Dmitri Alperovitch and "World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century"
44:32 Share

Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, director of the Stuart Center and Europe-Russia-Eurasia program at CSIS. And I'm Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia. And you're listening to Russian Roulette, a podcast discussing all things Russia and Eurasia from the Center for Strategic International Studies.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Russian Roulette. I'm your host, Max Bergman, and today I am joined by Dmitry Alperovitch to discuss his new book, World on the Brink, How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century. Dmitry is a co-founder and executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think tank focused on policy solutions in national security trade, in industrial security, as well as ecological and economic security.

Demetri is well known as the co-founder of the leading cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, and he also serves on the Homeland Security Advisory Council at the Department of Homeland Security. Demetri is also the host of the excellent podcast Geopolitics Decanted. Joining me as well is Michael Kimmich, who's not really a guest anymore.

on Russian roulette. Michael is a professor at the Catholic University of America, where he's the chair of the history department. He's also a senior associate non-resident fellow with our program here and a frequent contributor to Russian roulette. Michael's most recent book is Collisions, the Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability. Thank you both for joining us today and let's jump right in.

Dimitri, we really wanted to have you on to discuss what is a really fascinating book, and Michael as well, because Michael is also out with a new book to talk about the origins of the war in Ukraine. But Dimitri, I want to start with you, and maybe you could give us sort of an outline of what your book is about and why you wrote it. And I have to admit, I was sort of skeptical before picking it up that, you know, this Russia guy who I listen to all the time is writing a book about Taiwan, but I think you really...

weave the current geopolitical dynamics incredibly well together, essentially outlining how we are in a new Cold War and need to think in that way. But I'm summarizing, but Dimitri, maybe you could give us a rough overview of the book. Why did you write it? And then we'll sort of go from there.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me on, Max. Well, it's funny you call me a Russia guy because actually most of my focus at Silverado has been on China. And I feel a little bit like President Obama that tries to pivot to Asia in the last couple of years, gets pulled back into Europe and dealing with Russia and Ukraine over the last couple of years. But I've always believed for, you know,

well over 15 years, that China was the main threat the United States faces over the course of the century. And we needed to address it and we need to have a strategy for winning this Cold War. And to some extent, Russia-Ukraine, as important as that conflict is, unfortunately, is somewhat of a distraction from that real issue.

But I actually started writing the book right after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because I was one of the few, and I think Michael and a few of our friends were in the same boat as well, that predicted that Putin was going to invade Ukraine months before it occurred. I came out publicly in kind of mid-December with that prediction. And when I looked at the causes of that conflict and why I thought that Putin had made the decision to launch this ruinous war,

I saw the same dynamic playing out in the East Asia, in the Taiwan Strait. And I think there were basically five reasons why Putin decided to invade when he did. And those are history, in particular, his own distorted view of history, that Ukraine is not a country, it's not a nation, it's always belonged to...

as part of the Russian empire. Of course that's false, but he believes that just like she believes that Taiwan is not a nation and has always belonged to China, at least since the 1700s. Also, by the way, false, as I write in the book, there's never actually been one moment when whoever fully controlled China also fully controlled Taiwan.

Second reason is destiny. I think both of these men, both these authoritarian leaders are obsessed with the destiny of their countries, trying to make them great again, trying to expand their empires and get control of their neighborhood and become regional hegemons. Ukraine, of course, is vital to Russia's interests there, as is Taiwan for China.

And then there is a security and geography element to this as well. I'm not one of those people that believes in John Mearsheimer's argument that NATO expansion was the main or the only cause of this war, but I also don't believe that it had absolutely nothing to do with it. I do think it had a role to play here. In part, Russia was concerned about NATO expansion to Ukraine or potential NATO expansion to Ukraine because it wouldn't have the optionality to invade Ukraine. And once it joins NATO, it no longer has that

Right. So both from a defensive perspective and offensive perspective, there was a concern there. And similarly, China feels contained right now by the U.S. military allies, U.S. military bases. You know, when China looks out at the world, what does it see from the

Far eastern point that sees the Korean Peninsula with South Korea, 28,000 American troops, naval bases, air bases, radar installations. Further down, the Japanese islands with the headquarters of the 7th Fleet, Marines in Okinawa, of course, highly capable Japanese self-defense forces as well. Right in the center of that first island chain, really the anchor point of that first island chain is Taiwan, viewed as an outpost of U.S. power.

Closing down that arc are the Philippines, where once again, for the first time in 32 years, we're gaining access to the military bases on those northern islands. So from China's perspective, both defensively in terms of feeling threatened and particularly feeling threatened that it might get cut off from the global trade because the U.S. Navy has the ability right now to essentially institute a blockade, a quarantine of maritime trade going into and out of China,

It feels insecure, but also from a perspective of going on offense and dominating that region, it needs to have Taiwan to break out of that containment and push the United States out of that region. And then lastly, I think what's really, really vital both for Putin and for Xi and why the timing is so critical is the drive of ego, the individual egos of those two men who want to be the great leaders of their respective countries, who want to take control

credit for expanding the empires. Putin views himself as a new Peter the Great. Xi views himself as someone who can be greater than Mao, who's already in many ways consolidated so much power in China that he eclipses power that Mao has had at any point during his reign, except maybe during a brief period during the Cultural Revolution. And he wants to go down into the pantheon of Chinese history as the guy that accomplished this, that unified China, accomplished what he calls the

great Chinese nation's rejuvenation, of which unification with Taiwan he views as a critical element. And he doesn't want this to happen, you know, 20, 30, 40 years from now. He wants it to happen on his own watch. And I think Putin felt the same way, that this was not a problem, quote unquote, Ukraine, that could be left for future generations. It had to be dealt with now.

A great point. And there's a lot to kind of learn from both what's happening with Taiwan in the South China Sea as well. And in Ukraine, I went to Vietnam in 2015 when I worked for Rose Gottemiller. And it was sort of fascinating. One of the meetings she just did in Russian, which freaked out her

the Vietnamese minders that were there with the official that we were meeting. But the larger argument was, look what's happening in Ukraine. Russia's doing the same thing to Ukraine as China is doing in the South China Sea with an effort to try to strengthen our partnership with Vietnam. We've had some success, but Putin visiting Vietnam, maybe not.

Michael, I want to bring you into this. You have a recent essay, quote, the failure to deter U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia from the end of the Cold War until February 24th, 2022, of course, when Russia invaded. Maybe you could outline that essay and then sort of tie it into Dmitry's book, because I think the two really intersect.

Sure. No, I think that there are lots of lessons not probably to learn directly from this problem set, but to think through and to apply from one problem set to the other, which I understand is really, Dimitri, the essence of your book. So I would outline major reasons for the failure to deter. And I do think that there are lots of big intelligence successes on the part of the U.S. government four or five months before the February 2022 invasion. And those deserve to be given all the credit that they have

been given, but the failure to deter is a pretty momentous thing and we need to be very rigorous about how we think it through. And so the four reasons are the first was a kind of optimism about Europe that settled in after 1991, where there were a set of assumptions about Europe as a place that was inevitably integrating, that had some kind of peaceful momentum, that it was distributing on its periphery and sort of extending outward, and that in a way the answer to the problems of Europe was somehow more Europe. That really became entrenched in the thinking

policymakers that wavered a bit perhaps in 2014, but not really fundamentally. And you can see how, of course, it's been shattered in the last two and a half years, that optimism, but it made the work of deterrence a lot more difficult. Secondly, I don't think that after 1991, and I think it's worth going back that far, the West was ever really able to develop a coherent agenda for Ukraine. It wasn't part of the club, but it wasn't irrelevant to the club. You have these in-between measures like the Eastern Partnership Programme.

of 2009. And there's just a lot of vacillation. You see it in the famous Obama Goldberg exit interview when he's finishing up his two-term presidency. And he can't seem to position where sort of Ukraine fits in the hierarchy of American priorities. And that is an innate vulnerability. Thirdly,

and relatedly a lack of follow through on stated objectives. And so our stated objective, as you know well, Max, because we were both in the State Department at the time when it came to Ukraine, was to get the Russians out of eastern Ukraine, out of the Donbass. That was, you know, the whole purpose of the sanctions regime. It didn't happen. And it just feels to me in retrospect that we were pretty lazy about follow through. We meaning collectively sort of

Obama administration, Trump administration collectively. And of course, you can throw the Europeans into that mix as well. So all kinds of big stated objectives with rather limited follow through base between follow through and objectives was another vulnerability. And then finally, and here's

maybe where we want to think most carefully about China is an underestimation of Russia, which I mean in two respects. And I think the first respect is not a way that we're underestimating China, but the second one may be. The first is capacity. I don't think that we imagined that Russia had the capacity to wage a multi-year war of this scope. It just wasn't a natural part of our thinking. But more importantly, we didn't think that Russia had the intention.

You know, we had the intelligence, but we couldn't figure out what the intention was. And in a sense, we underestimated. We thought Russia might do a bit of a regional sort of escapade in 2022. But it was really hard to believe that there would be a massive full scale war. And that underestimation made the work again of deterrence all the more difficult. So over and out with those four points.

Dimitri, maybe over to you. I guess one issue that I sort of want to raise is this issue of ideology, where in your book, and I sort of firmly agree with this, there was a sense of the liberal world order, we're kind of democracies on the march. But are we sort of going the other way too much? We're sort of dismissing the role of democracy and in the quote unquote liberal world order as sort of an important tool in the West's toolkit?

And it kind of strikes me that with Ukraine, at least pre 2022, U.S. policy actually we want Ukraine to be sort of a buffer state. Effectively, we want to have European aspirations, but we weren't serious about bringing it in. We were going to engage it economically.

But the situation in 2021 was actually fine for the United States. Biden administration wanted to park Russia, focus on China. But it was Putin that upended that. And I would argue also the Ukrainians, to some respects, that the challenge that we have, I think, when it comes to Ukraine is that Ukraine won't be a buffer state. They won't allow themselves to be a buffer state. They're desperate to be part of Europe, desperate to be part of the West. So I

On the one hand, I guess it's a convoluted question, but are we sort of wrong in throwing out the desire of people to live in a democratic world just because in some ways it hasn't worked everywhere, but we're seeing in Ukraine that strong desire? And how does that play when it comes to Taiwan and China? Because that strikes me as a critical variable in something that's sort of in some ways similar and some ways different than the Cold War period. So there's maybe a lot there for you to unpack.

It's a great question. You know, I think the fundamentally the issue with Ukraine is that it only matters to a certain extent to U.S. national security policy. Right. And you've seen that even in the prioritization of the Biden administration, the Biden administration from the get go from December of 2021, when it started to see the buildup of Russian forces on the border of Ukraine, the president came out and said, I'm not going to send American troops to fight for Ukraine. He ruled it out from the get go. Right.

He has done the opposite on Taiwan. In fact, now on five occasions, most recently, just a couple of weeks ago, he has said in various forums that he would send American troops to fight for Taiwan. And I think it's an appreciation that Taiwan matters a great deal more to the United States from a strategic perspective than Ukraine. And this goes back long before, of course, Biden or even recent history, General Douglas MacArthur in 1950 called Formosa

as it was called at the time, the unsinkable aircraft carrier, it is really vital for the geostrategic position in part to contain China. And Ukraine never really played that critical role in U.S. sinking throughout history, right? Including modern history.

I also think that the Ukrainians absolutely wanted democracy more than democracy. They wanted to be part of the Western order. Maidan was started because of the association agreement with the European Union that was getting signed and then withdrawn by former President Yanukovych. And that's what triggered the protests. But let's face it, we also encouraged it, right?

We, in 2008, said that Ukraine should join NATO, you know, in the famous NATO meeting by President Bush. He also did that with Georgia. Having extended the arm, having encouraged them, then we did nothing for them, right? So when 2014 happened and the occupation of Crimea and then parts of the Donbass, we basically...

refused to do anything other than sanctions and didn't even send weapons until much, much later to support the Ukrainians. So we try to have it both ways, encourage them to do the right things, and then basically throw them overboard when we realize that our hardcore interests were diametrically opposed in supporting Ukraine vis-a-vis Russia.

Actually, Dimitri, let me follow up. What about China? And if we're kind of in this sort of effectively Cold War 2.0 with China, what role does ideology play? Because on the one hand, you could argue, well, what makes this very different than the first Cold War is that was sort of an ideologically focused conflict where you had two systems that were not compatible in terms of communism and market capitalism or democracy.

And you could argue, well, perhaps strongman authoritarianism and market capitalism can sort of go together in this current world order. How do you see ideology playing out in this new Cold War as you describe it versus the previous one?

Terrific question. And first of all, there is an ideological struggle. In fact, the Biden administration calls it out, right? They say we're in a fight of democracies versus authoritarianism. That extends to China, extends to Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and so forth. But it also is a misnomer, I think, to allocate so much importance to ideology in the first Cold War. In fact, my good friend Sergei Rachinko just released a terrific book on the history of the Cold War, looking at documents, recently declassified documents from the Soviet side.

And he talks about how ideology actually played very little role and increasingly diminished role as the Cold War progressed. So, yeah, you can look at ideology sort of from the Lenin times and even through Stalin time, and it was much more important than in the Brezhnev days or certainly in the Gorbachev days, right? So to think that this was always, you know,

same type of conflict that we had throughout those decades of the Cold War, I think is a mistake. And, you know, ideology ebbs and flows in this current conflict as well. I argue that this Cold War did not begin with Xi Jinping. It actually began much, much earlier. In fact, if you go back to Deng Xiaoping's famous instruction to the Chinese people, hide your strength and bide your time.

It's amazing to me that no one asked the question at the time, who are they hiding their strength from and what are they biding their time for? And it was fairly obvious in retrospect. Deng and following leaders de-emphasize ideology. Xi Jinping is bringing it back in many ways. And he is actually a Marxist-Leninist in the very traditional sense. And you're seeing that in his management of the economy, his refusal to fix really fundamental issues that they're now seeing on the economic front, crackdown on the technology sector and the like.

I don't think it's necessarily capitalist versus communist ideological struggle. I do think that there is much more of an element of authoritarianism versus democracy. And China is actually spreading it. It's not just about keeping that system for themselves. For example, as we speak, instituting schools in Africa for future generations of African leaders to teach them authoritarianism, to teach them surveillance technologies, how to control their populations. So they are

absolutely exporting it and supporting dictators around the world. Michael, maybe want your thoughts on this as well. How do you see the kind of Ukraine fitting into this, into the kind of broader global narrative of liberal democracy? On the one hand, I can see this as both repudiation to kind of the optimism that we had in the period after the end of the Cold War. On the other hand,

It's also Ukraine, I think at least in the early days in 2022, seemed to breathe life back in. Here was a country fighting for democracy as sort of a symbol for freedom against oppression. I guess, how do you see that playing out and ideology right now between, you know, at least in the Russia, U.S., Russia and NATO context?

What's true in Europe is not necessarily true globally. And that's, in a sense, normal, shouldn't be shocking to us. But I think very much in the European context, the fact that Ukraine is a democracy matters greatly. More than anything, I think the fact that Ukraine is a democracy, you know, trouble in some respects, but still a democracy matters greatly internally in that the 2019 election in Ukraine, which is democratic and

gives Zelensky a pretty broad mandate, also gives Zelensky a kind of legitimacy that's been crucial to the Ukrainian wartime effort. And there is a pretty stark contrast in the way that Ukraine is waging its war to a degree from the bottom up and the way that Russia is waging its war from the top down. So I think that that matters for the prosecution of the war, and it matters for the way that Europeans and Canadians and Americans and Australians and others care about the war in Ukraine. If Zelensky were simply another autocrat,

it wouldn't have the same resonance for the countries that are supporting Ukraine. But it does bear emphasis that many of the world's great democracies themselves with their own internal troubles, you know, India, Brazil, South Africa and other countries are just not on the side of Ukraine.

So globally speaking, democracy is just not the dividing line. It's not the litmus test. Countries have other interests, and that's something that we have to figure out in Washington. But I would, you know, it's the last point that I'll make. I would sort of emphasize also that as a historian of the Cold War, that's not exactly a new dynamic. There was a whole range and spectrum of relationships within the Cold War. It was less binary, I think, than it often seems. That's what a lot of the recent scholarship has brought forward. And so in some ways, we're sort of living through another iteration of that older Cold War.

Let's turn to the topic of deterrence, because that strikes me as critical for Taiwan. Deterrence obviously failed when it comes to Ukraine.

What lessons do you sort of draw from the war? Right now, Washington is full of talk of potential or thinking about potential conflict with China. And I think that makes sense. On the other hand, I mean, what we're seeing in Ukraine is the United States sort of drawing a clear red line that we're not going to militarily intervene to defend Ukraine, a state that we recognize. But yet there's a presumption that we would intervene militarily.

for a state that we don't recognize when it comes to Taiwan. Maybe you could talk about deterrence and maybe the strategic ambiguity that has been sort of playing out with the White House offering its commitment and sort of pulling it back sort of serves to confuse everyone. And maybe that's quite useful. Do we need to be clear about this to deter China? Love your thoughts. Yeah.

And, you know, maybe I would disagree a little bit with you, Max, and Michael as well, in that I don't think that deterrence actually failed in Ukraine. I think it was not practiced in Ukraine. Right. I mean, when President Biden, well in advance of conflict, says we will not fight for Ukraine, I don't know how you can claim deterrence has failed. We've basically decided not to deter.

Right. By making that proclamation, because we looked at our hardcore interests. And by the way, this was not just President Biden. This was unanimous, really, agreement across the political spectrum. There was no one on the Republican side or the Democratic side that had any interest then or even today to send American troops to fight for Ukraine. Right. I think that's quite a bit different in Taiwan. And it comes down not to democracy, not to whether we recognize a country or not, but to our strategic interests.

The Biden administration, I think, believed in the early days of the conflict and in the run-up to the conflict that Ukraine was going to lose. And many people believe that. And I'm guilty of that myself, that I thought that the Russians would overwhelm the Ukrainian forces and perhaps if they had a better plan, they might have. But the...

reality was they accepted it. It was unfortunate and we're going to punish Russia through economic sanctions and a variety of other means, but we basically decided at the get-go that Ukraine was going to lose. It was acceptable to us. Unfortunate, we didn't like it, but

We were not going to sacrifice our troops or major strategic interests and confronted Russia to avoid that scenario. It is very different in Taiwan because of the strategic importance that Taiwan has in containing China, because of the threat that China represents, because of the impact

to our alliances in that region, whether it's South Korea, whether it's Japan, whether it's the Philippines, you know, those countries become much, much weaker if China is able to take Taiwan, project power across East Asia, push the U.S. out, perhaps all the way to the third island chain, Hawaii. And it will change the geopolitics of that region, which is one of the most important regions of the world. East Asia alone is about 30% of the world's GDP. Many of the supply chains, things like semiconductors that we're relying on are

in there and of course much of the economic growth as well and China breaking out of that containment can also use that as a springboard for domination globally and when I say domination I don't mean that in the Nazi Germany sense that they're going to start invading countries left and right I don't believe that for Xi I don't believe that even for Putin uh

But you don't need to invade countries to dominate them. Just look at Russia and what it can do when it's near abroad in Central Asia and the Caucasus. A lot of these countries, when Russia says jump, have to say how high because they have no other options, right? The United States is far away. It can't do anything for them. They're living next to a big bully that can order them around. And that'll be Japan. That'll be Korea. That'll be the Philippines if China is able to take Taiwan. And that's why...

matters to hardcore American interests from a realist perspective. And that's why I think deterrence in the Taiwan Strait so far is holding, right? Look, China has the ability today to invade Taiwan if it knows for certain that the United States will not come to Taiwan's aid. Taiwan's military is simply too weak to withstand an onslaught from China without the help of the United States. But China knows today that there is a good chance

It probably doesn't have an exact probability, but a decent chance that the United States would not do that and would actually come to the aid of Taiwan. And that would change everything. And today, China does not have the capacity to overwhelm not just the Taiwanese forces, but also the United States military, the Japanese, Australians, and others that would come into the fight.

So far, deterrence is holding. I think it is changing in part because of the balance of power, military power in East Asia with the buildup of Chinese forces and frankly, the United States military and the Taiwanese military and the Japanese letting our eye off the ball over the last couple of decades and now trying to desperately catch up. But it's also changing because of the growing economic power of China because of its dominance in certain supply chains, particularly critical minerals, particularly foundational chips,

green energy and so forth, where Xi Jinping may convince himself that the United States will not intervene, not just because of his military power, but because of the economic damage that he can cause to the United States and its allies. And he can take Taiwan without a broader fight. That was Putin's calculation as well. He knew, of course, that the United States would not fight, but he thought that

even the sanctions would be limited because of the dependency of certainly the Europeans, but also the global markets on Russian oil and gas. And to a certain extent, he's actually been right. I mean, we talk a lot about Russian sanctions, but actually very little of the Russian economy is under sanctions, right? The defense industry is, but much of the extractive industry really is not. Most of the banks are not sanctioned. We have not tried to actually destroy the Russian economy in part because of the fears of the global economic impact that that would cause.

No, I think that's a great point and a major kind of difference between this time and the previous Cold War where our economically so intertwined with China. And I sometimes sort of think that you can hear two different sort of U.S. policy approaches if you come to Washington or if you go to New York. And there's kind of two different perspectives sometimes on China. Michael, curious for your thoughts on the deterrence issue. Anything Dimitri said that you disagree with? And feel free to go at Dimitri with any questions or anything else you have.

On the subject of deterrence, you know, I'm intrigued by the subject. I feel like I want to do a little bit more research in this regard. I think the Biden administration does speak the language of deterrence in 2021. I know that Jake Sullivan would use the word now and then. I think that there were certain deterrent hopes invested in threat of sanctions. I think we could kind of go back and

look at that. And I think I would like to understand just in general American strategic thinking, the sense of the U.S. as the guarantor of European security writ large and whether that was tied with notions during a major conflict in Ukraine. But those would just be, I think, minor qualifications. I think the point that Dmitry makes is exactly right, that there were sort of inbuilt limits to U.S. policy and those really, they're not always there in word, but they're always there indeed. And they sort of explain

you know, exactly where Ukraine is on the list of U.S. priorities. But, you know, the discrepancies between rhetoric and reality here are probably a subject unto themselves. And that's something I would like to write about in the future. Dmytro, the question I'd like to ask you is the lesson not to learn from Ukraine and to apply to Taiwan. How might you confuse the Taiwan issue by, in a way, sticking too close to what's happened in Ukraine?

And by the way, I want to say that I had a number of conversations with Jake and others in that lead up to the war. And I can tell you that certainly in a couple of months before that conflict broke out, they became convinced that this was going to happen no matter what. So they knew that deterrence has failed or they weren't going to practice it at any rate. But there was no illusions that the sanctions were going to stop Putin from invading at that point. Look, I think the one area where I disagree with some of the

common consensus in this town is that whatever happens in Ukraine will have a dramatic impact on Taiwan and ability to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. I think that's a rehash of a domino theory that's been described during the first Cold War. And I think, look, I'm a big supporter of Ukraine. I think we should support Ukraine.

for the reasons of the importance of supporting democracy there and standing up to Russia and trying to weaken Russia. I think tying to China is a disingenuous argument because Xi Jinping ultimately is going to look at the situation in his own backyard, the balance of military power that he's got across the Taiwan Strait, his own forces, the forces he would likely face, the likelihood that that invasion would succeed, the likelihood that he could deter the United States and its allies from intervening,

And that's going to be way more important than what happens halfway around the world in a land war between Russia and Ukraine. I just don't think it enters into his calculus much at all. Tying the two conflicts together in this way to kind of drum up support for Ukraine is not helpful.

I do think that there is a range of things that China could be learning from that conflict. And some people have said, well, it can look at how difficult this conflict has been for Russia, how much of its goals have not been accomplished and the economic impact that it has suffered, the devastation to its ground forces and say, you know what, an invasion of Taiwan would be even more difficult. We shouldn't try it.

Maybe they're learning that. They could also be learning that the United States will not fight a nuclear power because we've ruled out sending forces to Ukraine and kind of self-deterred ourselves from intervening. And they may say, you know what, this is going to be very easy because the United States will not fight. And if the United States doesn't fight, you know, this becomes not a cakewalk, but much more doable than it would be otherwise. So it's really, really hard to say what lessons she's learning.

to the extent that he's learned any lessons, because he actually doesn't strike me as a great learner to begin with. But you could certainly make the case for both sides of the equation. Because it does strike me that one of the outcomes of this conflict has been a closer partnership between Beijing and Moscow. And I think in 2021, there was a sense, at least amongst some folks in the Biden administration, there might be some way to wedge

Russia and China, or at least park Russia to the side. The summit that was held in Geneva between President Biden and Putin in June 2021 strikes me as this kind of, I wouldn't call it this sort of sense of a reset or Kissinger-China conflict,

kind of wedging strategy. But I think there was a sense that China-Russia partnership was limited in nature, and that by engaging Russia, they could tone things down with Russia, and that would limit the potential relationship between Beijing and Moscow. But now it seems like we have a new access emerging, or at least that's been argued. What do you think about those ties? And that strikes me as

in some ways, going back to the very early period of the Cold War with Mao and where Beijing and Moscow were, I don't know about completely aligned, but had similar ideological goals and outlooks and efforts. You know, it's funny you mentioned that summit in Geneva because it strikes me that in this entire history of this conflict and renewed conflict since 2022, that is the one piece that I think has not been paid much attention to is what happened since that summit.

that changed the situation so dramatically because, and I haven't talked specifically to administration officials that were there, but from my understandings, Ukraine was not even a major topic of discussion. If you remember, ransomware attacks from Russian criminals were the big issue that they discussed. And actually a lot of progress was made. The Russians started arresting some of those criminals. It was actually a fairly successful summit. And then of course, you know,

Six months later, you have the launch of this invasion and the dramatic buildup of forces in late October, November. So what changed between June and October and November, I think we have not answered. Now, that was not the first Russian military buildup. There have been multiple, including one preceding that summit, but the Russians ultimately pulled back their forces. That's an interesting point for historians to look at perhaps one day.

But I do think that it's quite overstated that this no-limit friendship, as has been called, but actually hasn't been repeated since its original pronouncement in 2022 between Russia and China, is so strong. In fact, when I look at this recent visit by Putin to Beijing, when he brought with him basically the entire Russian cabinet—

most of the oligarch posse that's in control of the extractive industry and other industries in Russia to Beijing. And then they released a communique after the summit. Yes, Xi had this bear hug of Putin. They talked about the great friendship between them and their people.

But the communique, I think, was very, very tolerant because the first item in the communique talks about the great friendship between the Russian and Chinese people. Okay, fine. The second item in the communique talks about the need to set up a special protection zone for tigers and leopards

in Siberia. And look, I'm all for protecting tigers and leopards in Siberia. I think that's a really important issue that I'm glad that President Putin and President Xi care about it. But I hardly think that it's the second most important issue between Russia and China, particularly at this moment in time. The third element of the communique talked about aligning the veterinarian standards between the two countries so that pets could easily travel between them. Right.

It's very, very clear that President Xi hugged Putin and did very little else. In fact, he's not supporting the military effort with direct supply of munitions or weapon systems to Ukraine. In fact, the Chinese banks are cracking down on even some of the dual-use trade because of fear of sanctions. So China is only willing to do as much for Russia as in its own country.

interest. It is a very, very transactional relationship and it's not willing to do an inch more. And that I think is really, really important for us to understand that this is not an alliance in any sense of the word. I wanted to follow up with another question for you, Dimitri.

It doesn't stem from the four points that I mentioned, sort of optimism about Europe and coherent plan for Ukraine and underestimation of Russia as explanations for the failure to deter, to the extent that deterrence is the proper framework for looking at the run-up to the war in Ukraine. In my book, not in that article, in my book, I linger on the perception of

American weakness, which is a difficult thing to measure. Of course, one of the key events that happens between the Geneva summit and the fall military buildup is the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is a pretty messy affair, although that's not really what I have in mind. I think it's more Putin's perception that the U.S. is a highly polarized society. Its foreign policy has become less effective. It's not a country that has the patience to kind of stick to big, difficult foreign policy ventures. It's not an easy point to prove because we don't really have the evidence for it, but it's something that I

sense in the Russia case. Maybe I could ask a two-part question of you, the degree to which you would agree with that point on the Russia side that Putin perceived Europe and the United States as, in some sense, weak, but more importantly, whether this is a factor or whether this is a concern of yours when you think of Xi Jinping and his estimation of American power at the present moment vis-a-vis Taiwan.

Yeah, I think these perceptions of weakness matter a lot less than actual declarations, right? Again, President Putin didn't need to think about whether the U.S. military was weak or strong because of the disastrous fallout of Afghanistan. He knew that he would not have to fight it because President Biden ruled it out from the get-go, right? It was very, very clear to him. He didn't need to read the tea leaves. And I do think that we sometimes overstate the degree to which some of these failures are viewed as

impacting the decision making of other people. When you look at the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, you could say, okay, that's a major weakness of American power. Or you could also say, okay, America cut its losses after 20 years of fighting this brutal insurgency campaign that it was losing. It pulled out and now it has the, it is basically Jutton's distractions and now can focus on what really, really matters, right? So at the end of the day, I think declarative policy

And capability matters a great deal more for deterrence than these reading the tea leaves arguments that some people make about what we have to do around the world. Right. If we have a declarative policy, which, of course, we don't have, that we will absolutely fight China to defend Taiwan. And if we have the capability to do so, that will matter a great deal more than what happens in Afghanistan or Ukraine or anywhere else in the world.

Dimitri, maybe we could close with a final question about where you think U.S. policy should go. The book ends with a final section, a game plan for victory. What needs to change with current policy? What are some of the things that we're getting wrong? And what do you see are sort of the steps that the U.S. should be undertaking?

You know, despite the title, the ominous title of World on the Brink, this is actually a very optimistic book because I argue that we have all the elements for victory, that we're much, much stronger than any of our adversaries. In fact, even when we compare the two Cold Wars, China is much, much weaker than the Soviet Union ever was, right? It doesn't have the Warsaw Pact.

It doesn't have the ideological appeal that the Soviet Union had for a great deal of the Cold War. And geographically, it is much more contained as we've discussed. So we have the ability to win this new Cold War by simply winning them out. And in fact, it's now very clear that the economic trajectory of China is not a good one. Their economy is 25% smaller than the U.S. economy. Their growth rate now is about the same as ours, 3% or 4%. And at that rate, they'll never catch up with us.

And of course, economic power leads to national security and military power. The key thing is to preserve the status quo. The status quo favors America. And we need to prevent the takeover of Taiwan, but we also don't need to append the status quo by helping to proclaim Taiwan's independence or recognizing Taiwan's independence.

What we've had in terms of the ambiguous but nevertheless important agreement since 1972, when Kissinger and Nixon came up with this phrasing of the one China policy where we will not support Taiwan's ambitions to declare independence, but we will also not support China's interest in taking Taiwan by force, is really, really important to preserve. Now, that deterrence

is eroding because of the buildup in the Chinese military and because of the weaknesses that we've demonstrated in taking our eye off the ball in the Pacific. But that can be reversed. And we also need to enhance our deterrence in the economic sphere by making ourselves less reliant on China, particularly in critical elements like

critical minerals and semiconductors, energy sources like solar, wind, EVs and batteries and the like to make sure that they have less leverage over us. At the same time, try to increase our leverage over them so that we could enhance our deterrence, right? And fundamentally, the problem, of course, with deterrence is that you're trying to impact the mind of one person. And it's inherently not measurable. You don't know in advance what's going to work. And in

And in other areas where our interests are at stake to a great degree, particularly in the nuclear realm, we tend to do it all, right? We don't just say, you know, we have 400 or so ICBMs in the Midwest in silos there. That's enough.

to make sure that we have a secondary strike capability to retaliate against anyone that dares to launch a nuclear weapon at the United States. No, we say we're going to have submarine-based launchers. We're going to have bombers that can launch strategic weapons as well. We're going to do it all, even though it's very expensive, very involved, but

the risks are so high that we can't afford not to do it. And I argue in the book that the risks of China taking over Taiwan and dominating East Asia are so high that we also have to do it all. We have to do military deterrence. We have to do economic deterrence. We have to do diplomatic deterrence as well to convince this one person because it is

only his decision not to launch this ruinous invasion and to convince them that if he does, he will fail and likely will lose his position in power. CCP may even lose its position in power in China because of that failure. And if we can do that, I think we can actually win the Cold War by default by eliminating Chinese ambitions, both in the region and globally, by making sure that the United States remains the world's greatest economy, by having great alliance networks that we do both in

in NATO and Europe, as well as, uh, in Estasia with Japan, Australia, Philippines, and others. And, uh,

We can wait them out. Now, the difference between the two Cold Wars, of course, is that George Kennan's great insight in the first Cold War was that the Soviet Union is a natural phenomenon. It would one day fall apart. That is not true of China. China is not going anywhere. It's been around for 5,000 years. It'll probably be around for another 5,000 years. And even the CCP may survive for hundreds of years. Who knows? And there's not a whole lot that the United States can do about that. But

If it can contain China, if it can keep much bigger economy, a much better alliance network, if it can make China much more dependent on the United States for critical technologies like artificial intelligence and chips and so forth, we will have leverage to essentially manage this conflict for the long haul. Great, Michael. I'm going to give you the last word. Now, this is Russian roulette. So I maybe ask you...

Given what Dimitri's outlined, the need to focus on the China problem, as Dimitri outlines in his book, is fantastic in doing this. How do you see it? How do you see this impacting U.S.-Russia policy going forward? How do you do containment vis-a-vis Russia when you're also trying to do the same policy vis-a-vis China?

Well, I think when it comes to containment, I don't think that they're the same trade-offs than if we're speaking of multiple conventional military conflicts. That, I think, is the real headache at the moment. You have a conventional military conflict in Ukraine. You have a conventional military conflict maybe winding down, hopefully, in the Middle East, but maybe not.

and then the threat of a conventional military conflict in Asia. And so the more those threats become palpable, I think the more the resource constraints, you know, sort of tie down U.S. policy. But if we're speaking of containment, of preventing things from happening, and let's, you know, sort of run with Dmitry's framing of the war in Ukraine, that it's something that the U.S. doesn't like, but has chosen in some ways to live with, what the U.S. can't live with is the spread of that war to NATO member states. But to

It seems to me that you can do that and you can do that effectively without detracting from any of what Dmitry was just describing a moment ago with the containment or the deterrence of China. And there, perhaps, I know, Dmitry, you're arguing that, you know, these sort of claims, these sort of glib claims that success in Ukraine are going to translate into success in Taiwan. But maybe there there is a bit of convergence that if you succeed with containment in Europe, if that's credible, if that works, if that's effective.

It sort of strengthens the tools that you were talking about in terms of deterring China, the diplomatic military economic tools, that there is perhaps a degree of overlap there. But speaking not about winning the war in Ukraine, whatever that might mean, but containing the spread of Russian military power in Europe. So it's perhaps one of the places where these problem sets do to a degree intersect.

If I can make one more point, Max, I actually agree with Michael on this. I recently made the same point at the Munich Security Conference this year, where I told the Europeans in one setting, I said, look,

It is a fact that Ukraine matters a lot less to the United States than it matters to Europe. You know, we're far away. You're much more close to it. It doesn't mean it doesn't matter at all, but it matters less. It is also a fact that China and Taiwan matter a lot more to the United States than they matter to Europe because, again, it's our neighborhood. It's not yours. Well, there's a deal to be had here, right?

We can continue and hopefully increase our support for Ukraine in a way that's not detracting from our ability to deter China and Taiwan. And we are going to ask you, Europe.

Because in some ways, this is also a favor to you to do more, particularly on the economic deterrence vis-a-vis China. Let's do a trade. I think that's a great place to end it and also a great place to give a plug for a new report that I have out last week with my colleague Christopher Johnston, who runs our Japan program, former White House staffer, that asks essentially what is Europe's military role in the Indo-Pacific? And the answer that we come up with is that effectively it should be to focus on deterring Russia, right?

And that's where Europe needs to focus. And I think that that means a lot of changes at NATO and something that we've been doing a lot of thinking about here at CSIS and on our sister podcast, The Europhile. Dimitri, Michael, we're going to have to leave it there. You could go on, I think, for hours and perhaps should do at some point. Dimitri, congrats on the book. It's a national bestseller. It's World on the Brink, How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century.

I want to thank you both for joining us and hope to have you again, Dmitry, on Russian Roulette. It's been fantastic. Thank you so much. Thanks so much, Dmitry. You've been listening to Russian Roulette. We hope you enjoyed this episode and tune in again soon.

Russian Roulette releases new episodes every two weeks on Thursdays and is available wherever you get your podcasts. So please subscribe and share our episodes online. And be sure to check out all the latest analysis by the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at csis.org.