Taiwan on the Eve of the Summit

Will Trump cut a deal with Xi that concedes ground on America's Taiwan policy? That is the question hanging over the US-China summit in Beijing this week. 

To talk through what's at stake, Ian and I are joined by Eyck Freymann, a Hoover fellow at Stanford and the author of Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China. Eyck makes the case for a more proactive form of US deterrence against Beijing than the current paradigm of "strategic ambiguity" allows called "structured ambiguity."

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everyone, and welcome to Into Asia. Today we're joined by Ike Freiman, a Hoover Fellow at Stanford and a China scholar of the highest caliber. His new book, Defending Taiwan, A Strategy to Prevent War with China, came out in April and is a really comprehensive account of all the issues around the most critical flashpoint in the US-China relationship and how to save it from going off the rails. It's also a very timely book, given that it's one of the key agenda items for the US-China Summit next week. So, with that, it's my pleasure to welcome Ike to Into Asia. Ike, welcome.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Thank you for having me on. It's really great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

So, what is the one China policy and how does the US and China interpret it?

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Well, the United States and China do not see eye to eye on this issue. The United States has a one-China policy, which is different from China's One China principle. The way to start is to understand Beijing's position, which is that there's only one China in the world, that Taiwan is part of China, and that the CCP in Beijing is the only legitimate government. The U.S. One China policy, formerly guided by the three communiques, the six assurances, and the Taiwan Relations Act, says essentially the United States doesn't take a position on Taiwan's status. It does not support Taiwan independence. It acknowledges that people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait believe that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China. But it is open to any outcome, provided that it's arrived at without force or coercion and that it's democratically acceptable to the people of Taiwan. What's tricky about the One China policy is that it was never articulated in complete form by any one president. It has emerged through accretion, through 50 years of diplomatic wrangling, with different presidents emphasizing and de-emphasizing different parts. It's a living thing, and it's sort of a totem that symbolizes America's resolve and restraint. And what's challenging now, as President Trump prepares to head to Beijing, is that China wants to exploit his lack of appreciation for these historical delicacies to undermine the world's confidence that he will sustain and defend the policy.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Do you think that Henry Kissinger at the time in the 70s made a mistake to give in on the One China policy in exchange for the status quo that we have today?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

I do not, because Kissinger's communique, what's known as the Shanghai Communique, that's the first of the three communiquees, which are the part of the One China policy that was negotiated bilaterally with China, was actually very legalistic and didn't give anything away at all. When Kissinger went to China to explore what became the opening in 1971, the PRC was at one of its most vulnerable points in history. It had experienced a rift with the Soviet Union, the two had almost gone to war. And here was this opportunity that had fallen almost out of the sky that the Americans were willing to reconsider over 20 years of unremitting hostility and political isolation. Nevertheless, Zhou Enlai explained to Kissinger that there could be no relationship between the United States and the PRC unless the Taiwan issue was resolved. But the PRC held a weak hand and ultimately they gave Kissinger a document whereby the United States got the substantive relationship with the PRC that it wanted without giving anything at all away. The key passage is that the United States acknowledges, quote unquote, acknowledges, Renshidao, that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of China. But the United States doesn't say what position that is. And there's people on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, the Kuomintang, who says, yes, there's only one China and Taiwan is part of China, and we are the legitimate leaders. And so the United States never took a position on who was right. Beijing has chosen to translate that language differently, so it can claim that Kissinger gave away more than he gave away. But actually, the entire US-China relationship that developed subsequently was built on sand because it was based on a deliberate legalistic translation error. The United States uh acknowledged, but it did not recognize.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

So you had mentioned uh the ambiguity that was at the sort of inception of the US-China relationship with Kissinger. But there's another ambiguity uh that we typically hear when it comes to US-China and Taiwan, which is the strict idea of strategic ambiguity. Can you talk a little bit about that and sort of when that comes online?

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Well, the United States is ambiguous about a number of things in its One China policy. One of the things that we're ambiguous about is what Taiwan's legal status actually is. At the end of the Pacific War, to whom did Japan surrender the island of Formosa and the Pescadores, which are now Taiwan's outlying islands. We are ambiguous on that. That is not what is meant by strategic ambiguity. Strategic ambiguity means what would the United States do if the mainland used force or economic coercion to try to bring Taiwan under its control. And Congress expressed its sense in 1979 in the Taiwan Relations Act that any such move would be a grave threat to U.S. interests. And it states pretty much as strongly as an American law short of an explicit treaty commitment can state that Congress would expect the president to do something substantial in response. And it says the United States must maintain the ability to prevent that militarily and must help Taiwan maintain the ability to prevent that. But Congress can't predestine how a future president will respond. And that is ultimately the strategic ambiguity question. The reason why the United States has this policy and hasn't pursued a formal military alliance with Taiwan is, first of all, that that is foreclosed by the Communique. But secondly, and more importantly, the United States wants to create dual deterrence. Yes, the primary object of deterrence is Beijing. You don't want Beijing to attack. But you also don't want Taipei to feel that it's so secure in its backing from the Americans that it can do something extreme and provocative like declare independence, which would trigger the war. And the fact that ambiguity deters Taiwan, Taiwan doesn't want to make too many provocations because they don't know if the Americans would be there if they start it, indirectly eases the pressure on Beijing to take action because Beijing is in no rush. It can wait as long as it wants to solve this problem with some confidence that Taiwan won't surprise them one day by declaring independence. It cuts both ways at the same time, giving the United States optionality. The difficulty is this position made a lot of sense when the US was vastly militarily, technologically, and economically stronger than China. And that's no longer the case. And as the relative power balance equalizes, it looks more and more like a get-out-of-jail free card. And if the United States really doesn't want to come to Taiwan's defense because the cost and the risk of doing so would be high, and if it sends those signals, then Beijing may get the wrong message that it can squeeze or salami slice its way to bring Taiwan to heal through incremental steps. And that is, I think, the way that we are going. And one of the arguments of the book is the one China policy is sort of set in stone for all of these reasons I described. We can't change it without risking catastrophic miscalculation. But we need to change how we communicate it. Otherwise, we are inviting Beijing to push on an open door in the gray zone. All of these ways that they can push against Taiwan with economic pressure, with legal pressure, with military pressure, that's short of actually kinetic force.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Can I ask you a provocative question? What would be wrong with the United States simply declaring that they would come to the rescue of Taiwan whatever happens if it were threatened? Not only because to protect Taiwan, but because it also involves Japan and South Korea. So it really involves the whole strategic arrangement in East Asia.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

This is an option that has been discussed for many years, and it's known as strategic clarity. And the idea is that it will improve the confidence of the people of Taiwan and eliminate doubt in Beijing about our intentions. It's possible to do, but it would accomplish less than people think it would, and it would have costs that are not fully appreciated. Let me explain what I mean. Joe Biden said as president, on four separate occasions, when asked if he would defend Taiwan, yes, I would treat them just as I would treat a NATO ally. That's the commitment we made. And each time the press said, Did he misspeak? Did he misspeak? He couldn't have spoken more plainly. And then the State Department said, Our long-standing position has not changed. Did the U.S. position change or did it not change? On the margin, Biden was signaling to Beijing, if you test me, you can expect that I would respond as I would if you tested me over Japan. Okay. But in a sense, indirectly, he weakened deterrence. Because the value of strategic ambiguity is that deters Beijing and Taipei at the same time. And if you are seen as giving Taipei carte blanche, particularly at a time when the leadership in Taipei are all personae non grata in Beijing, because they're seen as extreme separatists. You risk antagonizing or provoking Beijing by saying that we may give cover to Taiwan's leaders if they start talking about independence. And that may weaken deterrence because if Taiwan were to declare independence tomorrow, China would probably do something extreme, whether or not they felt ready militarily, simply because this is such a sensitive issue in the domestic politics of mainland China that the CCP would have no choice. Strategic ambiguity is the most reasonable position history has given us, and the costs of changing it are high. The other reason why changing strategic ambiguity is potentially problematic is entrapment does happen in history, but when states want to get out of a commitment in which they are entrapped, they usually find an excuse. If the United States really didn't want to come to Taiwan's defense, it would find some pretext, no matter what it had promised to Taiwan. The bigger problem here is not that Taiwan doubts we would come to their aid in a high-end contingency. It's that we have no doctrine at all, at least no public doctrine, for deterring China's pressure on Taiwan in the gray zone. And the gray zone scenarios are where it is at. This is Beijing's primary vector for pressure against Taiwan. Incremental gray zone pressure is how they change the facts on the ground, dominate and transform the regional order, and seize control of Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing base intact. So if the United States has a policy to prepare for the high-end contingencies, but no policy to deter the gray zone aggression, this issue is going to be settled by a crisis rather than a war. And it will be a crisis in which the United States is humiliated and has to choose between walking away or accepting a war or an economic crisis, which are its fault. And this is a bad set of options. We need to think about the plans that Xi Jinping is actually pursuing, not some of these tail-risk extreme scenarios that are less likely to happen.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

So, Ike, when you talk about gray zone aggression, um what I think you're referring to is basically everything that China has been doing to Taiwan over the past few years that isn't short of an amphibious invasion, which includes all these drill, you know, missiles firing over Taiwan, rehearsals of blockades, right? Those are what you're referring to as the gray zone tactics. And from the book, it seems like strategic ambiguity doesn't really have an answer to address that. It seems to mostly be referring to what the United States will or will not do under the case of an amphibious invasion or some kind of direct, more violent approach to Taiwan. Why is that the case? Like why do you think that given how important strategically Taiwan is to the United States, the successive administrations just haven't found a coherent answer to how to deal with gray zone tactics?

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Partly because many of the key gray zone tactics have been pioneered just in the last few years. Xi Jinping is building a broad menu of options to move against Taiwan. And they include high-end military options that have to be taken very seriously, including the most breathtaking nuclear force expansion since the early Cold War. He's building 11 aircraft carriers, the world's largest fleet of fighter jets and bombers, is already built and now is expanding the world's largest missile arsenal, the world's most impressive drone industrial base by far. He's ramping production of submarines, of amphibious ships. I mean, go down the list. And that means he's developing the capability to bombard Taiwan, to decapitate its leaders, to cyber attack it, to cut off its satellite and undersea cable connections, uh, to invade it and occupy it, to take out a counterinsurgency, to partially blockade it, or to fully blockade it. And the United States needs a set of preparations so it can deter all of those moves. But he's also building dozens and dozens of vectors of pressure in the space short of war. They include legal pressure on companies not to comply with U.S. law relating to Taiwan or Taiwan law, where it claims that PRC law is supreme. It involves pressure on third countries to deport Taiwan nationals accused of political crimes to China. It involves massive dredging of sand from Taiwan's waters, Taiwan's exclusive economic zone, to bring back to China, tampering relentlessly with the undersea cables connecting to Taiwan, cyber attacks, information operations, on and on and on. The goal of this all-domain pressure campaign is to isolate Taiwan within the international community, to make the people in Taiwan feel that they are facing a challenger that is so vast in scale that touches every part of their lives, and therefore that there's no hope, that they're overwhelmed. And then, if and when China chooses to have a contingency, that the rest of the world will struggle to articulate a plausible, legitimate case for why it should come to Taiwan's aid. In other words, it's the Hong Kong model. One of the reasons for this is that Beijing doesn't just want Taiwan as a matter of direct sovereign control. They want the world to accept it. For the CCP, this is fundamentally not just about Taiwan, but the definition of what China is and the legitimacy of the regime. This has been the core of the crux of the issue back to 1949. One of the things that Beijing intends to do if we have a crisis is immediately call for a UN General Assembly resolution and try to get the UN General Assembly, thanks to its partners in the developing world, to take its side. And ultimately, the outcome Beijing wants is for the United States to accept that the PRC is supreme over Taiwan. Because that will be the ultimate symbol of U.S. submission to the transformation in regional order broadly.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Except the difference with Hong Kong is that China taking Hong Kong did not directly affect the security of the fortunes of Japan and South Korea and other countries in the region, whereas Taiwan does. And in the age of Trump, nobody is sure anymore of American security guarantees. So how would they react to this new situation? Do you think that they would be reassured by what by your idea of structured um ambiguity? Or in what way what do you think they would like the United States to do?

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Let me just take a beat to explain where my own views differ on structured ambiguity. The idea of structured ambiguity is you maintain the policy, but you clarify two aspects of the policy. The first is the fact that we are strategically ambiguous about what we do in the high-end scenarios doesn't mean that we're passive in the gray zone. China is doing all these things that I describe to change the facts on the ground around Taiwan. And the United States and its partners should respond to these moves in a proportionate way. Now, there isn't a direct way to respond proportionately in the same way if China sends a bunch of sand-dredging ships to dredge sand from Taiwan's waters. We're not going to do that from China's waters. But we can respond in a different domain, say, by deepening our political and military relationship with Taiwan in a way that we deem to be proportionate. And Beijing may claim that it's disproportionate, but we should pursue that in a reactive and measured way. The basic idea is there should be an equilibrium or a balance in the gray zone, and they should understand that if they move, we will respond in a proportionate way that shows resolve and restraint. And then the second part of structured ambiguity is explaining to China that if we get wind of preparations to do something big and dramatic, like what Russia did in Ukraine in 2022, we won't just stand idly by and wait for them to start shooting before we get our house in order. We will reserve the right to act preemptively in order to secure an overall stable equilibrium. And I think it's important to communicate this so that Xi Jinping doesn't feel we're inviting him to push in the gray zone. Otherwise, I think we will get the crisis. Now, President Trump. President Trump intrinsically understands the value of ambiguity. He uses ambiguous threats all the time against his political enemies, against international adversaries. He gets it. What I don't think he has mastered are the finer points of the one-China policy. I think China has no idea what Trump would do if it initiated a high-end contingency. Maybe he would abandon Taiwan, but maybe he would also try to assassinate Xi Jinping as he did in Iran. I think the uncertainty, the erratic character of President Trump, is one of the reasons why China has shifted the locus of its preparations and pressure tactics from the kinetic high-end traditional military space to the gray zone. Because they don't want to give Trump a pretext to do something that is wildly disproportionate and overreacting. But they know that if they salami slice, he lacks the attention to detail to respond effectively. And also, most importantly of all, Donald Trump is very sensitive to the stock market. And if China creates a situation where responding effectively to China's moves involves unsettling the stock market, then Trump may not push back. And so far, I think everything we've seen in the last year and a half indicates that China's strategy is working. Prime example being the Strait of Horror Moves.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

When you were talking about the structured ambiguity argument, I was thinking about an example from recent memory. So uh when Nancy Pelosi visited uh Taiwan in 2022, you know, there was a there was a massive response, right? Um and and there was a that was an example where China had basically shifted the status quo by breaking what uh is I think typically called the median line, which is this kind of implicit line between um Taiwan and China where Chinese uh you know ships and other uh military equipment were not supposed to pass, they passed it um and they continued to pass it. So walk me through uh, you know, an administration going through the Pelosi case with a structured ambiguity policy. What would that have looked like in that case?

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Um, it's a good question. A couple of contextual reminders about that case. This was in the summer of 2022, if I recall right, it was July of 2022, maybe it might have been August. And uh China was just months away from the National Party Congress, where Xi Jinping was hoping to get a third term. It was also still zero COVID. A substantial share of China's population was locked in their homes. And that, of course, was not just about COVID, it was about Xi Jinping's broader discomfort with risk as he headed into that all important political meeting where his his skin was on the line in many ways. He originally asked. Asked President Biden for Pelosi not to go. He assumed that Biden could make Pelosi not go. Then it became public and Biden said, I can't, I can't make her not go. And Xi Jinping felt that it was a personal affront, it was a provocation. At the most one of the most sensitive points of his political career, and that he had asked as a personal favor, and that the Americans were doing this to test him. And clearly the PLA had built the preparations to do that exercise. I think they called it joint sword. And this was an excuse to do something that they had already wanted to do. But this is not a standard example of gray zone activity, because from China's point of view, it started with an American propagation.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

From what it seems, there's already violations in the gray zone, right? And so how what does that look like? Uh I mean, like if somebody were to adopt your policy, if an administration was to adopt your policy, does that mean that they need to start reassessing now, given, you know, the next time a ship crosses the median line, which is probably in the next few days?

SPEAKER_02 23:14

I think the way to think about this is the term status quo is the wrong framework for what's happening. There is no such thing as a status quo in the Taiwan Strait. Or at least Beijing doesn't think there is. There is an evolving situation, which is shaped by norms and patterns of behavior. And that is always changing because the technology is changing, the economic patterns are changing, the political personalities are changing. There is just an overall situation. And China is incrementally trying to pull that situation to be more favorable. And in some domains, those actions can't be easily reversed. And the United States needs to ensure that the situation is evolving so that on the whole, there is peace and that there is stability. I would say we should be more concerned rather than looking backwards at the gray zone pressure that has already happened. We should be more concerned about some of the things that China could do, particularly if they say, start demanding that aircraft coming and going from Taiwan start sharing manifests or start saying to cargo ships coming and going from Taiwan, oh, we want you to submit to inspections. That is, I think, the most dangerous vector. Because if China can seize control over who and what comes and goes, if they can establish that as a precedent, they get to screen Taiwan's relationship to the global economy, then Taiwan is checkmated because they will be able to turn that dial all the way to black. And at some point the US will have to escalate or China gets control of the FABs. So I think I am mainly applying this idea of structured ambiguity to these economic pressure tactics. And the idea is that if you use incremental measures to take control over Taiwan's economy or to salami slice your way to something that looks like a quasi-blockade or something like that, that we have tools to respond in a way that's proportionate.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

But why do you think, in terms of American domestic politics, if Trump doesn't have a grasp of the details, the average American voter certainly doesn't. And why do you think people should care? Why should they not be say if America wants to make a deal with China at the cost of Taiwan, well, um so be it. I mean, in the case of Iran, the argument for attacking Iran is otherwise they can nuke our cities, which is probably nonsense, but at least it's a clear rationale. In the case of Taiwan, it's a little unclear because um defending a democracy is probably no longer all that valid, certainly not in the age of uh Donald Trump. So why how how should it be sold politically to the American public that there should be a more robust defense of Taiwan? Is it only about the semiconductor industry? What do you think should make your idea of structural ambiguity politically um potent in America?

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Well, a lot of the structured ambiguity stuff will never need to be communicated to the American people because it has to do with the covert military-to-military relationship. And though we don't have all the details in the open source, it's quite possible that structured ambiguity has already been in effect for five years or so. Because we now know that there are a substantial number of US military trainers on the ground in Taiwan who are helping to organize, train, and equip Taiwan's elite armed units to resist invasion and other scenarios. And that is a dial that we can turn, that we can calibrate based on what Beijing does. We can send more advisors, we can equip them better when we send them. There's also, I am sure, lots of US to Taiwan government-to-government interaction that is happening informally that wasn't happening 10 years ago. And that can be increased as well. And Beijing is probably aware of a large amount of that, but that's not advertised to the public. A lot of structured managing structured ambiguity has to do with this private signaling. Also, U.S. uh defense deployments in Japan and the Philippines. There's a whole bunch of other ways you can do cyber information operations. There's other ways you can do this quietly. How to explain this to the American people? Well, there's I think there's three big reasons that Taiwan matters, other than the fact that they're democracy. The first is the chips. The chips are the key bottleneck in the AI revolution. I think the United States has a vital national interest in not letting the People's Republic of China win the AI race. I think the PRC has a view of AI, which is that it should entrench the regime's power. And I think it would have a chilling effect on our democracy, on our institutions, on our economic security, on the future health of our economy, on those of our allies, on the security of our nuclear deterrent. Uh losing to China in AI would be catastrophic. And if you lose the fabs, if China gets the fabs intact, then that is a that is an alarming outcome. Uh you also want to prevent a depression and a financial crisis. And if there's any kind of altercation and the fabs are destroyed, that is also bad. So you don't want China to win an AI, but you also don't want the devastating economic shock if you can avoid it. Then you want to prevent China from taking Taiwan and using it as a forward operating base, because if they can use Taiwan as a springboard for their Aaron naval power, they can dominate Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and others, hollowing out our alliances in the region. And then the final reason is that it's about regional economic order. Ultimately, China doesn't want to invade and occupy Japan and the Philippines, but they want countries in their region to engage with the global economy only when Beijing says so. And that would mean that Beijing would be able to weaponize their economies against the United States if we ever wanted to reindustrialize. For example, China made more ships last year than the United States has made since the end of the Second World War. The United States basically can't make ships. In order to learn how to build ships again, we need help from our Korean friends. If Taiwan were to fall by force or coercion, I can imagine a world where China says to the Koreans, no, we actually don't want you helping the US with that. And what are the Koreans going to do? And China would not have to invade and occupy South Korea to achieve that goal. But the problem with these military and economic explanations is that while I actually think they're more compelling than the chips in some ways, they're abstract ideas. And the benefit of talking about the chips is that they're a physical, tangible thing that everyone holds in their hand every day when they pick up their smartphone. And this is something that when I go on radio around the country and I talk to people, left, right, and center, everyone seems to get that we live in a technological society, and if we lose the chips, our modern way of life can't be sustained.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

But there is another scenario, which is perhaps more in the future, where China might regret what it wishes for. Because Trump may not be so unhappy if, for example, China were to threaten Taiwan seriously, and the Japanese and the Koreans no longer sure of American protection would go nuclear, which I think is not unlikely in the future. Now, what would China prefer? To have the United States play a sort of ambiguous uh role as the policeman of East Asia to make sure that that doesn't happen and that Taiwan is protected and Japan and Korea are too, or that a nuclear-armed South Korea and Japan would become more assertive in the absence of the United States?

SPEAKER_02 31:21

It's a fair question, and it's a question I discuss in the book. I do think that if Taiwan were to fall by force, you would see both Japan and South Korea alongside several other countries sprint for the bomb. And if you're Beijing, for very justified historical reasons, you would want to think twice about that. On the other hand, I think that what Beijing is trying to show is that it can achieve supremacy in the region without firing a shot, by seizing control over the sinews of commerce, the sea lanes that keep the region supplied. Ultimately, China is a continental power, but most of the other economies in the region are not. They are island economies that are almost entirely dependent on imports for energy, largely dependent on imports for food, and dependent on imports for pretty much all of their natural resource inputs that they use to do any industrial production, including nuclear weapons. South Korea doesn't have an independent nuclear fuel cycle. If South Korea wanted to sprint for the bomb, where would they put the fuel? Where would they put the waste? If I'm China, I'm thinking I want to establish the norm that United Airlines and FedEx and UPS and Mersk and MSC, the companies that carry the people and stuff through international waters and airspace, submit to my command. And if I can establish that in the South China Sea, and I can establish that in the East China Sea, and I can establish that around Taiwan, including on the far side of Taiwan in the Western Philippine Sea, in time I can extend that across the region. The example that I cite, uh, which I think is extremely disturbing, is in February of 2025, when the PLA Navy sent some ships down off of Sydney Harbor and fired some lead into the water one morning with no advance notice. And they were not a threat to anyone, but no one knew what the hell they were doing there. And so all flights between Australia and New Zealand were canceled for the day. That was Beijing sending the message: you guys are island economies, you depend on these private airlines that will not fly if they think it's unsafe, and we at a time of our choosing and in a place of our choosing can create the kinds of risks that will make them not want to go. And the Hormuz case illustrates this perfectly. If you think Iran, a country without a navy, without an air force, without a leader willing to show its face, is able to take 20% of global oil supply offline just by threatening to fire some drones at a ship. Imagine how China could hold these shipping lanes at risk if it wanted to. And in a world where China can control the sinews of commerce, it may not even matter if Japan and South Korea have nuclear weapons. Yes, in theory they could nuke Beijing, but only at devastating costs to themselves. China would have so many tools of economic coercion to use against them before they could possibly justify escalating to nuclear force. I think this is a new, a whole new vector of uh economic coercion and pressure between states, which is going to become absolutely central to China's practice of statecraft globally. And we do not yet have an answer for it. And nuclear weapons only partially solve the problem.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

How do you think that the current war in Iran um is affecting the policies on uh on Taiwan on both the Chinese side and the American side? Do you think it's going to change thinking, or do you and how do you think it's going to affect the summit?

SPEAKER_02 35:22

I think the United States has shown off many of the finest aspects of its military power, its offensive cyber, its use of AI for intelligence collection, assessment, targeting, some of its logistics, the sophistication of its air defenses, its electronic warfare. In many ways, the purely military operation against Iran has been very successful. But it has also illustrated its lack of stomach or preparation for prolonged economic war. And it has indicated that it, at least in this case, didn't have plans to work with its allies to form a united front against Iran. And I think therefore it has tempted Beijing to shift its focus from these high-end military scenarios where the U.S. might actually be quite capable, to these more nebulous gray zone scenarios involving economic coercion, where the United States seems to lack the ability to form and maintain coalitions and seems to lack the stomach for sustained economic pain. So I think that the war has just pushed Xi Jinping, it's persuaded Xi Jinping that the gray zone is the right place to be. I think Trump, to his credit, has been unwilling to take a truly humiliating deal with the Iranians. But I'm not sure that time is on his side if you look at the dynamics in the oil market. And I think he may believe that he needs China's help to get Iran to an acceptable deal. I don't think that Trump is going to trade away Taiwan at the summit. But I do think that Beijing will want to spin the summit as Trump trading away Taiwan. And whatever Trump says or doesn't say, that will be China's next phase of propaganda. In other words, Trump's love of strategic ambiguity sort of cuts both ways. In a sense, it deters China, but in a sense, it scares the daylights out of U.S. allies who don't know whether he's reliable. And China would like to use the summitry to show Taiwan and others that Trump is not reliable.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

And that China is more reliable. I think that's the other side of this, because China's weakness was always that the US alliances were stronger than Chinese alliances. But according to some polls that I was reading in the Asahi Shimbun in Southeast Asia, now there is more than 50% of the people in Vietnam and other countries now say they trust China more than they trust the United States. So you could say that the behavior of the United States is actually strengthening Chinese alliances as well.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

China doesn't have treaty alliances in the same way that we do, but yes, I take the point. It has not been a great success of statecraft and the long-term cost of the Trump administration's erratic and bullying behavior, I think will take many years to be felt.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

What do you think is the most dangerous aspect of the Trump administration's um approach uh globally, um, you know, policies toward um its allies and, you know, for example, the the Trump doctrine, you know, it's its attempt to assert supremacy over the Western hemisphere. There's there's so many different aspects of the Trump administration that I feel is uniquely damaging to uh its you know nor international norms that I think have an impact on Taiwan. So I'm just curious, like to you, what you found to be um the most alarming. I mean, just to give you like a recent thing that I remember, like Trump just musing about how he and the the new Ayatollah might co-run the Strait of Hormuz. And I'm reading your book about freedom of navigation in in the Pacific. I mean, there's just so many different alarming things. Uh what do you think is, you know, for you the most alarming and and in general, you know, can can a president who is in America first, is it compatible with your framework?

SPEAKER_02 39:16

Well, let me start by saying that I'm a Democrat and I find many aspects of this administration's policy, you know, distasteful or alarming for the obvious reasons. I try to call it as I see it. This book argues that Taiwan has to be a nonpartisan issue. We need to create a space in our political debate that recognizes that this is an issue that matters so much to the United States that if we allow it to become a political football, we are lost. And I'm encouraged when I go to Congress and frankly across the U.S. government, the the depth of appreciation all across the political spectrum of why Taiwan matters and how much it matters. I think the biggest mistake that this administration has made is its disrespectful treatment of our allies and its threats that US security commitments that have lasted for decades could be conditional. I think we need allies to manage the China challenge in the long term. And I'm all for burden sharing and restructuring relations with allies. This happens all the time. This is routine. But you have to do it in a way similarly to, you know, renegotiating or having hard conversations with a family member or a partner. You have to do it in a way that reassures the other side that there's a foundation of mutual trust and dependency that is unbreakable and ironclad. And I don't think the Trump administration has done that. And that's particularly visible in the case of our European allies. On the other hand, in their defense, they have done some things right in the reorganization of the Pentagon, in the changing of our acquisition system, revitalizing our defense industrial base. They are moving much faster, and I think more effectively than the Biden team. They are leaning very heavily on AI. They are betting much of the future of American power and statecraft on AI. That may or may not be the right bet, but if it does pay off, they will look quite clever, and historians may forgive them for other issues that they handled without decency or competence. But it's the alliance piece that worries me most. We don't have a NATO equivalent in the Indo-Pacific. In Europe, at least they have each other. At least the Netherlands has Italy, has Poland, has the Baltic states. In the Indo-Pacific, it's a hub-and-spoke system that we set up for peculiar historical reasons. And Japan, South Korea, Australia, and others don't have deep relationships with one another, with years of accumulated trust to handle these kinds of challenges. And now, as we cast doubt on our own reliability, we are leaving them highly, highly exposed. I think we should move towards a more coalitional structure in the region, but for that to happen, Japan will have to lead. And many of the details of this will have to be worked out by U.S. allies by themselves.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

There's a very good book to be written about why there should be a revival of the East Asian co-prosperity sphere led by Japan.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

That's provocative. Ian, coming from you, I'm going to take that one as a joke.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Well, no, I'm half serious because I do think that the the uh the ultimate answer in in East Asia is that there should be in a kind of equivalent of NATO, in that there should be a military alliance of Southeast Asian nations and East Asian nations. And obviously it wouldn't be the co-prosperity sphere, but it would have to be some kind of alliance. And just as Germany is key to any kind of more or less independent European defense um arrangement, it would have to be Japan. And of course, it's not it's it's for for obvious reasons, it's still very difficult to envisage envisage this, but it it seems to me that that's the only option in the end, because unless it's a continuation of Pax Americana, what else could it be? Because as quite as you say, they're very exposed.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

I completely agree. I take the point, but maybe give it another name and no horrific human rights abuses this time.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

Okay, well, thanks so much, Ike. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 43:44

Thank you so much for hosting. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

That was really interesting. That was Ike Freiman, Hoover Fellow at Stanford and author of Defending Taiwan a strategy to prevent war with China. Thanks for listening to Into Asia. If you enjoyed this one, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We'll see you next time.