00:00:00
please join me in welcoming Graham Allison to the stage [Applause] [Music]
00:00:10
[Music]
00:00:29
really an honor uh Graham thanks for joining us and thanks for agreeing to follow that routine
00:00:36
Graham Allison was founding dean of Harvard's John F Kennedy School of government and remains a professor of
00:00:42
government he's a leading analyst of U.S national security and defense policy with a special interest in nuclear
00:00:47
weapons and terrorism he's most famous as the assistant secretary of defense for policy and
00:00:53
plans from 1993 to 94 where he coordinated strategy and policy towards the state to the former Soviet Union Bill Clinton awarded him the Dem the
00:01:01
Department of Defense medal for distinguished public service for reshaping relations with Russia Ukraine
00:01:06
Belarus Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear Arsenal and he's since become the longest
00:01:11
serving member of the secretary of defense's defense policy board having
00:01:16
served for eight secretaries of defense and he's the only person to receive the department of defense's highest civilian
00:01:22
award from both Reagan and Clinton administrations Graham is one of the world's most cited experts on the
00:01:28
bureaucratic analysis of decision making especially during crimes of Crisis I read his book destined for work in
00:01:34
America and China escaped lucidity's trap which was published in 2018 and I
00:01:40
think was very prescient about the moment that we're in today a couple of weeks ago Elon Musk tweeted out several
00:01:47
times and everyone should read this book so congrats we get a little promotion from Elon as well but thank you that
00:01:52
must have helped sales congrats on that um the theory that when one great power
00:01:58
threatens to displace another war is almost always the result it's at the heart of his analysis on the U.S China
00:02:05
relationship during the Peloponnesian War the cities wrote what made War inevitable was the growth of Athenian
00:02:11
power and the fear which this caused in Sparta and Graham says the Trap triggered nearly every war from the
00:02:17
Peloponnesian War to World War One to the war of the Spanish succession the 30 Years War and now threatens to light the
00:02:23
world on fire once again Graham thanks for joining us uh today
00:02:29
um if you wouldn't mind just praying for the audience and for us here on stage the point that you make in your book
00:02:34
about the acidity's Trap and where we find uh the relationship between China and the US taking us and where it
00:02:42
specifically sits in that evolution of of call it tempering temperament today yeah
00:02:49
well thank you very much and it's a pleasure and honor to be here I'm a fan of your podcast and I think how you've
00:02:56
made this thing work I don't quite understand but I I I appreciate it I appreciate it we
00:03:03
have a friend in the Deep State he's sitting over there we're not going to name names but he may be introduction
00:03:08
and and we appreciate it yeah any case it's a pleasure a pleasure to be here so in the summary you gave I think is a is
00:03:15
a very good place to start let me do four or five quick bottom lines so first uh as I wrote In This Book which is
00:03:22
published just as Reagan big sorry As Trump became president uh
00:03:27
uh in relations within us in China expect things to get worse before they get worse
00:03:34
so that's exactly what I would say today and why what's driving that this is a
00:03:40
classic thucydidity and rivalry so as David said thucydides taught us 2500 years ago when
00:03:48
they rapidly Rising power seriously threatens to displace a ruling power happens that's normal and in most
00:03:57
cases the outcome is war so what we're seeing today and what
00:04:02
we're going to see even more intensely tomorrow and a decade from now is the
00:04:08
fiercest rivalry history has ever seen China is not just another great power
00:04:13
but it's going to be the biggest power in the history of the world the U.S is a colossal ruling power
00:04:19
which has been the architect and guardian of the international order that
00:04:25
allows us to live today in the 78th year without great power War a pretty amazing
00:04:31
accomplishment and so the US is not going to fade away comfortably with that confrontation
00:04:38
occurs most often the outcome is award in the book I looked at the last 500 years there's 16 times we've seen a
00:04:46
rapidly Rising power threaten a colossal ruling power think of Germany's rise beginning of the 20th century and the
00:04:54
challenge to Great Britain that became World War one so most often of the 16
00:05:00
cases 12 ended in war for ended in nowhere
00:05:05
so if we were just doing statistics was not inevitable it's just structurally
00:05:11
likely and the cases in which war didn't occur were cases in which somehow the
00:05:18
parties managed a degree of strategic imagination that bent otherwise Trends
00:05:25
or what you called earlier the physics of the situation so the Cold War I'm an old cold warrior
00:05:32
in the Rivalry between the use of the Soviet Union that had dominated 40 decade for 40 years of American
00:05:39
History the U.S and the Soviet Union came to the edge of War multiple times
00:05:45
Cuban Missile Crisis about which I've written the book the most dangerous but there was ultimately no hot War okay
00:05:51
well that's a big deal had there been a hot War we wouldn't be having this podcast Los Angeles wouldn't be here
00:05:58
Boston wouldn't be here so a real war a real bloody war
00:06:04
is catastrophic it can be in today absolutely catastrophic so
00:06:09
when I said to David when he invited me to come was you folks are in the business of strategic imagination
00:06:17
I mean that's what you do that's how you've come to have a degree of confidence in what you do you imagine
00:06:22
something that seems slightly crazy it seems almost unimaginable somehow you put pieces together uh some of the time
00:06:30
it works and lo and behold yikes our life it's got smartphones or it has the net where it has I AI or it has vaccines
00:06:38
or it has it has it has amazing so I'm hoping that you'll devote some of those
00:06:45
gray cells to to the geopolitical challenge that China
00:06:50
poses to the U.S today which will be the dominant geopolitical challenge for the
00:06:56
rest of our lives I don't think there's anything inevitable about the outcome I think though if we settle for diplomacy
00:07:03
as usual or statescraft as usual or imagination as usual
00:07:08
then we should expect history as usual but that's not that that's the trend
00:07:14
that's not inevitable so if you ask me buy one quickly a war between us and China in the year ahead uh no I give you
00:07:22
99 of that one we're between us and China next four years no I'd say 90
00:07:28
percent uh no okay war between the US and China over the decades ahead if both
00:07:35
stay on the current paths uh I don't like that thinking we had it
00:07:41
seemed like three decades of incredible collaboration uh with China and the West
00:07:47
in America specifically and just look at what happened with the iPhone and the number of people who who
00:07:52
um rose out of poverty um in China and it seemed to be going really well and it seemed like you know
00:07:59
the NBA was playing games there and we were sending movies there everything seemed to be on the right track and then
00:08:05
something has seems to have gone horribly wrong and a two-part question what has gone horribly wrong why has
00:08:12
this happened so quickly because it seems like it's changed since covet in
00:08:17
such a rapid fashion um that's quite us all by surprise how this has come apart and
00:08:25
um what does China want that we don't seem to understand
00:08:31
okay two great questions that I'll try to be brief so maybe in your world a
00:08:36
better way to think of it is to have an established entrenched uh company
00:08:43
and a disruptive upstart got it when the disruptive upstart is one percent of the business
00:08:49
welcome five percent of the business welcome 10 of the business now it's moving faster
00:08:55
and rap more rapidly all of a sudden one begins to think wait a minute where is
00:09:01
this going could it actually imagine it will displace me so China was at the
00:09:08
beginning of the century 10 of the US GDP today it's three quarters of the U.S GDP
00:09:13
so it's quite plausible that China will have a larger GDP even by market exchange rates than the US well wait a
00:09:21
minute we're number one that's part of who we are so in a thucydidity and dynamic basically the Seesaw of power
00:09:28
begins to shift think of a seesaw on a kid's playground like a guy with the bulk is on one end the little guys on
00:09:35
the other end he begins bulking up all of a sudden the Seesaw began moving the Dynamics of that is Lucidity strap so
00:09:42
the perception changes I used to look down on you now I'm having to look you in the eye I'm looking up the psychology
00:09:49
changes who the hell do you think you are I'd forget the environment in which you grew up you should be appreciative
00:09:54
yeah you should take your space okay excuse me our normal place is to be
00:10:00
running the show in your normal place is to take your seat at the table so we many many people imagine that China
00:10:06
would just follow the paths of Germany and Japan and take their place at the american-led international order that was a pretty
00:10:13
good idea except they hadn't thought very carefully about history Germany and Japan were defeated by the USA award and
00:10:18
occupied by the U.S and then we wrote their constitution and then we produced as a kind of training school so China
00:10:25
wants to be this liquid news line China wants to be respected as China not as an
00:10:31
honorary member of the West okay what happened in the late 90s because it started with Clinton where it seemed
00:10:39
like a good idea to admit to the WTO and then Bush kind of just you know put the nail in the coffin and did it and
00:10:45
actually supported it we could have not supported it um
00:10:51
some people say it was a trade-off for China's support for the Iraq War who knows but the point is it happened
00:10:57
but I'm sure you guys were sitting in the engine room scenario planning what happens if this happens
00:11:04
and it's fair to say that from that context we didn't necessarily get it right great so what did you get wrong
00:11:10
well again it's good to go back to 2000 and just to remember in 2000 China was
00:11:16
somewhere between five and ten percent of Us's GDP the people in 2000
00:11:22
eighty percent of the people in China were trying to live on two dollars a day so the place is a miserable struggling
00:11:28
mess the U.S who's been in the business ever since World War II of trying to encourage economic development in
00:11:34
countries so Clinton and Bush together Clinton said about the WTO it's a
00:11:40
win-win-win situation it's going to be a win for everybody China is going to be lifted up that's what we would like to
00:11:45
do because people's lives will be better and actually there's been on any poverty miracle in China that is human beings we
00:11:52
have to admire people that used to get a few calories now get enough calories to
00:11:57
eat that's it that's got to be a good thing the idea that this might work so
00:12:03
successfully that China could become could come and have an economy as large as ours
00:12:09
didn't occur to anybody at the time you could see a few few people as outliers but that was just kind of not in the
00:12:15
imagination and then secondly this was in a period of great Hubris in the U.S
00:12:21
we had won the Cold War we were living in this a bubble which uh you know the
00:12:27
famous the most famous thesis of the period was Frank fukuyama's end of History so everybody has become
00:12:33
democracies and market economies and if they have McDonald's they can't have wars because people would prefer to get
00:12:39
hamburgers and Wars okay you can hardly say that today without laughing but that was sort of well-known that was
00:12:46
conventional wisdom at the time so if you'd come along and said that wait a minute if China is very successful it's
00:12:51
going to come to have a GDP about the size of the U.S and then it's going to have back to your question it's going to
00:12:56
have its own aspirations the Chinese have a view understandably and Ray
00:13:02
talked about this earlier today sorry for four or five thousand years they
00:13:07
were the predominant power in all the World they knew so their story is the normal conditions of things is that
00:13:14
we're at the their through their confusion so hierarchy Harmony and peace
00:13:20
comes through hierarchy they're at the top of the hierarchy that's the normal place they were displaced from this by
00:13:26
westerners with technology 150 years ago they called that the century of humiliation and their aspiration is to
00:13:33
go back to normal and normal so them as China is the quote center of the universe China is the sun around which
00:13:40
the others there's you know as you remember their their thing about you know you can't have two tigers in the
00:13:46
valley there's the big one and the other one so I have two comments the first is just a reaction to this I'm sort of on
00:13:52
the opposite side of you which is that because of China's population was
00:13:58
and because of I think some of these technological things that are sort of on
00:14:03
the horizon I believe that we're sort of at the edge of an era of abundance that will create
00:14:09
a massive peace dividend because a lot of the justifications for war go away that's my personal view but I have taken
00:14:15
the time to try to steal man your point of view which is we go to war and the best steel man that I can come up with
00:14:21
is very practical so I'd like you to try to dismantle it which is you have massive youth unemployment in China and
00:14:27
waning growth and so the simplest and most productive way for China to
00:14:32
basically grow and to appease you know 25 of young people mostly men from not
00:14:38
Uprising is to essentially create demand and the best way to create demand is to
00:14:43
essentially create you know a war machine and that is why they go to war is that
00:14:49
I would say uh I appreciate that option I've worked very hard on the 12
00:14:54
scenarios for getting to war if there's a war between the US and China in the
00:15:00
next year or four years or decade how is it going to happen in my view the most likely not this way it's going to happen
00:15:06
the same way the less work happened now if I would take a quiz here since I know we lived in the United States of
00:15:13
Amnesia okay but when was the last war between us and
00:15:19
China I'm not going to give you a quiz but I'll tell you the answer was 1950. what
00:15:25
okay and what happened in 1950 North Korea attacked South Korea almost
00:15:32
pushed them off the whole Peninsula the U.S had just won World War II that's five years after the end of World War II
00:15:39
MacArthur and American troops were in Japan they came to the rescue of South Korea they pushed the North Koreans
00:15:46
right back up to Peninsula and the 38th parallel which has been the starting point they pushed right across without
00:15:52
even thinking and we're pushing right towards the Chinese border the yellow so you're now one year this is 1950 one
00:16:00
year after model has just won the Chinese Civil War he hasn't even Consolidated his position
00:16:06
the US is Superman we've just dropped two bombs next door in Japan in World War II of Monopoly nuclear power the
00:16:13
likely the possibility that China would attack the US
00:16:18
certainly Tim McArthur but Mao seeing the U.S coming up to his border and not
00:16:25
knowing wherever else he might stop sent his peasant Army to war with the U.S and beat the Americans right back
00:16:32
down the peninsula to the 38th parallel where the so wars happened often not
00:16:37
because anybody wants a war at the beginning of 1950 if you'd gone tomorrow and said I got a good idea why
00:16:43
don't you go to a world with Superman you could have said you heard me out of your mind if you've gone to Truman in
00:16:48
1950 say how about we have a word forget about it but so you don't have to have an intention of either of the parties I
00:16:55
think the most likely way or will happen in the U.S and China something happens in Taiwan either we're
00:17:01
underly provocative of the Taiwanese provocative uh I'm gonna I'm gonna hand it to Saks but
00:17:08
I want to just make one comment get your reaction if if that's the framing what about India because now India is
00:17:14
ascendant it's got a growing population it's got huge economic growth and unlike China who's not necessarily ever been
00:17:20
subjugated in a war the Indians have this memory of
00:17:25
basically having judeo-christians that dominated that region of which we all
00:17:31
had to get Liberty which is almost even worse maybe so just frame India in that
00:17:36
context there another great question and again nobody knows but the Indian story
00:17:42
either Theory one India is about to become a serious rival to China that's
00:17:48
the fashionable story today Theory two is India is the country of the future and will always be so
00:17:54
so we've been through already five of these Cycles before where we declared India was about the rise rapidly and lo
00:18:00
and behold and the it turns out to be India so India has a lot of internal problems itself as was mentioned earlier
00:18:07
today about 20 percent of the population are Muslims uh Modi is basically
00:18:12
undermining the multi-ethnic Democracy that nehru had built by getting support
00:18:18
from the majority by oppressing the minority so that's a complicated problem within and a lot of other components so
00:18:26
if you look at the Rivalry between the U.S and India in the 20th century and
00:18:31
just graph it you discover that lo and behold in every year virtually and every
00:18:37
decade for sure the gap between them is grown in China's favor now not this year India is growing
00:18:44
much faster than China this year and last year and maybe next year so we can look at the trajectories I think it's
00:18:51
quite possible and I think the American strategy which I think is the right one
00:18:56
is that this is a long run game a long game so there's going to be a long
00:19:01
rivalry between us and China we believe that a more Liberty centered uh open uh
00:19:10
Democratic political system will perform better over the long run than that party LED autocracy
00:19:16
she has a different idea he says things are too chaotic information is too uncertain uh you can't let people just
00:19:23
my God let people vote and look and see what happens in the U.S so we need to
00:19:28
have uh order and so our party LED autocracy we believe he's going to do well we play this out over time if the
00:19:35
U.S had to play this game only U.S versus China I think we lose but if the U.S plays this game with a group of
00:19:41
Allied and aligned of whom we now see in the quad India and
00:19:47
Australia and Japan and then in August we see Britain and Australia and the US
00:19:55
and in the trilateral that we just saw with Japan and South Korea so you're
00:20:01
seeing a configuration I call it more guys on our side of the Seesaw and that
00:20:07
can go over a long period of time and it may turn out that democracies fail internally I mean I think it's a
00:20:15
big Challenge and I think it's no certainty about that it may turn out that autocracies fail in the way
00:20:20
autocracies have have historically failed I think it's incredible framing because you have an autocracy in China
00:20:26
and democracy here and then somewhat Democratic is how we're I think describing India right now is India the
00:20:32
most important relationship for America to get right at this moment in time is that the relationship we really need to
00:20:38
be focusing on since that seems like it's the linchpin or the fulcrum well I would say that's a good question
00:20:45
and I'm not sure I've I I am probably unduly skeptical
00:20:50
about Israel let me show you about India because my impressions are overly shaped
00:20:56
by a leak on you Lee Kuan Yew was the founder and builder of Singapore and he
00:21:01
his great hope was for India But ultimately he became to be despairing of
00:21:07
its internal complexities Modi seems to be a different character if you look to
00:21:12
the way you ran the province of the Iran before or the state he was very effective he's very ambitious for India
00:21:18
so I'm hopeful about India if India emerges it has the potential
00:21:24
alongside I don't think only India Japan South Korea Australia New Zealand and
00:21:31
even maybe the Europeans again depending on what happens here so you could have a
00:21:37
group of Allied and a line not all agreeing on it everything but agreeing on enough that says we're we're trying
00:21:44
to make we're trying the complex problem of governing a society We Believe has to
00:21:50
start with the freedom and liberty of people that's what we think is and we think that's essential for the dynamism
00:21:56
of innovation and invention and lo and behold there's a lot of evidence for that and if we're the freest of the most
00:22:03
open Society low in the hole a bunch of people come from other countries where they're not so free and they do their
00:22:09
thing here right say thank God for that okay so under those circumstances played
00:22:16
out over a long run you can imagine imagine a story that turns out pretty
00:22:22
well in the case of the U.S and Soviet Union just to remember it's hard to believe but if you go back and read your
00:22:28
economic textbook that was published in the 1960s Samuelson was the you know
00:22:35
basically for economics it says by the 70s the Soviet Union will have overtaken
00:22:40
the U.S economy right yeah that was kind of a well-known fact well lo and behold lo and behold it didn't Okay the reason
00:22:48
it didn't happen is because dictatorships have a hard time in the long term versus democracies well
00:22:54
there's about 10 reasons why there's weaknesses in an autocracy and you're now seeing a lot of evidence of it in
00:23:01
the Chinese system particularly after she became even more autocratic and guaranteeing his lease on life with the
00:23:09
recent coronation where he's got his third term unprecedented but without a term limit so basically
00:23:16
if I'm the autocrat and especially if I come to think as they as he does he's
00:23:22
got the thought of Xi Jinping they write this into the Constitution so this contains all wisdom so one of the
00:23:29
problems the guys are having with their AI machines is you can't ask a question that doesn't that has an answer
00:23:35
inconsistent with the thought of XI sinping that declares what's true about this and that so he
00:23:41
doesn't tell Pine much about mathematics or science so you can ask those questions 10 cents AI machine
00:23:49
a pretty good competitor for gpt4 in the science or math but if you ask a
00:23:54
question about you know how the freedom centered societies
00:23:59
perform it can't answer that question because the foreign
00:24:05
if you if you choose people for loyalty more than for competence
00:24:12
look at a company and see how that works okay so seven reasons yes I think one of the points you make in
00:24:19
your book is that um and I think your book came out around the time that China and the US had
00:24:26
achieved rough parity in terms of purchasing power parity their GDP roughly roughly and I remember one of
00:24:33
the points you made is that China has four times the population of the U.S so
00:24:38
it's per capita GDP was one quarter that of the U.S if they merely got to the the
00:24:43
point of having half the per capita GDP of the US then their economy would be
00:24:49
twice as big as ours right and you know China has a lot of really smart hard-working people who are studying
00:24:55
subjects that we aren't studying as much as we should in the US like engineering like science and so forth so there are
00:25:01
reasons I think to believe that they're you know incredible rise could derail the demographics are a problem maybe the
00:25:08
um if the economy becomes too centrally controlled but let's just assume that it does continue its Rise
00:25:15
um I guess the question would be will the U.S have to effectively
00:25:22
recognize that they have a sphere of influence in Asia in order to avoid a war
00:25:27
I mean is that is that what we're going to have to do right I think so I
00:25:32
appreciate your starting with the basics and structural realities are hard to
00:25:38
deny so again the Americans don't like this but just do the arithmetic if
00:25:43
Chinese are only if their economy is only half as productive as ours and these are pretty talented people and
00:25:49
they work pretty hard they'll have a GDP twice hours I'll do it again wait a minute twice
00:25:56
hours now you're on a rivalry between A and B and B has twice the GDP so we can
00:26:01
have twice the size of the defense budget can have twice the intelligence budget right it can have twice twice twice okay
00:26:09
you know that's reality now can I find enough Allied and a line
00:26:16
on my side to make up for some of that yeah that seems right uh so that's one
00:26:22
way so you're like an alliance strategy more than they do that's right yeah okay we need it okay but if you said over
00:26:30
time in relationships like that if you're going to avoid war will there be
00:26:36
I mean a sphere of influence again there's a great abstract debate about this one in reality the sphere of
00:26:42
influence is the shadow that power casts in some realm so if you're more
00:26:49
powerful you have a you have a sphere of influence so in the South China Sea today
00:26:55
on Chinese border they have more ships they have more missiles on the land that
00:27:00
can so lo and behold uh we don't care call that their sphere of influence but if you look and see what happens in the
00:27:07
area we don't operate our ships the way we did when I was in the Pentagon in the Clinton Administration so if there were
00:27:14
an event in Taiwan which is 90 miles off their Shore like Cuba is on our shore and halfway around
00:27:21
the world for us the likelihood we're going to have the ships and the planes and the other
00:27:26
excuse me you know that just doesn't work that way you can let the geography and see the tyranny of it so Will there
00:27:33
come to be some degree of difference and accommodation if it was to be avoided
00:27:40
aren't that the answer is yes now then we you know then it becomes ugly because you say well okay you know in what
00:27:46
respect and I know you guys I saw earlier did the question for Robert uh
00:27:51
Kennedy about Taiwan okay I think that's a good question not to answer not the
00:27:57
answer yeah I mean this is where I I worry about the confidence of our foreign
00:28:04
policy establishment because I think it only has one gear which is Ford and double down
00:28:09
in the United States we have a Doctrine the Monroe Doctrine which says that no distant great power can bring troops
00:28:15
weapons or bases into our hemisphere because we do not tolerate other great Powers having security threats and Mass
00:28:21
on our border but our foreign policy establishment cannot comprehend that other great Powers want a similar Monroe
00:28:27
Doctrine I think that was a huge contributor to the war we have in Ukraine right now
00:28:33
thank you so we we have this Theory and I'm part of this establishment that
00:28:40
you're talking about and it's not so it's not Jewish did you
00:28:46
invade Ukraine it's it's not it's not that's such a
00:28:51
gross it's not it's not as uniform as you say and it's not as uh not always as
00:28:57
unsuccessful as you say but overall I think you're more right than wrong so basically the uh
00:29:05
we say we're the exceptional Nation so what does that mean that means we
00:29:11
make the rules and you're supposed to obey the rules but we're not invade the rules so we say we're for the rule-based
00:29:18
order excuse me the rule-based order uh was the basis on which we invaded Iraq
00:29:25
I don't think so that we occupied Afghanistan I don't think so so the US
00:29:30
has made a lot of mistakes of unnecessary Wars and a lot of being
00:29:40
a lot of a lot of the unnecessary Wars was because people with wrong ideas
00:29:46
dominated people with right ideas but there was a debate and a discussion so we need more people with the right ideas
00:29:52
you know getting into the conversation in an active way but let me just do one other footnote here so this is you we
00:30:00
have to remember this is this is 9 11. okay so this is a big day for me okay this
00:30:06
day in which airplanes hijacked by terrorists uh kill 3 000 people at the World Trade
00:30:13
Center in the Pentagon including the many people that I know extremely well uh what would a world be like in which
00:30:20
that happened every day or every week or every month we'd be totally intolerable you wouldn't when we wouldn't be doing what we're
00:30:26
doing why is that not happening some people did some right things
00:30:31
so there's been a pretty active program by the us some of it with some mistakes
00:30:36
but overall that's played a significant role in the fact that people who plan and
00:30:43
praying to conduct major terrorist attacks on the U.S are taken off the
00:30:48
chessboard every day people go out hunting every day people find people and I would say
00:30:54
thank goodness for this wow so I think that's an interesting point um you know certainly Al Qaeda hasn't
00:31:00
been able to hit us again in that way um I I do wonder whether there were two
00:31:06
tragedies on 9 11 one was the thousand people who died the other was the way that we reacted to it um like you said
00:31:12
we went into Iraq a total nonsack stupid stupid and a non-sequitur and then we stay in Afghanistan for 20 years and
00:31:19
again not necessary yeah on sort of the nation building grounds we then went into Syria that's still going on there
00:31:25
was Libya so it's and there was very little debate about all of these things at the time we made these decisions it's
00:31:31
almost like the U.S foreign policy establishment in reaction to 911 became almost deranged
00:31:37
um and I you know compared to say the 1990s where I think there were real foreign policy debates there was a real foreign policy debate in the 90s on NATO
00:31:44
expansion it doesn't seem like we have that many debates not within the policy
00:31:50
Elite maybe we're having them but it doesn't seem like the policy debates anything anymore it's just this this
00:31:55
sort of bellicose hawkish rhetoric at all times do you agree with that from the inside I yeah I I mean again I live
00:32:03
on the other side I live on both sides of this curtain and I would say inside there's much more debate and there was
00:32:09
much more debate than we take credit for it George Bush made a terrible terrible
00:32:15
terrible mistake in invading Iraq and in 2003 who who said that to him
00:32:22
his father's closest advisor prince goldcroft who was joined
00:32:29
at the hip with the father said to him this is a terrible dumb
00:32:34
mistake he even went so far as to write an op-ed about it after he had now he
00:32:40
did not write an op-ed without talking to Bush's father would George H.W bush have done this no if Gore if the if the
00:32:48
count had gone right in Florida and Gordon had been president would we've got to interrupt no so electing the
00:32:53
white president and having the right so if it had been the Bush 41 team rather
00:33:00
than the bush 43 team we would have made that mistake sir you mentioned this RFK clip one of the things that he says is
00:33:07
that we've gotten things backwards now where there's a military industrial
00:33:13
complex that essentially wants to maximize Revenue that's like logical in the capitalist system but then what it's
00:33:19
done is it's perverted the you know intelligence gathering institutions to essentially be
00:33:24
writing the justifications for these wars before these wars happen is that conspiracy theory or is that
00:33:33
I'd say it's complicated so but it's not enough
00:33:39
why is it complicated uh oh we live in an extremely dangerous world
00:33:49
but this year my brand can I ask you like to do we really though like absolutely really if had there not
00:33:57
had thousands of people not been taken off the chessboard you would have said many repeats of 9 11. okay and if you
00:34:05
were living in a place and it's somebody I know was trying to make a last trade
00:34:10
in the morning of 9 11 and a plane crashes here and the building is knocked
00:34:15
down all of a sudden the conversation changes so there's that yeah that's a terrorist piece let's think War
00:34:22
this is the other big event most people don't realize this year this month is the anniversary
00:34:29
of the end of World War II and the beginning of 78 years in which there's not been another great power War
00:34:35
right excuse me in history that's almost unheard of why is that answer well a lot
00:34:40
of good fortune a lot of Grace but also lots of things that the US did successfully so I think that the Geo
00:34:47
security dominates everything when you don't have security and the geopolitics to provide security
00:34:53
is very complicated now the structures that do that often end up making big
00:34:59
mistakes too so I'm not trying to make excuses with the mistakes but I think the overall of it is
00:35:04
that the the security order that's been built in the past and survived for the last 70 years had
00:35:11
been a big deal which is
00:35:16
um through the framing Jamal has here we have this military industrial complex we have this complicated relationship with
00:35:22
China and then we have Taiwan and we have this incredible policy of ambiguity uh and it seemed to be working really
00:35:28
well and now we are we having the proper debate on Taiwan what is the debate we
00:35:34
should be having on defending Taiwan not defending Taiwan providing them with arms because you
00:35:41
seem to believe in the book that this is going to be this is great what it's about let me add to that question and
00:35:46
this is going to be our last question because we do need to move um move on um in your role in defense planning and you
00:35:53
look at the Department of Defense today in the U.S defense industrial complex are we
00:35:59
equipped for a hot conflict with China and if we're not does that change the
00:36:05
positioning and the strategy that China then has and how they think about what they're going to do next with the U.S so
00:36:11
the first one is no we're not and it certainly impacts China and in fact I think if you were able to Greenfield uh
00:36:18
the defense department today for half the money you could get twice the bang for the month yeah no so bureaucracies
00:36:24
are complicated difficult the fact that we haven't had another great power War I'm prepared to pay a little extra for
00:36:31
it but if you said how efficient is it you know not not so much and into the I
00:36:37
think the the big question you should ask ourselves is uh for rational actors
00:36:42
in Washington or here today us and in Beijing are there more reasons more
00:36:49
incentives to compete between the U.S and China or alternatively more incentives to
00:36:55
cooperate right so we've been through all the ones to compete but for cooperating excuse me if we have a war
00:37:01
we destroy ourselves so we have a pretty powerful interest in survival in not having a war and not
00:37:07
allowing us something happening in Taiwan or this or that this one if we live in an enclosed biosphere on a small
00:37:13
planet either parties greenhouse gas submission can make the place unlivable for both of us if we don't find a way to
00:37:20
cooperate in dealing with that we have a financial system that's so entangled at a financial crisis one place can become
00:37:26
a depression everywhere so if we don't find a way to do it so I would say it's a good assignment for everybody make a
00:37:32
make your list of the recent inflatives to compete and turn the sheet over incentives to cooperate and we did a lot
00:37:39
more strategic imagination in that space and I'm helping some of you guys and this and the other folks will put some
00:37:45
of their great cells under that problem instead of this de facto posturing that everyone seems to hold today that we're
00:37:51
going to go to war this is our enemy and just be a little more thoughtful about the long-term relationship Graham Allison thank you so much
00:37:58
wow
00:38:04
[Applause] [Music]
00:38:29
besties [Music]
00:38:40
[Applause] [Music]
00:38:51
[Music]
00:39:04
thank you [Music]
