Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe.
Speaker 3: Wasn't thal Joe?
Speaker 2: In preparation for this conversation today, I sat down this morning.
Speaker 2: We're recording on what is it? November twentieth, that's correct,
Speaker 2: and I typed US China into Google news results. Here's
Speaker 2: a selection of headlines. US Commission says China could invade
Speaker 2: Taiwan with little advance warning, China leveraged India Pakistan conflict
Speaker 2: to trial and tout its military strengths, Pacific Islands on
Speaker 2: frontline of future US China war, and then finally the
Speaker 2: US China Chip War. Are we ready?
Speaker 3: I was just gonna say, I feel like the Chips
Speaker 3: in particular, or every other day, there's a different headline
Speaker 3: about what's allowed or what's not. But to your point,
Speaker 3: this is the story. I mean, there's Ai, there's a
Speaker 3: couple other things, and then the US China relationship.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it seems almost inevitable at this point that
Speaker 2: we talk about US and China in competitive terms, right
Speaker 2: and also in militaristic terms. And this has been going
Speaker 2: on for as long as I can remember.
Speaker 4: At this point, it's building up right, Like really in
Speaker 4: the last decade. You know, when we were younger, thought oh,
Speaker 4: we're just going to trade together and maybe they'll even
Speaker 4: liberalize it become a liberal democracy.
Speaker 3: One day, it didn't happen. But in the last ten
Speaker 3: years or nine years, it's really picked up. How much
Speaker 3: people are framing this in military terms.
Speaker 2: Well, I wrote that paper back in like two thousand
Speaker 2: and two that China was going to invade Taiwan by
Speaker 2: the two thousand and eight Olympics. So my view of
Speaker 2: this might be different to yours. My view has also
Speaker 2: been proven to be incredibly incorrect, So I'll leave it
Speaker 2: at that. But you know, we recorded this episode with
Speaker 2: Henry Wang a few months ago where we were talking
Speaker 2: about US China relations and he mentioned one person, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he said, you got to get him on the show.
Speaker 2: You got to get his perspective on this view of
Speaker 2: US China competition and are we doomed destined to end
Speaker 2: up in a military conflict. So here we are, We're
Speaker 2: going to do it.
Speaker 3: We're in his office. Let's do it, all right.
Speaker 2: We have, in fact, the perfect guest. We have Professor
Speaker 2: Graham Allison. He is the Douglas Dylan Professor of Government
Speaker 2: at Harvard University, and he, of course is the one
Speaker 2: who coined the term the Thucidities trap to describe the
Speaker 2: potential outcome of US China competition. So really the perfect
Speaker 2: person to speak to about this, Professor Allison, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for coming on all thoughts.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: So I mentioned the thucidities trap, and I think a
Speaker 2: lot of listeners will know what it is, and probably
Speaker 2: a substantial portion of our listeners are really into ancient
Speaker 2: Greek history and know all about it. But when you
Speaker 2: first came up with that term, was there a light
Speaker 2: bulb moment in your head where you thought like, this
Speaker 2: is the way to characterize the future of US and
Speaker 2: China relations.
Speaker 5: So thank you and answers. Yes, I think I had
Speaker 5: actually speaker Kevin McCarthy here at the Forum event a
Speaker 5: couple of nights ago, and he was reminding me that
Speaker 5: when he was trying to figure out what was happening
Speaker 5: with China, he called me up and he said, would
Speaker 5: you give me a tutorial? I said, of course, I'd
Speaker 5: be under too. We've started this conversation and his first
Speaker 5: question when we began was what the hell is going
Speaker 5: on here?
Speaker 2: That should have been my first question.
Speaker 3: Good question.
Speaker 5: Basically here, every day and every way, somehow or another,
Speaker 5: there's a story about China, threat, China, competition, China, China,
Speaker 5: and China, I said in a word, if you're trying
Speaker 5: to capture this from a phrase, this is a classic
Speaker 5: lucidity and rivalry. So China is a meteoric rising power
Speaker 5: never before in history as a nation risen so far,
Speaker 5: so fast, on so many different dimensions. A country that
Speaker 5: we couldn't even find in our review mirror at the
Speaker 5: beginning of the century because it was so far behind us.
Speaker 5: It's very hard to find in our rearview mirror today
Speaker 5: because it's either beside us or ahead of us if
Speaker 5: you think about arrival. So a meteoric rising power. The
Speaker 5: US is a colossal ruling power. Never since Rome has
Speaker 5: a country been so powerful in so many different dimensions
Speaker 5: for such an amazing period of time. In fact, I
Speaker 5: just have a peace. They'll be in foreign affairs next week.
Speaker 5: On the longest piece, this is the longest period without
Speaker 5: great power war since Rome eighty years. We celebrated in
Speaker 5: September without great power war. Historically, every generation or two,
Speaker 5: for the last few thousand years, there's been great power
Speaker 5: or wars, so amazing, colossal ruling power who's not only
Speaker 5: been good for itself, but actually good for an international piece.
Speaker 5: So Thucydides, when he was trying to understand what the
Speaker 5: hell was going on in ancient Greece, wrote about what
Speaker 5: he called the rise of Athens and the fear that
Speaker 5: this instilled in Sparta that made war virtually inevitable. So
Speaker 5: think about a seesaw on a kid's playground, and one
Speaker 5: heaviest on the one end and one lightest on the other.
Speaker 5: And the heavy is kind of in control. I can
Speaker 5: jiggle you if I want to, blah blah blah. Now,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, the light starts heavy weight, and
Speaker 5: he gets a little bigger and a little bigger. Pretty
Speaker 5: soon I'm feeling Wait a minute, I maybe I have
Speaker 5: only one foot on the ground. Maybe maybe I'm feeling less.
Speaker 5: So when you see this tilt of the sea saw
Speaker 5: and the tectonics of power, this concretes a discombobulation for
Speaker 5: both parties. The ruling party thinks, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 5: what's happening here? I used to look down on you.
Speaker 5: Now you're looking me straight on. And maybe even so
Speaker 5: my perspective. I used to be able to push a
Speaker 5: button and things would happen, and now I push the
Speaker 5: button and the things don't happen because my relative power
Speaker 5: has changed. Psychologically, I'm accustomed to being at the top
Speaker 5: of every backing order Americans. My wife says about me, wa,
Speaker 5: wash the cosmetics off my chest, and it says, USA
Speaker 5: is number one. Number one is who we as our identity.
Speaker 5: If you do the television, they scan you know whatever
Speaker 5: people hold up there, number one for their team, whatever, whatever.
Speaker 5: So the idea that somehow somebody is challenging my position,
Speaker 5: as I used to be the biggest economy. Now I've
Speaker 5: an economy. I used to be the main trading part
Speaker 5: of it. Yet now I used to be everything that
Speaker 5: was made was made by us, that was made. So
Speaker 5: as this happens, historically, we've seen over and over this
Speaker 5: discombobulation that leads into lots of misperceptions, miscalculations, misjudgments, and unfortunately,
Speaker 5: in about three quarters of the cases, this sends up
Speaker 5: in war, often a catastrophic war. So sorry, that's a
Speaker 5: long version.
Speaker 3: Of that's perfect.
Speaker 2: Sparta ended up attacking Athens, right because they were scared
Speaker 2: of the rising power.
Speaker 5: Well, basically what happened, I mean, it's a little more
Speaker 5: complicated than that, but yes, basically, as the discombobulation was
Speaker 5: occurring and Athens became more and more full of itself,
Speaker 5: as the rising power always does, and the ruling power
Speaker 5: become more and more fearful, then it turns out that
Speaker 5: some third party activity in Corsera that wouldn't have mattered
Speaker 5: to the two parties otherwise. So something that's otherwise incidental
Speaker 5: or easily managed with throwing a layer of misperceptions and
Speaker 5: miscalculations and you get there. Another wonderful example, I think
Speaker 5: the one that's closest to what we're now seeing is
Speaker 5: the period from nineteen hundred to nineteen fourteen that led
Speaker 5: to World War One. So if you ask yourself, how
Speaker 5: in the world could I assassinate an archsdooke in Sarajevo,
Speaker 5: which was so inconsequential that it didn't even make the
Speaker 5: front page of the newspapers in New York. Within five weeks,
Speaker 5: all of Europe was caught up in a war. And
Speaker 5: when you looked afterwards, people said how did you guys
Speaker 5: let this happen? And as Beulau, the chancellor for Germany,
Speaker 5: he said, ah, if we only knew.
Speaker 3: So, the rising distrust and the anxiety about status position,
Speaker 3: it's not that it directly provides the impetus for war
Speaker 3: per se, but that it creates the conditions such that
Speaker 3: reserve as an incident or an and that oh, because
Speaker 3: there's no trust, because there's all this concern. It can
Speaker 3: be that random thing, an large duke, some people in
Speaker 3: a third city.
Speaker 5: Something happens in Taiwan, something happens here, something happens here.
Speaker 5: And because as this seesaw is shifting as the rising
Speaker 5: and ruling, the technonics or moving, the mis perceptions or magnified,
Speaker 5: and miscalculations multiply, and the impact of third party incidents
Speaker 5: or accents amplified, so things that would otherwise be manageable.
Speaker 5: This is just nonsense. Let's deal with this problem. All
Speaker 5: of a sudden, I see it as you doing something,
Speaker 5: and then when I see that you see something, one
Speaker 5: thing leads to the other. So if you look in
Speaker 5: the case of Athens and Sparta Corran a city state,
Speaker 5: that neither of them cared much for it. In particular
Speaker 5: trusted at all gets involved with Era, which is now Corfu,
Speaker 5: and there's a fear that they're going to have a
Speaker 5: navy that will be able to challenge Athens, so that
Speaker 5: the Athenians get more excited. So one thing leads to
Speaker 5: the other. You get kind of a vicious cycle of
Speaker 5: misperceptions and miscalculations that then all of a sudden, certain happens,
Speaker 5: and once they something happens, oh my god, I have
Speaker 5: to react that action and reaction, and there you get
Speaker 5: to somewhere you don't want to go.
Speaker 2: We don't talk about ancient Greek history enough on this podcast,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, but I do need to bring it
Speaker 2: up to date. So you know, some people would argue
Speaker 2: that China has been on the rise for decades now,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure people have different starting points, but let's
Speaker 2: say since the nineteen nineties, and you know, now thirty
Speaker 2: or forty years later, we're at a point where there
Speaker 2: is competitive rivalry both militarily and economically, but we haven't
Speaker 2: had war so far. As you just noted, we've had
Speaker 2: eighty years of peace between the great powers, which is
Speaker 2: our good news story of the day. But why is
Speaker 2: that and doesn't mean that you need to reconsider the
Speaker 2: throcidian framework.
Speaker 5: Well, again, Thucydites is very thoughtful about this. He didn't
Speaker 5: say that there was a specific moment or point in
Speaker 5: the story. And in the book that I wrote called
Speaker 5: a Destined for work in the US and China, Escape
Speaker 5: through Cynities Trap, I looked at the last five hundred
Speaker 5: years and find sixteen incidents or sixteen cases in which
Speaker 5: a rising power seriously threatens a ruling power, the World
Speaker 5: War One being one interesting and dramatic example. So in these,
Speaker 5: sometimes before the rising power has actually overtaken the ruling power,
Speaker 5: something happens sometimes after. So it's that is not about
Speaker 5: some specific moment in time. It's about a dynamic that
Speaker 5: then when something happens, something happens. So if you look,
Speaker 5: for example, at the Cold War, which is one of
Speaker 5: the so in the sixteen cases, twelve in the war.
Speaker 5: If you want to model for war, think World War One,
Speaker 5: but four in the No War. So that's good news,
Speaker 5: one of which is called Cold War. So it's called war,
Speaker 5: but it's not war. It's war on every four bullets,
Speaker 5: bombs and bullets. So in the Cold War we had
Speaker 5: several very very close calls, for example, the Cuban missile crisis,
Speaker 5: about which I read a book, and that if you
Speaker 5: look at that chart over there on the wall, that's
Speaker 5: Kennedy's doodles during the Cuban missile crisis. Thinking about the
Speaker 5: choices that he's making, he thought that was between a
Speaker 5: one and three and even chance this was end in
Speaker 5: the nuclear war. That it ended in a nuclear war,
Speaker 5: we would have had a couple hundred million people killed.
Speaker 5: We wouldn't be doing this interview. So it could could
Speaker 5: he could have happened in that insence, but it didn't.
Speaker 5: How did it come not to happen? First, there was
Speaker 5: some brilliant state craft, for example, to get out of
Speaker 5: it so that they could otherwise there was a great,
Speaker 5: great glob of grace and good fortune, I say, But
Speaker 5: also there was a rivalry that went on for long
Speaker 5: enough in which one of the parties, the Soviet Union,
Speaker 5: ended up holloway being hollowed out by the contradictions that
Speaker 5: were part of a Soviet command and control system turned
Speaker 5: out not to be commitative of the lower So that's
Speaker 5: how one story ended that successfully, and that could be
Speaker 5: a possible analog for the current US China rivalry, and
Speaker 5: which Chinese would say, we see in your divisions, in
Speaker 5: your society and in your come up decadent of you know, whatever, whatever, whatever,
Speaker 5: maybe you'll be the one.
Speaker 3: They perceived us as the Soviet Union.
Speaker 5: And we many Americans trying to tell our side of
Speaker 5: the story, say well, they're going to be sort of
Speaker 5: like the Soviet Union because actually they were coming us
Speaker 5: and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: You know, obviously we look to the US Soviet relationship
Speaker 3: for perhaps lessons from history. China feels in many ways
Speaker 3: very different from the Soviet Union in some ways with
Speaker 3: respect to foreign policy, you know, like I read Henry
Speaker 3: doctor Kissinger's book on China, and he starts off by
Speaker 3: pointing out that China has never never been particularly interested
Speaker 3: in people beyond its borders, outside of the territorial questions, say,
Speaker 3: related to Taiwan or Tibet, and even still today, it's
Speaker 3: not obvious that China's interest with the rest of the
Speaker 3: world expands much beyond the goods trade at all. Does
Speaker 3: that affect your calculation the sort of internal when you
Speaker 3: think about these statistics, the fact that yes, there are
Speaker 3: these patterns of history, but also countries are different internally
Speaker 3: and may have different motivations.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I mean a can you can take it at
Speaker 5: the kind of level one, level two, level three, level four. Obviously,
Speaker 5: each of the country's story is different. If you look
Speaker 5: at Portugal and Spain, which is the first of these
Speaker 5: sixteen cases, back of the time of Christopher Columbus, they
Speaker 5: both were Catholic and there was a pope, and so
Speaker 5: when the conflict got to the edge of a conflict,
Speaker 5: the pupe said, I got a solution. Here's a line.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna draw the line down here. This side is
Speaker 5: going to be Portuguese, this side is going to be Spanish.
Speaker 5: Then that's why people in Brazil speak Portuguese, because they
Speaker 5: got on the Portuguese side of the line. But you
Speaker 5: had a situation which you had a kind of a
Speaker 5: ruling guru who could make a declaration. Unfortunately there's no
Speaker 5: such person today to do that. But looking at the
Speaker 5: Chinese cases, as you say, China's history has been one
Speaker 5: in which historically it is wanted to be and thinks
Speaker 5: of itself as the sun around which everything else rotates.
Speaker 5: They've got a line about there can be only one,
Speaker 5: you know, tiger in.
Speaker 2: The valley, but It's literally called the Middle Kingdom right
Speaker 2: in the Middle Country, and.
Speaker 5: The Middle Kingdom was the meaning of it was the
Speaker 5: middle between the Earth and heaven. So we're the We're
Speaker 5: the that. But not about the Soviet not like the
Speaker 5: Soviet Union wanting to convert everyone.
Speaker 3: Right, China's never had a come intern.
Speaker 5: Fort and they haven't been trying to take over territories
Speaker 5: of other parties other than just you know, they're in
Speaker 5: their periphery and they haven't had an aspiration. Enry actually
Speaker 5: has a good line about this. He said, you know
Speaker 5: that the Americans and Chinese are very similar in that
Speaker 5: both of us have a superiority complex, but only one
Speaker 5: of us is a missionary. The other one doesn't think
Speaker 5: people are even good enough to be Chinese, so they'd
Speaker 5: like for you to mimic their behavior. But they don't
Speaker 5: think you're ever going to become Chinese, and they don't
Speaker 5: wanted you to become Chinese. I want you to rule
Speaker 5: your country the way Chinese do. They want to They
Speaker 5: want you to have respect, yeah, and they want to
Speaker 5: be in their own domain. I would say that's roughly right.
Speaker 5: Leak On you was the best, the most insightful China
Speaker 5: Watcher and she China Watcher was leak On You. Leak
Speaker 5: On You was the founder and father builder of Singapore,
Speaker 5: and he was one of my mentors. I wrote a
Speaker 5: little book about him. And uh Hey said about China,
Speaker 5: this is going to be the biggest player in the
Speaker 5: history of the world. It's going to be very uncomfortable
Speaker 5: for Americans to get used to it, especially the idea
Speaker 5: that some smaller yellow ration. There's a racial element in
Speaker 5: the history and orever, he said. But he believed that
Speaker 5: it was possible that the US in China could find
Speaker 5: the way if they were smart, to share the Pacific
Speaker 5: in the twenty first century. And I would say that,
Speaker 5: you know, that would be the good news home.
Speaker 2: So both Joe and I did international relations, I guess
Speaker 2: in the early two thousand, yeah, around that time, and
Speaker 2: a line of thinking back then was that globalization was
Speaker 2: going to save us all and we were going to
Speaker 2: have our economies so enmeshed with each other that the
Speaker 2: idea of going to war or military competition would just
Speaker 2: be completely insane because it would mean mutual self destruction,
Speaker 2: not with bombs, but with I don't know, consumer goods
Speaker 2: like La booboos. So I had to throw that in there.
Speaker 2: Do people still believe that, because on the other hand,
Speaker 2: it seems like the central conflict between the US and
Speaker 2: China right now is economic. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: we haven't had outright military war.
Speaker 5: So good to remember how the cycles go. And I
Speaker 5: think I remember that period since I've been teaching for
Speaker 5: a long time. The theory that somehow economic entanglement would
Speaker 5: prevent war was a famous theory in the beginning of
Speaker 5: the twentieth century as well. So the biggest, the best
Speaker 5: selling book in the decade before World War One was
Speaker 5: Norman Angels book I write about this actually in Destined
Speaker 5: for War, called the Great Illusion, and he said, there's
Speaker 5: not going to be wars anymore because the cost of
Speaker 5: war will so greatly exceed the benefits that the winner
Speaker 5: will be a loser. And if you asked Andrew Carnegie,
Speaker 5: who was the richest man of the time in nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 5: for the Christmas nineteen thirteen fourteen, he sent out Christmas
Speaker 5: cards to his favorite four thousand people, who included the
Speaker 5: pins of every state, and he said, there's not going
Speaker 5: to be war anymore because now we have this.
Speaker 2: You know, Merry Christmas, No more war.
Speaker 5: Exactly, and he said, and I have built the peace
Speaker 5: Palace at the Hague where people can go and resolve disputes,
Speaker 5: So it's not going to be necessary to have the
Speaker 5: fighter war. I would say that's a grand delusion. It
Speaker 5: turned out out to be right. Now, what's right and
Speaker 5: wrong about it? Interesting? So is it true that the
Speaker 5: US and China, both financially and in terms of supply
Speaker 5: chains and in terms of economy are so entangled today
Speaker 5: that this should provide some counterbalance to the geopolitical and
Speaker 5: military impulses for confrontation. Absolutely right. And this is what
Speaker 5: you can see in Trump and She at their recent summit.
Speaker 5: I mean, of the people in the current foreign policy world,
Speaker 5: Trump is a far, far, far outlier in this respect,
Speaker 5: in that he thinks it's possible that the US in
Speaker 5: China can actually both be involved in such a kind
Speaker 5: of economic relationship that will be beneficial to both parties. Now,
Speaker 5: partly that's because I think he's so some of the
Speaker 5: people who are pessimistic about this have kind of given
Speaker 5: up on American competitiveness and thinking, you know, maybe we're
Speaker 5: not as competitive. Trump has I think a romantic view
Speaker 5: that the US can win, you know, every race. But
Speaker 5: on the other hand, he also has a businessman's view
Speaker 5: that's possible for people to be entangled in ways in
Speaker 5: which they can be fierce rivals and can also be
Speaker 5: somehow cooperating. So I've been stretching for silver linings because
Speaker 5: there's as many, many, many things. Nothing like about true,
Speaker 5: but I think it's conceivable if you look look at
Speaker 5: see what he said after the summit, when he tweeted
Speaker 5: at first he said it was great success for us
Speaker 5: on a ten point scale, that was a twelve. Actually
Speaker 5: what he understood was he came up against somebody who's
Speaker 5: as strong and has as many cards as he does,
Speaker 5: so you have to find a way to cooperate with him.
Speaker 5: But if that's true, if the both of the parties
Speaker 5: are searching for ways to cooperate, could this be a
Speaker 5: stabilizer in what would otherwise be I would say yes
Speaker 5: it could, and could it just end up in some
Speaker 5: kind of a a So Henry, who was my other
Speaker 5: most mentor about China, kept saying, Henry Kissinger, sorry that
Speaker 5: we need a new strategic concept that's that's comprehensive enough
Speaker 5: to encompass the fact that we're going to be the
Speaker 5: fiercest doucinity in rivals at all times, each of us
Speaker 5: really really does want to be number one, and it
Speaker 5: matters in many many But at the same time we're
Speaker 5: so entangled that we require cooperation or the other for
Speaker 5: our own survival. So this sounds like a contradiction. It is,
Speaker 5: But we managed a version of that a little bit
Speaker 5: in the Cold War. This one's much more complicated because
Speaker 5: the Soviet Union was never really a serious economic rival.
Speaker 5: By the time you go to high codeor in the
Speaker 5: Chinese case, China is media. But is there something in
Speaker 5: that space? I think there is. How did this might be?
Speaker 3: So you mentioned that like compared to many others, Trump
Speaker 3: is a US unto optimist and maybe even a dove
Speaker 3: venu measures, which is a little weird given that, But
Speaker 3: it clearly is how did this happen? Like how did
Speaker 3: so much of the foreign policy elite in the US
Speaker 3: over the last several years, it feel like, becomes so
Speaker 3: doumor jaded, pessimistic about the prospect of peaceful coexistence.
Speaker 5: I think I think the main driver was structural in
Speaker 5: the thucidityan story. Okay, so if you look at the
Speaker 5: British in the period from nineteen hundred to nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 5: They become to be more and more shocked by the
Speaker 5: fact that the Germans are doing things that are supposed
Speaker 5: to be ours. They're producing something that we're supposed to
Speaker 5: be in charge of. Actually, it's interesting, and I can
Speaker 5: describe this in the book as a famous document called
Speaker 5: the crow cr W Memorandum. So the King of England
Speaker 5: asks his foreign minister. He says, why is it that
Speaker 5: we're being so nasty about the Germans? This is my cousin.
Speaker 5: Guys are ruined.
Speaker 2: They literally his cousin.
Speaker 5: They go on vacation together in the summer, and he says,
Speaker 5: but every time I read anything, every time I see anything,
Speaker 5: everybody is blaming them for everything. Why is this? And
Speaker 5: Crow explains to him the sea shock is shifting, and
Speaker 5: as the seashell shifts, everybody's perspective is impacted and they exaggerate.
Speaker 5: And this is kind of like normal. And I think
Speaker 5: if you look at that Athens Sparta story, you can
Speaker 5: find a very similar thing. The Athenians are doing what
Speaker 5: they're doing, and the Spartans are talking to said, these
Speaker 5: guys are hopeless. Look and see what they do every
Speaker 5: day they get up and they think of some other
Speaker 5: thing to be bishopous.
Speaker 3: Just real quickly, if we zoom forward to World War
Speaker 3: two in that scenario, is the US the rising power
Speaker 3: that that Hitler was completely anxious about?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 3: How you fitted into that?
Speaker 5: I'll say that World War two cases a complicated one,
Speaker 5: and they've been a good question where Hitler is attempting
Speaker 5: to become a rising power in a situation that's already stabilized,
Speaker 5: but then he has actually such territory. Mostly in most
Speaker 5: of the cases, the rising powers don't have great territorial
Speaker 5: or imperial aspirations in the in the in the Cold War,
Speaker 5: in the Soviet Union, I mean, the Soviet Union did
Speaker 5: really believe in their ideology that every country should be
Speaker 5: ruled by a communist government and that they needed to
Speaker 5: have a continuous expansion in order to basically legitimize their
Speaker 5: own rule. Fortunately, most of most.
Speaker 2: Cases, how much of the current tension between the US
Speaker 2: and China, tension, discomfort, discombobulation, How much of that is
Speaker 2: down to China rising as a power versus the US
Speaker 2: declining as a power.
Speaker 5: I would say, in the good question, So in the
Speaker 5: China's meta narrative, who ask Chiesian paying or when they're talking,
Speaker 5: it's the inexorable rise of China. So there is confident
Speaker 5: and he's just confident that they're rising into what will
Speaker 5: be a Chinese century, as Teddy Roosevelt was if you
Speaker 5: take the equivalent period in American history. But the other
Speaker 5: component of this, which was not part of Teddy Roosevelt's,
Speaker 5: is that the US is irreversibly declining.
Speaker 2: That's what she believes.
Speaker 5: That's what she believes. And the person who works for him,
Speaker 5: who's is number four, and this closest idealogical person is
Speaker 5: one Hu Ni. Now by some accident of good fortune,
Speaker 5: have become one of their people, whom they one of
Speaker 5: the people whom they enjoy talking to. I think mainly
Speaker 5: because Kissinger I'm you know, his mentor or mintee, and
Speaker 5: because I introduced them to Ducydities. I mean, is what
Speaker 5: I said as the best publicity agent for a author
Speaker 5: than ever in China, because they've sold more copies of
Speaker 5: Thucyddy's Plopannian War in Mandarin since my book than in
Speaker 5: the previous two thousand years. So in any case, one Hu
Speaker 5: Ning is a serious thinker. He was a political scientists
Speaker 5: in Originally he came to the US in nineteen eighty
Speaker 5: nine on American Political Science Association fellowship or something to
Speaker 5: study at the university or to be a fellow at
Speaker 5: the university. And then he traveled all around the US
Speaker 5: and he wrote a book that's called America Against America,
Speaker 5: and you could go and it's in English. You can
Speaker 5: see the English comic and it's a as the analysis
Speaker 5: of the factors that we're going to splinter the country.
Speaker 5: It's pretty good for the time, pretty hotel, and they
Speaker 5: clearly continue thinking about that. I was there just before
Speaker 5: the Trump She summit in Korea talking again to a
Speaker 5: couple of people in the first circle, and they were
Speaker 5: saying about the US. You know, the US. I mean,
Speaker 5: here's one he was this stranger than we thought. I said,
Speaker 5: what strang And she said, well, let me just let
Speaker 5: me give you this to start that the list, he says,
Speaker 5: New York is the city is the largest Jewish population
Speaker 5: in the world, and they're gonna elect a Muslim mirror.
Speaker 5: New York City is the YEMPI center of global capitalism.
Speaker 5: They're gonna like somebody who's a socialist. It we're socialists.
Speaker 5: The US is the government is providing food for one
Speaker 5: in nine people in the US, and now they're talking
Speaker 5: about with all theygat we used to do that, you
Speaker 5: know when when when we had people who were poor,
Speaker 5: but that we think that's one of our great achievements.
Speaker 5: We don't. We don't hand out food and people have food.
Speaker 5: The US is sending troops to cities. Said, we remember tenement.
Speaker 5: Is this like tenement? This is not like you know,
Speaker 5: the division of income has now become so great. They said,
Speaker 5: you know, we saw this. This is data that two
Speaker 5: thirds of the consumption is now by the top twenty
Speaker 5: percent of the income owners. Well, excuse me. In most societies,
Speaker 5: the people who were not that were being left out
Speaker 5: with riot or you know that that would be that's
Speaker 5: why we say we have to be a modern socialist state,
Speaker 5: because they have to so you know, they're going down
Speaker 5: all this like that. I said, what do you have
Speaker 5: to remember is this is a strange country. It's absolutely.
Speaker 3: Contradictions.
Speaker 5: Contradiction. I sometimes I kaleidoscope of contradictions, because every time
Speaker 5: you move it it's another one. On the other hand,
Speaker 5: it's been remarkably resilient and no other society with no
Speaker 5: other governing system has been as successful over so long
Speaker 5: a period of time, is this one? And then I
Speaker 5: usually do my lines about God looks after drug so
Speaker 5: children in the USA I love. But I would say
Speaker 5: reasonable person could look at the country today and say
Speaker 5: this looks pretty strange. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So obviously there are the big structural questions that
Speaker 3: will last for a long time, both China's economic rise,
Speaker 3: US internal tensions, et cetera. But this year in particular,
Speaker 3: Tracy started episode with all these headlines and that's daily
Speaker 3: and Trump himself is you know, there's the contradictions within
Speaker 3: the White House, et cetera. But just the events of
Speaker 3: this year. Have they from today from January first to
Speaker 3: today or from the inauguration today? Have your views changed?
Speaker 3: Are you more optimistic less optimistic?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 3: How what have you learned in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 5: That's a good question. So I would say two thirds
Speaker 5: or eighty percent of the story is baked into the structure.
Speaker 5: So if and as China continues rising, which I believe
Speaker 5: it will, and growing at about twice the rate we do,
Speaker 5: which I think it will, and advancing in technologies the
Speaker 5: way it has been, which I think it will, even
Speaker 5: though it has many many, many problems, but I think
Speaker 5: they will manage more or less on that path, and
Speaker 5: Americans will wake up more and more every day that
Speaker 5: China is in your face doing something or whatever. So
Speaker 5: that's point two in this doucentity and rivalry. Again, it's
Speaker 5: natural for the ruling power to blame the rising power
Speaker 5: for everything, and blaming China or hyping China threat or
Speaker 5: demonizing China is kind of normal. And I would say
Speaker 5: that Spartans were demonizing the Athenians, maybe not quite the extent.
Speaker 5: So for Americans, we do it our way, But I
Speaker 5: would say that that part is right. Those are the
Speaker 5: negative components. While it may seem strange, especially in Cambridge,
Speaker 5: for somebody to look for some signs of hope or
Speaker 5: or silver linings in Trump, I think Trump understands that
Speaker 5: nuclear war would be catastrophic and really really worries about
Speaker 5: that in a way that the only other person in
Speaker 5: the foreign policy establishment equivalent lately that has done that
Speaker 5: was Biden, not Obama, not you know, eighty percent of
Speaker 5: the others. So that's number one. More, he understands per
Speaker 5: a bit. Secondly, he somehow he has this respect for she.
Speaker 5: He admires China some of what he admires. Is there
Speaker 5: autocratic rule? He says, how in the world did you
Speaker 5: managed to rule one point five billion people with so
Speaker 5: little objection? I wish I could manage my press the
Speaker 5: way you do. You know, bab Baba, you've got a
Speaker 5: lease on life. I mean, he's leader for life. Is
Speaker 5: anybody any suggestions for me? So he admires that he
Speaker 5: wants to be a great peacemaker. So I think it's
Speaker 5: not inconceivable that we might come to have a strategic
Speaker 5: concept that would be something like a partnership, which would
Speaker 5: then balance. I think, will the thucydity rivalry continue in
Speaker 5: every case? Yes? I believe it will, And will it
Speaker 5: mean that this feeds of fear and all the things
Speaker 5: that will be normal? But if it's also the case
Speaker 5: that my survival as a country depends on a degree
Speaker 5: of cooperation with you, so that we don't have a
Speaker 5: nuclear war, because at the end of a nuclear war,
Speaker 5: my country's caught, so that Hei doesn't end up ruling
Speaker 5: us all with the two AA leaders. So could we
Speaker 5: find so financial system in two thousand and eight, we
Speaker 5: would have had the financial crisis, would have become a depression,
Speaker 5: had it not been for a joint US China state
Speaker 5: no trade. I mean, if we look at the rare
Speaker 5: earth story, I mean that's what those are there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, metal on Graham's table.
Speaker 2: We were going to ask, so there are a bunch
Speaker 2: of these are mission coins?
Speaker 5: Is that right? These are just from from services. But
Speaker 5: this here, see if you can separate it, these are
Speaker 5: rare earth magnets. And you can seet careful, okay, in
Speaker 5: any case, because we'll get it. We have become dependent
Speaker 5: upon China for how many things in our supply chain,
Speaker 5: and they fortunately depend in honice for how many things.
Speaker 5: So part of the reason why they got the stale
Speaker 5: made in the current. What would otherwise be? You know,
Speaker 5: Trump's bullying another country is that he comes up against
Speaker 5: somebody as strong as we are. So in that case
Speaker 5: he's adapting and adjusting. No, I would say, you know,
Speaker 5: if I'm looking for silver linings, I'm looking in that space.
Speaker 2: I hate to end on a down note, and I'm
Speaker 2: conscious of the time and you have to run off.
Speaker 2: But in terms of the US China cold war turning
Speaker 2: into a hot war, what should we be looking out for?
Speaker 2: Because as we started this conversation, every day, there's a
Speaker 2: new headline about, you know, China's moving this naval vessel
Speaker 2: into this particular body of water, and there's propaganda airing
Speaker 2: in China that's prepping the population for an imminent Taiwanese invasion.
Speaker 2: That sort of thing. What would you actually look for
Speaker 2: as a warning sign.
Speaker 5: So I think most of the news lines that we
Speaker 5: hear or statements from people are China hype. And you
Speaker 5: cannot accuse China of anything today in the US without
Speaker 5: getting a residence. So nobody, I mean, I get blamed
Speaker 5: it Casley for being the China sympathizer by simply saying
Speaker 5: what you're asserting is false. Yes, of course there's many
Speaker 5: many things Chinese doing, but it does so. For example,
Speaker 5: one of the favorite cluses out China has the fastest
Speaker 5: nuclear build up in the world because they're going from
Speaker 5: about five hundred weapons to about one thousand weapons in
Speaker 5: twenty which answers, well, that's a historical statement. And if
Speaker 5: you look at the number of warheads we went to
Speaker 5: from in the Eisenhower period or the Kennedy period, in
Speaker 5: both cases there were more that just happened not to
Speaker 5: be true. Not there'll be many, many, many accusations of
Speaker 5: that kind, and I think those will continue because so
Speaker 5: China has developed a manufacturing ecosystem. It basically can produce
Speaker 5: anything at scale that half the price that we can
Speaker 5: well lo and behold. If you go to Walmart, sort
Speaker 5: to home depot, half the stuff or more is made
Speaker 5: in China. Well, people will complain about that. So that
Speaker 5: part of seems right, But I would say that most
Speaker 5: of this is just hype. Where you find danger is
Speaker 5: where there are third parties whose initiative might in this
Speaker 5: like the story of Coursera, produce a set of reactions,
Speaker 5: and they're the most The leading candidate of Taiwan and
Speaker 5: the current president of Taiwan Lie who done taking many,
Speaker 5: many dangerous actions. I think fortunately, both in the Biden
Speaker 5: administration and in the Trump administration, they've had conversations at
Speaker 5: that leader level about not letting this person by some
Speaker 5: irresponsible action. Dragosoptism. You know there is that the Chinese
Speaker 5: rules of engagement in their exercises in the Straits and
Speaker 5: in the South China Sea are now such that it's
Speaker 5: not very difficult to imagine a collision of a ship
Speaker 5: or a plane. We saw that at the beginning of
Speaker 5: the Bush administration when they collided with one of our spyplanes,
Speaker 5: and so could that escalate? And I think that's why
Speaker 5: again getting back to communication channels between the two parties
Speaker 5: where they can talk candidly and privately in order to
Speaker 5: have a circuit breaker if some accident happens, which I
Speaker 5: think on the current path would be likely to happen.
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask one more very quick question because
Speaker 2: you brought up manufacturing just then, and something else that
Speaker 2: we've been noticing lately is there's a tendency among a
Speaker 2: lot of Western economies, especially to talk about building up
Speaker 2: their own manufacturing capacity, including in terms of munitions and
Speaker 2: rare earth minerals. As you just mentioned. There was a
Speaker 2: headline I think just yesterday about the UK wanting to
Speaker 2: build ammunition within its own borders instead of relying on allies.
Speaker 2: What's the underlying motivation there, Because most people would look
Speaker 2: at a headline like the UK wants to make its
Speaker 2: own bullets as you know, a predecessor maybe to some
Speaker 2: sort of military conflict.
Speaker 5: Well it's good. I mean it is puzzling, and there
Speaker 5: are a lot of puzzling things. But I would say
Speaker 5: that whenever it's pointed out that people that you're dependent
Speaker 5: on some other party for supply of something. So for example,
Speaker 5: for the US, rare earth magnets are required for almost everything,
Speaker 5: so for cars, for iPhones, for laptops, for f thirty fives,
Speaker 5: for comahook whistles or whatever. So how would we allow
Speaker 5: ourselves to be dependent on China because that gives them
Speaker 5: something that they can squeeze that supply chain and be coarse.
Speaker 5: So I would rather be independent on that. And so
Speaker 5: any politician would then make an announcement, Okay, we're declaring
Speaker 5: they were going to be independent, asking what would be
Speaker 5: required to be done in order to reach that stage?
Speaker 5: People are not asking, so that would be at the
Speaker 5: next level. Similarly, if you look, for example, for most pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 5: most of the pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical precursors that we
Speaker 5: use for any medicines come from me, the China, or
Speaker 5: from Indian. Well maybe we should do these ourselves. Munitions
Speaker 5: we shouldn't be giving out a So the fact that politicians,
Speaker 5: when they see somebody says here's it been, it's your vulnerability,
Speaker 5: declared that we're going to be independent, as I would say,
Speaker 5: predictable if you look and see what behaviors follow from that,
Speaker 5: the answer is not very many. So I'm almost thready
Speaker 5: to accept the proposition that we're going to be inextricably
Speaker 5: entangled in supply chains and economics, in which case some
Speaker 5: version of mutual deterrence of the sort that we found
Speaker 5: in the nuclear balance maybe where we end up. Now.
Speaker 5: Is that a good place to be compared to the elsewhere? No,
Speaker 5: I've read to be independent, but compared, I mean, is
Speaker 5: that something we can manage if you have competent governments
Speaker 5: and managing And I would say, you know, yes.
Speaker 2: All right, Professor Allison, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: on all lots and inviting us to your office here
Speaker 2: at Harvard. Thank you so much. Yeah, a lot to
Speaker 2: look at to have you here.
Speaker 5: Glad to be on the problem. I thank you good questions,
Speaker 5: and I'm glad to see two serious students with international there.
Speaker 6: We took our background and went and took final highest
Speaker 6: praise I got, Joe.
Speaker 2: That was a real treat.
Speaker 3: It was a real treat. Just being in doctor Ellison's
Speaker 3: office was really nice. I just I could go You've
Speaker 3: heard me already say this, But like being a professor
Speaker 3: at an elite American professor Tess so sick and then
Speaker 3: like it would say, such a it's like such a
Speaker 3: dream career they have.
Speaker 2: You know what bothers me is you and I both
Speaker 2: did international relationship. Yeah, and I think we have a
Speaker 2: similar complaint. But like that conversation that we just had
Speaker 2: with Professor Allison was what I thought international relations was
Speaker 2: going to be. You know, we were going to sit
Speaker 2: there and pontificate about US China relations and then compare
Speaker 2: it to Sparta versus Athens in ancient Greece. And instead
Speaker 2: it was basically all philosophy. It was like game theory. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know it's and like it was so abstract, Like
Speaker 2: I think I had entire courses where we didn't even
Speaker 2: name a single country like by name. It was just
Speaker 2: if country A does this, what does country be do?
Speaker 3: It's such a weird discipline for that reason, and as
Speaker 3: an adult, I've tried to read some international relations books
Speaker 3: and it's all this like weird game theory and tables
Speaker 3: and stuff like that and just not my thing. I
Speaker 3: think there's there's probably I know we're going off on
Speaker 3: a little bit of a tangent here. It feels a
Speaker 3: little bit like, you know, the same phenomenon in economics,
Speaker 3: for example, Like you study economics, you're you're gonna think
Speaker 3: about like, well, what's gonna happen to the unemployment rate,
Speaker 3: what's gonna happen with the stock market, cetera, And then
Speaker 3: you read academic economics, and I'm not as like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm like, as I've grown older, as I've matured, I'm like,
Speaker 3: you know, I've like I appreciate academic econ more than
Speaker 3: I did when I was in my youth, and I
Speaker 3: was like, this is done with all these equations and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. It's all fake. I don't think that
Speaker 3: isn't much anymore, but it does feel like kind of
Speaker 3: disconnected from like, wait, I thought economists talked about, you know,
Speaker 3: the unemployment rate and stuff like that, and then you
Speaker 3: read what a paper is about.
Speaker 2: It's very abstract.
Speaker 5: You're right.
Speaker 2: One thing that did surprise me was when the professor
Speaker 2: was talking about his latest trip to China. Was it
Speaker 2: his latest trip, well, one of his trips to China
Speaker 2: where he was talking and trying to or hearing from
Speaker 2: Chinese policymakers about how they're very confused by America and
Speaker 2: in particular the example of capitalist New York electing a
Speaker 2: socialist mayor, and I thought like, if anyone can understand
Speaker 2: socialism with capitalistic characteristics, it must be the Chinese.
Speaker 3: It should be it should be very intuitive. No, I
Speaker 3: thought that was like just overall though very I mean,
Speaker 3: it was a little bit grim, the idea that almost
Speaker 3: like we're kind of a borrowed time here. It's like,
Speaker 3: it's been a really long time since a Great Powers
Speaker 3: war by historical standards, and so it's already been a
Speaker 3: long time. Historically, they come along work frequently, and now
Speaker 3: the conditions are in place for this, you know, the
Speaker 3: so called a Thucididy's trap as he sees it. I'm
Speaker 3: not thrilled that in the best case scenario, for the
Speaker 3: rest of my life, there's always going to be a
Speaker 3: risk of that being right around the corner the moment
Speaker 3: some third party country does something, you know.
Speaker 2: Well the leash the other thing. And again this goes
Speaker 2: back to why I'm so frustrated with IR as an
Speaker 2: academic discipline. But like the emphasis on good state craft,
Speaker 2: good state craft makes a difference. Yeah, right, you know,
Speaker 2: he talked about the Cuban missile crisis and JFK and
Speaker 2: we came very very close to absolute disaster there, but
Speaker 2: it was ultimately averted by the individual actions of human beings,
Speaker 2: both in Russia and in the US. And I feel
Speaker 2: like that's kind of what's missing in ir It's that
Speaker 2: like emphasis on individual choice and motivations and incentives and
Speaker 2: how to actually do good state craft rather than just
Speaker 2: like look at everything through the prism of either neoliberalism
Speaker 2: or realism power. Yeah, or did you ever do gender theory?
Speaker 3: I don't think I took that.
Speaker 2: There is an interesting one. The reason we had the
Speaker 2: Cuban missile crisis is because men and large objects.
Speaker 3: I've but it I am really interested in this idea
Speaker 3: that unlike the US, So he used the term I
Speaker 3: think he said missionary sort of to characterize how the
Speaker 3: US sees and spread democracy and liberalism and capitalism. And
Speaker 3: of course the Soviet Union also had this impulse to
Speaker 3: spread communism, and everywhere there was a communist party, it
Speaker 3: felt some tug to back them up, and that's how
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union got mired in Afghanistan for years and years.
Speaker 3: China doesn't really seem to have that. It wants to trade,
Speaker 3: I mean outside of it wants to consolidate it's physical territory.
Speaker 3: But it does not seem you know, like, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a great story several months ago, apparently the Cubans
Speaker 3: came to China, And as for advice, I said, well,
Speaker 3: have you tried liberalizing your economy? Have you tried basically
Speaker 3: not being communists? Like it doesn't have that impulse the
Speaker 3: same way the Soviet Union did, and nor does they
Speaker 3: have it like the US does. So I'm curious, like,
Speaker 3: as China truly becomes a global power, is a great power,
Speaker 3: it seems fairly rare historically for it to have so
Speaker 3: little interest in how other countries manage their affairs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the line about, you know, like, it's not
Speaker 2: really about getting more people to be Chinese, because it's
Speaker 2: special to be Chinese in the first place.
Speaker 3: We're not good enough to be Chinese.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, shall we leave it there at Chinese.
Speaker 3: Joe, let's leave it. Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at The
Speaker 3: Stalwart follow our Guesst Graham Allison. He's at Graham t Allison.
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