¶ Eyck Freymann joins The Chuck ToddCast
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get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos dot com slash chuck that is e t hos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and rates may vary. So while we are rightfully focused on what is happening in the Middle East with Iran, we've taken our eyes off the ball in two foreign policy stories. When I say we the collective, I guess political media have a little bit. One is, of course
¶ What is the strategy for defending Taiwan?
the war in Ukraine, and then the other is all is the pivot to Asia. I sort of joke about that. I'm old enough to remember in Obama's second term the pivot to Asia and even the first Trump administration realizing, yeah, you know, the whole point of being energy independent was to then confront China and the pivot to Asia. We have, i think, still waiting for that pivot. But my next
guest has a book on a topic. As you know, I've been covering it, probably a bit more than your average political podcaster has covered, which is the issue of Taiwan and the fact that twenty twenty seven, which was a marker that the Chinese had sort of set as
¶ The U.S. has a long-standing "One China" policy
sort of the is sort of when she wanted the Chinese military to be prepared to take Taiwan by force if necessary, is suddenly getting a lot closer. Right, object, the object in this Mirrea is quite close now, being twenty twenty seven. So the question is where's this going, where's this headed? And given what's been what we're still experiencing with the war in Ukraine, what frankly the United States has gotten itself into when it comes to Iran, what does this mean for Taiwan. Well, my guess is
Ike Freiman. He is the authors from of a new book called Defending Taiwan, a Strategy to prevent war with China, and he joins me. Now, Ike, it is nice to meet you.
Crazy meets you, Chuck. It's a pleasure to be on the show.
So let's start with the premise of your book. When you say defending Taiwan and a strategy. Is this a
¶ The goal is to let the Taiwan situation get resolved peacefully
diplomatic strategy that you want to outline, A military strategy, a strategy of deterrence, a strategy to eventually recognize independence for Taiwan? What is it?
This is a strategy you to prevent a devastating war with China, something that I think should be a goal uniting democrats, republicans, everyone in between. And a strategy to preserve an honorable piece in the Taiwan straight but also in the region as a whole. Something we can get into on this show is that Taiwan's fate is just connected to the fate of the broader region. The United States does not support Taiwan independence. We have a long
standing one China policy. It's decades old, it served us well, it's helped to deter war in the past.
I appreciate you saying that we've had a couple of presidents who seem to utter some sentences that put that policy in question. I mean, Joe Biden said some things out loud that no American president had said when it came to promising support for Taiwan.
That's true, and the One China policy is funny. It's a bit like a magic incantation because we talk a lot about it, but the substance of it is sort of was shifting and evolving. But that's okay, because there really is no such thing as a status quo in the Taiwan straight there never has been. There's a military balance, there's a diplomatic balance. The idea of the One China Policy is that on the whole, we support peace and
¶ What's the practical reason the Chinese want Taiwan so badly?
stability in this region. We don't take a position as to how Taiwan's status is ultimately decided. That's something for Taiwan and for Beijing to work out by themselves. But we don't want that to be resolved by force or by coercion. And especially since Taiwan has become a democracy, we want it to be democratically acceptable to the people of Taiwan. Why because Taiwan's fate for reasons of geography and a whole lot else is just tied up to
¶ Taiwan is a democratic success story, shining alternative to CCP
the fate of our treaty allies Japan, South Korea, Australia and beyond. And there's no way to prevent catastrophic cascading consequences in this region if Taiwan falls by force or coercion.
You know, whenever great powers shoot themselves in the foot, it's usually because they have a leader who's obsessed with an historic wrong in their mind, right, it is not usually about the current situation. Take Putin with Ukraine. He just believes Nope, Ukraine is not a country, it's part of Russia. And I get the same sense from she right that he views right. You you even say this that you label that Tay wants. He sees it as a lynchpin to what you call national rejuvenation. Yeah, which
means it's an ideological obsession, right of the leaders. But
¶ Taiwan's geography makes an invasion incredibly difficult
what is it other? Why do they take aside pride history? And maybe that is the strongest reasoning that they want what's the practical reason that they want this so bad?
It's a great question. This is how we should start. So as you say, Taiwan is the unfinished business of the Chinese Civil War, and especially since Taiwan has democratized.
Since Taiwan has become this staggering success of one of the most open and prosperous and technologically advanced societies on Earth, having it across the strait is a bit uncomfortable for the Chinese Communist Party, right because it's a living, breathing example of what another China could have looked like, a China that is both wealthier and more technologically advanced and
accepted in the international community and free. So that's understandable, and season Ping is deeply invested in this issue, but so were his predecessors. And you know, to study the history of this issue is to see that going back all the way to Mao, Chinese leaders have lusted after this prize and they have turned it into a domestic propaganda object. So the thing to understand, though, is that from the very beginning it has always been entwined with
¶ If China can take Taiwan, other dominoes in the region could fall
relations with the United States. When the Communists took over the mainland in the fall of nineteen forty nine, Now immediately gave his general's instructions to plan an invasion of Taiwan, and they looked into what an amphibious operation would look like, and they decided can't be done because the island's geography is just extremely difficult, and they've been working on that problem for seventy years and I think they're not satisfied yet,
but they're getting closer. Why does it matter. The first reason is geography. So Taiwan is a link in the first island chain, an archipelago that goes from Japan actually starting in the Russian Curl Islands, all the way down into the South China Sea. And you sort of have to look at a topographic map because in between those islands,
¶ Taiwan is a "nice to have" not "need to have" for China
the sea is often so shallow that you can't navigate through. So there's only a few choke points in between these islands that you can actually navigate through. And that means China's navy, which is now the world's largest in fleet size,
is like a burd in a cage. They're trapped in these little inland seas, the Yellow Sea, the East China See, the South Tennessee, and they want to burst out into the wider waters of the Western Pacific to project power globally, but they can't do it as long as the US has allies and partners all astride that island chain. So that's the first reason. A second reason is the semiconductor
of fabrication facilities on Taiwan. And then the third reason is the role that Taiwan plays in the regional economic order, and the way that Taiwan might fall would set a precedent for China's ability to use economic coercion against other countries in the region. And you put these all together and you see, if they can get this, all of the dominant fall and they can achieve national rejuvenation pretty quick.
Okay, I mean, I hear the case, but it still feels more ideological and caught up in history books, and it really is kind of me Chi wants no threat to China. China's built this massive economy. China's probably going to catch up in the chip space we see. You know, you know what is a necessity is the mother of
¶ China's project is "national rejuvenation", Taiwan is lynchpin of that
all invention, right, they have to innovate here. So this still feels like a vanity project more than an actual strategic necessity.
So I think the overall point that it's nice to have, not need to have, is right. And I end the book with vignette of the last time I was in Beijing in twenty twenty three, where I went to the National museum in Tiana and Square, and I went to this exhibit in the museum called Road to Rejuvenation, which tracks the century of Humiliation and then the party's rise and rule and season. Pain is obsessed with this exhibit.
One of the first things he did after taking power in twenty twelve is he took the whole polyp or standing committee there, and he said, this exhibit records our history and our present, and we're going to write the next chapter together. And then he added in twenty eighteen this glitzy new annex to celebrate his achievements in the so called New Era. And it's kind of interesting because the museum is packed with tourists from all over China and this exhibit the museum is, this exhibit is not.
It's empty, completely empty. I was there alone for two hours, and you can see the scope of his ambition. Military stuff is clearly part of it, but there's also a whole wall devoted to ethnic minorities where he's smiling serenely as the harmonized ethnic minorities sing and dance. And there's another about how China is going with green mountains and
¶ U.S. stretched thin, best chance for China is while Trump is president?
electric vehicles, and there's another of him you know, cheering athletes at the at the Olympics, and you see that National rejuvenation is about putting China at the forefront of literally every human endeavor, literally every human endeavor. It's about getting rich, technologically advanced, green, harmonious, culturally advanced. And so Taiwan is the lynchment of that arch. But if he rolls the iron dice, he has a whole lot to lose.
And that is the that's the double edged sword of his ambition, and that is ultimately why he is deterrible. But you have to show him that if he messes up over Taiwan, he could put the whole project in jeopardy.
Well, this, let's get to deterrence here. I am. I am a real pessimist when it comes to Taiwan because I think that if and this is where I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert in how how Chinese communist policy decision making comes. But if you're just doing game theory in your China and you look at the current geopolitical situation, you're never going to probably have a more pliant American president than the one you have now.
¶ Remainder of Trump's term is unique opportunity for Xi
The United States is stretched right now financially and militarily particularly we're seeing it in the Middleast where suddenly we're going to end up not being able to sell certain things to Ukraine because we need it for the war with Iran. And if there's ever a time to do it, it's probably while Trump's still president in this current situation,
especially since now the appetite with the American public. You know, whatever whatever anti China sentiment one can use to rally the rally Americans around the flag is a lot harder are already due to the unpopularity of this war with the run right. And you know, I sort of I have always wondered in my head, boy, is it how do you sell the American public on defending this island halfway around the globe right that American blood and treasure
should be used to defend this island. I think it's just very difficult, just in the current moment we're in the lack of credibility American political institutions have with the average voter these days, so you're just going to have a lot of skepticism. You know how the Chinese think better than I do. You're the expert here, Am I off a? Am I overthinking? This is this not how the Chinese are thinking.
I think there's a lot of truth in what you say, but I don't fully agree. I fully agree that the remainder of Trump's term is a uniquely tempting moment because Trump is so transactional, because he doesn't think strategically.
Look, the Chinese think they may may be able to get our defense of Taiwan as part of the trade negotiation.
Absolutely, so there's everything out. There's every reason for them to try to see what they can get out of Trump at the negotiating table, and then, failing that, to squeeze him and see what he gives up. And I think when we talk about dates, we need to recognize it's not a question of whether China does it or doesn't. They are already doing it. They are squeezing Taiwan right now.
It's a coersion right now, every direction.
It's the Boa Constrictor strategy using every tool of their
¶ How should we read Xi's purges of top military leaders?
national power, Squeezing Taiwanese airlines to list themselves as Chinese on their websites, you know, pressuring third countries to extradite Taiwanese nationals to Taiwan to China for trial, you know, establishing a like a near permanent presence of drones and other stuff all around the airspace and waters around Taiwan.
Getting other countries that had diplomatic relations with Taiwan to drop it. Yeah, and they've coerced a few to do that exactly.
So the question becomes, I think their plan a is just squeeze Taiwan to death, or squeeze Taiwan to the point where it, like Hong Kong realizes no one the cavalry isn't coming. We just have to negotiate, and then we signed some piece. They signed some piece of paper that says one country, two systems, Taiwan version. And then she's in Pinte Claar's victory. And that's that's the Hong
Kong model. And that's a lot more attractive than rolling the dice on an invasion, which is Russia showed in Ukraine could go wrong.
Right.
But here's the thing, China has a political calendar too. Twenty twenty seven is a Party Congress year. And remember the last Party Congress year. Granted it was COVID, but it was also COVID was over everywhere in the world. She's in paying locked everyone in their house for.
A year, we took advantage of it.
For another, that's how paranoid he was going into the last party Congress to get his third term. So now he's going up for a fourth term. He's completely cleared
¶ Xi Jinping doesn't give many interviews, remains an enigma
out the top brass in the People's Liberation Army. I mean, do you really think there aren't more purges coming?
Well? What do we how should we read these purges? I mean, you know, I thought, I think look as usual, right, you know, we Americans, our American political leaders are just terrible at putting ourselves in somebody else's shoes, whether it was Bush looking into the soul of Putin or Biden and his friendship as when when she was vice Premier, and frankly the wrong assumptions he made about the related
personal relationship he had developed with him. I think there's been a there's just been massive miscalculations on the American side of things when it comes to both Putin and she. She's a much she's got a much bigger appetite, I think, at least in his head. Then I think a lot of us thought, and I don't think we view Chinese leaders in the same way we view Russian leaders. I guess whatever it is or we just we assumed there'd be pragmatism and transactionalism, because for the most part, that's
how the Chinese have behaved diplomatically around the world. They're very transactional, and so I think that is probably given us false hope. But internally she's behaving like a paranoid dictator.
Well, I mean, he's not a man who's given a whole lot of interviews, So in his biography you can read the tea leaves and come up with your own psychoanalytical profile.
Yeah, we seem like we don't know much about them, but we don't.
But we do know that when he was I mean, Joseph Tarisian, my former Hoover colleague, is a wonderful biography of his father.
Yes, I've had I've interviewed him for this page picture for the same reason because I'm obsessed with trying to learn more about she. And it's interesting that it was it was easier to write a book about his father, and it is about him.
And Joseph went to all these former archives in the post Soviet world. But what you see is, you know, a portrait of a young man who was raised as much of a princeling as a princely can be, and he has everything ripped away from him. He is everything ripped away, and he's sent down to the countryside to be re educated by pig farmers and his education is disrupted, so so he has to get essentially fake degrees later on,
and his sister kills herself because of the harassment. This is a deeply traumatic moment and his his his conclusion is he's going to join the party, become redder than red. But it's a it's a traumatic experience in his young
¶ Western intelligence agencies have struggled to penetrate China
life which shows him that no matter how much security and status and fame you have, it can come apart very quickly. And I think what we know about him. Kevin Rudd, the former Australian Prime Minister, speaks beautiful Chinese and has spent time with him. Rudd recalls in his book You Know, sitting with Season Ping by a bonfire and talking with him about the world and just being taken by how afraid he is of color, revolutions and
all these things that could tear China apart. So I think if your Season Ping and you look at this Taiwan question, you're deeply skeptical about your your forces. When your generals say no, we can do this, I think I think you look at this and you say, there's a whole lot of ways that this could go wrong, that the Americans could use this issue against me, and
I think you are not in a hurry. I think he does want to be the guy who gets it done, but I think he's very happy to do this through a diplomatic solution that involves signing a piece of paper that allows him to declare victory and then kicking the reintegration or whatever to his successor. This is the thing about national rejuvenation, right. It's a wonderful goal to set because the deadline is twenty forty nine, when he'll be ninety six years old, so he can claim credit for
it all. But if there's anything that's not quite many loose ends that aren't quite wrapped up, he can pass in his successor with no loss of face. And I think that's important. He hasn't tied his hands here. If you go into the National Museum, it's not like he's saving a wall or a trophy case in the exhibit for Taiwan. There's just not a mention of Taiwan.
¶ Xi is in full control of the PLA after the military purges
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¶ The last thing you want to be in CCP is the rumored successor to Xi
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That's getsol dot com promo code toodcast for thirty percent off. And yes, I too, am a customer. Let's talk about the purge of the military leaders, because that's another thing. What does that tell us about our own intelligence capabilities inside the Chinese government? We frankly the West in general, Western intelligence agencies, And look, I have my own concerns about the equality of intelligence right now because for a variety of reasons, we have an American president who doesn't
trust the IC. You probably have rank and file i C members that don't trust the leaders. You also have other countries not wanting to share with the US anymore because of this. I mean, there's a there's sort of a cascade of reasons why we may we may We
¶ Xi may issue threats to Taiwan during their 2028 election
may have bigger problems with our own intelligence apparatus than we've had in quite some time. But it feels like we're not alone in not fully realizing how that this purge was possible. I mean, one of his closest allies, right, one of his longest relationships, but I think both politically and personally was part of this purge. What's spot? I mean, is it just all paranoia? Is it disappointment in the military. Is it a concern he didn't have enough control over the PLA?
So unfortunately, I don't know the answer to you.
Well, we just talked about we have no intelligence.
We have no intelligence. I'm I'm his open source, right, but based on the open source, we have no idea. And I think anyone who has confidence that it's one way or the other on Taiwan is just pitching it op ed because you can spend the story either way. So we don't know why he did it, but we can say something about the situation now that he has done it. Now that he has done it, he's in full control of the PLA. How do you know, Well, look at the ORG chart. There's more empty chairs than
full chairs. So he's now running the show. What he doesn't have yet is a new cast of hand picked characters who will carry out his wishes. Now we don't know why he did it, but we do know that it's a little strange to start a war or start a crisis that runs a high risk of escalation to war if you don't have military officers at the top that you trust. I think going into the next party Congress, he has some big decisions to make, not just about
the PLA, but about succession. So far he has raised a couple of or a loud rumors to brew about a couple of bright young things.
Like traveling their version of travelings, aren't they right? Yeah?
And then he has smacked him down with a hammer. So the lesson has become the last thing you want to be in the CCP is like rumored to be the next in line.
That's like, that's like today's Republican Party in America.
But yes, something like that, something like that. I wonder where we got that from. So so, but seriously, he's not getting any younger. You know, there's all these rumors about his health. Who knows what's true, right, But he's
¶ How does the U.S. deter coercion of Taiwan by China?
either going to go in with a successor in mind or he's going to go in without a successor in mind, he's probably going to have more purges he wants to do. And if if he wants to move against Taiwan, why initiate something that could become an open ended cluster, you know, his equivalent of the Russia's invasion of Ukraine or are Ron War. When he's got this, you know, he has to deliver his work report and he wants everyone to clap,
and he wants everything to be controlled. Much more likely he gets a statement, gets everyone to sign the statement that gives him permission to take a harder line on Taiwan, and then he comes out of in twenty twenty eight with basically a new mandate. Then Taiwan has elections that spring, and he's like, okay, guess what the DPP, the current ruling party, isn't allowed to win or else? Oh interesting, I think that's a much more plausible timetable. Trump will
be a lame duck. We will be in the midst of our twenty twenty eight cycle. Who wants a war with Taiwan over twenty.
Do you see twenty twenty eight actually as the moment to move a week er Trump? But Trump's still there, and in America that is going to be more focused on its domestic situation than wanting to.
Yeah, because because if their strategy is the Boa constrictor strategy,
¶ War games showing China wins more often are not a crystal ball for reality
then they're just going to keep doing it and at some point Taiwan's going to choke unless we intervene. So this is that's the problem with thinking about deterrence as like we're trying to stop him from doing X. No, he's already doing it. So his his threat is you Americans, It's on you to draw the line right, and when you draw the line, the markets for the Nasdaq collapses and everyone panics, and then you are accepting the consequences of holding us to account. But it's really on us.
Yeah. Well, I mean, look, this is why Oroan's probably playing out as about as well for she's interests as
¶ A high intensity war would result in the U.S. destroying PLA navy & air force
you could possibly put out. Let me go to the It seems as if we know how to do deterrence for kinetic deterrence right where we will sell arms to Taiwan and we will create new military alliances or call them diplomatic alliances that are pretty that are quasi military alliances. The QUAD, I think is on its way to becoming a you could see how it could become, at least as far as Chinese deterrence, a military alliance Japan, Australia,
the United States, India maybe right, and that's possible. And some of this has to do with something that I
¶ U.S. has advantage over China in cyber warfare
did a couple of years ago at Meet the Press, and what I know many a think tank has done is when you do the military wargaming of what would happen if China invaded Taiwan and we decided to defend Taiwan, help aside with Taiwan and help them do it, that China wins that standoff seven times out of ten when you go through these wargame exercises, So we seem to
know what needs to be done. If we got into an actual kinetic back and forth with China and we're trying to fix that, it seems as if we do not have an effective deterrence strategy to this boa constrictor strategy right that this is it's and I don't know what deterrence would work. You've got a Taiwanese population that is the more they flex independence, the more that it seems that that's worse for them. You know, what does deterrence of the Boa constrictor strategy.
Look, okay, I'm going to agree wholeheartedly with half of your question and challenge the premise of the other. Okay, So for the last fifty years, really for the last seventy years, we have maintained deterrence. Since mal first gave his generals the instruction to you know, consider the invasion of Taiwan in nineteen fifty. We have deterred aggression. We have kept the peace in the region through what we call the strategy of denial, which is just showing we're
¶ U.S. can stabilize the situation by responding proportionally
militarily stronger. We don't even have to use nukes to do it. If China moves against Taiwan, we can defeat their ability to put men on the beaches and to take the island.
Well, that was obvious through two thousand.
Yeah, So with the wargames that you cite, I wouldn't put any stock at all in those. Basically, war games are not crystal balls, they're not simulations of what's going to happen there. There games to explore what one side or the other might do in specific situations and like expand your imagination. So I recently took part in a wargame where I was playing China and nukes were involved, and like, yeah, nukes to make them realistic. But you know,
there's a whole lot of assumptions. You say we want to do and you know, shoot the shoot at the following ships, and you either sink them or you don't. But that's just a computer model in the best case.
Uh.
As far as I understand, my last book was called The Arsenal of Democracy, was about the specific military and military industrial parts of this. My best understanding is that if we fought China today, a high intensity war in the Western Pacific, it would be nasty. Thousands of Americans would die, but within a matter of days to a couple of weeks, pretty much all of the PLA Navy
¶ China thinks they can win a PR war, change Taiwan politically in their favor
would be at the bottom of the Taiwan Straight most of their air force would be obliterated. We would essentially maritime wars, air naval wars, the kind we haven't fought for eighty years. They work fundamentally differently from land wars. It's not about attrition and holding back reserves. It's just about who can deliver the hardest, most effective opening punch.
And a lot of that has to do with cyber and electronic warfare and other classified stuff that allows you to fry the other guy's eyes and ears, and we have various advantages in those capabilities which are super classified. The balance is tilting. It's not as much of a sure bed as it was before. But I think it's safe to say if China thought they could defeat us in a high end conventional war, our problems would go
way beyond Taiwan. It would be about the defense of Japan and the Philippines and South Korea and Australia and Guam and Hawaii, and China would be acting in a much less cautious and restrained way. However, as you say, China doesn't necessarily have to think they could win that war if they're confident that they can keep the contest in a crisis sort of short of war. And this is your question about how to deter the gray zone strategy.
I think the basic idea should be we need to show we're going to push back proportionally to maintain an overall stable situation. And that's tricky because let's say they have thousands of fishing vessels, civilian fishing vessels which are
¶ American public has no appetite for war, Iran war unpopular from Day 1
paramilitary trained by the PLA, that are hanging out around Taiwan harassing shipping. We're not going to do the same thing to China. So we need to stabilize the situation in another domain. And it's tricky to establish, like what is proportional, But basically, according to these age old traditions, we don't have like an explicit military to military relationship with Taiwan, Like certain levels of senior US officials aren't
supposed to go to Taiwan. And as China has proceeded with this both constrictive strategy we have it has been disclosed, sent more trainers to Taiwan to help them develop their forces and that kind of thing. Pushing back in another domain to help Taiwan defend itself, improve the confidence of the people of Taiwan. That's kind of the best we can do. And there's a whole bunch of stuff we can do. Energy partnerships, technology partnerships, giving visas to Taiwanese,
more direct flights. There's a whole lot of stuff that we can do that can stabilize an overall balance. But we have to threaten China. If you push harder in the gray zone, we will push harder to.
The Let's talk about Taiwan's domestic politics, because there's not Look just like Russia did with Ukraine starting fifteen years ago. You know, Russia was trying to win it at the ballot box, right, They were basically trying to trying to win find comp client leaders that would want to stay
¶ Could Taiwanese who want independence just flee the country?
in the sphere of Russia's influence. And then when they gave, when they frankly, you know, took a couple of losses there for them to decide, all right, we can't do this this way. We're going to now try it the other way. I think China still thinks they can win this when a pr campaign in Taiwan. Is that what you think?
Absolutely? And I think that's another reason not to invade.
Right, So if you look at the surveys, invade, you harden the opposition. I mean, Ukraine's never going to be in Russia's sphere of influence in our lifetimes, exactly right, exactly too many Ukrainians. Do you think they're angry now? And do you think they were angry at the start of this war?
And this raises a really important point about public opinion that is missed in surveys. That gets back to the point you asked earlier about why would the American people go for this? Why would an American president go for this? And the answer I'm a historian, so I think about these things is sort of pass dependencies. That's why I'm trained. But when you look at the history as of great power of wars or even great power crises like the Cuban missile crisis, these things do not fall out of
the clear blue sky. They emerge over the course of years, months, then weeks through a path dependent arc where someone does this, and then we do that, and then they do this, and then we do that, and we put reputational capital on the line saying hey, publicly, don't do this or else. And then by the time it's time for choosing, we have skin in the game and backing down means something totally different than it did at the beginning. And maybe we choose to back down, but we have chips on
the table now. And that is why I can't think of an example in American history where a president has decided, for reasons of strategy, we need to go to war or we need to go to the brink of war, and the American public hasn't come along. This Iran war may actually be the first time. This is the first time we're an American president. She'll military success was not greeted with a decisive approval from the American public.
But this was also unusual the first three days.
But he never gave a speed He never gave an Oval Office address to the American people saying, hey, listen,
¶ Occupying Taipei would make Kabul & Mosul look like child's play
like I know this is people don't want this. Here's my reasoning. He still hasn't even articulated what we're fighting for, what the warriams are. I think at Taiwan situation would be different. A Taiwan situation, China would China would push, and it might be the case that either Taiwan's morale implodes or our morale implodes, or both, and then Taiwan
just gets China gets the prize of that fighting. That's possible, but I think equally possible, in fact, probably base case, if China starts squeezing Taiwan, we do posturing to try to make them stop, and then they do a little more, and we do a little more, and we do a little more, and they maybe mobilize their forces on side of the strait or start doing economic coercion, and we start surging ships to the region, and you know the market starts getting nervous, and then by the time we
actually get to the to the precipice, it's a completely different situation.
¶ A blockade of Taiwan is Plan B, not Plan A
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¶ A blockade would turn the entire world against China
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check out. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace, so use that code. The other thing that I fear is about to happen with for those that want Taiwan independent
¶ China more likely to "quarantine" Taiwan than blockade
is that they flee the country and given what's happening with the big chip maker there at t SMC, thank you. I was going to say TCMs and the fact that they're basically stuck having to build their business in the United States now right, something that it's been fascinating to watch, where it's so clear that company wishes they weren't doing this. They're doing this because they feel like they have to,
not because they want to. Could the unintended consequence be that those that want to fight just leave, and then those that stay just want to have peace and then become more compliant.
Possibly, uh, But I think it would take a lot to get to the point where all those people leave. You know, there's elites. And when I go to Taipei and I have, you know, friends who are in business, and you know, they're going out to Omakase every night, and like some of them have Canadian citizenship for their kids, and they've got the ski chalet and Switzerland or whatever. And some of these people do exist in Taiwan. But for the most part, ordinary people, they don't have a
place to go. They don't have a visa status that allows them to just pick up and go to Japan or Australia or somewha else. And it takes a lot to walk away in abandon your home. And what could happen and what I warnt about in the book, so you mentioned wargames, right. The wargames usually start with the wargame I played a couple of weeks ago. It started with you know, in the pre turn, US Team China had blown up a US aircraft carrier. Like, so that's
¶ China has grown a middle class that will demand services & stability
like T equals zero, that's like the first turn. But that's not in the real world. How a crisis happens. The crisis starts happening before those first shots. And usually what would happen historically is people would say, well, this is basically a non issue. It's a non issue. It's a non issue until everyone panics at the same time, and then how do you get everyone out of the country, Like we thought that the evacuations from Saigon and Cobble
were hard. Try type ai right, right, Taiwan is a is a wealthy, sophisticated democracy with tens of millions of people. There's eight hundred thousand foreigners there right now, including tens of thousands of Americans. We got thousands of Brits, of Japanese, of Germans, of Australians and so on. How do you
get all those people out? If I'm China, I want to put the squeeze on to see if the Americans yank their people, because once the foreigners try to pull out their citizens, what is that message say to the people of Taiwan. You're on your own.
You're on your own. But doesn't this war not start with a I mean you sort of seem to outline this not with a shot fire, but with essentially a blockade of the island, right, I mean that's the I think the wargame I participated and that was the beginning, right, and then it got the United States to send military you know that that's what triggered the US military response of then sending a presence to try to break the blockade.
I think the blockade is not plan A. I think blockade is planned B for a couple of reasons. First
¶ China's economic ties to other countries create their own deterrence
of all, according to the Taiwan Relations Act, if the President wants to ben in Taiwan, the President's going to ban in Taiwan. But according to the Taiwan Relations Act and probably eighty percent of Congress, a blockade of Taiwan is tantamount to an invasion for the reason that China is trying now to get the TSMC chip making facilities, and they're declaring war'st the people of Taiwan the civilians
of Taiwan. Blockade means no food, no fuel, nothing in or out, and that I think creates such a humanitarian emergency that it's just such an appalling thing.
We're in the middle of doing this right now in our hemisphere.
It's true, it's true, but Taiwan, among other things, is the epicenter of the ai Revolution. Ninety nine percent of the in video GPUs that that are training the next Claude and GPT are coming from Taiwan. You don't want China to just seize those let alone sees those factories completely intact with all the engineers. So I think if they blockade, they create a panic, they get the whole world against them, in the same way the whole world is against Iran right now.
Interesting what they could just think a blockade is so aggressive that those that might be neutral about this issue thinking, hey, this ain't our fight.
Yeah, much much much, much much more like likely they do it.
That's what happened with Ukraine, right the invasion. Russia's invasion United, you know, brought Europe together in a way that I think Putin failed to imagine.
Yes, yes, and I think much more likely they do what I call it quarantine or some have called an indirect control scenario.
What is quarantine? What what makes quarantine different from a black eight?
What's different is it's not saying nothing can come or go. It's just saying we control what comes and goes.
Gotcha.
So it's saying, you want to fly from San Francisco to Taipei. Cool, connect in the port of Shanghai or Fujo, in the airport in Fujo and clear customs.
And decide whether you clear customs or not.
Will decide whether or not. Oh, you want to you want to export these chips terribly, Sorry, you have to go through this port in China. And that means essentially Timewan's on it. If we if we give into that principle, we're checkmated because we're not going to be able to send more diplomats, more military, Taiwan will never be able
¶ China is 1/3rd of world manufacturing, in every global supply chain
to build the weapons it needs to defend itself, and China will seize control over the chip supply chain with those factories intact. And that's a much. But then they can say we're not waging war against the civilians. We're not saying you can't send oil and food, right, and then blockade you know, the really medieval stuff. That's a plan B, and everyone knows it's there. And if we don't play ball, it's always something that they can blockade. Is what you're saying is blockade might as well be
a declaration of war. Correct, Let's let's let's end this conversation with something that I think we're I'm constantly you know, we all know this. Dictatorships they and slowly.
Then quickly, yeah, right when things go south with the people, they suddenly you know, it's incremental, and then it's it's suddenly gone. There's a massive youth unemployment in China. There's all of the you know, I've I could continue my My optimism about US China relationships are simply that China's you know, they've grown a middle class that is going to demand some services. Now we see it in our more mature economy, and and you know that that can
be the lynchpin between domestic strife and domestic equility. You know this is China's economy has not been great as far as they've at least when you and everything is by comparison. Yes, they're still growing in a large faster clip than than we are. Well, we're two different economies or something.
I don't think they are. By the way, the data.
Interesting, you think the numbers are. They're fudging their numbers a little bit. But the point is it's pretty clear.
¶ Some version of TPP is coming back because we don't have a choice
This is they've got an issue. They've got cranky middle class, they've got youth unemployment, they have their own population issues. How stable are things domestically in your view? You know, again, it's like with Russia, that economy is horrendous, and yet you know they're just for now sticking with them because there isn't an obvious alternative at the moment.
Yeah, I mean, I think you said it best. In an authoritarian regime, things are stable until they're not, because no one wants to go against the guy with the guns.
Right.
China has some massive structural headwinds, and I think the way to think about their economy is the only way they have left to grow is through exports, which is another way to say this is the only way they have.
Well, that's deterrence.
That's great, stealing growth from other countries, sure, but.
In some ways, if they don't have stable relations around the world, they can't grow.
Yes, So that's this is the economic piece of min deterrence. Concept in the book. I think, you know, the first question with economic deterrence is if we go to the brink, do we have a contingency plan for the crisis and we do not just barrel into the crisis or that thinking that markets are going to go crazy, you know, prices will go up.
How do we deal with this?
So you need a plan for that, But then you also need a plan how do you use a Taiwan crisis as an opportunity to reset the world economy on terms that are more favorable to the rest of the world and less favorable to China and the you know, India, Brazil, Indine, these countries may not take our position exactly on Taiwan, but none of them want to be hollowed out the way the American rust belt was by just the tsunami
¶ In the best case scenario, we're headed for another cold war
of Chinese experts. And that's the world that China wants, a world where China makes everything and you they're the factory and you're the farm. Like they want to turn turn us into Argentina. That's the goal, and no one
wants that. And so how do you build a coalition of not just your allies but the whole rest of the world and say if God forbid, deterrence fails over Taiwan, whatever happens over the fate of Taiwan, we have an idea for how we're going to re set use this to reset the global trading system in the way we're China can't pull this stuff anymore, and then you're taking the juice out of their economic machine. One hundred million
people in China are employed making stuff for export. You take those jobs away, that is what implodes their regime. But you can't do that overnight. It's a ten year, fifteen year project.
Well, and it's now a twenty year project, right because this president has set back economic relations with every single country on this gloat on this earth with his tariff policies that have completely shaken up relationships. I mean, look at this deal that China cuts with Canada. We work for the last decade to keep Canada from doing these deals with China, and now, understandably, so what choice. If you're in Canada's shoes, you look at it like, we
can't we can't trust the Americans at this moment. For our for our economic We're gonna have to We're going to have to play ball with everybody. I mean, how much has this tariff strategy of Trump's made it harder to rally what you just described here, which would be very rational economic deterrence of China. How much, how much? How much of a setback this has been.
It's been one step forward but two steps back. And the reason is China is so big of a challenge. China is a third of global manufacturing. You cannot just stop buying stuff from them overnight. Won't work. They're in every supply chain and you can't tell other people to do that either. So we learned this on Liberation Day. We're like, we're going to go called Turkey on trade with China. Ooops that that's not gonna work. And countries that are even more dependent on trade with China are
never going to do that. But what we have discovered is, you know, no credit to the Trump administration on this, just credit to China's predatory trade policies. China is hollowing
¶ Invading via the Taiwan strait is incredibly difficult
out the industrial base of the European Union, like Europeans are raising the populist parties because Volkswagen is dying, right, The economic heart of the European Union is dying. And it's if you go to India, if you go to South Korea, it's it's the same thing. They're being swamped by Chinese products. So the solution is, in principle, as many countries as possible should put up tariffs on China,
and they should take them down on one another. Because what broke the global trading system is not that trade itself is bad. It's that we allowed a communist country that doesn't play by the rules into the system.
Yeah, boy, it'd be nice if if America created this coalition. Maybe we could call it the Trans Pacific Partnership and it was a alliance of of Asian Pacific countries not named China and the United States. Oh wait, we tried that.
TPP isn't coming back, but some version could really use it.
¶ Chinese military is untested, could they "test" somewhere else?
Version of it, some version of it is. And you already see the beginnings of this with the US deal with Japan. Just announce on the Takaichi visit. There's going to be co op collaboration on economic security, supply chains, critical minerals. We're working with the Europeans on this stuff. Why because China is so big of a challenge that actually this time we don't have a choice but resetting
the terms of this international trading system. If we're doing it in peacetime, it's going to be step by step. It's going to be political and messy. What we should be thinking about is if God forbid, deterrence fails with China, there's the question of what you do economically on day one to prevent the financial crisis, and then there's the question of what you want the world to look like on day one hundred, day one thousand, day two thousand,
¶ China is taking lessons from Russia in Ukraine & U.S. in Iran
after the immediate hostilities are over. This is like a break the glass scenario. So if this happens with China, our trading, our economic relationship with them won't be the same. Maybe we'll have some probably we will not break it entirely, but it won't be the same. So what what is our vision for what it should look like? And that is the contingency plan that we should be doing now.
You're not going to have like a perfect plan, you know, in a in a desk and you take it out of the envelope, but you can agree on principles, the basic ideas of like how that system should be organized. Those are the conversations we should be having now to imagine that the world after wouldn't necessarily just be economic mutually sure destruction, there's another way through, you.
Know, you're actually outlining and this look, I kind of think that we ought to be thinking like that, that we're basically about to have another Cold War in the best case, right, And in some ways, isn't that what you're articulating, Like let's let's let's put together a plan to effectively win a Cold war against China kind of.
But this, this situation is different from the Cold War and some fundamental ways, and the biggest one is that we're all economically interconnected.
¶ China doesn't want to fight the U.S. - It's far too risky
No, right, the Soviets had no economic skin in the game, right, It made it easy to isolate them, and it made it easy for them to then, you know, make a common cause with those isolated with them exactly.
And what's different about the world now is that not only are we and the US and China deeply economically interconnected, but even if you imagine a world where we get divorced or we just like pretend to get divorced, we're still going to be trading with each other via Mexico and Europe and India and everyone else. So there's no there's no universe in which you bifurcate the world, and it's just like China on the one side and US
and everyone on the other. It's going to be a trifurcated world where like, if deterrence collapses and we have to reset the economic relationship, we're going to be trading some with them. Maybe we'll still buy their nikes, but
we won't buy their iPhones or something. And then there's a whole lot of countries in between the trade with both sides, and we don't want those countries to sell our nvidio chips to China, and we don't want those countries to sell components that China can sabotage remotely access or something into us. And so that means you need
to reimagine how the whole economic system is wired. Because you actually have to have control over the entire supply chain nowhere goods are coming from, know where all the components come from. That's a completely different architecture. You need institutions that don't exist to do that. But that may be the world that we're moving towards.
Well, like, this was pretty thought provoking, and you know, you dealt with so much nuance, it's hard to turn this into a fifty fifteen second social media bite.
Come on, now, Well, it's podcasts like yours that help us dig into the details.
No, I mean, it's it sounds like you don't think this is inevitable, and you're actually assume at this point that we're probably not going to have a kinetic hot Connecticut kinetic military exchange with China this decade. I think you see work. Just the way you're speaking, you seem pretty confident that I know you said hope, but that if.
We if we do, I think we'll win, but are not ready.
That is what you're saying.
I think there's a lot of uncertainty, but I like our odds more than theirs.
And you think she is reality based enough to know this.
It's so basically, it's just really really hard to get tens of thousands of guys across the taime went straight. I mean, this is like, this is one of the nastiest waterwiess in the world. You've got like fifty mile an hour winds, fifty foot waves in the islands in the middle of the strait.
The trees go aside, Well just wait till we have you know, sharks with lasers on them as well.
Right, and and undersea drones and all the and the Yeah, lots of lasers involved, but like, what you really don't want to do if your season paying is put fifteen thousand troops on the beaches and then be unable to supply them and watch them get massacred. So a lot has to go right for him. There's many pathways that are just passive least resistance.
This I should have asked as sooner. But it's a question I'm meant to ask.
Is the.
You know, there's always been this question. Boy, the Chinese military hasn't been tested. How would they test themselves? Is there another action they might take that has little that we don't care about, that they may do that they may, you know, in some ways the way the Russians you know, went into Georgia and things like that, or is there some is there some way that they that that they would want to test their military might on a soft target.
So you ask, you ask you is there a way that they can test? I think the thing to understand is that they have a direct pipeline of knowledge from the Russia Ukraine War, and they have a direct pipeline of knowledge from our ran.
And that's their that's their test.
They're using this as they are supplying the entire Russian military industrial ecosystem, but particularly Russia's drone base. And then just as importantly, they're learning the counter drone tech, right, the electronic warfare mainly that you use to kill drones. And then I am sure they've got a whole lot of spooks in Ukraine, yep, trying to buy up Ukrainian know how. So they're seeing both sides of that war in a way that we're not. That's the first thing.
And then the second thing is in the Middle East, they're watching all they're seeing how we do a high intensity bombing campaign, and if we go in with special forces and Marines, they're going to see that too, and they're going to learn from that. And I wouldn't be surprised if they will have some advisors on the ground in Iran, very very quietly. But still it's like studying in a textbook. It's not the same thing as actually
fighting for the thing. And as we said it you're in this conversation, it's one thing to learn how to fight a land war over years and years and years. It's another thing when you're fighting a war in the air and at sea, where basically everything's decided in the first forty eight hours, because if you lose your key assets in the first forty eight hours, there's no way you can come back and win, and that it puts more of an impetus on us to win quick and go big. I don't think they want to fight a
war with us. It's too right.
This is terrific. I really appreciate it. Good luck with the book again. The book is called Defending Taiwan. Make sure I get it right and reading Defending Taiwan a strategy to prevent war with China. Like I said, very nuanced, very rational, and a very important conversation. Really appreciate it.
Thank you, Chuck.
Appreciate it.