 Yeah, a very warm welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to our discussion today. Cold War is 2-0, that's the topic we want to talk about. Of course, the Cold War ended in December 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but just 30 years later, Russia's war in Ukraine changed everything. So what is the situation now? Russia taking a stand against the West, an open stand, and are we now in a new era in Cold War 2-0? Or is this just going on, did the first Cold War never stop? That's the question we want to discuss today and also how can we avoid conflict, such horrific conflicts which we are experiencing at the moment in Ukraine, how we can avoid it in the future. And with me, I have a distinguished panel here. So first of all, we have Ian Bremmer. He's the president of the Eurasia Group, the political risk consultancy, and it's based in New York. Then we have Michael McCall. He's a Republican congressman for Texas, Tenth District, and ranking member of the House of Foreign Affairs Committee. And to my left, we have Ivana Klimpo-Tinsatze. I hope I spelled it correctly, she's a member of the Ukrainian Parliament for the European Solidarity Party and Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Ukraine's Integration into the European Union. And last but not least, Kishore Mabubani. He's a distinguished fellow of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and a former diplomat. Welcome to all of you. And ladies and gentlemen, you will have the chance to join the discussion later and raise questions if you have any. And I'd like to start with you, Ivana. You just came directly from Kyiv yesterday, I think, or the day before yesterday, to Davos. How's the situation in Ukraine at the moment? Well, thank you for having this discussion and thank you for including Ukraine and Ukrainian voice in this discussion. I think it's very important. Obviously, at this particular moment, there is still no safe place in Ukraine and Russia makes sure that nobody in any area were in that area which is occupied by Russian Federation or where the fearful fighting is continuing or where people still live under non-occupation, that people would feel comfortable and not fearing about their lives. So that puts a serious pressure on us. And I wanted to start from something that we have just talked with colleagues. You know, everybody was giving us Ukraine, also in Russia and in the West, was giving us from 48 to 72 hours to hold. And three months later here we are, we are talking about Ukraine holding the stance irrespectively of that disastrous barbaric, absolutely bloody war that Russia is conducting across the country with all the tortures, with all the killings, with all the raping, with all the pain that we see across the country. We are holding the ground. But definitely it's not only about the heroism of our armed forces and the unity of our society. It is because there was something that was totally also, I think, underestimated by the aggressor that there will be a free world coming behind Ukraine and pretty promptly. And that is something very different from what, how the situation was developing back in 2008 when Russia attacked Georgia or in 2014 when very, let's be honest, pitiful sanctions have been introduced for the illegal annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and right now how the world came together and what are the instruments being enrolled in, in response to this attack. This is something that allows us to have instruments to fight back. We still need more heavy weaponry. We still need more sanctions on Russian Federation. We still need more of the backing and much wider also community of states to stand together with Ukraine. But definitely I think we all understand that today we are fighting the, the war is ongoing between world and anti-world, between the humanity and inhumanity. And I think that that's something that has to be understood. It is about world of rule-based order against those who do not want to respect it and want to discredit all the international organizations and all the possibilities we had to ensure security regionally or globally. Thank you Ivana. Ian, I'd like to come to you now. Russia has fought worth than many predicted and has also suffered significant losses. Is Russia from your point of view still a global power or has it lost its status now? Oh, I'm sorry. Do you want to go? You can tell me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, might as well, please, also, please, yeah. You know, I think we completely underestimated the will of the Ukraine people and way overestimated the strength of the Russian military. It's almost, their tactics are almost World War II style, whereas ours are very high-tech. We're pushing those high-tech weapons in as I speak, like the Switchblade 600 that is a lethal drone with a tremendous payload that's anti-armor. And that's helping. I wish we'd done that before the invasion, not after, but better late than never. But I think our military has been astounded at how incompetent they seem to have been. They've lost a third of their forces. This is like a David versus Goliath type conflict. And it seems to me we have to do everything we can to help Ukraine. And I think the tide has turned. I think Putin's goal was to divide and conquer NATO, and NATO has come out stronger than ever. Finland and Sweden will become now new nations in NATO and the entire world has been with the sanctions, which could be stronger, but has come out against Putin. I think he totally miscalculated this. But Michael, it sounds as if we are in the Cold War still, as if it never stopped. It's cold, but it's also on the verge of being a hot war. And what I mean by that, he's brought the butcher of Syria to conduct this war now, who dropped chemical weapons on Syrians and civilians with, you know, with Assad. And I think what we're most concerned about is if the butcher of Syria goes to his ways and drops chemical weapons in theater and or a short range tactical nuke, they do have very sophisticated nuclear weapons. And that would be a moment of desperation, kind of like a scorpion being backed into a corner. We obviously don't want that to happen. But I think the question, we have to talk about this and think about what happens if Putin gets desperate enough to do this. How would the world and how would NATO respond to this? Thank you. Ian, what's your take on it? I agree with Mike more than I want to. I'll tell you that. Look, the Russians were an economic superpower before the Soviet collapse. They're obviously not now. They were an energy superpower. They can still sell to a lot of countries around the world. But their ability to deal with a world that's transitioning to renewables is zero. They've already lost 300,000 of their most talented workers over the course of the last few months. And the intellectual brain data from Russia was bad after 1991. They were the second largest military exporter in the world. And I see a lot of countries that aren't going to buy that anymore because of how it's performing and also because they won't be able to produce them with spare parts. I see they're taking apart air fought planes right now to actually for spare parts for the other planes that they're still trying to fly. What they have is 6,000 nuclear warheads. But they also have a leader that's in charge of the country who's not going anywhere. And I absolutely don't believe that we are heading for a stable equilibrium. This is a new Cold War. I agree. And I think it is closer to a new hot war than I would like. I would say that it's a new Cold War in a couple of ways. First of all, the old Cold War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe. The new Cold War, the Iron Curtain unites Europe. Don't underestimate the importance of that. But also the fact that this new Cold War is not global at all. This new Cold War is between Russia and the United States and its advanced industrial allies. And that's it. And nobody else wants a part of it. And so there is a forcible decoupling. Their assets have been frozen. Russia's in a lot of trouble. But when we say that Russia's a pariah, it's a pariah for NATO and for some allies in Asia. But it's not a pariah for India. It's not a pariah for China. It's not a pariah for Brazil. And those things are important too. So it's a much more complicated situation. Final thing I'd say, we talk about nearing a hot war. I remember when Biden met with Putin last June in Switzerland. And Biden set the agenda. Top issue of the agenda? Cyber tax, because the colonial pipeline hit. And they said, don't you do that? You start hitting critical infrastructure. We're going to hit back. They actually reduced or stopped those attacks for a period of time. Are they going to keep reducing or stopping those attacks? I don't think so. Espionage, disinformation, in terms of, you know, against policymakers, if they have that information, in terms of against elections. I think the ability of the Russians to end in a greater stance of confrontation with the countries that are driving them into the abyss, deservedly so, is a real risk. And I think Mike and I agree pretty fundamentally on that. Kishore, let's talk about China. China is watching the situation in Ukraine with great interest, obviously. So what's your take on China's position with regards to the situation? Well, let me begin by saying that all of us in this room admire the courage and tenacity of the Ukrainian people. They've done a remarkable job of defending their country. And I think, as you know, the world is on your side in many ways. By the end of the day, it's not the Ukrainian issue that will decide the course of the 21st century. As we all know in this room, the real contest in this century will be between the world's number one power, the United States, and the world's number one emerging power, China. And the big question there is, will this U.S.-China contest become Cold War 2.0? And I want to argue that if you actually use Cold War 2.0, you completely misunderstand the nature of the contest within United States and China, because it is different in at least five significant areas. Very quickly, number one. Cold War 1.0 was a competition between free markets and central planned state economy. Cold War 2.0 is between free markets in United States, free markets in China. Number two, in Cold War 1.0, United States traded more with the world, much more with the world than the Soviet Union did. Cold War 2.0, China trades more with the rest of the world than the United States does. And number three, the Soviet Union saw the contest primarily as a military contest. As you know, it built up a formidable military capability. That's why we have 6,000 nuclear weapons. China doesn't think it's a military contest. It only has 250 nuclear weapons. It may increase a bit. So it sees it as an economic competition. The Soviet Union had no prospect of ever overtaking the United States and become the number one economy in the world. China can and probably will have the number one economy in the world. Fourthly, the Soviet Union had a kind of global agenda to compete with the United States everywhere, supporting client states here, client states there. China has no interest in client states. It's interested in trading with the world, creating economic connections, even the Belt and Road Initiative, but it doesn't want to engage in the same kind of competition that the US and the Soviet Union did. And fifthly, you had at the heart of it all an ideological contest where the Soviet Union was saying, my communism is better than your democratic system. Khrushchev said, I will bury you. China doesn't see this as an ideological contest. And frankly, when future historians write about this contest, they will see it as a contest within a 250-year-old young republic of United States and a 4,000-year civilization. And from the Asian points of view, what they see with the return of China is the natural return of a civilization that has been strong for 4,000 years. But I want to conclude by saying that the United States can still win this contest against China. And it can win it not by trying to retain its number-one status as the world's number-one economy, because China, that's an area where China can overtake United States. But United States can remain the most admired society on planet Earth. And as you know, we all send our children to study in American universities, not in Chinese universities. We still look up to the United States. And as George Kennan, the famous strategist, once advised in fact in Cold War I, he said the way the United States will ultimately win the contest against the Soviet Union is by demonstrating that its domestic society is superior to Soviet domestic society, and it did. So the United States can still remain the world's most admired society. China can have the world's biggest GNP. And I hope at the end of the day, they will have to live with a win-win formula that the rest of the world would appreciate also. Okay, I will come back to Ivana in a second. I first want to ask Michael, because I know he's very critical about China. Michael, what's your take on that? I guess particulars are nice. I actually agree with everything you said. This is a, you know, in the short term we're worried about Russia and Ukraine. It's more of a military. Long term, the competition between the great world powers will be between the United States and China. There's no question about it. I would say, I mean it's a military and economic competition, but they're very good. You know, and they're a worthy adversary. And we have to learn to compete better, I think. I would say we're in a cold war with them, but I would say we've been a cold war of China for quite some time. And I would take you back to 1997. I was a young federal prosecutor at Maine Justice and prosecuted the Johnny Chung case that then took us to the director of Chinese intelligence in China Aerospace, putting money into his Hong Kong bank account to then influence the presidential election. And why? Because they wanted dual use technology. They wanted satellite technology. They wanted aerospace technology. And they wanted to get into the WTO. They were successful in all of this. And I would say they've come a long way since 1997. And they're very sophisticated. In fact, even back then, my FBI agent got a diet for espionage because he was sleeping with a Chinese spy. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. He was compromised. And for 20 years, this FBI asset, Katrina Leong, was reporting back to Beijing. They're very clever and somewhat deceptive. And I agree with you. You know, when we look at Taiwan, which is 90% of the world's advanced semiconductor manufacturing capability, she wants that. And just like Putin, it was a question of if, but when to invade Ukraine. I think she is looking at Taiwan's question of when if he sees weakness. I think personally, though, he has a present sigh will be up in two years. She can't run again for Taiwan presidency. That they're very, they're really good at taking over economically and winning elections. So I think is, I think she, if I'm predicting his, his goal would be to try to do it without a shot fire, just like Hong Kong, just like the Solomon Islands that my father's generation liberated in World War II. They basically bought Solomon Islands and they signed a security agreement with them. And so the whole South China Sea, but Taiwan is the first shoe to drop. And we have to be very intensely focused. I just got asked on CNN. The president said something like we will, he sort of violated the one China policy by, and it used to be strategic ambiguity by saying we will militarily intervene. Well, I mean, I guess that's deterrence. And I think deterrence is the key here. That present she is, as he looks at what's happening in Ukraine, is it worth it? And we have to persuade him that it's not. But I don't know how many Americans would want to go to war over a tiny island they know nothing about. We had to educate them on Ukraine. Why is Ukraine so important? Okay, so the U.S. is in a Cold War with China. That's what you're saying. And we have been for decades. And it never stopped. That's how I understood it. Ivana, you want to talk about Russia again, I'm sure. And I want to respond also because maybe we also have some vision on whether this is Cold War 2.0 and whether it has ever ended. And I think there is a big discussion on who is it among because you are insisting that this is between the U.S. and China. And I still do not totally agree with the fact that you're putting Russia of this equilibrium. Because yes, maybe China right now is a more kind of senior partner in this tandem between China and Russian Federation. But at the same time, Russia is right now that most evil driving force of using the hot war instruments in order to get the goals of the Cold War. And here I think that the result of the Russian war against North Ukraine. Because Putin is clearly stating that he has announced the war against the West. Yes, with the first aim to erase us from the map of the world as a nation, as a state, because in his historical mythology that he has in his mind, we never existed. And we don't exist. And I am here, the living proof that we do. But we have to understand that everybody like China is watching very attentively with regard to Taiwan. Whether the whole world, free world will allow Putin to succeed, Russia to succeed. And that will actually define the next developments in the Cold War, if it's between supposedly U.S. and China, whether it goes also to some of the hot stages. And it seems to me that many analysts are talking about that we are kind of re-entering right now to the great powers notion. And we know that that particular notion has led to the first and second world wars. So we as Ukrainians, we totally disagree with this notion of great powers. Because we understand how dangerous it might be and how dangerous it might be to suppose that someone has the right to have the influence on this or that part of the world and so on. And I think that here we have to also think about, yes, all the possibilities of being capable to compete on one side, but on the other side of being not afraid. You know, back in earlier Cold War, you know, there were hot wars fought in Asia, in Vietnam and South Korea and so on. But it seemed that at that point, somehow, and those were, again, between the major powers that wasn't about being afraid of nukes and not being afraid. With all the tension it was there. So I think right now when we are talking about Russia being this big, one of the powers that is right now fighting this with hot instruments, fighting the Cold War, we have to also understand and make additional, put additional intellectual capacity into two things. How to actually cut off or break the tandem between China and Russia as its resource base. And I think that that is going to help also with regard to winning in the Cold War 2.0. That's one thing. And another thing is to think how do you deal potentially with the country that might be even dissolving after the end of this war? Yes, it might sound totally out of touch of reality because we talked about this with Manuela and she was like, this is wishful thinking and I'll tell you now. Because let me just remind you one story. Two weeks before Ukraine has announced independence 31 years ago there was George Bush Senior who came to Ukraine saying to Ukrainians don't you dare to think about independence. Don't even try to imagine you don't have the possibility and that was because there was underestimation of what is ongoing within the Soviet Union at that point and because there was such a big fear how to deal with country that is dissolving and when you have nuclear weapons on different parts of this country. So that's why I'm encouraging right now to put intellectual, maybe intelligence, maybe some other analytical powers and type of thinking in terms of foreseeing what kind of Russia we will have to deal with and how to cut that connection between Russia and China in order to ensure that we have the rule-based order and we'll have the security in the whole world in the future. Okay, I think Kishore you want to add something? No, no, as I said, we admire your courage but at the same time as you know Joe politics has been around for 2,000, 3,000 years. It's a cold and brutal business. And the more emotional you get about it the less you see clearly what are the hard geopolitical realities. Well it's understandable, the emotions are understandable. Russia is not going to be a major player, right? Let's be very, very clear. It's economy, I don't know what the size is again. What is it compared to? It was 11th. Yeah, I mean it's just tiny. Not 11th anymore. It's no longer in the first league, okay? So of the world economies. So it doesn't have the capacity apart from nuclear weapons to become a superpower again. It is basically yesterday's power. Tomorrow's power will be China. That's why I'm saying, you agree with me, the real contest will be with China. And I want to emphasize also that when it comes to Joe politics it's important to be clinical and China has clearly lost out which Russia's invasion of Ukraine in at least four ways. Number one, what Xi Jinping wanted in 2022 was a stable and calm atmosphere so that he can arrange his third term. Instead he's dealing with a massive domestic crisis trying to deal with zero COVID as a real nightmare in China and then a massive global crisis. That's the last thing he wanted. It doesn't help Xi Jinping at all. Number two, his number one strategic partner in the world. It's Russia, no question. And his number one strategic partner, Russia has been weakened dramatically, right? Russian forces have done so badly, amazingly badly in Ukraine, right? And number three, Xi Jinping wanted to deal with United States and Europe as two separate independent poles of power. Ukraine has brought United States and Europe together. Now China has to deal with the United West. That's a minus for China. Fourthly, the Chinese are $3.2 trillion in reserves which is thought, wow, that's a lot of money. That's cash, I got cash in the bank, I'm very strong. After the United States took over half the central bank reserves of Russia all these assets have become liabilities. They can evaporate very fast. So if you look at it in terms of the Joe's strategic equation China has been damaged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But at the same time I can also tell you that when you deal with the Chinese one year is irrelevant. A decade is the minimum unit of time you deal with and better even a century. And in the case of Taiwan, if you want to understand Chinese attitudes towards Taiwan understand the century of humiliation from the Opium War of 1842 to the end of World War II in 1945. Remember how Taiwan was lost? China lost the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Now Taiwan to them is the last living symbol of the century of humiliation. One of our President Xi has 100% rock solid consensus in the Chinese body politic that at some point in time Taiwan must come back and reunify with China. From a Chinese point of view. Yeah, from a Chinese point of view. But that doesn't mean by the way that reunification doesn't have to happen in one, two years. Remember two decades is nothing for them. And number two you can have all kinds of wonderful diplomatic fudges whereby you bring Taiwan back nominally in the Chinese family but it remains effectively a set autonomous unit. It can be done. So if you want to be creative in solving problems like this you have to understand the Chinese psyche and then understand what you try to do to avoid making sure that you don't have a Ukraine type war in Taiwan. I want to come back to you Ian now. Ian, do you see the danger of a tandem between China and Russia like what Ivana was saying? I think that when Xi Jinping stood up on the stage with Putin and said on February 4th that this was a global friendship without limits they expected some very different outcomes from what was going to come from Russia and Ukraine. It was a big deal for Putin. It's not as big of a deal for China. The world views of these two men are aligned because the Chinese do believe that the Americans and allies are trying to contain them in Asia and they see that as analogous to the way that the United States is trying to contain Russia in Europe. But Russia's economy is one-tenth of China's and when the Chinese president talks to the German Chancellor and the French president, it is very clear that the Chinese do not want to be tarred with the same brush that Putin has been tarred with. Yes, it's a friendship without limits but it's also a friendship without that many benefits. At the end of the day, when Jake Sullivan spent seven hours in Rome talking to the Chinese and he leaked first to the Financial Times that we're really angry about the military support that the Chinese are saying they're going to give to the Russians and they better not engage in breaking our sanctions, the Chinese are not providing that military support now and they're not breaking the sanctions because they may be angry with the U.S. but they also are pretty sensible about where their interests are. So I don't think that in five years' time we're going to see the emergence of this Russia-China alliance that is the basis of a Cold War 2.0. I think Russia has a big problem. I think Russia is increasingly not in any way a great power and I think that is a problem because, as Mike said, Russia is getting backed into a corner for largely their own fault though there are certainly things you can blame the West on and missed opportunities and frankly they should have been hit a lot harder in 2008 and 2014. There are a lot of reasons the Russians now believe that they were going to get away with what they got away with. I truly believe that if Putin had any inclination that what was coming was actually coming. He wouldn't have gone into Kiev with those troops on February 24th. I mean there were too few troops to take Kiev. I mean he thought the Ukrainians weren't going to fight. He was wrong about that too. So I mean incredible misjudgment but the one place that I disagree with Kishor and by the way Mike you said you agree with everything Kishor said you surely don't agree with Kishor that China is a free market economy. If you do agree with that I'm very surprised. We'll get that on the record. But the thing I disagree... Okay we're good on that. No, no, no, I know, I know. I'm just giving you a hard time on a lot of that. But the place that I disagree with Mike is that I don't believe that we are in a cold war with China and the reason I say that is because of the extraordinary interdependence that persists between the American and the Chinese economies. Now I think that there are a lot of people in the United States that are deeply unsettled by that and I think there are good reasons to be unsettled because there's no trust between the two countries but I think that that interdependence will persist and I mean the private sector with no question but not only that, the average American who just wants to buy those goods the Chinese tourists who want to travel to the US they want to send their kids to American universities I think that that will persist. In fact if you maybe make a bet with you I would say in ten years time there'll be more of it rather than less even though there'll be aspects of cold war on data and areas that are quarter national security and so in that regard I think the real geopolitical challenge here is the fact that the Russians have just forcibly decoupled themselves from the G20 the first time in history that's ever happened and I don't know where they're going to go because for me any scenario I look at does not feel like a stable and sustainable equilibrium for Putin and I don't think Putin's going anywhere in Moscow so I don't know what he's going to do that's what I think we need to manage. It's amazing how much we are in agreement I was told we were going to disagree vehemently but I think we're in a large part of an agreement and you're right China it's not a free market they're investing a trillion dollars in their digital economy and it was on the front page of the China Daily today I would say maybe it's not a cold war it's a great competition and America needs to wake up to the competition and if we're not competing with say Belton Road in Indo-Pacific, Africa and Latin America if we're not even on the field playing how do you win right? just like in a sports analogy you know Nixon went to China as a counter to Russia back then Russia was truly superpower and more of an economic superpower than China was that is completely reversed China now is the economic superpower of the day and I would just argue that even going back to that case I promised you that technology is going to be the great battlefield and it's going to be more of an economic type battlefield if I told you that not only did we give them technology but they have stolen so much intellectual property in the trillions of dollars from the United States but that we are in fact selling them today the technology for instance that they used to build their hypersonic weapon, their missile that orbited the entire planet and landed with precision that could carry nuclear payload why is the United States, why are we doing this? and I would argue that when it comes we are intertwined with China unlike Russia which is easy to sanction we are so economically intertwined with China they'd be very difficult and when they have the central bank digital currency that can evade swift it makes it even more difficult but I would argue that where we need to wake up after COVID are the critical supply chains America needs to wake up and start manufacturing more of this either in the United States or with our allies and that's three areas that would be medical, we saw that after COVID two would be rare earth minerals China controls 85% of the global market and by the way they produce their solar panels and batteries in the Xinjiang province where they commit genocide and then lastly at Bill I introduced the Chips for America Act Semiconductor Chips I mean we're having a hard time buying vehicles our most advanced weapons systems the ones we're trying to send to Ukraine do you know we have a backlog because we don't have the chips and when Taiwan controls 90% of that that's the competition Michael, time is running out I want to ask Ivana also because we are talking and Kishore we have chances we talk about Russia, we talk about Ukraine we talk about China what is Europe's position what do you expect from Europe and all that what we heard here today that's a very good question but let me just a couple of things of reaction you know you were saying that Russia won't be a major player because of its weak economy and so on you are again underestimating the whole history of Russia is about conquering wars and irrespectively of whether it has the capacity to do that or not I was born still in the Soviet Union I do remember how we were taught to be deprived of everything because we needed the great superpower and they are continuing on that logic but it doesn't matter how much they have for the ability to fight but they will give up on everything they will disregard any human being they don't give a damn about any every single person in order to regain territories and in order to project power even if they don't have it to kind of be great in their minds and I think that still it gets us to the point that Russia we don't have to repeat the mistake that was done after the end of the Soviet of the Cold War I when Russia was allowed to actually raise again I think that right now Russia after this war with the Ukraine or with the Russian war with Ukraine we would have to ensure that Russia doesn't have any tiniest okay any tiniest capacity to actually yet again start another war anywhere in the world and that means much much stronger sanctions and yes not getting to the technologists and so on what you were talking about with regard to China and one more thing as far as I recall US was cooperating with Mao against Soviet Union and I think that Xi Jinping is almost a Washington D.C. Democrat in comparison to Mao so there is a possibility I'm just kidding obviously I am kidding you understand what I mean but that's more about yes about competition about maybe rules and some procedures as opposed to what Russia is trying to do so I don't want you to actually get Russia off the equation and with regard to Europe in many things there are really tectonic changes in the policy of European countries we see that happening still too late but it's better later than never that's for sure and we still have to push them to catch up with what the US and what UK are capable of doing in order to actually have this unity but be kind of on equal footing with what with the whole West and not only how do you push them well first we need to ensure that they stop pushing Ukraine some of the nations in Europe stop pushing Ukraine for making a ceasefire and a peace deal with Russian Federation at the expense of Ukraine because that's not something to happen and I think that from there when we push them I think it's about really values whether their values are declared or they are ready to stand up for them and whether they are ready to defend them and if they do that means standing up to the challenge and actually giving also this heavy weaponry to Ukraine and actually getting rid of of buying energy sources from the Russian Federation and so on so Europe is part of this Cold War Kishore wants to add something ladies and gentlemen unfortunately already very late I think I can take one or two questions but first Kishore if you could yeah very very quickly I just want to respond to Michael's point when he said that you could wake up America to this contest with China actually in many ways when I go to the United States I find America has woken up to the contest with China it's a very strong anti-China consensus you can see that across the Washington DC establishment as I document in a book I wrote called has China won what the United States has is an attitude towards China but doesn't have a long-term strategy and what I argue in my book is that what the United States should do is work out a comprehensive long-term strategy for managing this this return of China China by contrast does have a comprehensive long-term strategy and just to give you a simple example in Cold War one it was the United States that traded with the rest of the world now China trades far more with the rest of the world and ten years from now the gap will be enormous and if you stop signing free trade agreements with the rest of the world you're giving China an advantage TPP China came in let's give our audience a chance to ask a question as well please the gentleman here thanks Seth Moulton Democratic colleague and Mr. McCall and the House Armed Services Committee just a couple of quick points and I'd love to hear your response particularly you Ian on this look I think this is an ideological battle it's just not over an economic system it's over whether we support democracy or autocracy and that's the one thing that brings Russia and China together and so they might not be likely allies but just like us in Russia and in World War II they're aligned on that point and they see us and our western allies and our technology and everything else as a common enemy and if you think it's not a military competition I just think you're not looking closely at what China is actually doing to build its military so I think there's a danger in just talking about this as Cold War 2.0 because it makes it sound like we can use the same strategies in World Cold War when this is actually somewhere between a Cold War and a hot war I like to call it a warm war some people say that sounds good Seth you shouldn't use a positive term I think it's a very heated economic and military competition China and Russia are not natural allies but they are aligned with a common enemy and it's about autocracy versus democracy and the chances for miscalculation blow up in our faces are higher because it is closer to a hot war than a cold war so I just love to hear your response to that so this was more a statement I take one more and then we do it actually it's not because it quite disagrees with what Ian and Mike were saying if you like to outside I agree with one piece of it not the other and it's a great formulation of a debate I agree strongly that it has aspects of a hot war it is absolutely heated and has the potential to morph into one very dangerous I think Mike and I agree on that too on the ideological front though two reasons I disagree one is that the Chinese are very happy to engage with equally and politically align with both democracies and autocracies as long as there is very strong economic business to be done they are indifferent to the local political system in a way that the United States says that we're not in principle we are but we often don't follow through on it second reason I think it should not become an ideological battle is because in all and I hate saying this this bothers me is that in all of the areas that the United States has very strong capabilities the dollar is the global reserve currency every bit as strong as it was 10-20 years ago you could argue it was stronger the role of the U.S. as an energy superpower a food superpower our universities the key shore loves all of this stuff I think the one area that we are weakest in terms of leading by example and exporting is our political system our represented democracy so if I'm advising Biden I don't want him leading with our weakest Trump card if you don't mind me saying that and that wasn't true in 1989 we beat the Soviets because the ideological war was clearly in our favor if we got into an ideological war with China that believes our political system is in structural decline I actually think that undermines us but it's a good debate can I add one sentence the three largest democracies in the world is number one India number two is the United States number three Indonesia of these three largest democracies in the world one sees it as an ideological contest Indian Indonesia do not see it as an ideological contest I agree it's both military and economic but I do think China unlike the brute force of Russia which is all military might they can outsmart us from an economic warfare using trade and their economic engine as a weapon against the United States and why do I say it because it India abstain right why it gets Russian equipment but how do they take the Solomon Islands security agreement they bought them off but you know Hong Kong without a shot fired why did 20 nations in Africa abstain from the UN Security Council resolution because China has bought them off through Belt and Road they are competing on the field in Indo-Pacific in Latin America and the United States is not on that field we don't have a long term strategy they do sir and it's a 100 year marathon okay unfortunately we have to come to an end to the debate now it was very interesting and obviously we could have gone for hours and just my takeaway is we are in a hot war and the situation is much more complicated than it was in the past and the main contenders are the US and China and don't forget Europe but with what kind of role Europe has we don't know yet can I throw a provocative question for the Ukraine so if let's say we got Hitler to the negotiating table after he invaded all of Europe and Russia would we negotiate with him would we say okay you can take Czechoslovakia Poland where do you think now that the war crimes have happened and my bill passed the house I know Zelensky says I will sit down and negotiate but is that time over I think that time is definitely over and I think that after what the whole world have seen in Bucha, in Irpin, in Brodyanka actually the very same things are being revealed right now also in those liberated areas in Kharkiv region the atrocities that we are dealing with are absolutely insane so the war crimes, crimes against humanity acts of genocide all of this together I think precludes any room for compromise between us and those who want to live and those who came to just kill us so there is no really negotiation in there and I think that has to be very well understood and that's why we are saying and I think that's already across the political board in Ukraine irrespective of which political party you represent and so on that in order to survive it's existentially we have to win if we get somewhere in the middle that means that Russia will have yet another possibility to attack and it will use that possibility so that that would be just a piezing of aggressive behavior of Russian Federation ok, with that note we end and thank you very much ladies and gentlemen for your patience and for that thank you so much