 Tensions between China and Taiwan at an all-time high. We need to fly our planes in force through China's air defense zone. Our best opportunity to deter China is by arming Taiwan and arming ourselves now before they think about launching an invasion. So are you saying that the United States would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked? Yes, we have a commitment. Should the United States choose military force to deter China from invading Taiwan? That was the subject of this month's SOHO forum debate, which took place in front of a full house at the Sheen Center in downtown Manhattan. William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a policy advisor to President Bill Clinton, defended the resolution. He argued that the US should use all the tools at its disposal to deter foreign powers from engaging in conflict with their neighbors, with the ultimate goal of preventing an outright war, such as the one we are witnessing in Europe. Peter Van Buren, who spent 24 years working as a diplomat for the United States State Department, took the negative. He argued that Americans rarely have the context or understanding to intervene productively in foreign conflicts, and that more often than not, what looks like deterrence to one party looks like provocation to the other. The debate was moderated by SOHO forum director Gene Epstein. The resolution reads, the US should use its military power to deter China from invading Taiwan. Defending the resolution, William Galston. William, please come to the stage. Opposing the revolution, Peter Van Buren. Peter, please come to the stage. William Galston, you're going to take the podium, and you have 15 minutes to defend the resolution. Jane, please close the voting. Thank you. Well, it's great to be here. I already know that I'm not at the Apollo Theater. More, more, thank you. It catches up to you. For me, this is an away game. I am not now nor have I ever been a libertarian. On the other hand, I'm not a neoconservative either. I am not repeat not out to remake the world. And I'm not out to start any wars. The resolution is not about starting wars, it's about preventing them. And I think that is very important. Having said that, I have a hard job. My job is to persuade you to act now, or that the United States should act now, to prevent something that hasn't happened from happening. It's not the same thing as responding to something that has happened. For example, Ukraine. Ukraine is an example of what I'll call failed deterrence. Whatever we were doing, it did nothing to prevent a terrible war. And I think everybody can see what not preventing a war looks like. It's horrible. And the argument for doing what we can to prevent something horrible is it seems to me the moral core of the proposition before us. But we're not simply talking about morality. Let me give you a one minute history of the past 80 years. Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Hitler, who could have stayed out of it, at least with regard to the United States, immediately or quickly declares war on the United States, we have two enemies on the Eastern Front and the Western Front. The war ends, total triumph. Two years later, it becomes clear that we have one big enemy. And we spent the next four days confronting that one big enemy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, we had or thought we had no enemies at all. And now it is absolutely clear that we have two big enemies again. So we are facing the same situation that we faced 80 years ago, except we're not at war with them yet. So we have a situation we haven't faced in 80 years. How are we going to respond to it? How should we respond to it? Should we do what we did after World War One? Or should we do in a different way appropriate to our circumstances what we did after World War Two? I know what my choice is. I think the years after World War Two worked out a whole lot better than the years after World War One. And if we play our cards right, we can prevent World War Three. Let me tell you how I think about the proposition before us. I've noticed something about foreign policy. And that is, it makes sense to listen carefully to what leaders are saying. Vladimir Putin spent more than a decade telling the world that he didn't believe that Ukraine was a country. It had no right to exist. It was part of Greater Russia. It existed as the result of an historical accident. I remember how amazed I was when I sat down and actually read those speeches that Putin gave and then a very long article that he wrote just last July. He made his position absolutely clear. But nobody believed him. Indeed, when the US intelligence services in November of last year started telling anyone who would listen that Putin was winding up to wage war against Ukraine, we couldn't get anybody in Europe to believe us with the exception of the Ukrainians. And even the Ukrainians were a hard sell, and President Zelensky was in partial denial up until a very short period before the war. Now, why do I mention this? For a simple reason. It made sense to listen to what Hitler was saying. It made sense to listen to what Putin was saying, and it makes sense to listen to what Xi Jinping is saying. And he has made it absolutely clear that he intends to reunify China as he puts it, that is to say, amalgamate Taiwan into Greater China on his watch. Now, we don't know how long his watch is going to be now that he has made himself president for life, but he's not a young man. He's not getting any younger. And his speeches, which if I had time, I would quote to you, make it absolutely clear that yes, he would like Taiwan to fall into his hand the way a ripe apple falls from a tree, but he's not counting on that. And he is preparing his country for an unpeaceful reunification with China. That's not all he's preparing them for. He is preparing them for an era of naval dominance in the world. And he is preparing his people for the glorious moment when China replaces the United States as the world's dominant power and as the writer of the rules that the rest of the world must adhere to. So I'm sorry, how much time do I have left? Ten minutes? Good. So that raises the question that is now before us. Should the United States use its power to deter or to do its best to deter China from attacking Taiwan to prevent another terrible war like the one we are now seeing? And I think there are a number of reasons to say yes. One has to do with one of the fundamental principles of the post-war era, the principle of sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of countries, not to be changed by force but only through consent. The principle that is being violated every minute of every day and we can watch it being violated on television. Now, you may say, well, that's okay. Taiwan isn't really a country. Well, that's what Putin said about Ukraine. And he offered many of the same reasons that she does. But one of the core propositions that I am resting my case on is that certain groups of people and bodies of territory may not begin as countries, but they can become countries. Taiwan, I want to argue, has become a sovereign and independent country whose integrity and independence is worth defending if we can. I will also mention the fact that Taiwan, which began as an autocracy, has evolved into a democracy, a healthy, thriving, multi-party democracy. It hasn't always been that way, but it is definitely that way now. That also makes it worth defending if we can. There are concrete American interests at stake as well. Taiwan controls nearly 25% of the semiconductor production capacity of the world. And according to the Boston Consulting Group in a report issued in December, it is responsible for fully 92% of advanced chip manufacture in the world. It is a place, therefore, of enormous strategic significance. Semiconductor chips are the oil of the 21st century economy. And we've already seen what happens when those chips become scarce. Products that depend on chips can no longer be made in sufficient quantities, like automobiles, which now have between 500 and 1,000 semiconductor chips per car. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would in effect turn China into the OPEC of semiconductor chips. I would submit that is not in the national interest. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would, in addition, affect the calculus of our allies throughout Asia. Whether we like it or not, countries bend to the will of what they regard as the superior power in their region. And when that power shifts, countries that have been with us, a vital part of the American alliance throughout Asia for decades will suddenly find reasons not to be with us. Third and concretely, the well-being of an incredibly important ally and partner, namely Japan, is at stake. I will take a minute to read a portion of an analysis from the Chinese air command. And it says this, as soon as Taiwan is reunified with mainland China, Japan's maritime lines of communication will fall completely within the striking range of Chinese fighters and bombers. Our analysis shows that by using blockades, if we can reduce Japan's raw imports by 15 to 20%, it will be a heavy blow to Japan's economy. After imports have been reduced by 30%, Japan's economic activity and war-making potential will be basically destroyed. After imports have been reduced by 50%, its national economy and war-making capacity will collapse completely. Blockades can even create famine within the Japanese islands. All of those Chinese capacities and the ability to turn them into reality would be triggered by the loss of Taiwan. And if you don't believe what I'm saying, talk to any Japanese diplomat. That is their number one worry in the world stage. We should deter if we can, can we? Yes, we can in two ways. Number one, by executing what's known as the porcupine strategy to help Taiwan defend itself. The porcupine is not a particularly strong animal. It's certainly not a particularly fast animal, but it knows how to defend itself by making things very painful for any would-be aggressor. If we give Taiwan what we should have given the Ukrainians a long time ago, namely the capacity to defend themselves against bombers, against missiles, and against ships, particularly assault ships, that carry troops across the straits to land on Taiwan's beaches, we can probably allow Taiwan to protect itself much better against a potential Chinese assault than we can right now. Second, everything depends on the balance of naval forces between China and the United States. The United States has allowed its navy to wither at precisely the point when the Chinese have decided to become the world's greatest maritime power. That is not written in the stars. It is a policy choice, and I submit it is a policy choice that we can make. In conclusion, deterrence is costly and in some cases risky. However, the costs of not deterring armed conflict are even higher and the dangers are even greater. If we had helped Ukraine defend itself, if we had taken action to deter what is now happening before our very eyes, I submit to you the chances that it would be happening would have been greatly reduced. Why not use the same strategy for Taiwan? Thank you very much. No, I've spent my whole life listening to people talk about wars we weren't going to have, and then we had. I've listened my whole life in 24 years as a State Department diplomat, watching enemies disappear so that new enemies would come and take their place. I drank champagne on government time, on government salary when the wall came down and history ended, and then I found myself once again looking at a new department of anti-terrorism. I served a year in Iraq. I saw dead bodies in ditches that did not achieve the freedom we had promised them, and now I have to hear about another enemy that we're going to deter that's going to end up taking lives. No one in this room in their lives has spent more than a handful of years without the United States being at war somewhere or invading somewhere, or having a police action, or a military intervention, or helping the Contras, or helping the terrorists, or helping the anti-terrorists fill in the blanks. My life and your life has been one of continuous warfare in the United States, stretching from Central America throughout the Middle East. And now what do we want to do? We want to revisit Asia as if the war in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and parts of Thailand was not sufficient enough. What if the United States simply walked away and left Asia and other parts of the world alone? Would it really be any worse? The U.S. should not use its military power to deter China from invading Taiwan. It is unnecessary, and it's more likely to provoke a war than to stop one. In addition, porcupines are far too cute to use in that particular analogy. I would have gone with something like a Warthog on those lines. The current strategy of strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis Taiwan and China serves two very important goals, American goals, world goals. It keeps the peace, and it allows for a productive, trilateral, plus-plus relationship among China, Taiwan, the United States, and the other countries in Asia. And it's important always to conclude all of the participants. I was very enliven to hear that Nick is in favor of butts in Three Ways and Reason Magazine because this arrangement in Asia is not simply China and the United States or China and Taiwan. The United States is an active player, and we need to keep all three participants on the ground. As far as deterrence being unnecessary, I note that during the entire 73-year existence of Taiwan, the mainland has not invaded. Despite changes in leadership as dramatic as Mao to Deng Xiaoping to Xi, the mainland has not invaded. Despite Taiwan changing from a military dictatorship, well supported by the United States, by the way, to a democracy, the mainland has not invaded. Despite global changes, including the Korean and the Vietnam Wars, development of nuclear weapons by China the fall of the Soviet Union and Donald Trump, the mainland has not invaded. The U.S. posture has varied from garrisoning the island of Taiwan to strategic ambiguity, to sending special forces there, which are present currently, and the mainland has simply not invaded. The Chinese military has gone from peasants with rifles to the Blue Water Navy, Professor Galston is so enamored with, backed by ICBMs, and yet the mainland has not invaded. China has gone from the agrarian isolation of the cultural revolution to a fully integrated, if not in fact an essential part of the industrialized global economy, and the mainland has not invaded. Putin got away with most of what he was trying to do already in the Ukraine, and the mainland has not invaded. This is not going to change in our lifetimes, and there's really not much more to say. You're left with the question of what will cause all this to change, and my answer is not a whole lot. The ball keeps bouncing, history remains. I'll be at the bar. Thank you, have a, I have more time. You laugh. But in fact, a couple of important points here, and by the way, those of you who are interested in fact checking me, if you go to my website, which is wementwell.com, I have a text of what, rough text of what I'm doing tonight, and all of the facts that I'm listing are all linked there, and so you'll be able to fact check me in real time. Now, that business about leaving the world alone, deterrence is very much a funny word, because what looks like deterrence from one side, such as forward deploying an aircraft carrier, might indeed look like provocation from the other side. Do we have that slide, please? What looks like deterrence against American hemogenomy and Asia over flights might in fact look like provocation from the other side. You'll be reading or have read an awful lot about Chinese air incursions. So I thought I would come up with a map that showed you these air defense interdiction zones that you hear about being violated all the time. You'll notice that the yellow one that Taiwan has created for itself actually physically overlaps mainland China, and so that Chinese jets sitting on their own runways are in fact in violation of that. Be careful when you read the newspaper or the magazines and see something about provocation. Some of you are big fans, I'm sure, of disputed islands. I don't want to leave you out up there in the balcony, and for those of you that are fans of disputed islands, I'll point out that little blip in the green line. That's Japan's own area of air defense interdiction, and you notice it makes a little loop just to the east of Taiwan. That's a disputed island that we just don't want to talk about because it's the Taiwanese and the Japanese who are kind of fussing over that when we don't even want to get into the islands that are between Korea and Japan. So there's an awful lot of what we call provocation going on in East Asia. We only seem to want to talk about the Chinese side. There's also more importantly very little need for deterrence that many, including Professor Galston, advocate for this evening. The Chinese on both sides of the strait understand that there's much to be gained from economic ties and political ambiguity and a much greater risk in an invasion that would do little more than tidy up some of the leftovers of the Cold War from 1949. But let's talk about deterrence. That's what we're asking for here. Let's talk about what deterrence looks like when you view it through the lens of provocation. China has exactly four overseas bases. There's a small logistics operation in Djibouti, Africa, a listening post on the Great Cocoa Island, which by the way is not in the Bahamas. It's near Burma. A Navy outpost in Guadar, which is somewhere near Pakistan. And of course, a military outpost in, forgive my pronunciation, in Gordo Padaqshan Tajikistan. I'm sure a lot of people who consider themselves well informed on this subject would have a hard time naming more than one of those places. In contrast, throughout the world, the United States maintained 750 bases. A few less now that the Afghan adventure is over. But these include former facilities in eight different Asian nations, 50,000 troops in Japan, 24,000 in South Korea alone. The US maintained troops on Taiwan up until 1979 and currently has special forces there in what we euphemistically call training missions. That many of those military bases predate the People's Republic of China. And in fact, the fact that they were set up to deter, there's our word again in the porcupine strategy to deter the Soviet Union. And of course, the Soviet Union is gone, but the bases are still there, leaving open the question of what their purpose really, really is. As I said, be careful with language, the incursions into airspace, which many people have raised as red alerts, are actually simply a foundation of creative map making. There is no such thing as an air defense interdiction zone in international law or practice. It's simply something that you draw around yourself. For example, at the reception tonight, if you really think that I'm kind of a pain in the neck and you want to draw a distinction, you can put a zone around yourself and I will promise not to violate that. At various points in history, American bases overseas, including in Asian countries, have stored nuclear weapons and some may do so even today. Forward deployed US warships are believed to contain nuclear weapons. The Ohio class and soon Virginia class submarines off China's coasts, east with 20 ballistic missiles, almost certainly contain nuclear weapons. And no matter if those don't matter or aren't available, flights direct from the United States mainland only take a few hours. Pretend now you're from Mars and just visiting Soho and tell me which side seems provoking and which side seems deterring. The key element of strategic ambiguity which is enshrined in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act is in fact a better idea than the strategic clarity that I think Professor Galston and those who argue for more deterrence are talking about. The more specific your response is ahead of time, such as article five, the more your hands are tied. Remember deterrence did work in Ukraine for Russia. Stop the United States. Now let's talk about some reasons why Japan or sorry, China, sorry, wrong war. China is not intending to go. China has $188 billion worth of investment in the United States. The value of cross-strait trade between China and Taiwan, $149 billion. China is the second largest holder of foreign US bonds. They are literally betting the shop on this relationship holding up over the long run. There's an awful lot of money. Professor Galston mentioned rhetoric out of China, particularly some of President Xi's type of thing. And you know, the rhetoric from China has not changed from Mao until Xi. It essentially talks about the historic inevitability of a single China. And in China, when you talk with the Chinese diplomats, and I've been assigned to both China, big China we used to call it, Hong Kong and also in Taiwan, you hear it from Chinese diplomats all the time. We deal in hundreds of years, thousands of years, and inevitably they're going to throw a four character phrase at you that you won't understand. That means it's going to be a long time till this all happens. Particularly the rhetoric that Professor Galston referred to, and I probably read it in English, which has a different spin to it oftentimes, is often coming in the political season, which takes place in October. There's a whole series of political holidays. The founding of the PRC takes place on October 1st. Taiwan celebrates its national day on October 10th, and both countries celebrate the 1911 Xi Hai Revolution rebellion there, which set off the process that created both China's ultimately. And this is always a great time for rhetoric. And so keep in mind when you're looking at a piece of rhetoric and you're decided you might want to get scared reading it, see if it didn't come from one of these October events. And if it did, turn the dial from 11 down to a comfortable six and participate, as our comedian said in some of those more exotic COVID cures. The goal here, that's the only thing that gets us gets us a cheer out of people. Philosophically, Chinese leaders have for thousands of years believed in historical cycles. They waited close to 300 years to end the foreign Qing dynasty. They waited out Britain for hundreds of years for the peaceful return of Hong Kong. Such things come up in conversation with their diplomats all the times, often as you talk about weather. The Chinese are patient people and they believe in historical cycles. I don't think any of us will ever live to see a united China, but I can guarantee you none of us will ever live to see a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. I have to end with a quote from Sun Tzu. One waits to win. Thank you. Bill Dawson, five minutes for your bottle. You can take the podium if you want or your choice. Take it from the podium, shot. Sounds good, yeah. Well, I had a lot thrown at me, so let me throw some of it back. First of all, I was careful in what I said, but also in what I did not say. And I did not once, to the best of my knowledge, invoke violation of Taiwan's airspace as a piece of evidence to prove anything. Nor, I note for the record, did I call for an explicit end to the policy of strategic ambiguity. Strategic ambiguity can be part of a deterrence strategy. And I think in that context it has much to commend it. So let us dispose as not germane to this particular debate, those two allegations. Now, then there are issues of logic. Consider the proposition mainland China has not invaded Taiwan, and therefore it won't. That is not exactly a syllogism. I think we can both agree, right? Because an equally valid syllogism would be as late as February of this year. Russia hasn't invaded Ukraine, and therefore it won't. That would have been a fine argument in February, at least it wasn't obviously false, but it's obviously false now. That brings us, I think, to the nub of the matter. And that is that the two of us don't even have a factual dispute. We have a predictive dispute. You don't believe that China will ever invade Taiwan, at least not in our lifetime, if I understood you correctly. And I believe something different. I believe something different based, in part, not just on what the political leaders are saying in some octobers. It's not every october. Some octobers, and particularly in years divided by five. I am also taking into account Chinese military documents, and I must add my frequent contacts with Chinese officials, whose tone on this question has changed very fundamentally in just the past five years. This is not, if I can vary the Asian analogy to slightly, this is not Kabuki theater. There has been a huge change in China. Which students of China have chronicled, particularly since Xi Jinping came to power. Chinese diplomacy has been more aggressive. Chinese aims have become more explicit, more firmly stated. And there has been an enormous military buildup in China. How much more time do I have, Jane? I'm sorry, one minute. Thank you. And I would ask you the following question. If we had helped Ukraine defend itself, and it turned out 200 years later that Russia never had any attention to attacking Ukraine, okay, we were frighted with false fire, as Shakespeare said. If we help Taiwan defend itself, and also help defend freedom of the seas with a stronger navy, I think the harm done is modest compared to the harm prevented if the prediction that underlies my side of the case turns out to be true. Thank you. I apologize about the defense zones. I brought that up only because it's a very common theme in most of the things that people are reading. So please accept my apology on that. Taiwan is not the Ukraine, and you can't simply pick that out and so draw analogies only because the Ukraine invasion happened to happen at the same time we're holding this forum. If the Ukrainian invasion did not happen, we wouldn't be talking about the Ukraine because that situation in Russia has nothing in common with what's going on in East Asia. Those of you who come to reception, I'll be happy to trap you in a corner and explain that at great, great length. The why now problem is I think where this all comes down to because we're left with this idea that the professor stated there about this predictive part of it, and you know the only point of studying history is for its predictive value, the lessons that you learned there, but you're left with that question of well, why now, why would China invade right now? Would they do that because they're simply far too much money being passed back and forth across the Taiwan Straits? Would they do that right now because they just are really, really tired of the 2.68 million visits a year that occur between Taiwan and China? Would they do it right now, the invasion, because there are 25,000 mainland students studying on Taiwan right now? Would they do it because there are nine airlines flying non-stop flights between Taiwan and the mainland, and they're not flying just from Taipei to Beijing, they're flying from smaller cities in Taiwan to even smaller cities because of the enormous number of family visits that are taking place? Would they do it because President Xi would like to risk his entire government, in fact the entire political structure of mainland China on an amphibious invasion of Taiwan, arguably the most difficult military operation that anyone could undertake? Why now? I was in Taiwan in 1989 when we asked the why now question. Taiwan was emerging as a democracy, and there was a Taiwan Independence Party looking to take some seats in the legislature, and as I'm sure you're all aware, declaring independence formally is one of those red lines in the Taiwan Strait area, and many of us at the American Institute in Taiwan are pretend embassy there were fearful that the result of this independence party taking seats in the legislature might be that invasion that some have predicted. We waited, we worried, we put some food away, and what happened was that the marketplaces started flooding with goods from the mainland. The invasion was certainly there, but it was economic, not military. The number of reasons that China would not invade Taiwan is so voluminous that it's very, very difficult to imagine any one reason why they would. If all you can point to is President Aline in President Xi's speech, by the way he said in his lifetime they would begin the process of unification or something along those lines. It was far from definitive because this is not a situation where you make definitive statements, and that's why strategic ambiguity, the way that the United States should step back and allow the two Chinas to continue their commerce, their social, their intellectual interactions is something that has worked, that something will continue to work, and I stand here with great confidence predicting that none of us will ever see fisticuffs across the Taiwan Strait. Thank you. Thank you to the two debaters. We now get to the Q&A part of the evening. I take it we have microphones on the side, and I trust we have microphones on the balcony, yes, so that people in the balcony can ask questions as well, but I'm going to begin by taking moderators prerogative to ask a couple of questions of the debaters, but even before I do that I'd like to invite them to ask each other a question. You can exercise that option at any time. Would either you like to ask the other a question or would you like to wave that and wait for audience questions to materialize? Bill, you want to wait or you want to? I think the audience is good. Yeah, good, yeah, make sure you have the microphone. Okay, wait for the audience. Pete, do you want to ask a question? I think the audience has been very patient, and I here I abandon my question asking prerogative for now. Not necessarily for now. Yes, very good. We're not going to go a little smithier on each other, but for now. You can abandon that abandonment at any time, Bill, if you feel that you should. I want to ask a couple of questions just to rile you guys up. I believe, Peter Van Buren, that I heard you state at the outset a rather radical position that you would be willing to defend, not just this, what did you call it, simulate, forgive me, strategic ambiguity, but as a way of pursuing policy, but that you would just as soon see the U.S. completely pivot out of Asia. And do you think that would be even a better solution? Well, I have to begin by saying it's actually an impossible thing. It's saying porcupines are going to fly. It's simply not going to happen. And so I offer it more as a rhetorical reason. Would you have said in 1986 that the Soviet Union is not going to fall? Don't be ridiculous. Would you have said that in 1986? I was in junior high school. Okay. Then I waved the question, but a lot of people were saying in 1986, the idea that the Soviet Union would collapse is ridiculous. In 1850, the end of slavery, don't be silly. But that aside, could you just answer the questions to whether it's possible? I would say without hesitation is that less is more, that the United States interventions overseas, and we're getting off the topic here, but this includes Taiwan. The United States interventions have caused far more harm than good, literal harm in terms of bodies piled up here and there, but also political harm. We've mucked around in places and caused trouble. I think Taiwan and China are both extremely skillful diplomats. I think they know what their interests are. I think they know where their soft spots are. And I think the more that we stand back and allow them to conduct their relations with one another without us necessarily leaning over everyone's shoulder, while standing back, if somebody needs to ask us a question, I think would be a more productive policy in the long run. Even including withdrawal from Japan, from Korea, getting out of Asia all together. Well, again, I mean, those are just simply impossible things. And I think the other thing to keep in mind is that the forces in Japan and Korea are there for other reasons. The debate on North Korea, I think, would go a different way. Okay. I think, guys, do you want to comment on that, Bill? Do you want to make sure you have your microphone built in your hand? Do you want to comment on that answer, or do you want to wave comment? I can either wave comment or get into a very long discussion comparing the results of America's getting involved to the results of America's not getting involved, which is why I mentioned the World War I aftermath versus the World War II aftermath. I would submit that staying out of world affairs between World War I and World War II was a disaster for the world. And it allowed a situation to develop in which the United States was dragged into a war that it did not choose. Looks like you want to make a comment. Do you want to take that argument into the multiple Iraq wars as well? Boy, let the record show, because it does, that I was an early fervent opponent of the war in Iraq. But the fact that one war is bad, or two wars, or three wars, does not prove, okay, yes, I know the litany as well as you do, and therefore all wars are bad. Is that the... All the weights that the scales seem to be pretty heavy on one side here, which are the good ones? I would take, I think that what the United States did in World War II more than outweighs all of the failed wars that you've just talked about. No, no, man, I stopped saving private Ryan like 17 times. But after World War II, which interventions are the good ones? We prevented a lot of bad things. We prevented a Soviet takeover of Europe. I think that was a pretty good thing to do. I am not arguing for a policy of war. I'm arguing for a policy of deterrents, which is exactly the strategy that we used for 40 years. And it was a damn good thing that we did. Okay, a question, just please phrase your question as a question. Don't have to identify yourself. And say to whom you're addressing the question, if anybody. I'd like to address this to both our debaters. Yeah. Should the... Close to the microphone as you can, please. Okay. Should the United States and its allies with Taiwan's concurrence recognize the existence of Taiwan, or should we continue to pretend it doesn't exist? Should we recognize the existence of Taiwan? Do you want to take that, Peter? Yeah. We should not formally recognize the existence of Taiwan simply because it is a stated red line. And the advantages of crossing that red line are so overwhelmingly wiped out by the disadvantages of crossing that red line. It's important to note that we treat Taiwan as a country in nearly every sense of that word absent calling it a country. It's one of those situations where the benefits so outweigh the other side that I can't responsibly say we should recognize Taiwan. Do you want to comment, Phil? As it happens, I agree with that answer completely. Okay. We're getting agreement. We don't... We want debate. We don't want agreement. Next question. I have a question to William. We have seen in the Ukraine that trying to take over another country could lead to the situation where Russia could plant a flag on a huge pile of rubble and everything else will be gone. With that experience, is the risk higher or lower that China will take on Taiwan? That serves a very good question. And the honest answer to your question is, I don't know, but let me make a broader point where I do think I have some evidence on my side. It is a frequent argument against the prediction that war will break out, that it is economically irrational for a war to break out. History demonstrates that that is not a good argument empirically. It was a very popular argument during the Edwardian period, the decade before World War I. As a matter of fact, a man by the name of Norman Angel wrote a book for which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, making the argument that there would be no war in Europe because it is economically irrational for a war in Europe to break out. Almost all wars are economically irrational, but somehow they keep on breaking out. So permit me to doubt the fact. Look, I think that it would be profoundly irrational for many economic and diplomatic standpoints for China to use force to seize Taiwan and reintegrate it with the mainland. Does that lead me to believe that China would not do that? No, it does not for the aforestated reason. Can you comment from you, Peter? If the only thing I had on the table here was economics, I would probably have to lean a little further towards Professor's answer. But in fact, there are so many different reasons why China and Taiwan would not go to war. And I would stress that one of them that is so important and is very, very difficult to understand is that these are people that see themselves as the same people. There is no inherent animosity about those guys over there who are different than us. Taiwan is mostly Han Chinese. They speak the same language. They share the same history up until 1949. They see the world in the same way. They eat the same foods. They look at things in the same way. And there's those 2.68 million family visits across the straits. And so if it was simply economics, France and Germany, I think there's more to the argument. But in the case of China and Taiwan, it's so much richer that I have to say that the economic argument, while important, is just part of a much bigger and richer picture. Next question. This is to William Gostin. The main American interest I heard was an economic one, that its micro-trip production capacity is the OPEC of the 21st century. But just as America has become a more dominant force in the oil market, what is stopping us from being a more dominant force in micro-trips? And secondly, we trust China with many supply chains that we depend on. And we haven't pursued interventions to prevent it. Why this one? Why now? Good question. First, we have become, I have noticed, a lot less trusting of supply chains, including mainland China, than we were, for example, before the pandemic. We discovered in the pandemic that we were highly dependent on China for even the basic medical supplies that we needed, although Reason Magazine clearly doesn't agree with me on this point, to try to reduce the severity of the pandemic, like masks, for example. I know they're not popular, particularly in this room, but if we were having another debate, I think I would try to persuade you that there was and continues to be in some circumstances merit to mask rating. Here is the problem. It is a lot easier to move production of goods such as masks and other basic medical materials than it is to quickly change microchip production. And since Peter had a slide, I have a visual. Okay. And it is a visual from the business section of today's New York Times, entitled, The Huge Endeavor to Produce a Tiny Microchip. And it is followed by a very, very lucid explanation, covering these two pages as to the extraordinary investment of money and time that it would take to shift the production chain of Taiwan in the area of microchips to the United States. We're not talking about a year or two years or three years. And if you don't believe me, listen to the president of Intel Corporation, who has given very detailed remarks on the extraordinary difficulty of replicating in the United States. As a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, a lot of the best technology in this area has gravitated to Taiwan. And if the Chinese were to take it over, obviously, I think the pace of technological advance would slow, but it would still be a huge shift. It would be like the equivalent of another country invading Texas and taking over its oil supply. It would be a real game changer. You made one other remark that suggests that I may not have been sufficiently clear in my opening remarks. The economics of the situation is very important, but that's not the only thing that's important. There are countries throughout Asia that depend on the United States for their independence and security. Starting with South Korea, but also including Japan, I quoted from a Chinese military manual on the way they're thinking about Taiwan in relation to Japan. And guess what? The Japanese are thinking about the relationship between Taiwan and Japan in exactly the same way, which is why they are scared, expletive deleted of the possibility that China would mount an aggressive war against Taiwan. So there are economic reasons, there are diplomatic reasons, and there are military slash strategic reasons for caring about the future of Taiwan. Thank you. Comment, Peter? Just on Japan, I want to clarify that whereas once it was very obvious that the United States was Japan's protector, that really is less and less the case all the time. First of all, Japan is one of several threshold nuclear countries in Asia, South Korea, Taiwan as well, that have the technology, have the ability to develop nuclear weapons fairly quickly if they wanted to do that. Japan also has been aggressively enlarging its blue water navy. They have several aircraft carriers right now. They're buying the F-35 from the United States. They're pretty well ready to take care of themselves. That said, Professor Galston and I do agree on South Korea and North Korea. That would be a very dull debate because I think we'd find ourselves strictly in agreement. Lastly, on the idea of conductors, semi-conductors and things like that, I think you could ask the Arab nations very quickly if you could eat an iPhone because that would be ultimately what would happen in China. If somebody has to produce these things, somebody would. Next question. Thank you both for being here. Appreciate the civil debate and I have a question that's directed to both of you. I know you've obviously stated that you consider this extremely unlikely but I still think it's hard to say that it's totally impossible but if China were to invade Taiwan, let's say including an amphibious invasion, should the U.S. go to war with China in order to defend Taiwan? I think the question is addressed to you, Peter, and Bill should follow up. Answer the question, Peter. So you're talking about we just we interrupt this this debate to tell us that there's a shooting war now in between Taiwan and China. That's a tough one because at that point my prediction has been proven wrong and so I mean I have to concede that that we probably should have gone with those porcupines. Can we vote right now? Let me answer it in a completely disingenuous way which is to say that I think Taiwan is in a pretty good position to defend itself. Taiwan currently the United States by the way is one of the provisions of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act which established this bizarro world that exists between the United States and Taiwan is that the United States must sell weapons to Taiwan and Taiwan fields the F-16 they're probably going to be looking to buy the F-35 if we can make that happen if they can make that happen through Congress and those of you who feel the Israeli lobby is strong wait until I figure out what the Taiwan lobbyists are capable of. They also have currently have the harpoon missile which has a 60 the basic 60 mile radius meaning that they could hit the the Chinese ships almost as they're leaving harbor the Taiwan people are also developing their own anti ship missile that will have a range of well over 100 miles which means they can launch the missile from the other side of the island and hit the Chinese ships in port. An invasion something like this is so improbable if you're talking about the estimates and I'm quoting from the the Pentagon's annual China military power report talking about something like 10 times the number of men who were landed at Normandy would be needed here here looking at such an improbable situation that I'm not going to answer your question any further Joe you want to comment if if this event were to occur it would probably be too late to do anything about it which is why I am so interested in the strategy of deterrence I want to say for the fifth time yet I am what I'm talking about tonight is not war it's war prevention uh and we have to acknowledge the fact that China has some some strategic advantages in the region that the United States despite its best efforts cannot replicate as every military strategist going back for thousands of years will tell you geography matters and you know the the problems of American force projection you know across thousands of miles uh dwarf the sorts of difficulties that the Chinese would have and so deciding to go to war is not it can be in part a moral question but it's also a very practical question of but going to war when you start out at a systemic disadvantage is something that is pretty hard to justify it would it would depend on the facts of the case but I'm tempted to end where I began that is if war were to break out tonight it would be much too late to do anything about it unless and I'm not recommending this unless we're willing to go all the way up the escalation ladder yes I am not willing to do that in the same way that I am not willing to go up the escalation ladder with with regard to Ukraine uh and if Vladimir Putin is serious I hope to God he isn't you know about rattling the nuclear saber uh then he has what the experts call threat dominance that is he's willing to do something the other side namely us isn't and therefore he wins in the long run next question hi hi my questions hi my questions mostly for William and but Peter if you want a comment I'd be interested to hear your comment too we hear a lot about deterring China but I'm also curious how much we need to deter Taiwan from declaring independence and if something like um getting serious about giving Taiwan really strong defense capabilities would make it more likely for them to declare independence because they might think they could fight off a Chinese invasion and what the risks are there Bill he wants you to answer first so go ahead Bill Galston uh now I do not want to contradict myself and therefore I will not say that it's that because it would be irrational for the Taiwanese to declare independence therefore they never would they might but my interpretation of the past three decades of political history in Taiwan is that they've come to understand pretty well the downside of declaring independence and the upside of preserving this somewhat ambiguous diplomatic and international status I suspect that if the Taiwanese declared independence it would be over American protests I bet on that which is not the way you want to take a step that the other side namely China will regard as something between a provocation and the crossing of a red line that justifies a military response I absolutely agree when I was in in Taiwan AIT we practiced what we called among ourselves rhetoric management to make sure that the words that were coming out of our colleagues on the Taiwan side were not inching closer and closer to these red lines and I think every politician every media person in Taiwan understands that speaking openly of independence would be the equivalent of I don't know the president of the United States using the N word on on on TV it is just that level of understanding that I don't think you'll ever see that happen next question in recent events I think if you think of China you think of Hong Kong and the suppression there and also the treatment of the Uyghurs internally that might just be availability bias but I would ask each of you do those events in recent history change how you think about this issue or the likelihood that they would indeed China is not a democracy nobody's pretending that that it is I cut off my great ponytail a long time ago China will exercise its power in Hong Kong the same way it exercises it in Shanghai or in Tiananmen Square and so the things you're talking about are not surprising at all to say though that somehow that leads to an invasion of Taiwan with all the consequences we've talked about I don't see that connection happen I know there is something of a disagreement on stage about the weight to be placed on statements by President Xi but in a speech that he gave last year before certain unfortunate events in Hong Kong he said that if there were a reunification of Taiwan and the mainland it would be under the principle of one nation two systems I believe we've heard that before and I do think that at the very least what has happened in Hong Kong is relevant to the question of how seriously we should take that sort of promise which in my judgment is not at all the Chinese Communist Party is not prepared to tolerate any alternative to itself and we shouldn't fool ourselves about that oh come in questions for Professor Galston you advocate for preemptively arming Taiwan as a means to potentially deter however it seems to me in the wake of Ukraine war US and NATO has already sent the signal to strong men that in the States we will step up provide arms for sanctions so given that why another very good question I have to commend the SOHO forum you know I can assure you I am the sole democrat writing a weekly column for the wall street journal and I just wish my incoming from that gig were anything like the quality of the questions tonight I really do so also agreed yeah uh you've given one plausible interpretation of recent events it's not an interpretation that I share or that is widely shared I think the signal the signal we sent was that we weren't prepared to do what was necessary you know to try you know to do everything we could to deter the Russian invasion before it came we had a lot of warning right we had events in Georgia we had the seizure of Crimea Crimea we had the famous little green men invasion of the Donbas and we did next to nothing in response and I think that Mr. Putin drew some conclusions from that that you know that may have encouraged him to do what he did it is also the case that until time was very short we did something to help the Ukrainians defend themselves but much less than we now have to do because we're racing to catch up after the fact because we didn't do what we should have done a long time ago and really give them a credible defense deterrent which they lacked and they've done amazingly well given what they had to work with but imagine how much better they will be able to do if they had prepositioned military stockpiles which we could have given them comment from you Peter okay yeah next question I agree with Peter that it's absolutely impossible to invade the Taiwan by ambition by amphibious assault now most of us are aware of what's going on in China they're having a housing bubble that's going to burst ever grand 300 billion dollars in debt they're going to default high-speed transit completely overbuilt their show projects they're losing 400 million 400 billion excuse me rumored by each every day they're also defaulting 300 million people are unemployed that's like the entire united states are employed and they have these crazy zero covid lockdowns and Shanghai people are protesting and and and even riding it's a good thing ccp has strict gun control laws now given these concerns can i ally your fear that Xi Jinping is only having political theater with his religion talks besides he's also getting of being voted in a near sometimes there's a question in the sr yes you can i can i ally your fears for this for this knowledge oh yes i think those are good points okay yeah well okay thank you and i uh bill you want to comment or you want uh i guess this will count as a point of disagreement uh because you did not you did not allay my fears uh among other things dictators who have problems at home frequently turn to oversee oversee events and adventures in order to change the subject and to rally the rally the population and so the fact that the chinese may and i underscore may be running into economic difficulty although i can tell you economists are disagreeing on that score uh i think is not a not a reason to discount the possibility of military adventurism i would only suggest that committing economic suicide over an invasion of taiwan is a very poor answer to economic problems at home well uh i didn't i didn't say it was an answer to the economic problems i said that it could be part of an answer political answer to the political problems that flow from economic problems that would exclude the fact that it would cause economic a version of economic suicide number one and number two it assumes that the excursion into taiwan works that the chinese pla is not defeated on the beaches that she is able to retain power after a failed invasion so i think it's just too risky now okay okay even strike west is a difference okay i i'm i'm afraid we're out of time for the questions uh both gentlemen will be coming to the party afterwards so you can call them then we we want to go to the summation portion of the evening uh thanks for all your very good questions bill gallston you have five minutes to summarize do you want to take the podium to summarize if you want to do it from there i can i can do it from here i can do it from here i think that will save a little bit of time quiet yeah i just i i'm not going to take five minutes because i think the principal lines of disagreement have become quite clear uh i want to stress now for the sixth time uh that the proposition on the table is not about starting the war starting the war it's about preventing one that's what deterrence means and deterrence doesn't mean certainty what it means is planting uh what it means is planting a doubt in the minds of potential aggressor of sufficient magnitude to influence that aggressor's potential aggressor's judgment that is the kind of deterrence that i'm talking about i am not talking about a radical change in american policy such as the abandonment of the policy of strategic ambiguity uh i am however arguing that what may very well be economically irrational could have a political rationale sufficiently weighty to override the economic downside which could be a temporary economic downside or potentially a more than temporary or should i say more than transitory uh economic downside i believe that we can do this uh at a relatively modest cost not nothing but it would represent an investment in maintaining peace that would be much much smaller than the costs of failing to maintain the peace unless you believe that the united states should simply retreat from the alliances in asia that we have created since since the end of the second world war and tell our erstwhile friends that they are now on their own i know that may be attractive in principle to some people of a libertarian caste of mind i think in practice you would not like the world that that act or anything like it would create i realize that that principle is not on the table but i suspect the idea that it's always presumptively unreasonable for the united states to take a forward leaning position in the world is part of the mindset of many of the people who have already cast one vote and we're about to cast a second one and i'd ask you to interrogate that proposition to ask yourself in reality is it always the case that creating alliances including alliances we are whether we where we are bound either legally or morally to come to the aid of other nations is necessarily a bad thing all things considered my answer to that proposition is no it isn't i think the world today is better because of some fundamental decisions that the united states made in the wake of world war two that we were not going to do what we did after world war one namely say okay the war's over let us come home lock stock and barrel and yes we'll be active in the diplomatic sphere but we will send a signal to the rest of the world that you're on its own and if there's some big bad guys you're going to have to do the best you can without us i do not think that that is a strategy that will make for a better or a more peaceful world all things considered i have a minute left but i think i have said what i have to say and so i yield back the balance of my time okay thank you would you like to take the podium uh peter i'll just okay okay an invasion of taiwan would leave china politically isolated economically damaged reputationally crippled and ironically if the attack fails it would probably bring down the shi government if not the entire government of the prc and ironically clear the way for taiwan to declare its independence there is simply no risk-gain calculation that says china will attack taiwan and therefore no need to risk the idea of whatever we consider deterrent slipping over into provocation my great fear is that there are people in the united states and this is not including professor gallstone who's given a very rational argument but people in the united states now that are trying to prepare the way for a bench clearing eagle versus dragon situation if not for the kinetics of it but simply to incur an arms race that will profit people and through that i fear that even rational arguments for deterrence as we've heard tonight um are feeding the fire that will ultimately risk our conclusions in asia that we don't dare think of i yield the rest of my time to either questions or to wrap up the presentation okay they both yield their time and it's time to reopen the voting jane uh yes no or undecided on the resolution the u.s should use its military power to deter china from invading taiwan the the uh the resolution uh yes china should out uh should use its military power to deter china from from invading taiwan it picked up 17 percent of the vote you went from yes 25 percent to 42 percent uh bill so that's 17 percent pick up in the vote that's the number to be uh uh peter you picked up votes but not quite as many went from 40 to 41 percent so uh the resolution carries bill uh galston carries the day and here is your uh uh your your that that was a tissue well congratulations to you both