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Speaker 1: What Am I Come? I Got?
Speaker 2: Tonight?
Speaker 4: A White House a national security correspondent for The New
Speaker 4: York Times. His latest book is called New Cold Wars,
Speaker 4: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's struggle to defend the West.
Speaker 4: Please welcome back to the program, David Tanger, Sir, you
Speaker 4: wrote another bat New co Wars. David, First of all,
Speaker 4: thank you. It's nice to see you again.
Speaker 2: Good to be here.
Speaker 4: Is the premise that the United States did a poor
Speaker 4: job of managing risk after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: Well, we certainly made a lot of false assumptions, bad assumptions.
Speaker 2: That doesn't sound along the way, Yeah, I wouldn't be as,
Speaker 2: wouldn't be as. And the fundamental argument of the book
Speaker 2: is that we believed, somehow we deluded ourselves into believing
Speaker 2: that China and Russia, each for their own different reasons,
Speaker 2: would like just sign up to the Western world. That
Speaker 2: we were going to go say, look, we got this
Speaker 2: whole thing figured out. All you guys do is come
Speaker 2: in here and sign on the dotted line.
Speaker 4: We're going to do a rules based democratic foundation order
Speaker 4: and everybody will be cool with it.
Speaker 2: And that was supposed to be the end of history,
Speaker 2: because right we were.
Speaker 1: Said, it's the end of history.
Speaker 4: Western liberalism is triumphant, and we can all just skate
Speaker 4: on the glorious booty that we get from it.
Speaker 2: Right now, you can't blame just him, because there were
Speaker 2: a lot of other people, believe, okay, And I signed
Speaker 2: on to a little bit of this myself, so I confess.
Speaker 2: But I got to tell you this basically went on
Speaker 2: for thirty years, good twenty five anyway, because we were
Speaker 2: busy doing the wars on Terry. We're just talking about those.
Speaker 4: Little when you talk about in the book, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of stories of how George Bush thought that there
Speaker 4: would be a great Reproachmont with Putin over there, shared
Speaker 4: dislike of terrorism and the two of them. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's stories in there that come out of James Bond.
Speaker 4: You're on a yacht with George Bush and Putin and
Speaker 4: they've just seen a.
Speaker 1: Very dark version of the Nutcracker.
Speaker 4: You're like, it's not even the regular Nutcracker, it's the
Speaker 4: dark Nutcracker.
Speaker 2: And you're like, I bet Bush really enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you love anything high.
Speaker 2: So this was two thousand and two. We were in
Speaker 2: Saint Petersburg. We were floating down the Never River. They're
Speaker 2: in a great party boat.
Speaker 1: There's this guy s wait, you were floating down the
Speaker 1: river with them.
Speaker 2: I was floating down a boat behind it.
Speaker 1: We weren't eat like tubing.
Speaker 2: That's what white House reporters do, isn't it. We were
Speaker 2: in the pools, just this sign. The pool was a river,
Speaker 2: all right, Okay, So we're following him down and there's
Speaker 2: this guy serving dinner.
Speaker 1: He's kind of big and hulking.
Speaker 2: It turns out it's Pregosion.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: If Jenny Progosion the head of the Terrible Army.
Speaker 1: Well, at the time, he was putin chef.
Speaker 2: Okay, his only job was make sure the meals were
Speaker 2: good and a really glowering wait.
Speaker 4: So he's like Bobby Flay and then he turns into
Speaker 4: the head of a mercenary army.
Speaker 2: Well before he did that, he ran the Internet Research
Speaker 2: Agency and tried to fix the twenty sixteen election with
Speaker 2: this information.
Speaker 1: They really are renaissance, man, it really is. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's talent, that's talents.
Speaker 4: So now this appears to be going along until George
Speaker 4: Bush wants them to go after Islamic terrorism. And then
Speaker 4: at that point Putin wants them to go after chech Nan, right,
Speaker 4: or at.
Speaker 2: Least Putin wants to use the excuse to go after Cheschney.
Speaker 2: And that was the beginning of Bush beginning to think,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe this guy isn't the one we thought
Speaker 2: he was.
Speaker 1: He looked into his soul.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, he may have looked at the
Speaker 2: wrong soul. So in two thousand and seven, Putin shows
Speaker 2: up at this thing called the Munich Security Conference and
Speaker 2: he says, you know, there are parts of Russia that
Speaker 2: have been separated from us that really belong to us,
Speaker 2: That to the Russia that Peter.
Speaker 1: The Great created.
Speaker 2: And remember Putin isn't trying to recreate the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: He thinks the guys who are in the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: were idiots. You go into his office, he's got a
Speaker 2: big bust of Peter the Great there. So who do
Speaker 2: you think he thinks? He is.
Speaker 1: Progosian. No no, no, no, how do we miss all
Speaker 1: of this?
Speaker 4: And even if we had been onto it, what would
Speaker 4: we have done differently?
Speaker 2: So first it was a combination of sort of bad intelligence,
Speaker 2: wishful thinking. Oh, sure, he's going to be troublesome, but
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, he cares about his
Speaker 2: oil exports, his gas exports, more than he really cares
Speaker 2: about this. And look up until the weekend before the
Speaker 2: invasion happened. There's a story the invasion of Ukraine in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: So this all past twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty fourteen comes, he takes crimea. Obama says, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to war for something that used to belong
Speaker 2: to Russia. Nobody does sanctions for a year, right, And
Speaker 2: the next year the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel signs
Speaker 2: the nord Stream Too agreement, creates this pipeline that runs
Speaker 2: from Russia around Ukraine's what doesn't get any revenue from it,
Speaker 2: and straight into Europe. And he says, she says, you know,
Speaker 2: Putin's a liable suppliers realistic Yeah, right, okay, reasonable assumption,
Speaker 2: maybe because he really hadn't cut off gas supplies So
Speaker 2: what happens next? Seven years later he goes after full
Speaker 2: on Ukraine. The US reveals the intelligence in starting in
Speaker 2: the late fall, they get this remarkable intelligence. They send
Speaker 2: Bill Burns, the CIA director who used to be ambassador
Speaker 2: to Russia, to say this would be a really bad idea.
Speaker 2: Putin says, oh, I'm not you know, I'm not doing anything.
Speaker 2: And the weekend before everybody's back in Munich and there
Speaker 2: are a bunch of Europeans saying to me and everybody else, Oh,
Speaker 2: he's not.
Speaker 1: Really gonna invade. He's just bluffing.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't risk his oil revenues. Four days later he invades.
Speaker 2: The intelligence chief for Germany was in Kiev the morning
Speaker 2: of the invasion. They had to evacuate him because he
Speaker 2: didn't believe they would invade.
Speaker 1: So what did he think that noise was? He got
Speaker 1: out of town kind of fast.
Speaker 4: So this is all hindsight, though in truth, what could
Speaker 4: we other when someone is imperialistic in that way? What
Speaker 4: can other powers do short of an actual shooting war
Speaker 4: to prevent these kinds of things. There's no guarantee that
Speaker 4: tougher sanctions after CRIMEA would have deterred him. It sounds
Speaker 4: like this is kind of his destiny and he's fulfilling
Speaker 4: that destiny, come hell or high water.
Speaker 2: So that's the other piece of this, which is we
Speaker 2: impose our values on Russia China and we think, well,
Speaker 2: we're not going to do something that would get in
Speaker 2: the way of our economic interests.
Speaker 1: Neither would they.
Speaker 2: So China's a really interesting example. Jijinping comes in more
Speaker 2: than ten years ago. Joe Biden spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time with him, traveled around with him. But the intelligence
Speaker 2: reports of as are this guy's not going to challenge
Speaker 2: the West. He's going to tend to his economy, make
Speaker 2: sure all is good. Right, We now discover, and you
Speaker 2: read about in the book, they're these secret speeches that
Speaker 2: he gave almost as soon as he came into office,
Speaker 2: saying we're going to build up our nuclear forces to
Speaker 2: the size of the Russians and the Americans. We're going
Speaker 2: to make sure that we take our claims in the
Speaker 2: South China Sea. I was out on in the rose
Speaker 2: Garden of the White House when she came to visit
Speaker 2: and promised everybody he wasn't going to militarize these islands
Speaker 2: they're building in the South China. See a year or
Speaker 2: two later you look on satellite photographs there are fighter
Speaker 2: jets showing up on the islands.
Speaker 1: Kind of looks like, no, that's just convenience.
Speaker 4: It's not are we lying to them or are we
Speaker 4: lying to ourselves?
Speaker 1: I think more to ourselves.
Speaker 2: So, you know, we did not want to conceive of
Speaker 2: a world in which we were back in superpower conflict.
Speaker 2: We wanted to live in the world in which the
Speaker 2: US was the predominant power. We finally calmed down the
Speaker 2: Middle East, doing real well with that, and and that
Speaker 2: we could focus on competing with China, some containment of Russia.
Speaker 2: And you know, Biden happened to be the one sitting
Speaker 2: in the office, sitting in office when this all fell apart.
Speaker 2: And most of the book is a story of what
Speaker 2: happens when that fell apart. It's the story of how
Speaker 2: this Opera Regia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the biggest nuclear
Speaker 2: plant in Europe, suddenly everybody's afraid is going to become
Speaker 2: the world's biggest Uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
Speaker 2: And there's an amazing story right from New York City
Speaker 2: two years ago, October of twenty twenty two, when President
Speaker 2: Biden shows up at a fundraiser at James Murdoch's house.
Speaker 1: They're nice, not familiar with the last name, but go ahead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's actually sort of the black sheep of the family,
Speaker 2: a Democrat who raises money for Biden, among others. So they're,
Speaker 2: you know, nice New Yorkers walking around with their wine
Speaker 2: looking at his our collection. The President comes in and says,
Speaker 2: by the way, we're going through something that is the
Speaker 2: closest to nuclear war we've had since the Cuban missile crisis.
Speaker 2: They're all looking at each.
Speaker 4: Other, like he drops that at a cocktail party.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they all thought that it was really the
Speaker 2: moment to get out to the Hamptons.
Speaker 1: Don't you think he drops that? And then it's like,
Speaker 1: do you guys have breathe like he does.
Speaker 2: Actually, people in the White House were amazing the now
Speaker 2: call it his Armageddon speech, because he had just said
Speaker 2: the same thing in the Oval office.
Speaker 4: Right, and then then he turned to everybody and go
Speaker 4: and my word is don't.
Speaker 1: That's a big thing. Now he tells dictators don't don't
Speaker 1: And they're like.
Speaker 4: Oh, okay, haven't we sowed the seeds of this with
Speaker 4: our own arrogance and cavalier approach to a lot of
Speaker 4: these foreign policy conflicts. A we always frame thing says,
Speaker 4: this is a battle between democracy and the free world,
Speaker 4: and liberation and authoritarianism. But the truth is we're fighting
Speaker 4: for trade channels and resources like this is all a
Speaker 4: function of competing capitalist powers.
Speaker 1: And aren't we the ones?
Speaker 4: I mean, we've invaded more countries than Russia and China combined.
Speaker 4: So how do we give ourselves somehow the passes the
Speaker 4: white hat guys when a lot of our policy has
Speaker 4: created a lot of the chaos that they're taking.
Speaker 1: Advantage of, it is I'm done, I'm out here.
Speaker 2: So there's been a lot of that going on in
Speaker 2: American history for a long time. Teddy Roosevelt, you know,
Speaker 2: took over his fair share of territory. But I think
Speaker 2: in the Biden administration we've had to sort of face
Speaker 2: these contradictions because at the beginning of the the president
Speaker 2: was saying, just what you said, this is a battle
Speaker 2: between democracy and autocracy, and everyone says, Okay, that's pretty clean.
Speaker 1: Then he goes to just not true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then he goes then he goes to Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 2: does the fist bump with NBS, right, And I was
Speaker 2: on that trip.
Speaker 1: They weren't quite sure. How that are you ever home?
Speaker 2: When you cover the White House, you got to go
Speaker 2: where the president goes as part of the job. And
Speaker 2: then you know, we move on to what's been happening
Speaker 2: in Israel and the Israel Hamas war. And as you
Speaker 2: said earlier, we are in the very odd position of
Speaker 2: both providing aid and providing the arms that are being
Speaker 2: dropped on Gaza. And I think this administration has had
Speaker 2: the hardest time trying to go write that and obviously
Speaker 2: is causing a lot of pain, not only for Gossen's
Speaker 2: but for people in the administration who are having a
Speaker 2: hard time living.
Speaker 4: With Would it simplify our position if we stopped part
Speaker 4: tending our morals were beyond the reproach of all these
Speaker 4: other countries. Would it help us to not have to
Speaker 4: scold everybody for failing to live up to principles that
Speaker 4: we very clearly do not uphold.
Speaker 2: Well, at least we have some principles. Okay, that's the
Speaker 2: one thing.
Speaker 1: We say that.
Speaker 4: But you know, you can't invade a country. What happened
Speaker 4: in Iraq, that's you can't call for regime change. What
Speaker 4: did we do in Libya. Every time we say these things,
Speaker 4: we undercut our own position with I mean, for God's sakes,
Speaker 4: Iran is an enemy today because we overthrew their democratically
Speaker 4: elected government nineteen fifty three. Right, So at what point
Speaker 4: do we just admit that this is how we're behaving.
Speaker 2: The odd thing is at the moment that presidents do
Speaker 2: admit that, they get chewed up for admitting to American error.
Speaker 2: Obama went and apologized to the Iranians.
Speaker 4: Saying apologize. I'm just saying, take off the mask and go,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: What this is?
Speaker 4: It strikes me as it's colonialism and imperialism in a
Speaker 4: more modern form. China is in Africa trying to extract,
Speaker 4: and we're trying to extract. We're militarizing economic rivalries and
Speaker 4: creating all kinds of chaos and death over what is
Speaker 4: ostensibly trying to get better deals.
Speaker 2: Well, some of it's better deals, some of it is
Speaker 2: protecting technology. And I argue in here that with China
Speaker 2: as opposed to Russia, this is, first of all, this
Speaker 2: is an incredible competitor, and it's a competitor in a
Speaker 2: military sphere, in the technology sphere, in finance, in economics.
Speaker 1: And we're their best customer and then they are ours.
Speaker 2: And that's really what makes this different from the old
Speaker 2: Cold War. So reason there's new in new Cold Wars,
Speaker 2: and there's a reason there's an ass at the end.
Speaker 2: First of all, we're fighting too simultaneously. Okay, the old
Speaker 2: Cold War, that wasn't the.
Speaker 4: Case, fighting the wrong terminology, because isn't that Look, the
Speaker 4: only people that never lose a war or the military
Speaker 4: industrial complex are the people that.
Speaker 1: Sell the weapons. And if we continue to.
Speaker 4: If we continue to push that weaponization of these economic rivalries,
Speaker 4: aren't we just playing into that cycle?
Speaker 2: We are playing into the cycle. But if you're in
Speaker 2: a world in which vacuums happen, if we say, okay,
Speaker 2: we're done with this, you're going to go back and
Speaker 2: build our big walls and sort of recede from it,
Speaker 2: someone fills that space. And that space is going to
Speaker 2: get filled largely by China, some by Russia, some by
Speaker 2: other authoritarian regimes. And so we've got to make a
Speaker 2: really hard and bad choice, which is do we want
Speaker 2: to be the one trying to fill that void with
Speaker 2: our technology and our principles, understanding that we violate them
Speaker 2: all the time. Or do we want to let an
Speaker 2: authoritarian regime go fill that space, which we know how
Speaker 2: that's going to look.
Speaker 4: It seems like what we should do is be honest
Speaker 4: about what our aims are in the way that China
Speaker 4: went into Africa and did Belton Road, knowing that really
Speaker 4: it's about cobalt and lithium, and rather than us going
Speaker 4: into Africa and just building up all these small military
Speaker 4: juntas that end up creating all those dictatorships that create
Speaker 4: so much cash and pain for those countries, Well.
Speaker 2: I'd argue that now we're not doing it with cobalt,
Speaker 2: We're doing it with semiconductors, right, So yes, the big
Speaker 2: story that we tell in here went to Taiwan. Spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time at Taiwan Semiconductor, which is the
Speaker 2: biggest producer of the most advanced semiconductors in the world.
Speaker 1: And you looked at the.
Speaker 2: Question does that create a silicon shield for the United
Speaker 2: States and for Taiwan? In other words, that the Chinese
Speaker 2: would not dare take over Taiwan because they would lose
Speaker 2: access to Taiwan Semiconductor.
Speaker 4: And are we going to learn any sentence that begins
Speaker 4: with would they dare?
Speaker 1: Yes? They would dare, and so would we, and so
Speaker 1: and so.
Speaker 2: My argument here is it's a silicon shield for a
Speaker 2: little while, John, but eventually the Chinese are going to
Speaker 2: learn how to make everything Taiwan Semiconductor is making, and
Speaker 2: at that moment we've got a real Taiwan crisis. And
Speaker 2: so the book is sort of a warning head to
Speaker 2: what these next twenty or thirty years are going to
Speaker 2: look like, because this is not a world in which
Speaker 2: these new Cold Wars are going to end sometime soon.
Speaker 2: They're going to be the dominant theme of the next
Speaker 2: twenty thirty forty years, long after Putin and She are gone,
Speaker 2: and long after Joe Biden and Donald Trump are gone.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that last part. The Trump's never leaving.
Speaker 4: I think the two of them, honestly, it'll be like
Speaker 4: twenty eighty four and they'll be.
Speaker 3: Like, it's another Biden Trump rematch. I can't two heads
Speaker 3: in a jar, he call wars.
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