 Hi, hello. Hi, hello, everybody. Thank you all for joining us today. Wonderful to transition into our third panel of the Sino-US Symposium at the 14th, the 14th annual symposium at Tufts University. My name is Haetong. I am a senior at Tufts. I'm a fourth year student and I study international relations. And I'm the vice president of search for Sino-US Relations Group Engagement. Once again, today we have a fabulous cast of three experts who will be joining us in a panel talking about the future of Sino-US Security Confrontation and particularly with regards to the ongoing situation in Ukraine and the new developments coming out from both sides of the Taiwan Strait. So the first one is our very own Professor Beckley at the political science department at Tufts University who is a leading expert on the balance of power between the United States and China. Professor Beckley is also the author of two books and multiple award-winning articles. A associate professor of political science at Tufts University and a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the AEI. Previously, Professor Beckley was a international security fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and worked for the United States Department of Defense, the REND Corporation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He continues to advise offices within the U.S. intelligence community and the United States Department of Defense. Once again, thank you very much for joining us, Professor Beckley. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. So I'll kick things off and just focus on the Taiwan issue and then maybe in Q&A or a discussion we can talk about the broader U.S.-China relationship. But just given Russia's invasion of Ukraine, obviously a potential Chinese assault on Taiwan is very much on people's minds. And my own sense is that an invasion is unlikely just because Great Power War is an unlikely event, but it's more likely than any of us should be really comfortable with. And the same way that a Russian all-out invasion of Ukraine was maybe not super likely prior to the actual invasion, but it happened and shows that old-fashioned conquest is still alive and well and something that needs to be taken seriously. And I'm especially concerned because I think if there is a Chinese assault on Taiwan that it's probably gonna happen sooner rather than later. So IE in this decade in the 2020s rather than in the 2030s or 2040s. And I'm also very concerned because if war occurs, I actually think the war could escalate significantly, could well become protracted because neither Beijing nor Taipei or Washington will easily be able to capitulate. There aren't easy off ramps to a war once it started. So I'll kind of flush those two main points out just in the next five to 10 minutes. And I guess my first point is while we need to think long-term about competition between the United States and China, I think on the Taiwan issue, we do need to be thinking short-term because China's own history, like the history of Chinese use of force as well as its recent behavior suggests that if there is gonna be an assault on Taiwan, it could happen soon. So there's been a lot of studies that have analyzed when and why China uses force and they all reach a pretty similar conclusion. They argue that China goes to war not when it's rising and everything is going great for it but when its security situation is starting to deteriorate and its bargaining strength is starting to decline. So Tom Christensen who's this famous China scholar at Columbia says he did a big study and he basically found that China uses force to either exploit a closing window of opportunity or to avoid an opening window of vulnerability. And my concern is that I think we face that situation right now that China has a potentially closing window of opportunity in the Taiwan Strait. And at the same time it has an opening window of vulnerability in its broader strategic situation. So I think it has a window of opportunity in the Taiwan Strait right now because first of all, China's just coming off decades of rapid military modernization. China's been churning out warships at a faster rate than any country has since World War II. And so you had this major shift in the cross-strait military balance between China and Taiwan. But I think that advantage is gonna peak this decade because the United States is also gonna downsize temporarily its naval, its air and naval presence in East Asia because a lot of US warships, guided missile submarines, long range bombers, those were all built in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. And at this point they're literally catching on fire. They're not usable anymore. And so they're gonna have to be retired on mass. And so in the late 2020s you're gonna have this temporary dip in US firepower essentially in East Asia. And as a result, that gives China even more of a potential opportunity. But on the other hand, I think that window of opportunity won't stay open for very long because both the United States and Taiwan have ambitious plans to rapidly develop their strike options in East Asia to spread out their forces and make them much more resilient against a Chinese preemptive attack. And so China has its chance, but probably not for very long. And at the same time, it faces this opening window of vulnerability at the grand strategic level. And that's for a few reasons. One is that China's economic growth is starting to slow. So for most of the past 30 years, China, its economy was growing like gangbusters. It was mostly self-sufficient in most resources. It had a huge demographic dividend with lots of workers and relatively few elderly people to take care of or children. And at the same time, it had probably the most secure geopolitical environment in modern Chinese history. You didn't have Japan preying on you or Western imperialist powers attacking you if you're China. And China also had pretty easy access to foreign markets and technology. And a lot of this frankly was underpinned by a solid relationship with the United States which helped provide for a more secure environment. But I think all of those factors I just listed are starting to reverse that China is running out of resources. Its economic growth is slowing. It's running out of working age people. It's starting to amass a huge population of senior citizens. And China just these economic headwinds are hitting China at the same time that China is now confronting an increasingly hostile security environment. So just around the world, negative views of China have surged to levels we haven't seen since the Tiananmen Square Massacre. And they're starting to manifest themselves in ways that are making life more difficult for leaders in Beijing, whether it's the rise of a more independent Taiwanese identity, the fact that there's thousands of new trade and investment barriers that have been slapped on China over the last few years. Countries kind of balking at their Belt and Road projects. There's this series of sort of export control, these sort of ad hoc coalitions of countries that are trying to cut China off from key technologies. So the key example there is the semi-conductors coalition where you had a bunch of rich countries try to cut China off from advanced chips. That kind of model is sort of being scaled out over lots of other different types of technologies. And even with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, you've also had sort of the reinvigoration of the West as it used to be known. And some of these countries, the major economies have kind of had some practice about what it would entail to cut a major power out of the global financial system. And so that has to be very concerning for China just cause you've already gotten these parties kind of together and talking and practicing if it were on Russia and those kind of same weapons could be turned onto China. So I think that's the strategic backdrop that we need to look at the Taiwan situation today because if you're Xi Jinping, who by the way is gonna be pushing 80 years old by the early 2030s, then you're probably thinking if you wanna accomplish that longstanding national goal of reunification, it doesn't look like there's any peaceful option just given where Taiwan is moving in terms of public opinion. And so you might need to turn to more coercive options and the 2020s seem like if you're gonna strike would be the best time to do it. So none of this means that war is imminent in the Taiwan straight, but it's certainly more likely than I'm frankly comfortable with. And so this means that for the United States and Taiwan, they both of them really need to get their act together as soon as possible. There's all these debates going on in DC about should or should not the United States build a 355 ship Navy, like, or should we spend lots of money on R&D on weapons systems that are gonna be ready 10 or 15 years from now? And for me, I just think those are sort of beside the point that the United States actually needs a surge of weapons systems in the Taiwan straight or around the Taiwan straight as soon as possible. To try to maintain some level of deterrence there. And for in Taiwan, it's the same thing. Taiwan has developed new strategic concepts that would make themselves kind of like what the Ukrainians have done, making themselves a prickly porcupine that is just really hard to conquer. But the problem is Taiwan hasn't put its defense dollars where its mouth is. So it's still spending money on fancy items like F-16s that may get blown up in the first few hours on the runway in a Chinese preemptive missile strike or on indigenously built ships that may not make it at a port at the outset of a war rather than on what the Ukrainians have which are like lots of little, lots of missile launchers and mortars and other kind of fires that you could direct at a Chinese assault force. So when I advise the US government, a lot of it is just trying to like, what can we MacGyver together right now to try to shore up deterrence in the Taiwan straight because I just worry that time is short. And the second point which I'll just make very briefly is that I worry that if the war occurs it could actually go long. And that's because that's been the case for most major power wars. Usually, the great powers, they get into the war thinking it's gonna be this short, sharp conflict and they'll be home for Christmas. And then it ends up dragging on for years and years and both sides escalate both horizontally into new theaters as well as vertically by ramping up the amount of firepower that they bring on each other. And so this again means that if you're the United States or Taiwan you can't just be thinking about how to repel the initial wave of a Chinese amphibious invasion or the initial few weeks of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan you actually have to be thinking that this conflict could drag on which means you need the ability to rearm, to regroup and reload and to build up the capacity to churn out war material for the long run. And right now the United States and Taiwan really don't have much capability to do that. The last thing I would say is that the United States and Taiwan need to be thinking about off-ramps because for every article or book I read about how to fight China in a war over Taiwan I read maybe like half of an article for every 1,000 articles I read about how to fight a war over Taiwan I read maybe one article about how to de-escalate a conflict once it starts. Like what would be the kind of peace deals that could be struck? Cause presumably the war would not end with either Beijing marching on Washington DC or vice versa. It's gonna end with some kind of negotiated settlement. So what would that settlement look like? How could you allow China to save some face and claim some semblance of a victory so that they don't feel they have to fight on and vice versa? These are the kind of things that need to be taken seriously but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be the case in most strategic debates today. So I'll leave it there since I know we have other distinguished speakers and I wanna get to discussion as well but thanks so much for tuning in. Thank you so much, Professor Beckley. Very insightful analysis. And next we have Professor Mario Del Perro who is a professor of international history at Sciences Pole in Paris where he teaches courses on the United States in the world of the Cold War and 20th and 21st century global history. He has published very widely in both English and Italian. And before joining Sciences Pole Professor Del Perro has taught at the University of Bologna and held professorships and visiting professorships at the European University Institute. The Clug Center of the Library of Congress, Columbia University, New York University and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies of Geneva. He's currently writing a book on a mission of Texan evangelicals in the early post World War II Italy which tries to offer a micro historical account of the global dynamics of integration of the Cold War. Professor Del Perro also runs a blog and regularly comments on the United States international politics for the Italian and Swiss public radios and for Sky News. Thank you for joining us Professor Del Perro. Well, thanks a lot for the invitation. It's a great pleasure to be here. I was telling Lucas that I've been tested positive to COVID a few days ago so I'm secluded in my bedroom. It means also having a small child appropriately nicknamed Godzilla in the other room. So if you hear some screaming, no need to call, say, the children. It's just in my daily life at home with a two-year-old. That said, thanks for the invitation. It's also a great pleasure to be here with Professor Perkley. God knows how many students of mine have read his 2011-2012 article on China's century of international security, which I loved by the time I then have inflicted on many of my students. So I understood actually originally it was more of a back and forth of a Q&A between you and us, but following what Michael did, I'll offer a couple of quick, very quick reflections on Ukraine and then we can move on and try to link the two because there is clearly a potential linkage between Ukraine and Taiwan, if you, between China and Russia. So what have we seen in these, what is a bit more than a month, two months actually of war, again the 24th of February? We have seen that banal to say are a clear, kind of resemente of the Atlantic Alliance. The war, the blatant aggression of Russia, I don't know how else to put it, has provided a long needed and a long absent, if you will glue between the US and its European allies, but even more among European countries because within the EU and within the European bloc of the Atlantic community, there have been, there were, there still are more on which in a second, a huge differences, even in the kind of policy, in the kind of connection, in the kind of relationship with Russia. So the war has re-semented transatlantic unity that has been very visible under however, a reasserted US leadership. Now, the Atlantic community has historically worked via the presence of a clear hegemon. Somehow the Atlantic Alliance has been kept united and federated by the presence of a superior actor, which was the US. I don't think what we are seeing now is very much different. There has been a lot of discussion on, for example, Germany's decision to significantly increase its defense spending. And that, I mean, Germany has not been the only European country to follow that line. That is happening under a renewed Atlantic umbrella. It's not the, you know, Macron's quasi neo-gollist strategic autonomy of Europe, what we are seeing now. As I said, it's happening under US leadership, if you will, under the US watch, under the NATO and transatlantic umbrella. Finally, from more, if you will, ideological, discursive, rhetorical point of view, what we are seeing is kind of in a revalidation of a sort of called neo-Cold War narrative. As a historian, I'm very skeptical of Cold War analogies. I have also written a couple of articles against the use, misuse and abuse of the Cold War analogy. But in terms of narratives, somehow what we are seeing today, it's the alleged apparent revalidation for sort of, you know, black and white narrative of a community of democracies led by the US, kept together by US leadership, as I was saying, facing a very authoritarian state which has, you know, which has been subjected, its population to a brutal neo-authoritarian turn post the beginning of the war, which is visible on multiple counts. And it's visible also on the kind of new diaspora of many, you know, even academics. One of my dearest colleagues is a Russian academic left Russia in 2013 after being, you know, he was director of a major Russian university and he left the country after being harassed by the regime. And he was telling me that something similar at a lower and less visible level is happening today and presumably will continue to happen in the near future. So to sum up, the war has provided the Atlantic Alliance with sort of rational re-strengthening the unity or somehow silencing the differences within the Atlantic Alliance. The war has somehow reassert US leadership and the war has re-validated a kind of, you know, ideological very binary partition of the international system or more specifically of what's going on in Europe today. That said, I see no reasons to be optimistic at the moment. There are no breaking points visible. It's very hard to imagine an outcome. So following up on what Michael was saying, you know, imagining a Taiwan war scenario, what we are seeing in Ukraine now is a war which is potentially bound to last. Clearly Ukraine will not set for a compromise of sort at the moment. Clearly Russia will not accept a form of punitive defeat. Clearly the sanctions, they take time to bite in a way and they also take time to make their effects visible. All Russia, but even, you know, in those European countries, I think of Germany and Italy, which are more dependent on Russia or more interdependent with Russia. So the absence of a clear breaking point leads me to believe that the war will go on for a while with all the, you know, the consequences of that. And finally, whichever the outcome and it's hard as of today to imagine an outcome, whichever the outcome, it will leave us with some kind of, you know, major issues bound to remain. We will have a Russia which is a pariah of the international system, but it is a pariah which sits on thousands of warheads still endowed with the natural resources which Russia has relied so much. We will have a Ukraine, you know, in which the national identity will be radically redefined by this war, by the heroic resistance and by what Ukraine is doing. You know, nations are, I don't want to get too academic, but nations are constantly reimagined re-invented. They leave a foundational mix and in the Ukrainian national mythology, 2022 will be almost foundational, so to speak. But this radically nationalist Ukraine will be strongly anti-Russia, inevitably so, understandably so, if not, you know, Russia, for example, it will be a hyper-nationalist country with a strong sense of, you know, victimhood, I don't know how else to put it, bound to have a kind of, you know, special truck to EU membership which is problematic on multiple counts and therefore bound to, you know, have an impact within the larger, you know, European community, European group. And then finally you will still have divisions among European countries which remain very deep. They have been silenced by the war. I mean, Russia managed, you know, Putin has managed to somehow amass the largest quantity of strategic mistakes one can think of in a single shot, right? You have NATO and Sweden now, Finland and Sweden are now considering NATO membership. You have Germany, you know, putting on hold the pipeline, Nord Stream 2 and so forth and so on. But that said, those differences remain. Poland and Germany or Poland and Hungary, they have very different positions vis-à-vis Russia for a variety of reasons and those will still be there at the end of the war. I stop here with just one last sentence. Those divisions, that kind of, you know, Europe's pluralism or diversity is also very visible in the relationship and therefore in the attitude European countries have vis-à-vis China. And the elephant in the room once again, as always, when we talk of Europe today, is Germany. I mean, we can, you know, we can discuss of European integration and Macron can play the military card to claim a role that France cannot have it. I mean, you know, my colleagues at Ciansport don't like to hear that. There is still a very strong kind of neo-Golden belief in France's grandeur but the hegemony in Europe is Germany. The actor that called the shots is Germany. We saw that post-2008. We saw that over Greece. We saw that even in the case of Italy. And that applies also to Russia and to China. Just to make one banal example, and I stop here, if you look at China, Germany has, as of today, a total volume of trade, which is almost the same level of the trade Germany has with the US. Germany doesn't run with China, the same monumental trade surplus it has with the US, but China has become a key economic partner of Germany. And if you look at, you know, Germany's trade balance with China, it is in Europe in a league of its own. I mean, just in another planet, if compared to, you know, the balance of trade and the volumes of trade, imports, exports of Italy, the Netherlands, which has a large, large deficit with China, not to mention France. I stop here, but I hope there would be the possibility then to come back to some of those points. Thank you. Thank you so much, Professor Delperro. It's definitely very relevant as the French presidential election is still ongoing into the second round, I believe, and where France will be heading to is, and Europe as a whole will be heading to is definitely something to look forward to. And of course, our third participant is Ebenezer Azamati, who is from the Department of Politics and International Relations, DPIR at the University of Oxford. He is a ardent Closh Whitson with keen interest in the interactions between wars and the origins of world orders. Azamati is a student resident at the University College of Oxford and reads for the default in international relations. His research examines real, politic and illiberal great powers conceptions of established international doctrines and liberal concepts. In particular, he is a student of classical realism in training who investigates the complex connections between international commitments and the national interests of great powers involved in the management of the international order via preeminent international institutions. Ebenezer, you have the floor. Thank you very much for the invitation to participate in this. I might say it's a great honour to be on the same platform with two professors, one of which I have read, one of whom I've read his article before and actually used from my own assignments some years ago, I gained an undergrad first on my faculty. It's a pleasure to be on the panel with you and also a pleasure to be here. Now, a lot has been said, where do I want to start from? The previous speakers focused on China, one person focused on China and the second person focused on Russia and Ukraine and also concluded with a little bit of China. Now, I look at both nations because interestingly, they are part of what I call illiberal states and arguably the most powerful illiberal states in the international system. So I focus on those two countries. Now, in my discussion, I intend to make three main points, but I would start with two questions. The first question is what does the West want? If there is a West, what does it want? And secondly, does the West need Russia and China? These two questions I would answer after my main three points I wanted to make. Now, when everybody talks about China and Russia and whether or not there's going to be a great war because of what I've completely said, he relatively is hoping that there's not going to be a great war between China and Russia. And then he continues to make the points well, even though some people say it seems likely he is uncomfortable with it, but for me, the point I want to make is when we are talking about war, is the West interested in wars at the moment? It doesn't seem like that. That's the first point I'd like to make. Now, take Iraq 2003 when the New York cons were in power and they were more interested in going to Iraq. Public opinion then was different. Access to information then was different. In today's world information, this dissemination has become so quick and every time they can hurry has access to information. At least if you can read and write, you have access to information on whatever is going on in the world. And over the years, what the West has done is that public opinion in the West is the first to condemn whatever Western leaders decide to do. Thinking about this leads me to the position that a decision by the West to go to war with China should China decide to invade Taiwan would be absolutely controversial and highly contested. Now, more importantly, we've seen how the Western nations have dilly-dallyed when it came to Ukraine and Russia because obviously, again, the argument of we are not interested in the nuclear war, Russia might attack us, we don't want to involve ourselves in a long ground war with Russia, et cetera, et cetera. And all of these is also fluid by public opinion. Now, these factors have resulted in the West strategically evading realities and the evasion of realities obviously results in avoidance of war. Imagine the US put itself forward that should Russia invade Ukraine, they would wage a war, it's a war against the international community and therefore NATO led by the US was going to attack Russia directly. Surely Vladimir Putin would have threatened nuclear war, but would we have gotten the crash notes? And that is why the times of Renault Reagan were interesting. When Reagan decided to increase the number of US weaponry, we realized where the Russians got to. But today the times of Renault Reagan, the times of the Renault Reagan and the Nixon's and all the others have long passed and we are in a time where every time they can hurry can comment on foreign affairs and has an opinion about foreign, about international relations and what countries do and what they don't do. This has also led to the limitation of what leaders can do and what they cannot do because they are afraid of public opinion. Of course, I'm not saying public opinion didn't exist in those days, it existed, but today it seems louder than ever. Now this has led to the same leaders always coming to be, oh we have those who actually love international law, we love human rights and we know what to do in such times. The love for human rights, love for international law and all of these have left China and Russia thinking that oh of course if we go to war, the West is going to argue with international law, the West is going to argue with human rights that are actually because of this and that, because of international law, because of the fact that we love human rights, we have democratically laws and etc. They are surely not going to come after us, surely they will use sanctions and this leads me to my second point, even before that, the continuous resorting to argument on international law, human rights, etc. means that over the year, China and Russia have been practicing what I have termed as geopolitical internationalism, where basically where international law, human rights or any other international liberal doctrines actually plays to their advantage, they use them. And obviously when they know that the West is going to play the cards of these international liberal doctrines, they take advantage to exploit them all and obviously the West has left to continuously resort to oh we believe in international law and continue to do whatever they want to do. One point I would like to make is this whole idea of international law and human rights again. Over the years, the continuous expansion of international law and human rights institutions to cover Russia and China have now made it impossible for the West to be able to directly confront these two countries. Now, if you use international law and continue to argue in the name of the West, what happens is that China and Russia are left out because they don't strictly believe in these things as the West believe in them. They think it's actually needs an end and they continue to exploit these means to an end. Okay, some this is where it becomes critical. The continuous have not become normalized by the West and we should I think I think I've announced it. Oh, it's back. Hi. Can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Is it University College Wi-Fi? I suppose so. Unsurprising. Unsurprising. Sorry. Did I get kind of over the bit? Yeah, I think you cut out in the middle. Oh, sorry. So why do you continue to use of sanctions and the effects that would have on the United States and the West being able to confront China and Russia if I remember correctly. Right. Right. So the point that was making that was my third point is the continuous usage of sanctions against Russia and China equally means that these countries are also learning. And of course, once you learn, you also come to achieve something with what you have learned. There is a very famous African proverb that goes like If they have to learn to shoot without missing, birds would also learn to fly without passion. What that means is that if you continue to if you continue to sanction us would find ways around the sanctions. And over the years, China has been finding ways. Sorry. We can hear you. Right. So when these days when people say sanctions against Russia are going to bite Russia hard, etc. As myself. So do people think Russia is not learning anything from these sanctions? Do people think Russia is just sitting down without strategizing and planning? Surely Russia and China, Russia is sitting down and planning and strategizing. Of course, once we are in the West, we will be thinking that our actions are biting them so hard, etc. But then it's good to look at the other end. What is Russia doing? What will Russia do after this war? However long it takes, what would Russia do to become very useful and relevant again to the West? Because that will lead me to my next point. But even before that, I would like to cite an example. In 2014, when Russia was sorry, in 2012, when Iran was switched out of the system, we realized that just eight months afterwards, China decided to start thinking about an alternative to the system. And now we have the SIP. So, imagine one day the West decides to completely cut off Russia from the Swiss system. What happens? Surely Russia would find out an alternative. And in fact, they even started that in 2014 when there were threats that they were going to be sanctioned and in fact, they were sanctioned, their banks were sanctioned in 2014. They developed an alternative internally where they could still transfer money and do transactions, monetary transactions in Russia. Obviously, once you are doing that, what's happening is that the effect of the West is reducing gradually. Of course, some people may say in terms of fire power, in terms of militaries and all of that, the West still has advantages. But these things, we do not realize their effect immediately. They grow gradually. The next most important point which answers one of my questions is the West needs Russia and China. Surely it needs one of them, but it doesn't need both. Unfortunately, the strategic thinking that used to exist in the State Department and the Foreign Office in Britain and the United States seemed to have lost effects. In the 70s, when the communists were trying to gung up against the West, Henry Kissinger was smart and swift and he was able to call to the Chinese to the side of the West, and they came against the Soviets. Obviously, that is not the only thing that reduced the effects of communism around the world and the effects of the Soviets around the world, but of course it was very, very effective and useful. But today, both Russia and China have unfortunately been demonized and for me my argument has always been maybe it would be better if we had a reconsideration of the Kissingerian approach in the 60s and 70s where at the end of the day there was an effective way of reducing the effects of the Soviets around the world. The final point which I would make is in answering my question what does the West want? At this point in time, the West doesn't seem to know what exactly it wants. Does the West want a divided world or the West wants a world that is infused together? We have one world that includes China and Russia or we want a world where Russia and China are on their own with their allies and the West is also on its own with its allies. This question has been the major question on the minds of policymakers since the end of the Cold War and of course unipolarity has made it impossible for the West to understand that there will always be enemies, people who don't really approve of the West at any point in time, every point in time. The world cannot think equally. We cannot all have the same ideas or the same style of thinking. Somebody would oppose some group of countries would oppose what the West thinks. But sadly this has not been a reality that the West has accepted since the end of the Cold War and also the West has equally not accepted that they want to have a united world that makes it difficult to know where exactly the West stands. In fact, even within the West among the West one major problem is of course people talk about Germany all the time and I ask myself what does the West want Germany to be? I think we want Germany to be a strong military power or a weakened military power. Obviously within the West opinions are divided. France and Britain will surely not want to have a strong, a militarily strong Germany. To some extent the United States would have wished that there was a strong, a militarily strong Germany. We have to acknowledge the reality that the United States alone cannot supervise peace over the world at this point as it used to do immediately after the Cold War. Now the West has to make a choice as to whether there has to be other strong powers in addition to Britain and the United States or they want to keep things as they are now and of course once things are kept as they are now China and Russia surely know that the West would just be backing without biting. So I'll end here. Those are very interesting points. I think what we're going to do right now is pivot towards a little bit and try to dissect a lot of the points that have been made and try to relate them back towards Sino-US relations. I think on the point that Dr. Del Perro and Ebenezer made about Germany, I think we should start there with regard to the Ukraine situation and its relationship with China. Obviously we have seen a titanic shift between German policy before the war and after. Germany rearming, Germany being a little bit more assertive in its affairs with regard to Europe. Dr. Del Perro, you mentioned that NATO has historically always acted as guided by a hegemon. Can Germany fill that place while the United States increasingly pivots towards the Indo-Pacific or do you believe that's not realistically or feasible at this moment? I think that would be an important question to answer. Thanks. In a nutshell, the answer is no. It is no because Germany still lacks the resources to do so and possibly the political will. It is true that Germany has been more assertive, has reconsidered some elements of its Russian policies even post-2014-2015 but at the same time Germany is the actor somehow today resisted a modification of the policy on sanctions and the extension of sanctions also was key realms named energy resources Russian energy resources which Germany and Italy those are the two countries most exposed most dependent on those resources which Germany and Italy and their economies still need. My second point Michael thinks about it is that it's somehow artificial to separate neatly the Atlantic, Euro-American so to speak situation and alliance from the Asia-Pacific. The two are tightly interconnected given how integrated China is in the global economy and therefore how important the position of China still is in the global supply chains for example often in the beginning or intermediate stages and the power of conditionality so to speak that this Chinese presence in the globally integrated economy confers to China put it very simply I don't think you can imagine a situation in which the U.S. pivots to Asia and delegates responsibilities to the Europeans in Europe because the Europeans are too fragmented and divided without the American so to speak those divisions are bound to explode no one really wants the Macron model of Europe led by France in the military strategic well and B because if you want to contain somehow China are weak and China you need Europe on board given that Chinese investments in Europe China's trade with Europe and China's ability therefore to rely on that to eventually make up for a loosening of the Sino-U.S. interdependence an example I often make with my students is the new NAFTA the new it's called now USMCA agreement approved with a large bipartisan support in the U.S. and there are many closes many elements in the NAFTA too if we want to call it so which have a clear anti-Chinese objective rational to get to the tariff zero automobiles cars produced in the NAFTA space they have to have a percentage of the components that make those cars that now have to reach 75% it was 62.5 before what does it mean that the Ford factory in Queretaro in Mexico needs to assemble those cars with components which are themselves in large part produced within the North American space and not imported from elsewhere which means first and foremost from China that's the kind of logic that has informed the U.S. attitude vis-à-vis China in the past few years both Biden and Trump and Europe is still very reluctant to follow the U.S. on that path the kind of containment of China that the U.S. and vision today I think follows that route and therefore requires a full U.S. European presence it requires the cooperation of Europe and which is a cooperation that's very problematic to come long story short I don't think Europe has the resources but also the political will to somehow you know stand on its own and allow the U.S. to transfer resources and commitments to the Asia Pacific and also I don't think you can neatly separate the two somehow the U.S. needs Europe also in the Asia Pacific so to speak one quick follow-up and then we can pivot to Professor Beckley we saw that China and Russia I'd like to hear what Professor Beckley thinks about this particular point we saw that China and Russia made a joint statement right before the Olympics and China has been a little bit it has made not tested support given Russia indirect support during the whole creating crisis and we have seen that European governments are a little bit more hesitant than they were before about Chinese actions do you think that China's actions vis-a-vis Ukraine could change European perceptions in the long run and then we can I'd like to hear what Professor Beckley thinks about this possibly there are some elements you think of the you know Chinese direct investments in Europe there are some elements on which some European countries have taken in the past few years some more you know a more severe, a more strict kind of approach and attitude when it comes to Chinese investments post 2017 there has been even in Germany a more strict betting and there has been a decline in Chinese FDIs in Europe which is not that different from the dynamic we have seen in the US clearly Ukraine is a big test of China's ability to act responsibly now Michael earlier on was saying China is kind of a window not calling it of opportunity, of risk there is a window of risk in the 2020s because usually China can become more aggressive when it is slightly declining more than when it is rising the same time China has multiple interests in global stability in the status quo so there is a tension there I think I'm not entirely convinced that China and Russia can move beyond the kind of opportunistic convergence as the one we have seen today in the past few months even because generating, producing that kind of integration that China has seen as experience in the global order post 1970s requires also the development of infrastructures the full integration within a specific still liberal or US mostly ruled or dominated international order it's very difficult to imagine something similar taking place happening between Russia and China in the short term very banally you have to to create a kind of deep economic integration between the two countries a real form of interdependence you need very heavy infrastructure investments as of today it takes a week for a train to go from Moscow to Vladivostok just to give you one example among many so there is a huge landmass in between and linking the two countries building pipelines railroads and so forth and so on does take a lot of time and makes this kind of alternative block if you want to call it so imagine at least on the short term I would like to hear your perspective on this I think it is an important voice I agree with professor del perro on many points in particular this idea that the United States can't outsource European security to the Europeans and concentrate on Asia and the United States also needs a lot of European participation to implement a more comprehensive strategy vis-a-vis China my sense is that sometimes people assume that you need this block of countries all moving in lockstep and completely unified and doing the exact same thing and so if the United States can't get Germany to ramp up its naval presence in the South China Sea that is somehow a failure of the alliance what I see is more of a web springing up that are tailored around specific issues that when you add it all up could form a pretty powerful containment barrier against China if it comes to fruition so while I don't think the United States expects European powers to get directly involved in any kind of military fighting if there's a war over Taiwan they are working with European powers to develop new trade standards that implicitly discriminate against China I think a lot of what the G7 was doing even before the Ukraine crisis was setting up these new standards and then ad hoc technology coalitions to cut China off from key technologies was already a warning a shot across the bow for Beijing so I think it's more of that sort of thing and then focusing on with the countries in the region in East Asia to actually hold the line entirely the only other scenario would be if there's some kind of protracted conflict and the United States was looking for ways to escalate the conflict horizontally through some sort of blockade of China's energy supplies through the Strait of Malacca then European Navy suddenly become extremely important for that as well but I don't think the United States expects nor should it any kind of European participation it's not like the front in the Cold War plugging Central Europe and plugging the full to gap with a unified NATO I don't think the United States needs that or is asking European powers to do that so yet to me it just seems like there's this web of various types of anti-China action coalescing whether it comes to fruition there's still a lot of divisions internally but I think ironically the Ukraine crisis has accelerated it just because it seems like it's woken up countries around the West to understand that war is a real possibility like it's not some sort of abstract thing Russia's kind of shaking us out of our stupor with that and second just that these authoritarian powers need to be taken literally and seriously like when Putin was talking about how Ukraine doesn't actually exist as a nation it turns out like that's really what he believes and he's going to act on that and send massive military forces to make that happen Xi Jinping's statements on Taiwan and the South China Sea and maybe taking them more seriously and literally than they did before again maybe these things won't come to fruition but I see momentum gathering and gathering pace and the Ukraine crisis has even been stepping on the accelerator even to a greater degree and to me you know some people think that China has been having a good war with Ukraine because somehow this serves Chinese interests to have Russia launch this war right after China announces a no-limits partnership but to me it seems like a disaster for China on numerous fronts because for one thing Russia I mean Russian power, economic and military power is going to be crippled by this crisis no matter what the Russian military is getting ground down by the Ukrainians at the same time that the Russian economy is being choked out through western sanctions so Russia is just less it brings less to the table simply because its power is being constrained so much by the crisis and at the same time it's galvanized capitals around the West to try to look at this situation more carefully so to me this just seems like a horrible outcome and then on top of that you know China is a major commodities importer and when you take Russia a major oil producer and major supplier to China partially off the market and when you jeopardize also the food production of both Ukraine and Russia that can cause prices to rise and that puts China in even further line because China is having to scramble for places to find just basic necessities like food and energy and so if this crisis continues I think it's going to be even worse for China just from a sort of macro economic perspective as well and just a quick follow up you've made your point very clear that you think China is peaking and there's a closing window of opportunity with regard to Taiwan given how difficult it has been for Russia to defeat an enemy that's right on its doorstep thinking if China was opting for the military option later in the decade do you think this conflict has changed that point of view or do you think the use of force persists within Xi Jinping's inner circle? Yeah so I have two minds of this on the one hand I think if you're like an objective Chinese analyst you have to look at this and really question even more than you did before the PLA's ability to mount either an amphibious invasion or sustain a blockade against Taiwan and we've seen this throughout history you know authoritarian militaries sometimes they suffer from the fact that they're so centrally controlled and so the lower level units are always looking to the capital for orders and so they're very rigid on the battlefield because promotions tend to be based more on loyalty and politics rather than on competence you tend to have a lot of corruption in these militaries and I think there's strong reason to believe the PLA suffers from a lot of the same bugs and weaknesses that the Russian military does so if you're an objective PLA analyst I think you have to worry even more that your military may not may look very impressive on paper but given the lack of combat experience the amount of corruption and just the authoritarian nature of it and the really politicized nature I mean each major military unit in China's military has split command they have the battlefield commander and then they have the political commissar to enforce ideological discipline and you would never want that to have two different cooks leading the kitchen in a military conflict it could lead to disaster but the problem I think is that Xi Jinping may not be getting this message and I think we saw this in the Russia case too where if you're an authoritarian leader and you've purged so many of your political rivals and have been ruling with an iron fist through fear your subordinates are not going to be giving you objective information because you've shot so many messengers along the way and you've purged more comrades than Xi Jinping more than a million senior level CCP officials have been pushed out of the party disappeared jailed or basically been demoted over the last five or six years and so my worry is that even though there's an objective case to make that the PLA should maybe tread more lightly just given the fact that in the fog of war things could go very badly for them even if they have immaculate battle plans on paper but the problem is I worry that Xi Jinping is surrounded by a bunch of yes people essentially that they won't tell him and be totally straight with him because he clearly wants to have some kind of recognition under his regime under his time in office has made that clear and they are worried about giving him information that may disrupt that because they don't want their head on the chopping block so that's my biggest worry Okay and on that point of information I think we can pivot to something that Ebenezer said in his opening statement with regard to the West's willingness to go to war essentially to up the ante in a crisis like this Ebenezer you mentioned the nature of information and how technology has made information so accessible around the world and noted that that could potentially hamper the West's ability to respond in the event of a crisis In the past we have also seen democracies kind of be a little bit ambivalent or a little bit contemptuous with regard to the international system right before an attack and then once the attack happens whether it is the attack on Poland or right now in Ukraine democracies move into action relatively quickly do you think the information sphere has changed that technology has changed that or if an attack on Taiwan for example were to happen or if the Ukraine war escalates do you think that the technology of today has made that rule that past precedent irrelevant I will start by pointing out that we have to show that in times that democracies have been ambivalent or contemptuous towards the international system in those times the sort of information that was available to the public the amount of information that was available to the public there is not the same as today the amount of information being developed as the general public and to be fair if the Ukraine war were to escalate or China were to attack Taiwan obviously we are still going to get these loud voices and loud so called pacifists who would be predominant on all forms of social media screaming and shouting and mainstream media debating why it is not useful for the West to get involved and these days emotions have become more useful in the West than realities people have well to put it quite harshly failed to accept realities these days people are actually more interested in how much we can emote how much we can face the realities and for me China is looking carefully at what is going on in Ukraine and noting down the fact that day in day out there are people from the West who are continuously arguing that it is not useful for the West to get involved in this war and of course this even includes academics and so called aspects on trans relations who argue strongly that it is not useful for the West to be involved in this war to have a position on this war perhaps not but to me even if people such as I have mentioned do not have interest in the West getting involved in this war I do not think it is useful for it to be unveiled so public as they have done because look as Stalin said some years ago I have very useful idiots in the West that was started because in those days Stalin could see clearly how much people were even advocating for his Soviet Union in the West now if you have seen who has planted all sorts of spies all over in the West in the West universities even in Western political parties etc and they are all listening and seeing all this sort of information and feeding them back to China clearly they are watching and knowing that well I mean if we should invade Taiwan the argument would be well Taiwan has always been part of Taiwan has always been part of China and it was only in 1949 that they left so surely we are going to get people in the West who would argue this and the other time I saw in a paper one particular paper in Britain very very famous paper where someone was arguing that Russia's claim over Crimea is not right any more than Britain's claim over the folklore so if you have people in the West spreading these kind of information clearly and these countries would obviously be assured of their support in the West and once these supports are expressed loudly in the West it's going to make it difficult for Western leaders to make any strong decision to go to war or make any stronger decision any decisions that are stronger than just imposing sanctions and I told early on Russia and China are beginning to know how to go around these countries and so you made a point that when the Ukrainian war against Ukraine started the West came to a decision very quickly even that is debatable because we all saw the division among the Western nations when some sanctions were proposed and how long it took some of these countries to even agree to the proposition of an implementation of these sanctions and more importantly yes they made a decision to go with sanctions but are sanctions stronger enough in those days these democratic nations would have gone beyond just sanctions and do things more decisively rather than just imposing sanctions that's even up to today some countries do not fully agree with but just have to go with just because of public opinion it's going to be interesting so now that we're approaching the end I think we could probably wrap up with a few closing statements on what the impact Ukraine is having on the more widely on not just the transatlantic alliance but perhaps in the global order how will American foreign policy change as a result national security strategy was released before the invasion and mainly focused on China but we now the Asia Pacific strategy might change especially in the United States so how do you guys think this particular situation in Ukraine will impact the long-term trends of this decade and further on so if we can start with professor dopero move on to professor beckley and finish off with an easer thank you I partially answered I think in my first intervention surely on the short term it's reversing the trend of defense spending the post-2008 one could say post-1991 in the case of many many European countries there has been a constant decline in military spending Ukraine is very banally the return of war and of a very orthodox conventional traditional brutal war and what we have seen for the moment is that the first almost instinctive reaction is you commit to spend more on defense the second point I think it goes back to what professor beckley was saying we need to take I don't want to call it ideology but you know the rhetoric the language the lexicon that comes out of those countries seriously as a matter of fact both in France and Italy there is a long tradition of Ukrainian studies and those experts have been saying that for quite some time pay attention to what Putin or you know the main ideologues of the Russian regime are saying about Ukraine and pay attention to that and I think what has happened I imagine all of you remember Putin's last speech before the beginning of the war which was you know this kind of historical kind of fresco or one centrup or more of history beginning with you know accusing Lenin and moving on all the way to Gorbachev passing by Stalin and Khrushchev in between it gives us also a sense of the centrality of history of a certain view of a certain historical imagination last point which we haven't mentioned here there is a big you know a big variable a big unknown which is the domestic political and electoral dynamics of the US and of the European democracies we live in hyperpolarized and very volatile political systems we have seen pre-Covid Covid helped the European Union and a certain European cosmopolitanism if you will but pre-Covid we have seen countries think of the Italian government for a while which were explicitly pro-Russian on the one side and very open to set up a kind of special relationship with China here in Paris we will have in a week a runoff with one of the two candidates who was extremely close to a link to Putin Russia and the two Putinian candidates in the first round together got more than 30% of the votes you have the US going through a political constitutional crisis which is not over at all it is kind of you know in our attention it's left on hold because we are all you know in Ukraine and China and other things state congresses are approving laws which will be then tested in 2024 or potentially unimaginable constitutional consequences and I can go on and on and on so long story short I think that's a key variable and a key unknown which could of course affect the response of the US any more for a variety of reasons but in the case of the Atlantic Alliance it could have a major impact on the foreign policy of the US and its allies and therefore in the ability to preserve strengthen and make more coherent this renewed transatlantic unity drove and provoked by the Ukrainian war I agree with pretty much everything Professor Del Perro said so I'll just kind of footstomp I think in the short term this certainly galvanizes the west what we call the west even though it includes many major eastern countries but in the long run you have this counterbalance in the form of populism which I think is very much alive and well obviously the French election is going to tell us be sort of a bellwether of that I think there's a non-trivial risk that Donald Trump is going to be president of the United States again the Democrats don't really seem to have their act together that would fairly mean that you'll have a complete breakdown of at least a coalition that's forming against China because Trump and other populists have been anti-China even in the Republican Party in the United States there's a big anti-China basis there but at the same time they're not so hot on allies and so you may have the United States pursuing it in a more unilateral fashion as we saw during the actual the initial Trump administration of various European governments and up electing right-wing candidates who want to stake out their own position and who admire someone like Putin who has aligned himself with the Orthodox Church and is basically reasserting the supremacy of white Christian dominance over other peoples that's very appealing to certain conservative strains both within the United States and throughout Europe so I think those are the two main things I mean I'm cautiously optimistic at least geopolitical solidarity just given the nature of the Russian and Chinese threats and the vivid example that we have in the war in Ukraine but I mean nothing is a foregone conclusion and populism is certainly alive and well and bubbling under the surface To conclude I would just say three things the first one would be it's about time the US acknowledged that the strategy challenge is on and how do we deal with it sooner than later for me if I had the advantage or the opportunity to advise the US government I'd say maybe it's better to look among China look between China and Russia which one threatens us in the long term which one would do a big blow to us if we have to actually face them down directly and which one doesn't and surely the one that doesn't we should be finding ways of trying to bring them into our umbrella so that we can have at least one enemy to fight and for me it seems to me that Russia poses a lesser threat than China so it might be worth US authorities reconsidering their decisions and their positions on Russia in the past years the other thing I would like to mention is about again the West being decisive as in what we want and what we don't want and what we want Germany a very important part what we want Germany to be or do we want Japan another important part what we want them to be do we still want them to be to be their kind of post second world war more powerful than what we've made them since 1945 that's very useful and once these two countries are made stronger beyond what they are today I think China and Russia would have reason to reconsider their current positions the third thing and finally for me is again this proclamation of yes we are the ones who believe in the greatest things that ever happened to the world we are the ones who are holier than thou and we know what is best for the world some of these decisions have affected the West very badly I wouldn't want to be the one mentioning some of these decisions but obviously we all know how much the decision about change and diversification etc have affected the West badly and maybe it's about time to reconsider some of these decisions and see a better way forward to ensure that in the short, medium and long term the world that we become thank you very much for the opportunity I don't think we could hear your last few statements with maybe it's about time the West reconsidered some of its decisions about some of these policies that have in the long term affected the West badly for me I think a reconsideration of such positions would ensure that in the short term, the long term and the medium term the West would be able to overcome the potential challenges that past decisions have brought upon the West okay thank you all for your opinion and for your time this has been a very interesting conversation on the future of Europe the United States and China so we're very thankful on search to be for you to agree to participate and we hope to hear your opinions again maybe in some future articles or books that are coming out so thank you thank you thank you good luck with your studies thank you so much thank you all thank you so much all the best with everything bye