want to do if like you're real objective is resolving, you know, by 2049, as she has said, as you document in the book, the Taiwan question and unifying it with the mainland, why would you not just even sort of cynically maintain the good deal of Hong Kong so that you could make a deal with the kmt so that the KMT would have an argument? It just seems very much harder to make an argument that China is someone you can make a deal with when you have what's happening in Hong Kong. So I'm just curious how like what's happened in Hong Kong affects how a quote unquote deal, any deal with China could be understood.
- [27:23]
C
This is a really insightful question. I think you can look at the Hong Kong scenario, what happened in Hong Kong, from Xi Jinping's point of view, and you can look at it from Taiwan's point of view. And really you have to understand both. The way that China likes to negotiate is first they want an agreement on abstract principles, and then over time they will use your acceptance of those abstract principles to constrain you. This is something I learned in studying Chinese negotiating behavior in the past. They don't negotiate over agendas. One country, two systems is a vague slogan. What does it actually mean? Hong Kong got to keep its basic law, it got to keep its right to issue its own passports and so on. But there was always an understanding when the, after the joint declaration that Hong Kong was being handed over, it was being part of China, and that there was some implicit conditionality. Hong Kong, for example, couldn't have said to the Americans, oh, set up a military base in Hong Kong. So there were implicit red lines, but they were not clearly drawn. What Xi Jinping experienced with, through the umbrella protests is a realization that Hong Kong was not on board with the much more organizationally disciplined and let's, let's call it what it is, Leninist direction that he was taking the mainland and that the, the era of a more open China was coming to an end and Hong Kong was not down with it. And the more he pushed in response, the harder Hong Kong pushed back. He thought that he actually practiced restraint, but that the restraint didn't work because the more restraint he practiced. The gentler he was with Hong Kong, the more the Hong Kongers felt empowered to stand up and say no. And ultimately he chose to use violence to subjugate Taiwan. And it was, it was a horrific, horrific thing. Now Taiwan, looking across the strait had a very different experience of that. What they saw was that China made a set of promises about what country to what one country, two systems would involve and then once it had the power, tried to reinterpret what those promises meant. And you're absolutely right to say that this has profoundly shaped the debate on Taiwan. If you're the dpp, it means there's no point negotiating with Beijing because Beijing will offer you weasel words and empty promises. And as soon as you commit on the principle, you're screwed because then they will use that to constrain you. I think the KMT understands this as well. I don't think the KMT wants to be Hong Kong, but I think that the KMT believes Hong Kong might be the best option available or it might be a better option than getting attacked. And the way you, the way you work with the KMT is you show the KMT that America supports Taiwan, that America will be present for Taiwan, that America is not just trying to extract the chip making know how so then it can trade Taiwan away, but that actually it is the reliable partner that has been for decades. The KMT might have shifted in some ways, but this is still a party that we have had productive relations with for most of Taiwan's modern history. And if we fall into the trap of believing that they are just agents of Xi Jinping, if we make the mistake of interfering in this election on behalf of one party or another, I think it can only end badly for us because it will undermine the credibility of US promises that we, we respect, that Taiwan can make its own choices. And ultimately if Taiwan really decides that they want to make a deal with Beijing, I think there's not a damn thing that we can do.
- [31:36]
B
So one last question before we get to Taiwan scenarios. So when you were describing at the start of the episode the way a summit works, right. A lot of it is done beforehand. There's a lot of show, you know, speaking to stereotypes, but also a stereotype that's genuinely true with President Trump. Trump likes to get big deals. So there was a lot of talk going into the summit about possibilities of getting a lot of Chinese investment in the United States around. Once again, these Taiwan questions wrong along questions. Along with Chinese EV companies participating in the American market, how should we think about the Economic side and whether Trump's interested in those topics are the same as Xi's interest in those topics. Right. Because the way you set up Xi's interest, they're very much focused to the broad perspective on the Taiwan side of the question versus Trump's are much more, once again, focused more towards these economics, economic deal senses. So how do you think about these different dynamics working together?
- [32:38]
C
The way I framed it at the beginning is I think the key is both sides want stability for strategic reasons. And then there are deals that each side would like, but they're nice to have, not need to have. They're potential benefits that go alongside stability. They're not required to maintain it. For Trump, he wants to extend the trade truce because he would rather have as much predictability as possible in the American trade relationship with China at a time when inflation is rising and the Federal Reserve now has to shift its guidance from having a cutting bias to potentially a hawkish bias getting ready to possibly raise interest rates. He is not prepared for the effects of a new trade dispute with China on the economy heading into midterms, where the Republicans are already unfavored. China doesn't want to return to a trade dispute either. They think they're making great progress breaking their dependence on US Supply chains, and their domestic economy is not so healthy. They're happy to sustain the truce. Also, Xi Jinping is looking forward to his National Party Congress next year, where he has a lot of personnel work to do, including completely reshaping shaping the pla. He's got his hands full with domestic stuff. This is basically his election year now. There's also stuff that they can do that's more structural, which AI, arms control, AI and nuclear weapons. That stuff is. Everyone agrees that that's good and it's. It's a. It's nice that the US And China are talking about it, even if the details still have to be worked out. And then along the way, I think Xi Jinping believes that he's got a pretty strong hand and he can push Trump to open the door to conversations about Taiwan. I don't think that Trump is going to make any significant concessions of any kind. He might tweak how he describes the One China policy in a completely material, insignificant way. And then the State Department will say the policy hasn't changed, what State Department always says. I think Xi Jinping does think if he can start a debate, he can start a dialogue with Trump and he can sustain it with another summit and another summit and a summit after that, he might be able to sell Trump on the idea, let's throw this next Taiwan election to the kmt, the peace candidate, and then let's just take down the temperature on this issue. And this doesn't have to be a problem between us. I think he is playing a long game with Trump and I think that there's a possibility that Trump is attracted by that pitch. I think it would be a mistake, as I've said, for the US to intervene in the Taiwan election on any side. But that is absolutely Xi Jinping's theory of victory. He wants to get the DPP gone so he can get a more favorable Taiwan president. And that is both for the opportunistic reasons that he might be able to get a deal, but it's also because having a DPP president in Taiwan is uncomfortable for Xi Jinping, because any given day William Lai could just say something about the word independence and then Xi Jinping has to have a crisis because he's so constrained domestically he wants to get a KMT candidate elected. That's a very sensible thing to want if you're, if you're Xi Jinping. And the difficulty if you're the United States is not to take the bait, not to reopen or litigate the substance of our age old policy and just say no, we are resolved to maintain the status quo and we are never going to work with you to force Taiwan to the negotiating table. That goes against our long standing policy. So sorry, Xi Jinping, we won't do it.
- [36:35]
B
You know, it's really interesting when you were describing interfering in the election. I'm sure a lot of listeners will kind of have some Cold War era. Kermit Roosevelt is in Tehran in 1953 or you're talking about sort of the Putin centric color revolutions funded by NGOs sort of model. But given everything that you're saying, the real way to understand the political dynamics between the KMT and the DPP is that quote unquote interference would basically be spending the months leading up to the election signaling that the US wasn't going to stay strong on Taiwan, indicating that actually it's a bad bet to think that Taiwan's gonna be able to maintain its quasi independent state. Basically you, the US would signal that the one China policy actually isn't sustainable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's sort of like a reflection on like the actual dynamics. Is that, is that, is that correct or is that not quite the right way of framing it?
- [37:33]
C
I think if Trump and Xi Jinping made a deal to try to steer the election towards the kmt. There would be comments that Trump would make about William Lai and he'd say, well, he'd make jokes. He's like, well, he's a bit unreliable. Oh, he's not that popular. Oh, he hasn't been effective handling the legislature. He couldn't even pass a defense budget. He's very weak. Like, he wasn't a good negotiator. Like we, he was. Like, he was very disrespectful when we did our trade negotiations. And he would, he would say that would signal to the people of Taiwan that the dpp, which presents itself as the pro America party, the party that will keep America committed to Taiwan, isn't actually doing what it promises and is in fact making a situation more dangerous by pushing the US Away. And I don't think that Trump is thinking this way, to be clear. I don't think that this is, this is not a prediction. I'm just saying that if what Xi Jinping would like is for Trump to say stuff like that. And I can imagine a world in which Trump says that, because I can imagine worlds where Trump says a whole lot of things. And the way to think about that scenario in this context is that this summit is just the beginning of a longer series of conversations in which Trump and Xi Jinping do the kind of personal diplomacy that has been available to Vladimir Putin and in the first term was available even to Kim Jong Un, but has never been offered in the same way to Xi Jinping because Xi Jinping didn't feel confident enough to do all of that summit diplomacy with Trump. Remember, when you do summit diplomacy with Trump, he can humiliate you if he wants. He humiliates foreign leaders all the time. Remember what he said to Zelensky? Did you even say thank you? Xi Jinping, who's a man who's so obsessed with face, with his position at home, had to get to a position of some confidence to be ready to go on camera with Trump, not knowing what Trump would say or do. But I think Xi Jinping now feels that he's got a strong hand. He's shown Trump that he can retaliate in ways that will hurt the United States. And Trump has consistently shown public respect and personal warmth for a long enough period of time that Xi Jinping feels ready to take the risk. So this could be a significant, the beginning of a significant shift in U. S. China relations where the surface of it becomes much warmer and fuzzier. And that will, if that happens, And I think it may will completely change the whole discourse we have about US China, and it will make US Allies feel very insecure, because what are Trump and Xi Jinping talking about? It will be the same conversations that people said people had when people when Trump went to Alaska to meet Vladimir Putin. But I think that beneath that summitry, the fact is the United States and China remain structural rivals across the board. And that rivalry is intensifying. It's intensifying for a whole number of reasons, including, if not especially, AI. So I don't think that the United States is going to sell out Taiwan because I think the Trump administration, whatever it says and signals in public, understands that if it allows Taiwan to fall by force or coercion, the United States will have a very ugly future and it will be Donald Trump's fault.
- [41:12]
B
So for the last section, we obviously talked about the big picture, but what your book spends a significant amount of time doing is unpacking different scenarios that we should understand. Any potential conflict over Taiwan that really matters when it comes to deterring outcomes, we don't want. So a lot of folks who follow this issue even casually will know that 2027 is kind of like the hot year in this topic because it's the year that Xi Jinping specifically said he wants the PLA be ready for a offensive military intervention. In terms of resolving the Taiwan question from a mainland Chinese perspective, you kind of suggest that's not quite the most useful way of conceiving this. But like, just unpack both, like 2027 and what, like what you think about actual scenarios. So it's like when people hear 2027 and being ready, they hear D Day.
- [42:07]
C
Right?
- [42:07]
B
I think that's a direct quote from you. They hear that this is going to look much like, putting aside the differences in geography, just the Ukraine, Russia situation where, you know, we hit the timeline and then there's an invasion and the US has to respond to that invasion. But there are other scenarios as well. So, like just start with 2027, your sort of thoughts on like the D Day question and then some of the other scenarios that you spend a lot of time on.
- [42:30]
C
The book on Xi Jinping is building a menu of options to move against Taiwan. And they range from options in the gray zone, some of which he's already taking, legal pressure, economic coercion, cyber, to a range of kinetic options that include decapitation, sabotage, cyber attacks against Taiwan's critical infrastructure, invasion, bombardment, and blockade, which can be a partial or a full blockade. And as he builds these options, you need to remember he can play these moves in combination and in sequence. He can start with the decapitation, and if that doesn't work, try the bombardment. And if that doesn't work, try the invasion. And if that doesn't work, try the blockade. So the United States and its allies need to think through these scenarios and make sure we are effectively prepared for all of them in any combination or permutation, so that there's no pathway on the scenario tree that when he war games, it leads inexorably to a victory at an acceptable cost. We have to take these scenarios seriously. And 2027 is a key date that he gave as a deadline to his own system to build certain capabilities. When we discovered that the US Government made a political decision to make that public because we had to motivate our defense industrial base and all of the services and the combatant commands that are competing for resources around the world for different projects and scenarios to help understand that we need to be making certain investments if we want to keep pace. Now, 2027 is not a deadline to do anything. And because we made this deadline public six years ago, we have had six years head start. So I don't think that Xi Jinping feels like the PLA is ready to do this next year. Even if he did, I don't think he would do it because it's a party Congress here. It's a very risky point in the political calendar for him. But he doesn't need to use these kinetic capabilities to get coercive value out of them. Because in a crisis in the gray zone, a crisis may or may not escalate to war. And because it may escalate to war, both sides need to ask, if it did escalate to war, who would win? What would it be like? So this is the way to understand his investments, for example, in his nuclear forces. It's not because he plans to nuke the United States, but it is because he wants to use those nuclear forces to change the balance of risk in crisis scenarios. I happen to think that the gray zone crisis scenarios are most dangerous and most likely, I think Taiwan's status is more likely to be determined by a crisis than by a war. War, because a crisis is potentially how he humiliates the United States and gets Taiwan for free with the semiconductor fabs intact. And therefore we need to seek to deter the crisis, not just the war. And with that analysis I think I hope to argue building the capability to defeat the invasion, to win in some of these high end scenarios. That's a necessary condition, but it's not a sufficient condition because if he thinks that he can get what he wants through the crisis, you will invite the crisis and then you will lose.
- [46:14]
B
So the
- [46:16]
A
last part that you really
- [46:17]
B
took us towards is the six year head start the US had when it came to 2027. And it should be noted that, you know, we both have interest in the arsenal of democracy who co authored a book on this. You note that, you know, the way we should understand the rearmament and mobilization period in the lead up and during World War II is that it actually started in the 1930s. So you actually had to have senators, the people within the FDR administration, etc. Actually starting to make moves early so that you would be ready by the time Pearl harbor and just sort of the general pre war Atlantic conflict between the United States and Nazi Germany so that you were really there. But it's great for us to tell that story, but we should understand that story as a failure in a certain sense. Well, actually I'm not even gonna say that's even true because the way you described it in the book was quote and I thought this was just funny in terms of thinking about the sort of impacts and why World War II is just unique in comparison to a lot of other conflic. The pre war mobilization period failed in the sense that it didn't deter Japan from attacking, it didn't deter Nazi Germany from deciding because it didn't have to from deciding to go to war against the United States. Now the reason why I just laughed as I read that is. No, it's actually a good thing that we didn't deter. It's good that there actually was a war because a world where the United States is just chilling and Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are sort of running wild over Europe and Asia is just like not a good one. But like I think in the case of the US and China, the deterrence thing is a good thing. I think obviously there are all sorts of critiques we can make of the ccp. But I think at a pure what is happening in the world level, they have not launched a second World war where you know, tens of millions of people are dying, where a literal holocaust is going on, et cetera. So it feels like just at a vibes level to make it super casual. It's not quite clear that we are reaching the ideal sort of getting ready in order to deter sort of benchmarks we would need to make when it comes to avoiding a conflict. What's your sort of assessment?
- [48:36]
C
Well, I Agree, and I disagree with that. I do think it's really important to. To point out, as you just did very effectively, that In World War II, we started building the arsenal of democracy too late to deter the war, but in time to win it. And yes, the world would have been different, in some ways worse, but in some ways better. Hundreds of thousands of American lives would have been saved if we had deterred. Deterred escalation, or if we had just built up enough military or defense industrial capacity that we could have helped the Soviets and the British and the Chinese defend themselves. I think the United States will not mobilize effectively in the end unless we get a clear political signal, a clear mandate that this is a priority because the world is unstable and at war. When Roosevelt gave his speech, or his fireside chat where he used the arsenal of democracy line, it was December 1940. France had fallen that summer. Japan was three years into its war in China. They controlled all of coastal China, essentially, as well as Manchuria. The Soviet Union was neutral. Britain was alone. Germany controlled essentially all of continental Europe. There were the Free French still resisting. But Germany was next poised to expand its influence over the Middle east and over the imperial possessions of Japan. Excuse me, the imperial possessions of France. And there was fighting in the Mediterranean and in North Africa as well. It was a world that looked very dire, even worse than today's world looks with the Russia, Ukraine war and the Middle east conflict.
- [50:42]
B
Conflict.
- [50:43]
C
And it took that long for Roosevelt to be willing to go and level with the American people and say, the world is on fire and it's going to come over here unless we deal with it over there. And I close my arsenal of democracy book with a plea for American politicians to level with public. In the same way that if we want to sustain our liberties and our prosperity and our way of life for another generation, we need to prevent the outbreak of worldwide war. Trump obviously hasn't done that, but in a meaningful way. Pete Heth, to his credit, is doing that in that he's going out every day and lambasting the primes and saying that the way we've been doing defense production for decades is unsustainable. And we're going to shake up the system and create a pathway for new companies to participate. And we are out there. The Treasury Department and USTR and others are signing economic security partnerships with Japan, South Korea and Australia and other partners. And I don't think we're doing enough. I don't think we're doing it in a sufficiently multilateral way or a sufficiently transparent way. I don't like many of the tactics that we're using to, to pursue this, but the United States is standing up and they we have gotten the memo that we need to put our military and the industrial capacity that underpins it in a better position to sustain deterrence into the2030s. And a lot of that is based on a keen awareness that the Taiwan case is where we are most likely to be tested. Now I've got my plenty of complaints about this administration, including how they've handled this issue. But we should be grateful that the politics are moving. And I can say this with some confidence because when I wrote my Arsenal of Democracy book, it came out last fall, we put it out in September and we argued if you it's it won't actually break the bank. To get the military on track to deter China into the2030s we basically need some hard choices, a bunch of institutional reforms and between 250 and $500 billion over five years. That's a lot of money, but it's not an incomprehensible amount of money in Pentagon terms. And I remember showing it to Neil Ferguson who's my colleague and mentor and collaborator and he said, ike, this stuff is never going to happen. It's never going to happen. But we had about 100 recommendations and it's been less than 12 months and already about a third of the money that we called for was appropriated in the big beautiful bill. And about a quarter of what we recommended has already been taken up and there's meaningful progress on another quarter. So I think we're on track to do most of what we recommended in the five year window that we called for and credit to Congress and the administration and to allies that are making the decisions to make that possible. But to level up we're going to need sustained political will and I want to see that from this administration and hopefully from Democrats too if they take over one or more chambers in Congress.
- [53:58]
B
And I have to say as we close, and this is really why, the more you focus, because it's kind of funny, you and I are both speaking
- [54:04]
A
to like left and right audiences.
- [54:05]
B
So the left is uncomfortable with our sort of democracy. I've heard this explicitly from former like NSC, NEC officials in the Biden admin. They're uncomfortable if they are still a democracy story because it involves war. And in many ways like the you know, center left to left are not well set up for that. And then the right is uncomfortable because they only think of FDR in New Deal terms. But, like, I think it's just helpful to say there are two different presidencies for, you know, 8 and 8. If you're conservative, put aside what happened between 1932 and 1940, what FDR just did, and what I think the Biden administration and then Trump administration has failed to do is take all those, like, hundred recommendation, like the equivalents that you're describing there, but then put it in a concerted, clear picture that just makes sense to everybody. Right? Like lend lease. And the garden hose metaphor of lending your neighbor a hose when their house is on fire and then not worrying how much the hose cost, but then asking for it afterwards is just like a perfect metaphor that takes an incredibly complicated policy issue and just merges it into one thing. There are so many things that. And same arsenal, democracy. That's a great articulation. No, we're not going to enter affirmatively into a war in Europe and Asia. We're going to instead arm Democratic powers. That's the speech in 1940, in December. But I think when you're describing how Pete Hecksoff has done all these Pentagon reforms and is attacking the primes, I think the primary failure that anyone left, right and center could pick up on is a failure to take those specific decisions that he's making and just integrating them into a clear and comprehensible structure that makes sense for people.
- [55:42]
A
People.
- [55:42]
B
Because I think a lot of Democrats that are listening are going to sort of raise their eyebrow when you refer to Pete Hexath as taking these good moves against the primes, because what they're going to see is, what do you mean? We just had a $1.5 trillion military budget after Trump said no more new wars. Like, that is just like the general, like, common sense reaction that people have, and we really just need that FDR skill set.
- [56:02]
C
I'm a Democrat. I wasn't. I wasn't in favor of this war, which I think is an illegal war, for sure. Yeah.
- [56:10]
B
It wasn't accusing you of anything. It's.
- [56:14]
C
I'm keenly, keenly aware of the difficulty here, and I think that you are. You are raising the right point. And the argument that has to be made is we need to depoliticize this and find a common language for talking about these issues that allows the two parties to set aside their very real disagreements at the door. And the way to do it is to. We. We started this conversation by talking about how China uses guiding principles to frame conversations. Now, I think that actually is a very effective thing to do. Talk about, rather than what we should do, talk about what we are trying to do and, and the principles of how we're trying to achieve it, which is we don't want to fight a devastating war with a nuclear armed adversary, and we don't want a crisis that takes us to the brink, that screws up our economy, that confounds our politics, that shatters our alliances. So we need to deter the crisis and the war and maintain an honorable peace. And to do that, we need to, at an acceptable price for the taxpayer in an age of high taxes and inflation, do it for the lowest possible cost, leveraging allied and partner complementarities whenever we can, getting allies to share the burden, and being as smart as we can about saving money and stewarding taxpayer resources effectively. And then once we have these capabilities, to use them and to signal them responsibly in a way that shows resolve and also restraint, that maintains peace. That's the goal is peace. Now, you can, you can emphasize the democracy aspect of it, you can emphasize the re industrialize America aspect of it, you can emphasize the technology aspect of it, or the allies aspect of it. There's, there's different ways that you can spin this. And the what works in the Georgia 5th congressional district might not work in the California 17th and vice versa. And that's okay. But what people like you and I can do is help to show that there's a way to engage on these issues, that people who are not military nerds, people whose primary issue is health care or education or immigration or some other issue, can look at this issue and say, okay, this here's a common sense thing that Americans need to do to secure our future. We can do it for an acceptable cost. And here's how we should go about approaching this in the least partisan possible way. And if I can do anything to put that into people's heads, that this is a thing that can be possible because we've done it before for this way, when the chips were down, then I think the book won't have been written in vain.
- [58:56]
B
That is an excellent place to end. Ike, thank you for joining me on the realignment. There are two very good books that have been referenced in this episode and folks should definitely check them out if they like the broad topics we've discussed. We want to really dive in and be knowledgeable on them. Thanks for joining me on the show.
- [59:13]
C
Thanks so much for having me on.