 Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to the Lowy Institute, welcome to our beautiful headquarters here at 31 Bly Street. I'm Michael Fooley, love the director of the Institute. Let me acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which the Institute stands, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. This event is part of the Institute's project on Australia's security and the rules-based order which is supported by the Australian Department of Defence for which support we're very grateful. It builds on the project's earlier work which has taken this concept of the rules-based order and looked at it in all sorts of interesting ways. It includes a brilliant podcast series, rules-based audio, digital interactives that look at how Australia has thought about the rules-based order over the last decade, pieces of work on US, Chinese and South East Asian approaches to the rules-based order, and we've also hosted a number of visitors as part of this project, including Kurt Campbell, Corey Sharkey and Simea Saran from the Observer Research Foundation in India. It's an impressive body of work carried out by Ben Scott and Sam Roggevan and Sasha Fegan and others and I'd urge you to have a look at it. Of course, in a way the times suit this project because the challenges to the rules-based order are so much clearer now than they've been in the past. Russia's invasion of Ukraine might be the most egregious breach of the rules since the end of the Second World War. It's produced on the one hand a quickening of connections among Western countries who are keen to prop up the order, but also a surprising level of indifference among many other states, surprising given that it's hard to think of a more egregious breach of the rules than annexing, attempting to annex your neighbour's territory. We might talk about this later. Close at home, China's assertiveness is also a challenge to the existing order and to the rules that support it and it's generating counterbalancing moves, including AUKUS and the Quad. So the times suit the project and the project has analysed the times in interesting ways of which I'm very proud. Now the views of the Americans on all these issues is obviously critical. Here in Australia we regard ourselves as one of America's best allies, but the truth is that many countries think that they have a special relationship with Washington. The Brits think they have the one, the French know that they have the original one. The Canadians and the Mexicans legitimately do have special relationships with the United States. The Irish do. The Japanese, the Germans, the Russians of course, the Chinese, the Koreans. You get my point. There's a reason why American secretaries of state are always saying things like the United States has no better friend than insert the country. So I always feel we're a bit smug on this question and for some time I've been concerned that the community of American officials and observers who really know us is actually quite small and it's a very familiar group of people who are fabulous, but who don't represent the whole spectrum of thought or expertise in the United States. Washington is one of the most competitive environments in the world and we can't rely on a tiny group of mates. So over the last decade we have set out to expand the circle of America's friends in Washington. We've brought out very senior Democrats such as Jake Sullivan, Kurt Campbell, Nicholas Burns and Tom Wright, all of whom are serving in senior positions in the Biden administration, but we've made an equal effort on the Republican side of the House, hosting Steve Hadley, Corey Sharkey, Brett Stevens and many others. And I'm pleased to be hosting someone else tonight who, like Corey, also sailed on the on the Good Ship McCain, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security, my friend Richard Fontaine. Richard is the CEO of CNAS, a brilliant institution with which he has been associated for more than a decade. Prior to CNAS he was foreign policy advisor to Senator McCain. He worked at the State Department at the White House and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He knows Australia well, he spent some time in the past at another institution across town, but now he's back at the Lowy Institute which is where he should be. Richard is going to speak to us for about 15 minutes and then I'm going to have a conversation up here and I'm going to take your question. So while you're enjoying the wine and listening to the intellectual nourishment from Richard Fontaine, please think of your questions because I'm coming to you soon. Richard, let me call you to the lectern and welcome. Thank you very much. All right. Well, thank you very much. It's great to be here and it's great to be back in Australia for the first time in a few years. Let me just begin by thanking the Lowy Institute, that remarkable executive director, Dr. Full Love, and the rest of the team here for the opportunity to be here, to speak to you and to be back in Australia. Lowy, of course, does tremendous work on Australia, on the U.S.-Australia relationship, the Indo-Pacific and a lot more and has become an indispensable feature of foreign policy discourse, not only here but in Washington as well. So it's a privilege to be here. The title of this short talk is the rather modest theme of the present and future of international order. So that I've already consumed two minutes. I'll try to spend 13 or so defining what it is we mean when we say international order, what the present is, and what the future might look like. International order is this concept that is often invoked, it's seldom defined, even less as it explained. Some people have argued that international order is anachronistic, it's shabby, it's reflective of an age gone by. Others that it's fragmenting before our very eyes, and some people argue there's no such thing as international order anyway. This is just sort of the conceit of some abstract minded people who do foreign policy. But I would submit that on the contrary, international order is real, it's important, and I guess to quote a song that's not popular anymore, we would miss it if it's gone. And so that's what I'll try to explain just a little bit about. So what is this thing that we call international order? As I said, it's often invoked. The first page of Australia's 2020 defense strategic update warned, quote, confidence of the rules based global order is being undermined by disruptions from a widening range of sources. The first page of the Biden administration's national security strategy, which came out today, states that, quote, we are in the midst of a strategic competition to shape the future of international order. And in their joint statement from earlier this year, China and Russia noted, quote, the sides Russia and China intend to strongly uphold the outcomes of the Second World War in the existing post-war world order. That's what they said anyway. So what is this thing that everybody's talking about? I would define world order as those institutions and rules that govern not always effectively the conduct of nations. Much of today's rules based open liberal international order was established under US leadership after 1945. It's a rules based order because it elevates standards above a might makes right kind of doctrine. It's open because any nation state that wishes to follow those standards can join its ranks. There's no exclusionary ideological or regional blocks. And it's liberal because it's weighted toward the protection of free market capitalism and liberal democratic values. That order's existence has generated significant benefits over the decades, an absence of great power, conflict, unprecedented prosperity, the expansion of democracy in every region of the world. And given the stated intention of many governments to defend and strengthen the international order, and given even the protestations of countries like China and Russia that they seek to abide by it, what is the problem? Why is there an entire program at the Louie Institute on the future of the rules based order? Well, one of the problems is that recent political debates, certainly in the United States, but in other places as well, has focused not on the benefits of world order, but rather on the costs, defense spending, alliances, military packs, diplomatic deals, international economic arrangements. It's easy, and politicians have, dismiss this as the obsolete manifestation of a Cold War mindset or the hubris of Western leadership or the conceit of those who overlook the interests of the average citizens who shoulder those very costs. And it is easy to dismiss those things until the foundations of world order shake violently as they are right now with the invasion of Ukraine. Then the alternative to world order grows clear. The alternative to an ordered world is the law of the jungle. The alternative to countries acting in defense of that order is the law of the jungle, where big countries can take territory where they can impose their rule, where they can spread chaos at will. That's what Russia is attempting to do in Ukraine today. Russia and China have defined and articulated their own vision for international order, one that is, despite their claims deeply at odds with many of the principles that animate the post-war liberal arrangements. In February to sum up their vision, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping issued an expansive joint manifesto. The world they seek, the statement said, would in the future be ordered very differently than in the past. China and Russia would cooperate with, famously now, no limits to assume their rightful places in it. They would forge, quote, an international relations of a new type. It would be multipolar. It would no longer be dominated by the United States. There would be no further NATO enlargement. There would be no color revolutions. There would be no globe-spanning US missile defense system. There would be no American nuclear weapons deployed abroad, actors representing, but the minority on the international scale, that is, the United States and its allies, might continue to interfere with the domestic arrangements in other states. They might incite contradictions, differences, confrontation, but Beijing and Moscow would work together to resist them. And in this world to come, nobody would pressure China and Russia on human rights or interfere in their internal affairs. Democracy itself would be redefined and subject to no universal standard. It's only up to the people of the country, the manifesto said, to decide whether their state is a democratic one. Russia would join with China to oppose, quote, any form of independence for Taiwan and the formation of alliances defined as opposed to Beijing and Asia. And then, of course, the Russian president went further this month when he announced the annexation of four Ukrainian territories to Russia. Putin said, and this is a quote from him, all we hear is the West is insisting on a rules-based order. Where did that come from anyway? Who's ever seen these rules? Who agreed or approved them? Listen, this is not, this is just a lot of nonsense, utter deceit, double standards, and even triple standards. I'm not sure what a triple standard actually is, but that's what he said. So indeed, who agreed to these rules? Well, Moscow for one. In 1990, it agreed to the Charter of Paris, which articulates principles for a post-Cold War order, including democracy, and from refraining from using force to violate the territorial integrity of another state, it agreed to the Budapest memorandum in which it agreed to safeguard Ukraine's territorial integrity. Again, who agreed to these rules? Well, Beijing for one, when it signed the Convention on the Law of the Sea, despite its subsequent activities in the South China Sea, or when it made international commitments with respect to the status of Hong Kong, which is subsequently abridged, or when it joined the core UN human rights treaties, which is in the process today and has been in the past and probably will be in the future violating. So the gap between the country's commitments and its behavior are only of interest if someone's going to hold them to account. And that's why after Moscow's invasion, as Michael said, the world's largest economies, except China, moved quickly to disconnect Russia from the benefits of globalization, including trade and technology and travel and finance. They banded together to send unprecedented levels of military assistance to Ukraine with some countries, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Japan, reversing decades of their own policies in order to act. Violating the cardinal principle of international order, the prohibition against violent territorial conquest, has to elicit strong counteraction, or Russia's actions today will encourage other would-be aggressors tomorrow, including in other regions around the world. And this, of course, is a world that we have seen before. These principles of the post-Cold War order didn't just fall from the sky in 1945 and everybody said, this is a good idea, let's give it a shot. It was a direct response to the first half of the 20th century, which saw the two most costly wars in human history, the worst economic depression ever, and the rise of autocrats who thought that they could conquer the world or at least large parts of it. And it was the determination to never again see those things occur that was one of the motivating factors behind constructing the world that it has been. And it worked in many ways, and the subsequent 80 years were far better for all of humanity than the previous 30. This endurance of international order, of course, as we all know, is not automatic. It rests on a balance of power among major countries, it rests on tight relations among strong democracies. It relies on countries to be active in its defense. And here's where this reaction that has been stimulated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine suggests, I think, some hope for the future despite all the horror that we witness when we watch what has happened there. The countries that are joined in common concern for the preservation of a liberal world order, Australia, America, and all of the rest could stay as united in the future as they are today. They could use Putin's war as a turning point, committing themselves to upholding the rules and the norms that will otherwise fade. There's nothing inevitable about the world that Russia and China envision where autocracy reigns, where democracy can be redefined, where countries can swallow their neighbors, and where a cramped vision of human potential in the future would trump its opposite. Today, the revisionist powers of the world, Russia and China in particular, are formidable, but of course they pale in comparison to the combined might of the West broadly defined. Defending an international order that is inherently liberal requires unity and commitment and entails costs. And at the beginning of the year, it seemed unlikely that a bunch of fractious democracies facing the determined rise of autocratic challengers could come together to make a difference, but it doesn't today. And so I think that that remains both a challenge and an opportunity for all of us. So thank you very much. I'm going to go around. I'm going to take the prerogative of the stair. That's a rules-based approach to getting up here. So great. That was a terrific short exposition of the concept that we might draw up and send to the Department of Defense and say there you go. There are our conclusions. I mean, that's a bracing, brief, but articulate defense of the concept and its importance. So let me ask, let me probe you a little bit on some of these topics and then come back to the audience. Let me start with Ukraine. As you know, last Thursday we had the privilege of hosting President Zelensky on this stage, albeit via video link. Do I understand correctly that you would say that net-net the effect so far of the war on Ukraine on the international order has been positive? Yes. I mean, it was a reaction to Putin trying to blow a gigantic hole into international order, obviously. Again, the cardinal principle is the prohibition against territorial conquest by force. That's precisely what Putin has tried and the amount of resistance that he's met in the endeavor and the relative failure of Russia to accomplish its goals, I think, has been a net plus for demonstrating two things. One, that there are very serious costs to abridging that kind of prohibition. And two, countries involved in it are at a minimum less likely to be successful than they thought when it started. And those are very valuable lessons for the whole world to see. Do you think the Biden administration is having a good war? There's no such thing as a good war. So I would, you know, as a good think tanker, I would quibble with the premise. But I think the Biden administration has done a close to masterful job at assembling what I would call the anti-aggression coalition that aims to support Ukraine and to punish Russia and make it unsuccessful in its endeavor. If you run the thought experiment of what all of this would look like if the United States hadn't been involved, then again, this in retrospect kind of seems like a natural role. This was no sure thing that the administration would play the role it has. You know, if it was just the Europeans or just the Europeans and others that had to come together to do this, it's really hard to see this being as effective as it has been. So I think the administration has done well there. If you run the thought experiment at a different thought experiment, I, you know, I'm struck by the importance of the role that Zelensky himself has played. And in particular in that first week, when, if we believe the reporting, he refused the offer of a safe passage out of Ukraine, when he stayed in his capital, stayed in his country, all those amazing videos of selfies of him surrounded by his national security advisors saying, we are all here. Quite a notable contrast to the situation in Afghanistan only a few months earlier. How much, what are your observations on Zelensky's leadership? Tremendous. I mean, if he had done what Ashraf Ghani did in Afghanistan, I think we might be talking about a very different situation. And of course, it was the sort of moral and physical courage to stay when, you know, the Americans famously offered him a ride and, you know, go into exile and run the country from Poland or something. But then the masterful use of the information environment since then, which has had this political effect in so many different countries. I mean, I've traveled this year a bunch domestically in the United States, not just on the coast, but Dallas and Houston and other places and been several countries in Europe. You can go to small towns in Spain and France. And there are Ukrainian flags hanging from the city hall. The Kennedy Center in Washington remains lit up in blue and yellow. There are Ukrainian, you know, ribbons tied around trees in Texas and things like that. There were never Afghan flags or Iraqi flags or Syrian flags or Darfurian flags or anything else. And this really has captured the imagination of people all over the world. And I think Zelensky's role in all that is absolutely critical. So you see those flags in a lot of countries and countries in particular that people like you and I visit. But of course, if you take the glass half empty approach to the to the reaction, even though, as you say, it's it's you can't think of a greater sin against the international system than what Mr. Putin has attempted to do. It is striking how many countries around the world, how many developing countries, how many countries in Asia are sitting on the fence, not voting with Russia at the UN, but abstaining. Two days ago, I hosted India's excellent minister of external affairs, Dr. Jay Shankar. And I asked him about that. And he said, he said, look, there's a as well as an East West dimension to this conflict, there's a North South dimension. And the South increasingly feels the West. Sorry, the South increasingly feels the North is tone deaf. So let me ask you about that element, the glass half empty element that even though, as you say, the rules based order has provided a platform for many, many good things since the end of the Second World War. There are still many, many governments around the world who who won't vote something as simple as cast a vote in the General Assembly condemning attempts to annex your neighbor's territory. What does that tell us? Yeah, I think the glass is more than half full. If you look at the assistance of Ukraine or the costs imposed on Russia, the countries that aren't on the fence represent the world's biggest economies with the exception of China and the world's most powerful militaries with the exception of China. Now that said, it's I've heard the phrase that we've won the G7, but lost the G77, which I think has some insight there. And there is certainly a narrative in places like India where this is Europeans fighting Europeans. At the end of the day, what really does this have to do with us? Or, you know, or alternatively, yes, people care what's going on, but they care about other things too. They care about, you know, the ability to access maintenance for their defense systems, or they care about access to energy and so forth. And so the trade offs are harder and things like that. But there is this kind of bifurcation. It does seem possible that over time Putin has kind of resolved this to some degree. I mean, there was a vote in the U.N. within the last 24 hours, and Russia that moved to tend down the Russian annexation got more votes in favor than any other vote, and has so far in the however many months since this war, and the number of countries voting with Russia went down by, I think, one. So, you know, there's still a bunch of abstentions and all of that, but things are moving in that direction because of the barbarities that people watch in Ukraine. But nevertheless, yes, there's absolutely a difference in interpretation. And if you look forward, what will be the lasting effect on Russia's power in the world, do you think, the poor performance of the Russian military and the Russian state, the flawed decision making in Moscow, is Russia a busted flush now? It will be weaker militarily. It will be poorer, and it will be more diplomatically isolated than it has been for a very long time, at least since the end of the Cold War. If the war had stopped tomorrow, the Russians would need years to replenish their military forces given the devastation and forget for a second just the human side of the devastation that they've been able, that they've inflicted on themselves, but rather all of the military machinery and so forth. And the export controls that are in place would make it exceedingly difficult for them to just replace these things that they were before. So you're talking years of diminished military capability. Now, at one level, if the will to do the kinds of things that Russia has done in Ukraine, still attains than having a militarily, conventionally militarily weaker, poorer, diplomatically isolated country, that's a good thing. On the other hand, if that will remains the same, Russia still has alternatives. If its conventional military capability is not as effective as it was, it's got the high end and the low end. So the low end is asymmetric sorts of operations and cyber attacks and information operations and meddling in democracies and all of that. And the high end is nuclear weapons. And what you may see is Russia leaning more toward trying to use that high end and that low end because the conventional side is not working for it. And that's a quite clearly dangerous situation in its own right. What do you think is the probability of Russia using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine? I think it's quite low, but it's higher than it has been. And it's certainly higher than we should be comfortable with. There's no evidence so far that this is anything other than rhetoric, but nuclear rhetoric is a rhetoric unlike any other kind. And no one knows what Putin will do when his back is against the wall. There's lots of reasons to think that Putin should calculate that the cost of doing so would seriously outweigh the benefits, the benefits on the battlefield, the benefits in terms of the reaction of the Ukrainians in the West, etc., etc. But that was also true on the move of Kiev. And he did it anyway. I mean, it was very hard to imagine how this was going to be successful when you go to Kiev and try to topple a government and you seize a bit of troops and all this stuff. It didn't stop him from doing it. And that gives, I think, an uncertainty premium here. And what would be the implications of nuclear use for the international order? Well, we would wake up in the day after a nuclear use and it'd be a different world. I mean, these are the most destructive weapons ever deployed. And their only use has been in 1945. And there's been a very strong taboo against the use of nuclear weapons in combat ever since. And for very good reason. Because once you open that box, then no one knows where that leads. And it is extremely dangerous sort of place to be. There's two aspects there in terms of the reaction of that kind of thing. And with respect to the international order, there's a lot of focus on, okay, well, if God forbid, Rush actually did that, how do we punish that act? And of course, you got to do that so that you demonstrate that the costs are very high of doing something like that. That's the next guy who thinks about doing it, realize that the cost would be high. But even more important that is it has to be unsuccessful in achieving the objective as it intended to achieve. That way, the next guy says, well, even I may be willing to stomach the cost, but it didn't work. And so if the goal of Putin in using a nuclear weapon is to back the West off and force the Ukrainians to capitulate, then the response has to be to not allow that to happen. That in turn is easier said than done because then what's Putin's next step, right? And no one knows. So hopefully we won't get to that step. You can scare yourself pretty quickly. But, you know, the consequences for the international order of a nuclear use would be profound. All right. Let me move away from Ukraine onto the broader question of a rules-based order. It's obviously in the interests of a country of Australia's size and location that the rules of the road be well understood and widely observed. But superpowers have a more ambiguous relationship with rules. Now, everyone in Washington these days is talking about a rules-based order. But a cynic might say, well, I don't think President Trump believed that rules applied to the United States or indeed even to him. And someone with a long memory might say that the Bush administration didn't really feel it itself constrained by the rules-based order. And in fact, it was happy to gaily invade a sovereign country without the cover of a UN Security Council resolution. So I guess the sharp question I would ask you is, do American policymakers really believe in a rules-based order? Or is this a useful rhetorical device for constraining China and other powers now that you have, now that they're on the march, this is a good and given that the rules generally favor the status quo, it's a good tactic? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, is this all just a bunch of fluff that you talk about and try to weaponize against your adversary, but you don't in any way intend to be bound by them yourself if that's going to inconvenience what you really want to do? So thank you for the cynicism and that question. The United States is by no means perfect in following the rules, even rules that itself tried to put into place. On the specific example of the legality of the war in Iraq, I have a view that is different than the one embedded in yours, but the point of litigating that is beyond- I think you lost that butt. Well, what I was going to say there is, I think there was a good case that the war was legal. It lacked legitimacy in the sense that there was a legal framework that you could rely on in order to talk about what you were doing. But on the other hand, when you go for a second UN Security Council resolution and you don't get it, to then fall back on the legality makes life pretty difficult, right? So anyway, look, I think that superpowers will just like many countries will find ways when it isn't convenient to be bound by the rules. They'll find attempting to abridge the rules, to violate the rules, try to work around the rules. But generally speaking, this is not bullshit. I mean, I think the United States really does believe in rules-based international system not only for sort of airy-fairy, altruistic, what's the future humanity stuff, but ultimately it reflects our values. We don't always live up to our values, but the rules reflect our values. You can understand why China and Russia don't like the rules-based international order because it doesn't reflect their values. But a set of rules that allows for liberal societies to flourish, that allows for a more open international economy, that allows, I mean, say what you want about the war in Iraq, but we didn't try to annex the territory, right? This was not territorial conquest for the purposes of augmenting the United States and making Iraq the 51st state. That is precisely what Russia is doing in Ukraine. And I think there's many, many occasions that I've been in the room's forum when there have been things bandied about and the very existence of the rules have led policymakers to not pursue a course. So I don't think this is just, I think neither that we are perfect and bound by the rules all the time, nor that this is just airy-fairy rhetoric for that purpose. The rules-based order is not bullshit is the line that I'm taking away from that answer. It's not bullshit, this rules-based order thing. All right, let's come to this theater to China. What's the sharpest challenge that China presents to the rules-based order? There's several, I think, on the technology front. The one that could touch average citizens in countries like ours the most is probably the ones related to economic activity and technology, the sort of illiberal values that are embedded in technology standards and rules that the Chinese favor. I mean, they have a view of technology and the state that would put the primacy of the state over the individual. We have a view of the individual over the state. That gets very wonky and arcane very fast when you're talking about technology standards or the international telecommunications unit. But look at everybody on their phone as we're talking right now. This is a big part of human existence these days being mediated by technology. And so that is a major one there. Of course, you have the violation of the law of the sea, you have an arbitration tribunal that said that China was in violation of the existing rules. That has not changed Chinese behavior, but I think has presented a pretty profound challenge. And then if there is a move of violence against Taiwan or some other place, then that would similarly be a major challenge. I think the other thing is the, I mean, I don't have to tell Australians this, but the use of the economic tool for to restrict essentially the free speech of a country like Australia. They don't like criticism, and so will weaponize economics, not in sanctioning illegitimate behavior, but sanctioning legitimate political speech and behavior, which is essentially what they've done. So those are a few of the areas. Let me ask you about strategic ambiguity and Taiwan. All of us have been watching with interest Mr. Biden's perambulations on this question. I sometimes remind my colleagues of that scene in Goldfinger. I don't know if you're a Bond fan, but where James Bond has carried out several operations to frustrate the plans of Oric Goldfinger, and Goldfinger says to his sidekick, once his happenstance twice his coincidence, the third time it's enemy action. Now, in this case, not one or two or three, but four times Joe Biden has been asked what he would do in the event of China moving against Taiwan. And he said we would support Taiwan and four times the White House has backed off this. So is four times enough to say that this is signaling on behalf of the president? So in Washington, a Washington gaffe is when a politician messes up and says what he really believes. And four times, I think Joe Biden has said what he really believes, and I would take it to the bank because he's the decider. Now, if China attacked Taiwan, presumably, if the president was made the decision to defend Taiwan, he would need a congressional authorization force, but he'd get it. So you can say the policy hasn't changed. We will defend is exactly the same as we may defend if you squint hard enough and all of that. But how unambiguous can you be? So to me, there doesn't seem to be a lot of complexity in the message that he has sent. And Net-Net, do you think that Russia's invasion of Ukraine and in particular its inability to get the mail through and the weakness that it's shown? Do you think should that give hope to people in Taipei? Do you think that it has improved the position of Taiwan vis-a-vis China? Or has it made little difference? Do you think to China's calculations? I think it has helped. Everyone's trying to learn something from this, from the military to the global response and everything else. And there's a couple of lessons here that I believe that Taiwanese are learning, that I suspect that Chinese are learning. One is that when you show up in the country, the battle just begins. That's not the end. You go across 100 miles of water or you go across the Ukrainian border and you've got to deal with a population that's going to fight you back. Now, if China actually invaded Taiwan, do we know if Taiwanese are like Ukrainians in that sense? No. But the Chinese, I think, would have to calculate that they are and would have a pretty big challenge on their hands with a country of 20 plus million people that did not want to be occupied by China. Two is that when, before Ukraine, people had thought about an insurgency against the Russians that would look kind of like an Iraqi insurgency, there would be IEDs and snipers and sabotage operations. And it turns out that it's high-end weapon systems that have been the big game changers. Nobody knew what Heimar stood for, but now everybody loves them. It javelins and harpoon missiles and drones and now even sophisticated anti-aircraft and missile defense. And so that kind of points the way to a way in which Taiwan would be better and more capable of defending itself against potential invasion in addition to the stuff that it's thought about before in terms of sea mines and things like that. And then I think everybody, including the Chinese, would like to know what the global reaction looks like over time. I mean, everybody has sanctions on Russia now. This is an outrage two years from now, three years from now. Does it look more like the aftermath of Crimea in Hong Kong where there were sanctions and everything, but then cooler heads kind of prevail and you wake up in a couple of years and look who's got Crimea and look who's got Hong Kong and it's probably worth it for those countries or is this totally different and a model for what might be applied to the Chinese if they went after Taiwan? I think the Chinese would like to know the answer to that and it would take some time for that to mature. One of the responses to China's assertiveness has been AUKUS. So give us a view from Washington of AUKUS. Do you think it's smart for Australia to seek to acquire a fleet of nuclear propelled submarines? What are the traps for AUKUS in Washington in the Defense Department or the Navy? Do you foresee problems? I know there's an imbalance of effort between Canberra and Washington and AUKUS. Every time you go to the Australian Embassy in Washington there are a couple dozen more AUKUS advisors but that doesn't seem to be tweened with more people on the US side working on AUKUS. So what do you think about it? What are the challenges and what are the challenges for AUKUS? I think there's great enthusiasm for AUKUS in Washington, support on Capitol Hill in the administration, outside the administration and so forth. A lot of feeling that there's an opportunity here to share defense technology in a way that has not been shared before that in turn will lead to greater allied capability in the theater where it matters the most and the acquisition of nuclear propelled submarines is a major step forward for Australia and therefore for an ally of the United States, so I think there's big support for that. Obviously there was a minor flare up of France but you may have heard of that and I think gone through a little bit of that on your own so we don't need to rehearse that but that seems to have passed and now been resolved more or less and I think the big challenge there are a couple challenges I would say that I think folks are focusing on AUKUS. One is the subs are going to obviously take a long time, it's super complicated, it's a very ambitious endeavor and the subs are going to do what the subs are going to do. This other pillar of advanced capabilities in terms of technology is ripe for some sort of early win, something that could be done in the next two or three years that would not have been as possible in the absence of AUKUS. Deciding on exactly what those are, what the timelines of those and then pushing those through is a challenge but that's kind of where a lot of energy needs to go. One of the big issues on the American side is the thicket of export controls and ITAR and all of these kinds of things that have been barriers to technology sharing even between the United States and Australia that would be commensurate for example with the intelligence sharing relationship between the United States and Australia. So we're in this kind of weird, we have been in this weird situation with the Brits and with the Australians where the three of us will share intelligence of extraordinary sensitivity, just unbelievable stuff and the level of trust is so high and yet that does not apply for reasons of law, policy, international regime, regulation, bureaucratic politics on the defense technology side and so systematically identifying what those barriers are in our system and then overcoming those is a lot easier said than done but it has to be. And just coming back to the boats, I mean if you had to guess, do you think Australia for example would plump for the Virginia class boat? Do you think that would we have any chance of getting the first couple made on your production? What are you doing? Why are you asking? I don't know. So I should ask you that question. So what's the answer? Are you going to buy American? I mean buy America seems to be a big thing in our country these days. We're a bunch of protectionists now but so we're still in the buy Australia. You're going to raise your British flag or raise your American flag? Why don't you declare an allegiance here? Well you know what's Jerry Seinfeld described the Australian flag as. Britain at night. Oh there you go. So that's something to watch for. All right we're not getting any answers on the boats from Richard. If I knew I might try to tell you. Okay. Let me ask one or two more questions and then go to the audience who's been who've been very patient. Let me ask about the United States and about US politics. Are you still you're still a Republican aren't you Richard? Yes. Yes. Okay. How do you feel these days about the Republican Party? I was going to say the post-Trump Republican Party but of course he hasn't gone anywhere and increasingly the even the far reaches of the Republican Party seem to be quite trumpified and there are many candidates for office in November for the Senate and Congress and so on and the Republican side who still maintain Mr. Trump's big lie that he won the last election. How does that how does that make you feel? Terrible. I mean how it makes me forget being a Republican or Democrat American a human being. I mean a majority of a party and the guy who clearly lost and had every challenge turned down because there was no merit to it telling everybody that in fact he didn't lose he really won and so we have an illegitimate president there and he should be in the White House now it's absurd and yet millions of Americans believe it and there's a set of political incentives to push that line that made me feel good. Thanks for asking. All right what I asked you about the probability of nuclear use what about the probability of Mr. Trump returning do you think A. do you think he will run and B. do you think Joe Biden will run for reelection and and C. if Mr. Trump wins what's the probability sorry if Mr. Trump runs what's the probability of him winning. So with the caveat that as late as 7 p.m. on the evening of 2016 most people thought Hillary Clinton would be president of the United States so these things are very hard to tell and at the beginning of 2016 Jeb Bush was the front runner so on the Republican side and in 2020 Joe Biden wasn't the front runner until the very end so these things are hard as hell to predict that said if you were forced to pick the front runner on both sides it would be Joe Biden and Donald Trump far and away I mean Trump's approval rating among Republicans is between 60 and 70 percent that's down from about 90 percent so it's fallen but it's super high and you know after that you've got Governor DeSantis in Florida who's you know in the number two position but further down everybody else is in single digits if Biden decides to run then he won't be contested there's not another Democrat who will challenge him in the primaries who will have any shot and if they have a rerun of Biden versus Trump then hard to say but I mean a very decent shot that Trump would be re-elected and what would that mean for the international order I guess we would muddle through as we did last time the thing that was so amazing about the Trump administration in some ways was you know people have tried to identify Trumpism right what is the Trumpist foreign policy what is this Trumpist ideology and some people even try to kind of adopt little parts of this but really it's a set of idiosyncratic beliefs about the way the world works it seemed to have been kind of forged in 1980s New York right and basically a lot of it is America's been getting screwed by all kinds of people especially foreigners immigrants and allies who get rich under America's protection and and won't pay their fair share and you know the and trade partners who have stolen our jobs and owe us money because the trade deficit and all this other stuff no one in almost no one in his administration believed that and almost no one in his administration acted on that so he would say that about allies and then his own vice president would go to NATO and be like we love allies it's the their most important thing in the world America's greatest strength is our network of alliances or he would say you know you know the the Japanese you know and then and then even he himself two days later would say so if he had been more disciplined which is not usually a word that one identifies with Donald Trump but if he had been more disciplined then presumably he could have pushed down these sort of policy preferences that he totally clearly has but in the event most of the stuff he just wasn't able to get done so he didn't like NATO but we ended up staying in NATO he didn't like troops in Japan or in South Korea or in Syria or in Afghanistan or Iraq by the end of his administration they were all still there right he didn't like trade agreements he renegotiated the one with South Korea for the second time and got back into it and after he did some modest changes and replaced now the tariffs was a big change but I think you would see more of that kind of lurching in a second Trump administration you don't think he would learn learn yeah learn wait go ahead sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you no he would learn what no wouldn't he'd learn wouldn't he would realize that too right I mean he would wouldn't he learn the lessons from the first administration and realize that that elements of of the civil service had had blocked him that that instant American institutions had resisted him wouldn't he be a greater challenge in the second term well so what I'm saying is it's not the deep state that resist him his own appointees his own vice president his own secretary of state his own secretary of defense that that was a thing it it wasn't this mythical set of civil servants that got together in a smoky room and like we're going to be the resistance we're going to say no I mean it was his own people but you could be right I mean if you look even in his time in office so for example you know they his his folks tried to keep the United States and the Iran nuclear deal and then he kind of learned that he could just put his foot down and say no we're getting out and that's what happened so yes there there's some ways in which that could definitely be the case the other thing that I worry about if you start to play this out is who would serve in those roles because for whatever the flaws of some of the senior people in the Trump administration generally speaking they had their head screwed on right and we're trying to do I think generally speaking the right thing in many cases under very difficult circumstances and also generally speaking they came out with usually diminished reputations sometimes legal bills and you know I mean life was hard and speaking of learning a lot of people have learned that lesson too and so unlike with every other administration there's not going to be a line around the block of people trying to take senior positions in a second Trump administration they will be filled but by who and then you may actually have more kind of true believers or people who are just less competent at their jobs. Got it all right who would like to ask some questions I'm going to choose this lady first if you could just wait for a microphone and if I can ask everybody to to direct a concise question to Richard thank you. Okay thank you for the lady first. I'm a Chinese journalist since you just talking about the possible second term of President Trump for the its application for the international orders so as the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party of China is coming in so any changes that you estimate this would bring to the China's foreign policy and any possible application to the current international order thank you. Yeah I don't expect the reelection attempt by Xi Jinping to be a real nail biter I don't think we'll have to stay up too late to watch the returns coming in to know how that one's going so I don't know whether the Chinese leadership will feel more secure and less necessary after the party congress to look tough and or will be emboldened by the greater security of a third five-year term would convey and thereby be more aggressive internationally. I just don't know the answer to that we will find out but I would suspect there's going to be more continuity in anything because I also suspect that the guy in charge today will be the guy in charge then all right yes sir yep in the second row. Hi I'm Kazi I'm retired from Bangladesh Navy um taking your reference punishing Russia so a little bit deviated how about the punishing of cohorts of Russia those who have contributed the Russian economy taking the advantage of war so did you consider did US consider how they will be punished after the war of course history is always written in favor of winner I don't I don't know so the Michael Fulilov also referring India foreign minister he was telling 100 million numbers the question 100 billion dollars allocated US allocated for the war so how much has been spent from Russia side and from the cohort side how much cronies they have allocated for Russian economy to kill the Ukrainian people and countries like Bangladesh and alike we have been highly inflation due to the rise of oil price and we are the good allies of US if you if they don't get the good reward so how they will be rewarded or how they will be morale upheld to be a good allies of us thank you thank you yeah I think there have been and there are efforts under the sanctions to sanction countries that would be doing business with sanctioned entities in Russia so for example Chinese banks are abiding by the sanctions not because they would choose to do so but because otherwise they're going to be cut off from correspondent payments with the United States and so I mean that that is a way it's not solely Russia itself but rather those who are doing business with Russia they're falling into the scope of the sanctions um you know on the on the oil price there's this major effort and we'll see whether this works or not to basically put together a buyer's cartel that would increase the flow of Russian oil under the global market while reducing the revenue that goes to Russia and that should if it works bring down the price of oil and and also because there's more supply and also bring down the revenue that's going to Russia but that's a huge if it's never been tried before obviously you've got a seller's cartel producers cartel and OPEC plus and they're doing their best to push the price up so how that will net out I don't know but that is one answer to the question you asked I think I saw Richard McGregor's hand up earlier Richard McGregor from the Lowy Institute thank you no matter what anyone says about Trump he did tap into something one of which appeared to be alienation from traditional U.S. foreign policy and bearing that in mind if it did come to a conflict over Taiwan now obviously it might depend on how it starts you know a Chinese invasion or Taiwanese to let declaration of independence or whatever what is the appetite do you think amongst the American people to support a conflict like that it's a great question and I think right now there's not a very easily discernible appetite because it hasn't been much of a topic of conversation so at CNES we did a Taiwan US-China Taiwan war game for NBC's Meet the Press this Sunday talk show which has been viewed now a couple million times and the big takeaway of this is just how destructive this thing could be I mean if you think that this is going to be a minor skirmish confined to the Taiwan Strait or in the western Pacific then you know you better think again and part of the reason we wanted to do this and part of the reason why NBC wanted to do this is because people in Washington talk about this stuff all the time people outside of Washington talk about it not very much at all so I think it's pretty hard to tell but we should talk about this as well without any sense of casualness about the implications of a US-China war this is not like fighting the Taliban or Saddam Hussein or something like that this would be destructive in ways that we haven't seen in a very very long time and so we have a very significant incentive to avoid that outcome in the first place but those popular sentiments are only now starting to kind of come together I think because we're running out of time I'm going to take a couple of questions and then hand them to Richard to answer together sir I'm just interested in the case for Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan why what what does an American think the logic behind that was good question we'll take this quote yes from this gentleman here framework you've talked a lot about the say late 40s United Nations Charter our own involvement with doc effort etc but from a Chinese point of view and I studied classical Chinese at ANU I think the Chinese concept is that you have say Emperor Qianlong who had domestic sensitive borders ever Tibet Mongolia what we now call Xinjiang Manchuria etc etc all these succeeding Chinese regimes essentially lay claim to that territory so whether it's Republic of China out of the Xinghai revolution through to 49 with the communists etc and then the intervention of the Korean war with the 7th Fleet etc etc etc the 1940s geographer who created the so-called nine-dash line they all see those boundaries as the legitimate inheritance of their country so therefore Taiwan is part of that country and was controlled as a province under Fujian under the late Qing and they lost it in 1895 against their their last naval battle they got their ass kicked basically from their point of view the rules based order is something that comes in that suits the western nations and they see that rules order being imposed upon them in the same way that you have a century of humiliation etc etc etc and basically the rules suit the western powers they don't recognize your question sir yeah they don't recognize the legitimate claim of the territory as they see it which includes Taiwan irrespective of whether you happen to be KMT general or a communist etc understood so is it a I think that's right order yeah but I mean there are a lot of historical claims out there of countries that have irredentist appetites for territories I mean if you start to allow countries to go after territories that are you know historically claimed then you're gonna have a lot of wars China says Taiwan is part yeah exactly so just on the Nancy Pelosi Nancy Pelosi has always been a pretty much a hardliner on China after Tiananmen Square massacre she went to Beijing and unfurled the banner on Tiananmen Square she's always been a huge proponent of human rights in China and a big proponent of Taiwan and Taiwanese democracy I think she thought that the republicans probably can take the house is probably less time she'll be speaker of the house and wanted to make this trip and we've got three branches of government and what was the net effect of that trip do you think well the net effect was for the Chinese to establish a sort of new normal in terms of their military exercises I mean they practice this blockade which they hadn't done before in that form and also in terms of their encroachment across the halfway point in terms of the air in the Taiwan Strait you know they've quintupled or something the amount of times they did this and so they used this to establish basically a new baseline of what they would be willing to do on a regular basis and so I mean I what it ended up being was a symbolic act of political support on the American side and the Chinese response was a fairly tangible set of changes to what it is doing around Taiwan Richard we're out of time I'm going to ask you the last question I guess when you return to the concept of the rules-based order given everything we've changed how confident are you that in in 50 years the order will look something like what it has looked like for the last 70 years how optimistic are you about its staying power I think the principles of the order territorial integrity of country sovereignty the freedom to have democratic rule and things like that I think those are going to stay in place and I think that they're that they will be upheld and defended and supported the specific rules themselves and the institutions around themselves around them should change in fact they should change a lot more probably than they have changed since 1945 because we still got a lot of the institutions and you see other things sort of popping up and that's entirely appropriate the specific rules and ways in which countries agree to interact and things those should adapt given circumstances and time but I'm optimistic that over the long run these principles that have made you know the period since 1945 better than the period before 1945 will remain ladies and gentlemen with peppered Richard with questions from all angles like like various high mars units he's come through with flying colors we've put him through put him through his paces this week more generally actually with my colleagues have taken him to a a blizzard of meetings but he's been good humid and intelligent and insightful throughout and I really appreciate you coming all this way to talk to us Richard and thank you for speaking to us about the rules-based order and taking questions on such a wide variety of things so ladies and gentlemen please thank Richard Fontaine thank you