 Welcome back to War Economy and State. This is our monthly foreign policy and international affairs podcast here at the Mises Institute and I'm Ryan McMacon. I'm a senior editor here at the Mises Institute and joining me is my usual co-host Zachary Yost and I've known Zachary for a few years. He's been a frequent contributor to the Mises wire and also was recently, that is late last year, a Marcellus Policy Fellow at the John Quincy Adams Society and they published his white paper on Taiwan and China-Taiwan relations and touching on issues of China potentially invading Taiwan and we've touched on that a little bit in a past Radio Rothbard episode which we'll link to in whatever formats we can but we're back to talk a little bit about Taiwan not so much from the the tactical side although we'll mention that a little bit but from the strategic side and things have actually changed a little bit. We now know a little bit more about how the rest of the world outside NATO behaves in response to foreign policy aggression from other states. Turns out it's not actually the way that NATO would hope it would go necessarily but since Nancy Pelosi has insisted on flying over there and making a big deal out of it and people also seem to be under the impression that the US explicitly supports an independent Taiwan there's a lot of misunderstanding about it so we'll just kind of talk a little bit about it and then just speculate about what we think might happen if China were to become progressively more aggressive toward unifying Taiwan in a de facto way back into China. So just just to start us off then, Zach, right I noticed that in some of the conservative media they were basically trying to accuse Biden of I guess reversing US policy and being okay with Taiwan being part of China that basically they gave in, they surrendered to China, they refused to really press the issue of Taiwanese independence forgetting the fact that US policy has never been in favor of an independent Taiwan, correct? Yes, since the US stopped recognizing Taiwan as China so to go way back as many listeners probably know the Chinese Civil War the nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek lost and retreated to the island of Taiwan and despite you know only controlling Taiwan and some tiny islands off the coast of the mainland Taiwan the Republic of China was recognized as the government of China for decades and decades and then in the 70s a sort of Cold War politicking Nixon went to China and eventually the end result was the US recognized the People's Republic of China the Commies Red China as China and stopped recognizing the Republic of China aka Taiwan as the government of China and until that point it's sort of hilarious in a way Taiwan had had the China seat in the UN Security Council so this tiny island nation that supposedly you know governed all of China and only controlled this island could veto at the UN and all that sort of stuff since that time when that happened Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act this act did not say that the US is responsible for defending Taiwan or anything like that what it did is it basically said it's the law that the US has to sell defensive weapons to Taiwan for it to defend itself and there have been various communicates and policies and things like that and the US excuse me has abided by its own version of the one China policy this is different than China's version of the one China policy that is there's one China and the PRC is that China and Taiwan's this break off province America's one China policy says the PRC is the government of China but it does not say that Taiwan it's sort of ambiguous as to whether Taiwan is part of China or not and speaking of ambiguity for decades our explicit policy has been that of strategic ambiguity which is we have no official policy as to what we would do in the event Taiwan was invaded by China we've not said China Taiwan we will defend you we've not said China back off or will attack you if you try to attack Taiwan official policy is we we don't have an official policy as it were another crucial thing to understand is what what the status of Taiwan now de facto Taiwan is an independent country has a government for a while it had the tallest building in the world modern economy etc etc but aside from like some tiny islands in the Pacific and some places in South and Central America no one recognizes Taiwan as a government or as the government of China but everyone basically has unofficial relations with Taiwan and the Taiwanese government and many listeners might be familiar with uh how extensive trade is with Taiwan because they produce like a huge portion of the world's microchips and that's been a huge issue for the past few years and there's legislation about it in the US to bring production here all sorts of stuff like that so Taiwan is a country that no one recognizes as a country and Taiwan it's quite important to note still the the government of Taiwan maintains that it is the legitimate government of China Taiwan has not declared independence meaning that it would become Taiwan as it were they would relinquish their claim basically to be the rightful government of China and they just move into the future as Taiwan they have not done that and it's a point of great contention within Taiwan about that and in fact in polling there's a difference lots of polling Taiwanese people say they'd fight to defend Taiwan if it was invaded but actually less people say they would defend Taiwan if the invasion was the result of Taiwan declaring independence so that's just an interesting aside now when it comes to US politics which is quite driven by the heart rather than the head tons of people who pay attention to politics to some extent just love Taiwan it's understandable why you know they're not the godless Kami heathens and they think we should recognize Taiwan as independent you know not even thinking about whether Taiwan wants to declare independence because it's quite a controversial issue there and so there's a great deal of support for Taiwan but there's a great deal of ignorance about all the technicalities and complications of that relationship and what it would mean were the US to just say Taiwan you're a country that can we recognize well I think that's one of the few times that pragmatism has won out in the long term in US policy is this ambiguity over the issue we're refusing to say you would defend Taiwan or absolutely we will not join into an alliance with Taiwan I mean things change over time and it would just seem that the pragmatic thing to do is just leave your options open without picking a fight with Beijing would seem to be the what makes sense that's but as you know Americans they they they have to take this like moralistic position on everything this is something that in in US Japan relations that Ralph Raco has noted a lot and just in East Asia in general especially in the 40s and 50s was that everything had to have this moralistic tone and anytime the US fights a country it has to have unconditional surrender and it doesn't matter how many cities of a million people you have to burn to the ground what's right is right and it doesn't matter how many people you kill that's a very American way of going about it's right if we look at the history of diplomacy in western Europe especially where states recognized well this is actually relevant to the taiwan issue right is that just one of the weird things about the state system that came out of the 17th century is that states exist if other states say they exist and so if you can just get some critical mass of recognition of of your statehood from other states within your estate you're both a de jure and a de facto state and so taiwan's actually in a pretty weird situation whereas for a long time has been a de facto so usually after like 10 years or whatever where you're a de facto state who does your own thing people just start fine whatever that the other regimes of the world just recognize you but this is just that odd case where decades later you've got a lot of regimes still say you've got states saying well i don't know if that's states an actual state or not and and just the way the state system works that actually determines whether you're a real sovereign state is on the opinions of other sovereign states and it doesn't have to be that way or that's certainly the way it's been for 300 years or so yeah and a lot of the unrecognized states they're sort of de facto states are not modern developed states they're like Somaliland or uh Nagorno-Karabakh or the breakaway places in georgia or the Donbas peoples republics these are not you know they're they didn't have the tallest building in the world Taipei 101 for a few years until it was surpassed they don't have you know they're not a crucial hub in the world's manufacturing network things like that but yeah it is a complicated situation and uh it would be there have been moves towards more normalizing relations i can't remember if it was Lithuania or Estonia or Latvia one of the Baltic states has sort of upgraded their sort of relationship with Taiwan and China of course went nuts threatening all sorts of embargoes and everything else but um yeah it's it's obviously made more complicated by China's large economic influence in the world and things like that yeah Taiwan probably among quasi states by far the the highest standard of living right because as you know a lot of these breakaway areas they're just they're poor backwaters that um they're they don't have relation trade relations with 150 other states uh like Taiwan does and i'm old enough to remember the 80s when you would buy lots of toys and products and stuff where they would still say made in Taiwan you don't see that much for consumer goods like you used to you saw a lot of made in japan stuff too and everything's made in china but yeah i mean that really drove home out Taiwan was its own thing and so it really is an unusual situation in terms of Taiwan's status even though it's not recognized as a sovereign state and so it does really demand some level of pragmatism then if you're going to deal with it and i think most of the world is used to that you just see how the russians behave right well we just we let practical realities guide us as to who we treat as as other states that are useful to us and China's are in russia's willing to do business with anybody i mean you can just look at the way that they uh they deal with turkey which is part of nato right they're like well you're part of nato but we're gonna just go try and win you over to our side as much as we can anyway we're not gonna we don't care what that says about nato's legitimacy or whatever way and russia doesn't go to uh turkey and say well the only way we'll deal with you is if you give up your nato membership i mean they know that's not gonna happen but they know they can get what they need out of uh turkey anyway without making these big grandiose demands uh but the us seems to love to do that and in some ways that is sort of like like china and that the us is always making these big moralistic claims and demands and lots of posturing to uh to uh virtue signal essentially to local interest groups and that's what i think that's what the american right seems to want right now we need lots of big gestures suggesting that we hate the commies and we love in the idea of an independent taiwan even though that might actually be really bad for taiwan doing a bunch of i'm not sure that polosi's trip to taiwan has improved taiwan's situation is at all um although i don't know they don't seem to mind but i i guess it's just hard to predict what that could lead to then uh with with the us just seemingly becoming much more involved in taiwan all of a sudden right so i i think this trip was a disaster uh from both taiwan's long-term interest and the us's long-term interest um as we discussed in the previous radio rothbard episode china can't invade taiwan right now it doesn't have that capacity but that does not mean taiwan is without issues one of the largest issues is that they're rather lax daysicle about their defense i mean of all the countries in the world taiwan oh excuse me has uh about it's the most conceivable that this is a very modern state that could be invaded and conquered and completely subjugated like poland in world war two or something something that doesn't happen much anymore yet last year they spent 2.1 of their gdp on their military as i discussed in my paper and in the radio rothbard episode they theoretically could field over two million troops if they deploy their reservists but the quality and morale of the reservists is definitely in question and part of the reason for that is they openly state uh you know uh journalists interview people and i mean the government officials have also stated openly uh that they expect that the us with japan will just swoop in if there's an invasion and they'll take care of everything pretty fast and uh that's it so why would you you know spend decades and decades you know having millions of people waste thousands and thousands and millions of man hours you know training and buying all this equipment and everything when you know uncle sam or rather uncle sucker will come in and take care of it for you and what message does polosi's visit sent it tells the taiwanese leadership the us has got our back they're gonna pick up the tab and we can continue our lazy free riding that we've been getting away with for a long time and i fear that the reception polosi has received in the us or even lots of my libertarian friends and lots of conservatives like applauding polosi they're like i thought i'd never say this but you know well done polosi blah blah blah blah what incentive is this going to send to all of the other politicians or would be politicians in the us go to taiwan go visit taiwan and say taiwan we stand with you and everyone and back home in america will cheer and you know you'll get points for standing up to china um so i think that's bad for america in that we're you know letting these people free ride off of us and as i discuss in my paper it's highly questionable if the us could stop the invasion and it would undoubtedly as things currently stand be a disaster huge loss of life um but it's also bad for taiwan because they're being lazy and not going to be as prepared as they should be i you know somebody should produce like some sort of graph um a statistic a ticker showing how many people put the uh the taiwanese flag like in their social media profile now that uh now that we of course we know that's a thing like with ukraine and i do see ukrainian flags flying here and there in denver the question is though those might be actual ukrainian so i don't i don't know i never know how like if this is just like some upper middle class white person who's virtue signaling or it's like a genuine ukrainian uh but but i could see that becoming a thing right suddenly the us you get all these americans just on fire with standing with ukraine or standing with taiwan all of a sudden and that would probably not lead to uh to more rationalism and pragmatism in american politics on this issue for sure it would seem that if you were taiwan you would want to embrace maybe more the swiss model a very very active self-defense and having a top-notch military force and we've we've discussed that in passing i think we need to do it a little bit more in the future is to talk about uh the uh the swiss and how really for centuries the swiss have had this reputation as just like these uh extremely effective fighters and just horribly feared mercenaries 300 years ago and they never really lost that reputation right yeah i mean as we talked about in the last episode switzerland basically successfully deterred a nazi invasion basically because they armed the entire populace and you know shooting was the national pastime etc etc in contrast taiwan has some of the strictest gun laws on the planet and um it's actually quite interesting i've been doing some reading about the british home guard during world war two which is quite interesting it really was one it so basically it was comprised of basically all the people who were either too young to join the military too old to join the military or who uh worked in factories and whatnot and couldn't join the military because they were in like a necessary profession in like three months after its formation was announced and it was announced in part because it was spontaneously happening and the british government was sort of worried of all these private militias forming to defend the country that they couldn't control within three months it had like 1.5 million members sort of a spun one of the largest if not the largest all volunteer force in human history it's hard to picture that happening in taiwan because no one takes it seriously there was a sort of infamous piece in the wall street journal last uh fall where they interviewed reservists like people you know after they graduate high school basically have to have some mandatory training and they're like yeah i just moved tires around and spent all day watching american war movies and like drawing manga and uh so it's like how are these people going to defend the country even if they're willing which is you know talk is cheap there's all these polls saying they would defend the country but they also say at the same time the us would come and it'd be over fast anyway so it's uh i have concerns about the the fighting spirit of taiwan which is necessary to resist well you were uh you mentioned a 2.1 of gdp being spent on defense and for people who just what does that number mean right that's that's a fairly low number for a country that's next to a very huge country um that has a policy basically of forcibly forcing that country uh into into it absorbing that country um probably the highest gdp percentage i've seen is maybe saudi arabia which is around 10 if memory serves and that's just off the charts that's way huge are the most other countries but a lot of countries especially ones facing threats it's pretty standard to see three four five percent of gdp spent the us spends three percent of his gdp on defense which is way too much for an economy as gigantic as the us the us wouldn't need to spend nearly that much uh to maintain an effect to maintain an effective defense force but taiwan doesn't have an economy the size of the us so two percent is just teeny tiny that's i think it's like 14 or 15 billion bucks right it's not not that much so you get these fully integrated nato countries that are spending two percent or 1.8 percent even but those are countries well ensconced within western europe and know that uh that really they're the only threat they face anyway is the russians who are just teeny tiny compared to the chinese anyway and and teeny and way more even teeny tiny compared to the us uh and look and now they should probably feel all the all that much better looking at how much the russians have struggled in ukraine in terms of overrunning the country i do think the russians will peel off a significant portion of that country but they just don't have the capability to roll into the volv or whatever they call it now uh right up to the hungarian border or anything like that but in terms of just dominating taiwan cutting off trade right as you've noted like a real uh establishing a beachhead on taiwan going across the 90 miles of the strait uh really subjugating the place military immensely expensive could lead to horrible horrible things but there's lots of other ways they can inflict damage on on taiwan and that leads us then to the other question of uh and it also doesn't mean that internal politics in china couldn't reach such a feverish situation in some case where they decide we've got nothing to lose in terms of because the regime or we're losing legitimacy we need to really whip the country into a nationalist frenzy these things happen and they said what's the best way to do that the best way is to just invade taiwan i mean if you had it you've had instability in in china in mainland china you could see how that might lead to people becoming bonkers enough to decide that invading taiwan uh was was the only way to go i i don't think they're at that point right now i agree with you that it's just so unlikely at this point for so many logistical tactical whatever reasons um but you never know what happens when you might reach a point of instability domestically right and that's you know one of the core core i think insights that people need to take into account when they're thinking about foreign affairs and international relations and whatnot is the radical uncertainty of the future that uh i mean if in 1900 if you showed you know all the world leaders here's the world in 2022 i mean they would i mean they couldn't even comprehend it no one could have predicted how the 20th century went just as we can't predict how this century is going to go and so i would argue that's a that's an argument in favor of prudence and uh not doing crazy things well and i think another reason for prudence is that the united states cannot count on the rest of the world for just backing up the u.s and its strategic goals no matter what and i think uh an important lesson is being learned in the case of russia so in the case of russia right it's it's even less ambiguous than if if china were to invade taiwan where russia has invaded what everybody recognized as a totally sovereign country i.e. ukraine and killed a lot of people there and has in many ways cut off trade and generally done things that most countries consider to be a bad thing you you invade a neighboring country and you declare war on them and yeah i would say that yep ukraine did a lot of things provoke russia but i think most of the the world looks at that and they say okay well i i don't think that i don't think a big country should invade a smaller country and just seize territory like happened nevertheless even with most most people say yeah that invasion that was a bad thing the u.s has not gained nearly the amount of support i think they anticipated they would have in most of the world after this invasion took place and you saw this in the un vote where you didn't you didn't get condemnation you had a lot of abstaining from the vote on when the un took a vote on should we just condemn russia a lot of countries just abstain and yeah you only had like half a dozen countries actually vote in favor of russia but most of the world was like not our not our problem not our business and this included like most of the world's population so you had you had india you had russia you had huge numbers of countries in uh africa yes the the the western world the quote unquote free world the u.s aligned world yep you had nato australia the u.s but the rest of the world was like i want to stay out of i want to maintain trade with russia i want to keep getting my wheat from russia i want to keep getting my oil from russia and i'm just really not interested in picking a fight with russia just because the united states says russia is bad so this attempt at i think creating this new this new model of well there's the first world which is america the free world there's the second world again well that's russia again and then there's the third world or the non-aligned countries but we're actually going to bring them all over to us so it seemed like the u.s would have loved to have had this sort of new world order where we had we had quote unquote free world aligned against russia and everybody who loved democracy would support america but that didn't happen you had lots of countries that are you know marginally democratic or which the u.s even recognizes as democratic just staying out of it and then you've got india buying oil from russia you got of course the chinese doing lots of that and so i think there was a somewhat rude awakening for the state department just wake up and realize oh most of the most of the world doesn't really actually care what u.s strategic goals are in eastern europe and you see that explicitly with saudi arabia where they're just coming out and saying hey we want to build bridges to all countries we're not we don't we don't want to make any enemies we want to we want to deal fairly with china and with the united states and with whoever else is willing to come and play with us and that seems to be where the you where most of the world is really interested in being right now and so it wouldn't seem that beyond countries that are enmeshed in the issue like japan and even then japan might be interested in having negotiated settlements and really just try to avoid a major global conflict but this idea that the u.s which faces no real threats to the western hemisphere from china that the u.s is in a position where it can make lots of moralistic demands and say well we're not going to stop fighting until xyz happens and uh we will we will never give up well a lot most of the world faced with the issue of being cut off from trade with china or maybe facing some side some sort of military collateral damage from china uh a china that's that freaks out in the face of a conflict with the united states with which then maybe starts really asserting its control over the south china sea and so on that would make a lot of its neighbors really uncomfortable so i could see how the the world is not going to just line up to back up the u.s in any sort of conflict that the u.s might seem to be courting with the chinese right um yeah as you say the case with russia is so it communicates volumes i mean even nato countries i mean those close to russia much more eager to you know support ukraine those further away a good bit less inclined um i mean it's it's it's absurd like germany is actually lowering decreasing their defense budget for the next year if i remember correctly like they announced oh we're going to spend all this extra money and then they're like actually because we're doing that we can lower the regular budget and it's i think it's actually lower in both percentage and like actual raw numbers it's it's so absurd um india i think will be immensely important in any kerfuffle in east asia and they aren't friendly with china in the past few years they they've beaten each other to death there are soldiers have beaten each other to death in this sort of contested um border area that's huge it's vast it's up in the mountains it's not a great place to fight but both sides have installed over the decades tons and tons and tons of infrastructure so they could you know shuttle 50 000 troops up to fight in the himalayas if they need to and um but at the same time india wasn't unaligned in the cold war and they're probably also not very eager to be you know the us's lap dog uh in any confrontation with china because the us track worker is so clear uh despite our highfalutin moralistic rhetoric at the end of the day we're entirely interested in us interests um so we're not going to be looking out for the best interests of india or anyone over there we're going to be looking out for our own interests and we can see this in the situation in ukraine uh officials have more or less said you know we don't want ukraine to negotiate before we're ready uh you know they're willing to sacrifice ukrainian troops who receive two weeks training before being sent off to be canon fodder for the mass russian artillery um that's one of the benefits of being so secure and being a regional hegemon who controls that entire hemisphere of the globe we're not the ones suffering uh and even in europe this winter americans might have some high heating bills but we're not actually going to you know be rationing gas or anything germany they're they're already rationing how like they've shut off hot water to public buildings uh turning lights out at night i mean these countries are going to be in for quite a painful winter for the sake of ukraine and i think we're going to see quite a shift in public opinion when that happens you know there's always that significant portion of uh libertarian types and just uh people in general a lot they do tend to be i think more on the either the libertarian side or kind of the far right conservative side and they're always looking for the better country to move to right america's getting so bad what other country am i going to move to and before covid there's a lot of talk of various european countries you wanted to move to and new zealand was popular for a while that's true too yep and uh but now but now after the the ukraine invasion right central europe doesn't look quite so fun as it looked and you know i've just looked at the map for years i'm like boy being well ensconced in the bosom of the north american land mass uh has its advantages for sure because you're just so far from these geopolitical conflicts uh with the exception of nuclear war but then being in europe in the case of nuclear war doesn't help you either so they they uh so yeah i mean if i gotta move to idaho or what but that's a whole lot better than being in uh i don't know eastern hungary or whatever where situations of immigration of conflict with major powers are just so much more tenuous than they are when you're just in the western hemisphere i mean latin america's pretty secure too because of that uh and so you could be yeah sure move to paraguay too you'd probably be in a pretty good situation geopolitically there as well right short of the uk you know attacking slash defending the falcons were any other power to do a mess in any way with any south american country the u.s would it would be quite terrifying uh the response would be immense and overwhelming uh well so the u.s is in this this position and this makes me think of our old friend though we i think we can wrap up with wondering what would what would our buddy john mirshimer uh want to do now a lot of he's kind of in recent years and he's all famous at the moment for talking about ukraine and all that stuff and he's had a lot of insights there uh but he he's a realist i'm a realist but i'm more of a defensive realist so i i think uh mirshimer who's an offensive realist and thinks that every country's always trying to maximize its influence at least as a regional hegemon so he thinks china's going to be real aggressive at least that's my reading of it and and does have and he may be right that in an ideal world china's policy is to push the u.s out of east asia past both the first and second island chains back out to hawaii basically right uh and so he said in the past so the u.s needs to really work then to balance china uh in eastern asia well the question is then is that well what does that mean so say you had a bunch of people you could see how this is the one one of the few places where you'd have people the pentagon wanting to actually listen to mirshimer it's like look we got this guy who says we we can't just let china do whatever they want in in east asia and so what does that look like then so say so the the state department whatever and they agree right we got to do something to to contain china in east asia what does that look like without prompting world war three and really keeping things uh from from spinning out of control or does the u.s just finally admit look we got all these bases in japan japan can have its own military we we we got hawaii we got guam even well we won't be pushed out past guam i guess they could make a last day about the second island chain there uh but but what does sane policy look like here now of course as a as a roth bardian type obviously the ideal situation is taiwan becomes an independent state and the u.s pulls back and china's its own regional hegemon and that's no threat to the united states whatsoever but i know lots of people including mirshimer disagree with that idea so so from from a more washingtonian point of view what's what's the sane policy in east asia yes so uh i'm much more on the offensive realism side but i must say i do differ with john mirshimer who i love so much uh last year he participated in a debate about china and all that and he explicitly said not only should the u.s work to defend taiwan but that it will and at the time i felt like padme in revenge of the sith you know i don't i you're going down a path i can't follow you you're breaking my heart john mirshimer i'm i am in favor of balancing against china but i am much more in favor of leading from the rear as it were we have partners in east asia who are filthy stinking rich countries who could themselves deter chinese expansion one being taiwan which has immense resources it has a lot to work with in terms of defense i mean the island has been prepared for invasion since 1950 the other is japan and unfortunately japan is another country that has been free riding off the u.s in part from our own very foolish policy after world war two where we wrote i mean americans basically wrote the japanese constitution and we wrote the japan forever abandons the idea of settling disputes through war and it will never have a military well almost immediately once the cold war started people were banging their heads and going what dumb idiot wrote this in it and japan loved it there's this whole thing called the yoshida doctrine which is that they explicitly knew if we create a military the u.s will have us fighting in vietnam or wherever korea and korea at the time when all this is happening that the their doctrine of the japanese government during the cold war was explicitly let the u.s provide our defense so we can invest in our economy and it worked great for them now that the um if i'm remembering correctly i sometimes get all these foreign political parties mixed up i believe the governing party of japan is the liberal democrats and they have been in power in japan all but like two or three times since i think 1955 or something but they've never had a huge majority and they govern with this other smaller sort of right wing party well um shinzo abe was assassinated i believe like the day before the elections for the japanese parliament's upper house and it seemed to have generated quite a sympathy vote for his party he was he's for those who don't know he was the former prime minister who stepped he was longest serving prime minister since the second world war he stepped down for health reasons but he was still immensely influential influential he was assassinated and the governing party wins enough of a majority that it is now expected that they will probably it's at least conceivable they will alter the constitution to change the article that forbids them from having a military i mean they have a vast i mean relative to you know for today's time they have a big military it's technically police force the japanese self-defense force and with that out of the way we can expect more japanese militarization that is if the u.s doesn't mess everything up by saying japan we've got it we'll take care of it you can continue to free ride so if zak yost was you know running things it would be you know bringing our partners in east asia to come to jesus moment of you guys have to defend yourselves we'll support you you know from way back here and um sort of farming off that containment and uh i think we can do that in a smart way that does not overly antagonize china i mean no matter what we do china will squawk and complain and you know issue threats but this at the end of the day there are red lines we don't want to cross with china it'd be disastrous immensely foolish to position us troops in taiwan completely opposed to that i think that'd be a terrible idea but that's not to say we can not sort of work coordinating partnerships from back here in the western hemisphere indian china i mean it it seems that their relationship is not going to improve greatly um at any time in the near future but at the same time the u.s it would not be out of the realm of possibility that the u.s would mess it all up the perfect example of this being russia and china for a long time i mean back the soviet union and china had horrible relationships and i mean literally we're fighting tiny little wars over like uninhabited islands in the amera river well in the early 2000s if i'm remembering correctly they resolved all outstanding border disputes and us conduct since that time has only driven russia and china closer together and it seems that this visit to taiwan is just ensuring that china and russia are going to continue to grow closer together china is very vulnerable in terms of how much food and oil and whatnot it imports from the rest of the world well if they're engaging in any kind of long-term thinking at all they'll know well the secure thing to do is to rely on russia to import these things so i suspect russia and china are going to be close together for the foreseeable future and that's quite a mistake i think uh that they'll write about in future centuries um but i think we can have a sane containment policy against china that just steps back from us doing everything we can let other people take care of themselves with our assistance we don't need to have this very toxic codependent relationship with taiwan and japan i would say are the main people to be involved all right well we'll have to leave it at that then for this episode of war economy and state thank you zak for joining me and uh this is a monthly show so we'll see what global disasters transpire in the next few weeks uh as we plan for september's episode but uh we do plan to be back and so we'll see you next time thanks everybody