How does a war with China start? With Admiral James Stavridis
On this podcast series, and in many other discussions and debates in think tanks and in the media, we often speculate about the likelihood of a kinetic conflict with China – is it inevitable? Or is it highly unlikely? But today we want to consider how a war would actually start, however grim this topic may be. It’s often hard to visualize what the trip wires would be. Admiral James Stavridis co-authored an entire book with Elliot Ackerman on the subject. It’s called “2034: A Novel of the Next World War”.
Admiral James Stavridis is a retired four-star U.S. naval officer. He is currently Vice Chair, Global Affairs and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm. He is also 12th Chair of Rockefeller Foundation board. Previously he served for five years as the 12th Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He led the NATO Alliance in global operations from 2009 to 2013 as 16th Supreme Allied Commander with responsibility for Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, counter piracy, and cyber security. He also served as Commander of U.S. Southern Command, with responsibility for all military operations in Latin America from 2006-2009. He earned more than 50 medals, including 28 from foreign nations in his 37-year military career.
Earlier in his military career he commanded the top ship in the Atlantic Fleet, winning the Battenberg Cup, as well as a squadron of destroyers and a carrier strike group – all in combat.
Admiral Stavridis earned a PhD in international relations and has published eleven books and thousands of articles in leading journals around the world. His 2012 TED talk on global security has over one million views. Admiral Stavridis is a contributing editor for TIME Magazine and Chief International Security Analyst for NBC News.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] I think it will take China until roughly 2034, just over a decade from now, not exactly. Way out into the future, but I think it'll take a decade for them to consolidate their maritime capability, their carrier capability, their stealth approach, their artificial intelligence, and to bring quantum computing forward.
On this podcast series, and in many other discussions, and debates, and think tanks, and in the media, and even in Congress, people are often speculating about the likelihood of a kinetic conflict with China. Is it inevitable, or is it highly unlikely, or does it lie somewhere in between? But today, we want to consider how a war would actually start.[00:01:00]
Sounds grim, but how would the bullets actually start flying? It's often hard to visualize what the tripwires would be. Well, my friend Admiral James Stavridis co authored an entire book on this subject, but unlike the other ten books he's written, this one is fiction, or maybe predictive fiction. It certainly feels very real.
It's called 2034, 2034, A Novel of the Next World War.
Admiral James DeVritis is a retired four star U. S. naval officer. He's currently Vice Chair of Global Affairs and he's Managing Director of the Carlisle Group. He's also Chair of the Rockefeller Foundation. And he served for five years as the Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Most relevant for this conversation, he led the NATO alliance. He was Supreme Allied Commander from 2009 to 2013 with [00:02:00] responsibility for Afghanistan, Libya, Libya, the Balkans, Syria. And he oversaw a lot of cyber security, and he also served as commander of the U. S. Southern Command with responsibility for all of our military operations in Latin America from 2006 and 2009.
He's earned more than 50 medals, including 28 from four nations in his He served, I think, around 37 years. He has a PhD. So he's like a, uh, a warrior scholar, if you will. Jim Stavridis. Thanks for joining the conversation, Dan. What a pleasure to be with you. And by the way, in that litany of, uh, shopping list of NATO missions, you left out the one nautical one.
I was in charge of counter piracy off the coast of Africa. And I will say this, out of the now 18 NATO commanders, I'm the only one who had to fight pirates on his watch. So this is like a real Captain Phillips kind of Oh, big time. And it was a significant [00:03:00] NATO mission. We deployed dozens and dozens of warships down there and we gradually beat it down over the course of the four years.
And yes, it was precisely against the version that you saw in that fantastic film, Captain Phillips, the Somali pirates. They were part of my shopping list at NATO. All right, so, so, that is, I'm glad you, you made sure I didn't leave out that important detail, because you're right, one could argue it's, it's, uh, as relevant, or could be as relevant going forward.
I wanna, I wanna start, I'm fascinated by your book, uh, uh, your and Ellie Ackerman's book, 2034, as I mentioned in the, um, intro. I'm, I'm fascinated by it, I guess, for a number of reasons. One of which is, you know, I remember the, um, 9 11 commission report, the Baker Hamilton report. And they opened the report by basically saying one of our biggest failures in the lead up to [00:04:00] 9 11 was a failure of imagination.
Right? We failed to actually take a step back and really Try to conceive of the of the unimaginable and you could say that a similar criticism was was leveled against our lack of preparation or lack of Anticipation of Pearl Harbor, you could certainly say the same thing about kovat 19 Right? Failure of imagination.
That was that whole moment when George W. Bush had read John Barry's book and suddenly got, started to really light up concerns within the um, the Bush 43 uh, administration about our preparedness. So, there's a number of ways to deal with like a failure of imagination that obviously war game scenarios are often a way to deal with uh, avoiding failure of imagination.
But rather than participate in another war game or Publish an op ed or another think tank paper. You wrote a piece of fiction. Maybe one [00:05:00] could call it like predictive fiction to try to like paint a picture through a novel of what could happen. Now that's not typically what a retired four star admiral does.
What was the, what was the inspiration? What was the conceit? Like, how did you come up with this? Well, thank you for having me on. And let me, let me start by saying 2034 is my 10th book, but it's my first novel. So not my first rodeo in terms of writing books. Um, and I think book length, uh, endeavors are important because they force a reader who's willing to go with you on that journey to really dive deeply into a subject.
And that's why not a point paper, not a pamphlet, not a glossy that ends up on a. coffee table at a think tank. I wanted to do a book. So then the choice becomes, as you articulated correctly, [00:06:00] between writing a policy book, How We Could Get Into a War with China by Admiral Jim Stavridis, or how about a novel?
And so the way I came to decide on doing the novel, Dan, to write a novel about the future was by looking at the past. And what I mean by that is, I went back to the Cold War, U. S. Soviet Union, which had a very rich body of literature, of fiction. Things like Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy, On the Beach, Neville Shute, The Bedford Incident by Mark Raskovic.
Dr. Strangelove. Doctor Strangelove, everybody's favorite film. One of my favorite films. You can go on and on. And when I was a young graduate student in the 1980s, we actually had a Cold War film festival. Wow. And it's striking to me, and always has been, how fiction allows us, here's your point Dan, the idea of imagination.
So [00:07:00] it, in terms of why a novel, it was to, Begin to replicate that, that literary body of fiction that I think allowed us to imagine it. And I think, and here's an important point, it deters. Because when you read Red Storm Rising and you see a world in ashes, or you read Neville Shute on the beach and you see the personal tragedy of an apocalyptic post nuclear world, you are deterred.
You begin to think, oh my god. I don't want to get into a war with, in this case, China. So that was the essence of how this began. And I went to my editor and pitched the idea and he said, uh, you know, Admiral, you're a great guy and you've written nine really good books, but. You know, this'll be your first novel.
Let's hook you up with a novelist. And so that's how Elliot Ackerman, who's a, a dear friend, fellow Fletcher graduate Combat veteran, that's [00:08:00] how our partnership began. And I'm, I'm quite happy with the result. Imagination and deterrence are the two ideas of the book. I, I will tell you that it, it has had a, uh, I mean, it, it's Smashing Success, New York Times bestseller list.
I mean, I, I cannot tell I first. Really turned on to it with a group of classmates of mine from business school who I stayed close to. We were having dinner and suddenly we were all talking about China and the book that drove the conversation about China was 2034. So again, it wasn't a think tank paper.
It wasn't an op ed. It wasn't a piece of nonfiction. It was forcing us to imagine this scenario. So let's talk about that scenario. For those of our, for those of our listeners that haven't read the book, what is the scenario? Yeah, let me, let me do it very quickly, but let me do it through the characters.
Because I want to make a point that this is, in this sense, not Tom Clancy. These are deeply [00:09:00] developed characters, each of whom carry Their nation's scenario in their own story. So as the novel opens, you meet the first principal character, Commodore Sarah Hunt. She's coming to the end of a brilliant Navy career, surface warfare officer, former destroyer commander.
She's now in charge of this small flotilla of three destroyers clipping through the South China Sea. She gets tangled up. with a Chinese, what appears to be a merchant vessel. She makes some decisions that aren't perfect. As a result, by the end of the afternoon, her flotilla is under significant attack.
Flash to Washington, D. C. We meet the second principal character, a world you know so well, Dan, on the National Security Council staff, an Indian American, uh, named Sandy Choudhury. And he is a kind of [00:10:00] number two, number three at the National Security Council staff. He's a Fletcher graduate, okay, sue me. And so, he then encounters the third principal character, who is, in my view, the most fascinating character in the book, Chinese Admiral Lin Bao.
He's the defense attache of China to the United States. He's in Washington. And Sandy Choudhury at the White House is told, Hey, there's this Chinese admiral who needs to see you immediately. And he has a conversation with Sandy, uh, Chaudhuri and Admiral Lin Bao about the events that have just unfolded in the South China Sea.
Flash to somewhere over the Strait of Hormuz and you meet the fourth principal character, Major, uh, Chris, callsign Wedge. Mitchell. We named him Wedge because a wedge is the simplest tool known to man. And that kind of [00:11:00] describes him. He's right out of the volleyball scene in Top Gun. And he's up there flying his airplane on the edge of Iranian airspace when all of a sudden, the airplane starts flying itself.
It is forced down to Bandar Abbas, where he meets the fifth and final character, the Iranian general, uh, who is a very dangerous man. Uh, Kassim, who is based on, uh, Suleiman. And by the way, uh, Suleiman was a back character in the novel and when he got killed in real life Elliot and I had to rewrite his character story a bit.
He and Wedge have an encounter that doesn't go well for Wedge. Everything I've described is the first 40 pages of the book and from here you see the U. S. and China. So, I want to get into that [00:12:00] because I find in the conversations I have these days about China and a possible war with China or a war or Between China, say, and Taiwan that the U.
S. gets involved with. Uh, it, it's actually hard to visualize how it happens. We talk about it at a high level, like that it could happen, but we don't actually talk about how it could happen. I think what's very powerful about your book is it really, you start to visualize, oh my gosh. This, this, this is not an abstract conversation, this could, you could just see, you know, like, it's like a 1914 scenario where one thing happens and one thing, don't anticipate that, and that triggers something else, and then suddenly you stumble into a situation, so, I wanna, I wanna spend a few minutes on that, before we do, why 2034?
Why that year? I mean, you've pointed out that Admiral Phil Davidson testifying on Capitol Hill, and, predicted that this could happen six years away. So he's even, he's even more, um, if you will, panicked, at least from [00:13:00] a timeline perspective than you are. And I thought 2034 was aggressive. Let's start by, uh, sharing with you the resounding critique I received of the book from my contemporaries.
So very senior military officers, both active duty and retired, they said, Stavridis, this is a great book, but you got one big thing wrong. The date. It's going to happen a lot sooner. So many of my brother and sister four stars are with Phil Davidson. However, I assess that it's more realistic in 2034 and the reason is because of the correlation of forces.
I think it will take China until roughly 2034, just over a decade from now. Not exactly. Way out into the future, but I think it'll take a decade for them to consolidate their maritime capability their carrier capability their [00:14:00] stealth approach their Artificial intelligence and to bring quantum computing forward you see a lot of Brilliant analysis of this by our mutual friend, Eric Schmidt.
Um, he's well tuned into this. I think Eric would, would share with me roughly that timeline. And, and let's add to it Chinese psychology and sensibility. The Chinese are not reckless. They are extremely methodical. They plan, they think in very concrete steps. So when I added all that up, when I started to, to really write the book, roughly 2020, I said to myself, okay, it's gonna be 10 to 15 years and the 2034.
Why the four? It's a nod to Orwell in 1984, which is a work. like ours of cautionary fiction. You use the term predictive fiction, I hope it's not predictive fiction, but I know it's cautionary fiction. Much as, yeah, I mean, [00:15:00] predictive and fiction, I mean, fiction gives you the caveat that it's, it's a predictive Yeah.
Um, okay. So let's, I want to talk about some of these metrics, you know, between now and 2030 or 2034 or, uh, or before we leave that point, let me pick up a thought you, uh, threw out quite correctly. I mentioned the Cold War. The other war going through my mind was in fact, World War I. It was, The way the nations of World War I managed to sleepwalk into a cataclysmic war.
And, and back to your point, how does it start? It starts with something unexpected. In 1914, the assassination of a, of a member of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's royal family in a dusty corner of the empire. Sarajevo, and yet, four years later, the Austro Hungarian Empire is gone, the Ottoman Empire is gone, and the Russian Empire is gone.
Um, these things start [00:16:00] very small, but nations have had a tendency in history to lose control of the ladder of escalation. And that is precisely what happened in 1914, and it is the scenario that we sketch out in 2034 as well. Okay, so that's, so in terms of metrics, you know, just in terms of, because you, you've talked about how there'll be a certain point at which there will be parity between China and the U.
S. militarily, and that could obviously create a more permissive environment for things to spiral out of control because the Chinese Leadership will be feeling more, uh, self confident, perhaps more cavalier. So where would you say we are right now comparing the U. S. defense budget and the Chinese defense budget?
These are kind of apples and oranges, as the saying goes. It might almost be, you know, apples and hubcaps. They're very different, starting with the fact that we pay an enormous amount of our budget. To personnel costs, because [00:17:00] we have an all volunteer force, highly educated force, we want to retain them.
China has conscription, so you start by kind of recognizing it, it's, it's different, but I'll strip that out and say, I would estimate it as follows. If you think of our budget as ballpark 750 billion a year, and then you adjust China's budget for the fact that they don't pay those kind of personnel costs, I'd say, Dan, their budget can be thought of in terms of about 500 billion.
You know, in dollars, it's probably around 300 billion. Because they don't have those personnel costs, it's probably closer 600 billion. Point is, it's rising rapidly. And second point is, they are directing it very intelligently into the assets they will need to conduct real 21st century combat. That's cyber and cyber security.
It is space. It is [00:18:00] artificial intelligence. It's hypersonic cruise missiles, and it is netting all that together. And with a little soup song of. Uh, high end special forces, enhanced human characteristics. It's a very smart budget, a smart strategy. It takes the best of what we do and concentrates resources on it.
So, ballpark, they're probably two thirds of where we are in spending, accelerating 2034. I think they will be beyond us. And it's part of the reason they're able to focus on all this innovation, technology innovation based, uh, war fighting is because they do not have as much of the legacy commitments that we have, so they're not investing in just updating and servicing and doing maintenance on legacy systems.
They, uh, in a lot of areas of the future of warfare, they're sort of starting from scratch. Correct. They have a, uh, [00:19:00] a kind of a, this is a counterintuitive term in business, but they have what I would call the second mover advantage, which is to say, um, they have observed us closely. They've seen what works.
They've seen what doesn't work so well. And as a result, they can focus. Their resource decisions. That's point one. Point two, they have a highly streamlined system, shall we say, of deciding what to spend money on. Here, we've got They don't have fiscal cliff situations going on. And they don't have, they don't have, you know, 550 very helpful legislators, all of whom are from different states, who want the pork to come back to its particular swine pond.
And as a result, You know, they've got a lot of advantage in how they do procurement. And then third point, um, they know that we are not going to invade China. We're not seeking to overturn or do regime change in Beijing. They look around [00:20:00] their neighborhood. They don't have any significant opponents so they can really focus on this, uh, geopolitical, uh, contest with the United States.
Whereas the United States has this global range of interests. Right, we have to do force projection all over the place. Exactly. Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, uh, NATO. Threatened by Iran and Russia, and China has a much cleaner slate, if you will, and I'll close by saying Just focus, what, on the South China Sea and the East China Sea?
Bang. And also watch the relationship between Putin and Xi, which is drawing inexorably closer and closer together. That shores up the one flank, uh, from Cold War days, if you will, that Mao had to worry about. Not so much for Xi. He's pretty confident of his relationship with Putin. Advantage China. You mentioned hypersonic missile capabilities.
So that is That is a term that has just burst into the [00:21:00] news, no pun intended, recently. Uh, can you explain, I mean, it's a missile capability that can go at about five times the speed of sound. And what are its other features that make it so, by the way, we're, the U. S. is in the hypersonic missile business too, just to be clear.
So, why was it such a shock to us that China Was, uh, was re, you know, experimenting in this, in this, in this sector. Let's, let's differentiate one thing very quickly. We've been in the hypersonic missile business for decades. A ballistic intercontinental missile is hypersonic. It goes up into space, comes down many, many times the speed of sound.
Um, so we, we've had hypersonics. What is new and different here are atmospheric level hypersonic. So hypersonic, if you will, cruise missiles that are capable of being directed at [00:22:00] five times the speed of sound, but not on that slow predictable trajectory that that we have always. That's why our missile defense systems are okay against ballistic missiles, but they are useless against this new generation of hypersonics that the Chinese, the Russian, and the United States are developing.
And so, the concern is both offensive and defensive. We need to increase our defensive capability to protect, um, our, Fixed sites are carriers are high value units against these maneuvering terminal hypersonics, but we also need to generate offensive hypersonic stand because in the end, I think we're going to need a deterrent regime here.
You don't use yours. We don't use ours. Because these things, uh, potentially could have the impact of nuclear weapons. And by the way, you could put a nuclear weapon on [00:23:00] one. So, uh, this is a, a new advance in, uh, in military science. And we've got to get ahead of it. And frankly, China and Russia are both a bit ahead of us right now.
Going back to, uh, uh, uh, an old, a metric that seems dated, but really isn't, and certainly according to your book is not, and according to your, some of your other books, and the book that came out shortly before this book by you, um, warships, how would you compare, uh, our fleet of war fleet of warships to China's?
Yeah, this may surprise many listeners, but China has more warships than the United States. We have about 300 ish. China has about 350. Now, ours are bigger, more nuclear powered. We have the big advantage of our aircraft carrier fleet, our somewhat smaller small deck aircraft carriers, [00:24:00] if you will. We have much more experience operating them.
We have a global logistics, maritime network, bases all over the world to support them. So, if you said to me, Admiral, which fleet would you prefer to fight, which one would you prefer to command in battle, I'd still take the U. S. fleet. But I think by 2034, you're going to see, again, China, because quantity has a quality all its own, as the saying goes.
Um, increase its numbers, and by the way, what's the major Chinese maritime building program? It's nuclear aircraft carriers. They are building those right now. How many, we build what, about 10 to 15 ships a year? Warships a year? Yeah, ballpark. And the Chinese are Double that. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Now, again, many of theirs are smaller, lighter, less capable, but back to where we started this conversation, if you load it up with hypersonics and it's being used as a [00:25:00] forward platform and it's got a lot of unmanned capability in it, you can get a lot of use out of a frigate with a appropriate weapon system on it.
What about, what's the importance of China's? Uh, maritime network globally, they have, they have access to a lot of ports globally that they themselves are building through their one belt, one road, uh, program. Uh, I've. I have friends in other countries who marvel and are sometimes terrified by the extent to which, you know, Chinese companies backed by the Chinese Communist Party are building ports in their countries.
What's the significance of this network? Yeah, let me, let me introduce listeners to an old time, 100 years ago, Navy Admiral named Alfred Thayer Mahan. He retired as a a one star admiral, but he was a notable strategist. And he invented this idea, if [00:26:00] you will, of a global network. In those days, it was coaling stations.
You would go buy coal to move your ships because they ran on coal, obviously. And this idea was picked up by Theodore Roosevelt, and that is what led to the explosion and capability of the U. S. Navy, and you can drop a plumb line to the U. S. Navy fleet today. China reads Alfred Thayer Mahan, and they are following that blueprint, and what they want is either outright bases, you know, Chinese flags flying overhead, or guaranteed access, and they're looking initially around the Indian Ocean, then around sub Saharan Africa.
Watch for China to look for basing agreements in Caracas, Venezuela, Havana. Um, they are going to want to move toward the Caribbean over time. They also are concentrating on maritime choke points around the world, maintaining ships in and [00:27:00] around the Strait of Malacca by Singapore, the Strait of Hormuz, uh, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal.
Again, this is all out of Alfred Thiermahan's playbook. It's been the U. S. Navy's playbook. China has cracked that book open and is moving in that direction. In terms of new capabilities, so we, we talked about hypersonic cruise missiles, at least Uh, new capabilities for certain adversaries of ours, like China and Russia.
Uh, there's obviously cyber capabilities, AI based military capabilities, AGI, Artificial General Intelligence. One, one area you hit on in 2034 is EMP, Electro, Electromagnetic Pulse, uh, the threat of a Electromagnetic Pulse, uh, attacks, which, for those who follow it, In the, in among certain U. S. academic and kind of geopolitical strategist types, we think about it as a major attack on the U.
[00:28:00] S. in terms of our infrastructure, like taking out our, you know, electrical grid or whatever. But in the book, you focus on it being used in the battlefield, like, like a tactical tool against forces. So can you explain the degree to which you are worried about an EMP attack? In any kind of scenario, whether it's in the battlefield, in the theater, or on a civilian setting like the U.
S.? I can. The essence of all of our high end military electronic systems are the chips that are in them. These chips are vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse, which is simply a high burst of energy that can fry the chip's ability to do what it needs to do. This kind of electromagnetic pulse is best generated.
There are a number of ways you can generate it, and there are some precision guided ways that are coming along, but in terms of scale, it's through a nuclear [00:29:00] detonation. We could have a debate about how high that would need to be and how big it would need to be. Potentially, you could do one over the United States, which is the common scenario people have written about.
Um, which would fry all of those chips simultaneously, bringing our electric grid, our transportation grid, our financial system, everything to a stop. Now, can you do that in a tactical space? By 2034, I think we Could I think the Chinese could I think the Russians could using micro directed bursts of energy Potentially Dan from space or from unmanned vehicles what we think of as a drone strike today Of course is a missile that comes down You could have a drone that has an electromagnetic pulse that can be targeted against a ship a group of ships A base, um, a column of [00:30:00] tanks, an enemy's strategic weapon system, and so forth.
So, again, this is a, if you will, growth area that we ought to be very concerned about. I want to lift the lens a little bit in terms of trying to understand Chinese objectives generally. Uh, before we get to that, and I know you get into this in the book, but I'd like you to spend a moment on it. Do you, how important is, is the coming Olympics in China?
As an inflection point that China has to wait to get past the Olympics before taking action, uh, or not. Where do the Olympics figure in? I just wrote a piece called, it's in Bloomberg, uh, called The Year of Living Quietly. Because I think we're going to have a year of living quietly with China. A, your point, Dan, because of the Olympics.
B, in the fall, the 20th Party Congress is when President Xi seeks to be anointed for an unprecedented, since Deng anyway, [00:31:00] in Mao. a third five year term as the leader of China. Um, he does not want anything dramatic happening between now and late next fall. He wants to be Statesman like, um, he's not looking for controversy.
Um, he doesn't need to throw out any kind of, uh, Uh, nationalistic play for this. He wants to show that he is the leader to consolidate China's rise well into this century. He's still a relatively young man. And so this is when he will join Mao and Deng Xiaoping as one of the three greats of modern China.
Uh, so look for a pretty quiet year and in terms of US China, and as a result, we ought to be thinking. How should we use this time? What can we be doing? And I think it's a kind of a carrot and a stick sort of approach. Now would be a good time to help [00:32:00] Taiwan strengthen itself. And we should do that through providing them at sale prices, uh, additional weapons systems, defensive but lethal weapon systems, maybe some training.
Kinds of interactions, we should do all we can to strengthen Taiwan because China's not going to do anything dramatic in the moment. I always say about China, we should confront where we must, but we should cooperate wherever we can. That's a pretty good mix. This would be a good year to think about that as a strategy.
In terms of Chinese objectives, from your perspective, what are they actually trying to accomplish vis a vis Taiwan? Because I, I, I sometimes wonder whether or not we all sitting around, uh, you know, worried, talking on podcasts and television shows and think tanks about the possibility [00:33:00] of, of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, actually allows the Chinese leadership to meet its objective.
We're all seemingly terrified about it. So all they have to do is hover around the possibility of military action against Taiwan. They have the Taiwan worried about it, they have the West worried about it, and they don't actually need to risk a U. S. Chinese war. You are precisely correct, and the way I would categorize it is they do have a red line, and the red line would be Taiwanese independence.
It would be if the Taiwanese themselves, if Madam Tsai, the leader, who I know well, I've visited Taiwan several times, she's a deeply impressive leader, quiet, self assured. If, if the Taiwanese were to declare independence, that's a red line, China's going to go. I think anything short of that, we'll call it the [00:34:00] Dan Senior Theory applies.
Hover around, hang around the hoop, wait for something good to happen, um, take your time. That's certainly. The next 10 to 15 years. Now, beyond that, Dan, I think as that correlation of forces begins to favor China, the idea of doing something more aggressive becomes more attractive. I think that's a 10 to 15 year future, but short of a declaration of independence.
Uh, I don't see a, an imminent, a military threat against Taiwan and therefore we should likewise kind of hang around the hoop, strengthen Taiwan, and let's see where relations go over time. In terms of strengthening Taiwan, you know, we can't be more Catholic than the Pope. Uh, Taiwan is, I think spends about 2 percent of GDP on its defense [00:35:00] capabilities, which is like comparable to Singapore.
Uh, it does not feel like, like Israel, for instance, which spends multiples of that on, of its GDP, uh, on defense, and given the threats, you know, uh, arranged around Israel, one would expect them to spend that kind of, uh, percentage of their economy on defense. I'm surprised Taiwan doesn't spend more. I am too, and if I were advising the Taiwanese, I would say, yeah, Israel.
Pretty good model. Um, you are at risk. You have an opponent who is determined to conquer you. You've got some advantages, just like Israel does. But, you know, as Abraham Lincoln said, charity begins at home. Um, I, I think a, they ought to double their defense budget and then double it again. I'd say kind of six to 8 percent minimum.
Here's the good news. A lot of people don't realize this. They think of Taiwan [00:36:00] as, you know, this little. This little island like Key West or something. Taiwan, you know, has a population of, uh, you know, 25 million as a GDP. They're ranked in the top 25 in the world as a standalone economy. As you know, they are the leading center of high end chip manufacture.
Um, they can afford this, they have the technology, um, they ought to be clipping up that defense budget one to two percent a year over the next four years, in my view. And by the way, you're starting to hear those conversations more, uh, realistically in Taiwan. We, we think about a war with Taiwan as a, as a sort of binary, either China will do it or not.
And if, I mean, one theory is that it's not really about Taiwan, it's not really about us, it's about just sending a message to the region that they, China, are going to be as [00:37:00] influential and as dominant in that part of the world as, say, the U. S. is in the Western Hemisphere, where no one would question our geopolitical influence in the Western Hemisphere, and if that's the case, uh, A, there are other ways they could do it, and B, um, it's not really Taiwan, as I was saying earlier, that they're worried about, it's really, say, about isolating Japan.
That, that like, that this is, that they have broader geopolitical goals in the region beyond just Taiwan, and Taiwan is just a kind of tool. Pressuring Taiwan is kind of a tool in the toolkit to send a message to the reason that China's in charge. Let's kind of do it from the inside out, if you will. So within China, there is a great deal of nationalist pride that says Taiwan is a rogue province that has broken away from the mothership, and it must come back.
That is a legitimate Internal trope within China, and it's very [00:38:00] real to the Chinese. Believe me, let's go to the region. Uh, yes, they are concerned about Japan and they ought to be. Japan is a big country. Um, another nation that underspends on defense. In their case, they have some constitutional, uh, strictures that were put in place at the end of World War II.
They're starting to overcome those highly technologically capable. Obviously a, uh, heroic and war like psychology going back centuries. Um, and China has suffered at the hands of Japan again and again and again, particularly over the last hundred years. So yes, they're concerned about China. They also want the economic domination of the South China Sea because it's full of hydrocarbons, which is kind of the missing card in the Chinese, uh, hand of economics.
They don't have oil and gas. ready and right there and under their sway. [00:39:00] So they want to dominate the South China Sea. Deter China and convince their neighbors to join them in and kind of to coin a phrase in East Asia co prosperity sphere. Gee, where have I heard that term before? Uh, Japan in the 1930s.
That's the regional model. And then ultimately, and you know, don't take my word for it. Just Google President Xi's goals for China. He's given multiple speeches that he expects by mid century. China will be the superpower of the world. And it is, as we used to say about the Soviet Union, no coincidence, comrade, that they are gradually expanding.
Back to Alfred Thayer Mahan, if you want a global reach, you have to have a global navy. 70 percent of the world covered by the ocean. So, it's really all three layers, Dan. There's real ambition behind it. There was real planning behind it, and there are real resources behind it. [00:40:00] I'm imagining your former colleague, uh, Lloyd Austin, uh, current Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, uh, your former fellow, uh, military officer, uh, walking into the president by walking to the Oval Office and saying, China just invaded Taiwan, we need to do something.
We need to respond. That, that scenario, I can imagine, but I'm trying to imagine Austin, Secretary Austin walking into the president's office and saying, China just invaded an island that you've never heard of. We need to respond. And the president's saying, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? I'm gonna, I'm gonna marshal U.
S. forces Uh, and deploy them to respond, to get ourselves, to risk getting us into a, into a war with China over what island? What was that, Mr. Secretary? Yeah, Kwajalein. I think that Dan, uh, your scenario, you are correct, is improbable. I [00:41:00] think Taiwan is more probable. Here's what I worry about in addition to the Taiwan thing, is Lloyd Austin walking in and saying, we've had a dust up in the South China Sea and, uh, The Chinese, um, have flown low and fast over one of our ships and one of our captains believing herself to be in imminent danger, acting under rules of engagement, shot down a Chinese fighter jet.
And Mr. President, I'm not sure what's going to happen next. And then the door to his, to the oval flies open and Jake Sullivan comes in and says, A U. S. Navy destroyer is sinking, uh, in the South China Sea, Mr. President. We don't know what happened. Possibly this is an act of retribution. And, oh by the way, 350 American sailors died on that ship which sank.[00:42:00]
And then Lloyd Austin says to the president, we've got to respond to this. You know, we shot down the Chinese jet, you know, if you will, in good faith, under our rules of engagement, but China has attacked and killed 350 sailors. We're going to respond. We're going to take out a Chinese submarine that we're trailing in the East China Sea.
That's a tough call for the president. And again, Dan, back to ladders of escalation. It starts relatively small, an incident sparked by, you know, these are young people, people in their 20s and 30s flying those jets. I commanded an Arleigh Burke class destroyer when I was 38 years old. These are young people and they are out there defending their country and they are going to take shots.
And then. If that ladder of escalation builds and public opinion gets behind it, you know, we've hit two wars, I'll give you a third one. How did the Spanish American War start? It started [00:43:00] when the battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor. And we were certain it was done by the Spaniards, by effectively terrorists.
Well, when we salvaged the main 50 years later, we discovered it blew up because of an internal boiler explosion. Yet we went off to war. So These incidents happen, the ladder of escalation is hard to control, and could that lead us into a war? I think it could, unfortunately. So let's stay on that. So we've got these sailors, U.
S. sailors, and, and pilots, deployed throughout the South China Sea, sort of head to head, nose to nose, uh, with, uh, head to head, nose to nose against their Chinese counterparts or adversaries. People forget, like, how big the South China, or people don't always focus on how big the South China Sea is. What is, like, half the size of the U.
S. or something? It is half the size of the continental United States. Okay. So, you know, in World War [00:44:00] II, While the enemy in Germany was, was certainly foreign, it was, you're still dealing with a country that was a sort of quasi western culture. We've got all these military personnel, as you point, point out, people with not a lot of experience, very talented, uh, and, and trained impressively, but not just years and decades of experience, in a part of the world and a culture nose to nose against these adversaries.
They don't really know, and in many cases don't really understand. How would you compare that reality to World War II, World War I? It is The Cold War, I guess? There are, some things are the same and some things are different. What is the same is the youth and inexperience. The adversarial nature of these two regimes, um, and thirdly, the distance, the scale, [00:45:00] the scope of this, uh, dwarfs anything in the compressed zone of Europe.
The things that are, um, different. Are that, and they're good things. We don't share a land border with China, thank God. So, the odds of us putting a, you know, as the saying goes, don't start a land war in Asia, I think it's a pretty good bet we're not going to. We don't share a land border. Neither side is trying to effect regime change on the other.
China is not seeking to knock out Washington and make the United States a communist country. That was the nature of the Cold War. But that's not the case today. And then thirdly What's different? We haven't talked a lot about this. It's not just the U. S. and China. It's allies, partners, and friends. Here, the U.
S. has both a big advantage and a big responsibility that plays into all this, so that the systems are not Bye bye. completely. We can draw lessons from the Cold War. I would say the [00:46:00] principal lesson we ought to draw from the Cold War is talk, talk, talk. Um, you know, we came close to ending the world in 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
We were decoupled as this saying goes from the Soviet Union and advantages that we are integrated with China in many ways. But we can blow that advantage if we allow an incident to spark and we lose control of the ladder of escalation. We need more communication with China, not less. Jim, I'd be remiss if I didn't, uh, given your experience with NATO, uh, draw you in on the current situation on the, uh, vis a vis Russia and Ukraine.
Sure. And comparing it actually to the, to the China Taiwan situation. How worried are you about A real Russian invasion of Ukraine, something at a whole other level from what we saw in 2014 and 2015. Well, let's start by quoting, uh, from the James Bond novelist, uh, Ian [00:47:00] Fleming. Ian Fleming said once, and I think he puts these words in Bond's mouth, that the first time someone takes a shot at you, it's kind of happenstance.
The second time, maybe it's coincidence. The third time, it's enemy action. So, Putin invaded Georgia and annexed a fourth of it in 2008. He invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014, you know, this is the proverbial third strike. Um, if he goes across another sovereign border in anger, my view, Russia and Putin in particular need to be ostracized from the international system.
So how worried am I that he's going to actually do it? I personally put the odds a bit lower than some analysts. I think there's probably around a 20 percent chance that he actually goes in, rolls the dice, and if he does it, I think [00:48:00] it'll be a limited incursion. He's not gonna roll into Kiev and, and put in his, one of his, uh, oligarchs to run Ukraine.
He would have the fight of a lifetime on his hands with the Ukrainians if he did that. It would make Chechnya and Afghanistan look like a walk in the park. But what he might do, cross that border, Take another chunk out of southeastern Ukraine to connect Crimea with the Rodina, with Mother Russia. So, I think that's about a 20 percent chance, Dan.
I think there's a 40 percent chance that he ups the hybrid game. You'll see more, uh, deepfake videos, Zelensky in compromising positions. You'll see Propaganda. You'll see targeted assassinations. You'll see car bombs going off. You'll see, um, Russian nationals supposedly, uh, tortured by the Ukrainian security forces.
You'll see incidents at sea between the two navies. So more of that [00:49:00] hype designed to just kind of divide the Ukrainians. I think that's probably the main chance, about 40%. And I think there's a 40 percent chance That we can come to some kind of an accommodation with Putin, which would, uh, certainly not give him a veto over who joins NATO.
But I think it potentially could be a conversation that, um, takes down some of our missile systems in Poland and Romania, which he thinks are directed against Russian strategic forces. They're not. They're directed against Iranian ballistic missiles. You know, there's some trade space there. There's some trade space in the sanctions that are currently, uh, extant.
There's potentially some trade space in, uh, quiet conversations about, you know, it's pretty hard to get into NATO. And, you know, your veto idea, that's not going to work, but we assure you XXX. So, you know, I think there's a 40 percent chance we can get through [00:50:00] this without Uh, shots being fired in anger, but you know, 20 percent chance of, of this thing turning into a bigger war is unacceptable and dangerous, and we ought to be concerned about it.
Could one argue that Putin has already achieved some of his objectives? He's, he's, he's gotten direct telecommunications. With the President of the United States, the tele, you know, they had a video conference, I think, or, or at least a phone conference on December 7th and December 30th of last year, he's, he's, he's dealing directly with the President like, almost like a superpower, rather than having to deal with NATO or go through NATO.
President Biden has not signaled that he would respond with the military. With military force, if, if Putin went full on into Ukraine, he's signaled sanctions, so it could look like we're, we're kind of, um, apprehensive about military action, so suddenly, the, the shoulders that Putin is standing on are a lot larger in the region, because he, or in Russia, because he [00:51:00] suddenly looks like he's, Not an equal to the United States, but it's definitely, you know, increasing his and Russia's stature.
Uh, I think you're exactly right. Again, as we did with China a moment ago, let's do it from the inside out. So inside Russia, he looks strong. He looks decisive. He is an equal to the president of the United States. He's calling the shots. Um, people are scared and nervous about his action. He's on Dan Signora's podcast.
You know, he's, he's, he's topping the charts. Now he's really arrived. He's rocking. So, inside, uh, the country, very positive. In the periphery of Russia, the group of nations that are still aligned with him, um, even today as we're cutting this podcast, you see Russian soldiers going into Kazakhstan. Um, the Kazakhstanis are looking at.
Him as strength to put down the revolt Lukashenko in Belarus. Uh, Transista. A [00:52:00] little carve out from Moldova. Um, you know, he is got these nations that are typically former Soviet republics. around him and he looks strong and decisive to them and the west particularly coming off the The exorable departure from afghanistan where we looked weak and and indecisive and incompetent in the in the execution, um, you know, he looks pretty good just by making the threats your point and then finally How is this playing in Washington and Brussels and London and Berlin?
Uh, you know, it's playing like, wow, we got to worry a lot about Vladimir Putin. And we're talking about whether or not we should open up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for him. Um, that's another objective. That he has gotten without firing a shot. Um, as I always say about Vladimir Putin, he is an excellent tactician.
He's one of the smartest tactical thinkers I've ever [00:53:00] seen. He really employs that KGB methodology. He's a jujitsu master in real life. He wants to keep his opponent off balance. That. He's Vladimir Putin. He's a terrible strategist. Long term, this is not a winning position for Russia. Long term, if he were a smart strategist, he'd be trying to cement relations with the West.
He'd want to integrate with Europe. And I'll close with this. I mentioned earlier Xi and Putin getting closer and closer together. If I were advising Vladimir Putin, which I assure you I am not, but if I were, I would say, Mr. President. Be careful, be careful what you wish for here, because Russia will assuredly end up as the junior partner in that relationship.
And by the way, China looks north to Siberia, this vast land area, the size of the continental United States. [00:54:00] We're like maybe 30 million people live yet. It's full of arable land, fresh water, gold, timber, diamonds, oil, gas. China looks at that. Like my dog looks at a ribeye steak. It looks really, really good.
Be careful, Mr. President, be a better strategist. All right. Before I let you go, by the way, we'll edit this part out. Do you have like five more minutes? Sure. Five, seven minutes? Okay, I want to, okay. All right, um, Jim, before you go, I want to ask you two questions about your own career. You're, you're a rare figure in American public life for a variety of reasons, some of which we've talked about at the beginning of this podcast.
But also because, well, let me, let me illustrate this with two examples. You were vetted. As a possible vice presidential nominee for Hillary Clinton in 2016. So you actually, there was a short list of a handful of candidates. Six, there were six people actually vetted. And by the way, my advice is, if anyone [00:55:00] asks you if you want to be vetted for vice president, run screaming in the other direction.
It's a really hard process. Yeah, I, I had a little bit of, not the experience you had on the other side of it with the Romney campaign in 2012. I, I, uh, my chin dropped at what, um, we put people through for that process. So you went through that process. So on the one hand, you were considered, if you will, vice presidential material uh, by the Democratic nominee for president.
And then shortly after president One, you were invited to meet with then president elect Trump to talk about the possibility of a cabinet position, not your idea, his idea. Correct. So, I don't know that many people who, on the one hand, could have been Hillary Clinton's vice president, on the other hand, could have been a member of Donald Trump's cabinet.
Now, obviously you were neither, but the fact that you were held in high regard by both parties at a highly polarized time in our politics, I think says something about you and your [00:56:00] model of public service. What do you make of that? Were you sort of surprised by, by both situations? Let alone that both of them happened within a few months of each other?
I was surprised by both. I kind of think of them, by the way, as two bullets whizzing by my head. Uh, but I think first of all, it speaks to what I hope most Americans feel about the military, which is that we are nonpartisan. And by the way, I'm a registered independent, always have been, always will be. I've never contributed to either political party, nor will I.
I think that our military gets a part of why someone like me would be attractive in a situation like that. Secondly, I like to think I'm known as a person who is modest, who is empathetic. I don't have a high opinion of myself. You know, I'm five foot, five inch balding Greek American. You know, I am not, um, that big admiral out of central.
Greek, but your [00:57:00] family's from Turkey. That's correct. Good catch. Right. Uh, ethnically Greek citizens of the Ottoman empire 1920, 1920s after Smyrna was burned. Today, Izmir. Point being, I don't have elevated views of myself. And, and thirdly, um, I, I, I hope that, um, when I've written, when I've spoken, that I talk about the need to find solutions, to be pragmatic, to reach across the aisle.
Um, look at someone like, uh, a Republican like Rob Portman of Ohio, uh, look at, A Republican like, uh, uh, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts or a Mitt Romney. Um, and on the other side, people like Tim Kaine, who was the winner of the Veep stakes and deservedly so. Um, and, and, and my Congressman when I was Dean of the Fletcher School in Boston was Seth Moulton.
Democrat, a [00:58:00] veteran, uh, look at many, many. People there are more than we think who are in the center who want to reach across the aisle. That's a theme I continue to hit and I will always continue to hit because I think it's critical for the country. We're in danger of Becoming so utterly polarized that we can't find our way back to the center.
I think we'll succeed We always have we've been in tough places before but it's going to require Um, as many of us as are willing to do it to be speaking about the importance of the center, be it center right or center left, and how those elements ought to work together, Dan. We, uh, in 2020, I want to talk about one other, uh, figure, one, perhaps a, a real giant of American public life over the last, I mean, you know, in the, over the last six, seven decades.
Five six decades in terms of the number of roles he had which is former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld Which I I think we first met when you were [00:59:00] working For Secretary Rumsfeld in the in the office of Secretary of Defense OSD in the early 2000s First can you describe what your role was for our listeners?
Working for Secretary Rumsfeld. Yeah, I was what's called the senior military assistant effectively I was He would hate this term, but I'm going to use it. I was his military chief of staff. He had a civilian, a guy named Larry Dorita, who was I worked very closely with Larry, shared a room with him for, for a little bit in a bombed out palace in Baghdad.
Yes, right. He treasures those days, in fact. Um, and so he and I were this kind of pair, um, and, and my job was. To work with the director of the joint staff, a fellow three star who kind of ran the uniform side and I worked with the OSD, um, Policy experts and we would craft advice to Secretary Rumsfeld and anybody who knows Don [01:00:00] Rumsfeld knows Working for him was hard.
He's extremely energetic very demanding experienced. Um, it was entertaining. He's, he was one of the funniest people I've ever been around. Um, and, and in the end it was quite inspirational because he cared so deeply about the country and, uh, you know, downstairs. I have one of his squash rackets. He's a famous squash player.
And you're a serious squash player. I was. I was on the team at the U. S. Naval Academy, and that's probably how I got the job working for Rumsfeld. And we played squash two, three times a week. And everything you need to know about Don Rumsfeld, you can see in a squash court. He would crash into the walls, he'd knock you aside.
He was intensely competitive, but he was brutally fair. Um, he was, in my view, he was one of the great Americans, one of the greatest Americans who didn't end up as a president of the United States. He had about every other job you could have. So I certainly had [01:01:00] disagreements, some disagreements with Secretary Rumsfeld on certain issues and Some of the folks I worked with in Baghdad had disagreements with him, but I was struck after he passed by the by the scathing Criticism of him which I found very inappropriate for a variety of reasons not the least of which is It was like right after he died people didn't have the capacity to take a step back and think about his larger imprint Yeah on on Uh, American public policy, American public life, uh, it was, it was, it felt like a lot of score settling.
So if you were to sort of have a, a 10 to 15 year horizon looking back, 10 to 15 years from now, 20 years, what will history You know, how history judged Secretary Rumsfeld, how will it look back at Secretary Rumsfeld once we get beyond the, the, the nitpicking? Yeah, I think he will be judged reasonably well, particularly the long throw of his career, his time in the White [01:02:00] House, Chief of Staff, he was an ambassador to NATO, he served in the House of Representatives two time.
Secretary of Defense, a three time ambassador, you know, pretty hard not to give that kind of uh, resume It's due but but two times secretary of defense not not like back to back in the administration It's like secretary gates, but but over, you know, 30 to 40 years apart Yeah, let me put it another way when I graduated from annapolis in 1976 Secretary of defense don rumsfeld handed me my diploma and in And six when I pinned on my fourth star, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld pinned on that star.
Um, you know, in the middle, he went off and, and was an incredibly successful. We haven't even mentioned the CEO of three fortune 200 companies. I mean, he, he really could do it all. Great athlete to lovely wife choice, just the whole package in so many different ways. But, but [01:03:00] Dan, I want to. Close on Rumsfeld because the the heart of the negative legacy is Iraq.
Let's face it. Let's be honest There were a couple of misstatements along the way that that inflamed people, you know You go to war with the army you have it sounded callous and non compassionate But of course, it's a true statement But it was tone deaf And Abu Ghraib, I think dragged him down although he took Full responsibility for that, a Secretary of Defense offered to resign, President rejected his resignation.
The heart of the negative criticism is Iraq, and here's the point I want to make. We spent trillions, we lost thousands, but let's see how Iraq comes out. We haven't seen that yet. You know, and, you know, people say all the time, oh, we lost the war in Iraq. Well, wait a minute. We, we went into Iraq to make sure Saddam Hussein didn't have [01:04:00] weapons of mass destruction, check.
We went into Iraq to, ideally, to help it to be a functioning democracy, which it is today. We went into Iraq in order to ensure that Iran didn't come to dominate it. Check. And we went in there so that we could continue to have a sovereign relationship with this very important state. Check. Now, let's, you know, who knows how it all comes out.
Um, I think in the end, Iraq is not going to look like the kind of defeat that we suffered in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, I think, on the other hand, will go down as a significant defeat, but it, it went down in defeat, not because of Rumsfeld's actions, but because of decisions that were made toward the end of the war in Afghanistan that I think were questionable.
And you can't point to an Many other parts of the Middle East where you have a multi ethnic, multi sectarian [01:05:00] Arab democracy, however imperfect, trying to make it work, where participation in elections is sky high, election after election after election. You have a real multi, as I said, multi ethnic, multi sectarian coalition government making compromises, maintaining some modicum of rights for minorities.
I mean, where else in the Middle East can you point to that, especially for such a large country? Indeed. And again. Let's see how it turns out. And I think that Rumsfeld's. Legacy will be intertwined with the fate of Iraq. Jim, I feel like we could have gone, uh, for, uh, keep going for a while. I appreciate your taking the time.
I know we went over. I'm most import, most importantly, I now, by Admiral Stavridis, there's been declared a Dan Senor theory in geopolitics, which I wrote down as you said that, because I'm now going to refer to myself in the, in the third person as the Dan [01:06:00] Senor. When we talked about that issue, and I could say, look, it wasn't me!
It was the admiral. No, you can. Who coined that phrase. Quote me. So Jim, thanks for joining the conversation. It was my pleasure, Dan. I'll see you, I hope, this summer.
That's our show for today. To follow Admiral Stavridis, you can track him on Twitter. at Stavridis J. That's S T A V R I D I S J. As for his book, 2034, or any of his books, you can order them at barnesandnoble. com or purchase it from your favorite independent bookseller or that e commerce site that I think these days they're calling Amazon.
Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.[01:07:00]