Elbridge Colby’s lecture at Christianity & National Security 2023, where he discusses China, realist foreign policy goals, and the just war tradition. The following is a transcript of the lecture.

Mark Tooley: Daryl Charles will be here for the rest of the conference today and tomorrow and is staying here in the Army Navy Club, so you can have access to him for the next 24 hours if you have any more questions or comments for him. Our next speaker, Elbridge Colby, a leading spokesman and expert in terms of the challenge the U.S. faces from China. He was a senior official in the Department of Defense, wrote a very important book last year on this topic, leads a group called the Marathon Initiative, and I always mention when introducing him I had the honor of meeting and hosting his grandfather about thirty years ago to speak to my church group. His grandfather was William Colby, director of the CIA and a great figure in intelligence in World War II and during the Cold War. So his grandson continues in that tradition. So Elbridge, thank you so much for joining us.

Elbridge Colby: Well, thank you so much, Mark. Thank you, and thanks. It’s great to be with you again this year. It’s really a pleasure in this important conference and on a very important topic of the Christian tradition or the Christian belief and how it’s squared in the world of geopolitics and war and peace. I think we’re here, I mean… I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that we are in something like a world crisis. To use the Churchill phrase, it’s always dangerous to presume to use phrases of Winston Churchill for multiple reasons, but I think it’s not an exaggeration. The possibility after a war has broken out and has been going on in Europe, the largest war in Europe since the Second World War has been going on for about 20/21 months. And now there’s a potential for a war expanding in the Middle East.

Obviously, the Israelis have been atrociously and brutally attacked by Hamas earlier this month, and now we’re preparing what looks like a ground invasion into Gaza, but the potential for that war to expand to include other players like Iran, Hezbollah, and potentially, God forbid, the United States itself, and then most significantly the potential for a conflict between the United States and China I think has only deepened. If you’re China and you’re looking at the situation now, the United States is already depleted. A lot of money stockpiles and political capital and so forth in Ukraine over the last 19 months, and now, or 20 months, and now has the potential to be drawn into a Middle East configuration. That’s a very propitious opportunity for Beijing. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but they are clearly preparing for a large-scale war against the United States. They have made clear that they are willing to use force to resolve the Taiwan issue, and I think more broadly, Assistant Secretary of Defense Eli Ratner said the other day that their ambition is to eject the United States from the Asia-Pacific region, and if that happened, that would have a profound and even catastrophic impact on our daily lives here, our freedoms, and our prosperities. So in this context, I mean thinking about it as a Christian, how do we think about this?

I wrote a piece in First Things last year called “The Morality of A Strategy of Denial.” Mark was very kindly mentioned my book A Strategy of Denial, which is much more of a pure work of strategy, although it has an implicit morality to it. But I build out that moral framework in the article called “The Morality of a Strategy of Denial,” which is a defense of basically just war in the context of the strategic problems that we face today, which are very acute and unfortunately, as a Roman Catholic, I have to say this issue is of whether just war is a licit and a relevant framework has been elevated by his Holiness the Pope repeatedly, who’s pushed back against it, but I have argued consistently that just war remains the best framework, and of course, it’s not a perfect moral framework, and as I think was being said here earlier, it doesn’t give clear and easy solutions. But that’s true in any difficult moral situation, obviously.

And I think the morality of the strategy of denial is basically one of, I think the way I put it, using, actually forget the exact Bible, or Bible passage, but it’s basically the Gospel parable of the steward, which is a model of stewardship. I would differentiate it from pure consequentialism, which does not weigh everything is calculated, but I think, basically, if you have the model of the steward in mind, the moral judgment of a statesman or statecraft is not the purity of intent or the sort of admirability, if you will, of the aspiration.

So when George W. Bush said he wanted to end tyranny in the world, the aspiration has an element of, although it has a Pelagian kind of vibe to it, but anyway, as an expression of will, it has an admirable quality too. It’s a good thing to want, but of course, if you measure it by the logic of stewardship, which is that of reasonably anticipatable consequences seeking to end evil, I was referred to as a dreamer, by David, from which I thought was pretty ironic since the guy wrote a book called an “End to Evil in the World,” which I was like, well, that as long as human beings are fallen.

I think evil will be around. I think that’s a pretty reasonable assessment. But I think that’s the point, is that especially in this era, I mean, if you looked at the President’s comments the other night, I don’t question well. I have very strong disagreements with the President, but I don’t question his intentions to have a world that’s stable in which there is peace and which people are treated fairly. That’s not my question. That’s not my question at all.

My question is that I think that the policies that he is pursuing in his administration, or pursuing can reasonably be judged. Not to be that they will not succeed in that goal, and that is the measure, essentially a kind of a fiduciary measure, a trustee, that we should judge our statecraft by. And if that’s the case, then you have to reckon with the fact as I think Pope Benedict did, that sometimes war is necessary.

Pope Benedict himself, I think it was on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, he gave remarks when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, to the effect that D-Day itself shows a pure form of pacifism is unstainable, right? Because, for obvious reasons, and I actually took it a little further after he passed away, I pointed out that, given the fact that the Soviet Union was so central, in a sense did most of the fighting in the defeat of Nazi Germany, that actually carries even further that the Soviet Union was genuinely an evil empire. That’s a real heavy, heavy stuff.

But I think as long as Christians are going to be engaged in speaking seriously about statecraft, that is the only kind of plausible way of looking at it. Obviously, when Christians were in the sort of primitive environment, and were not in any way close to political authority, and many of them believe the world was about to end, it seems, they didn’t need to have this kind of situation but as I took a little time to kind of point out the many times the Christians have relied on military force to protect the Christendom or the Church or whatever.

Going back to the Huns or the Arab invasions in the 7th Century and so forth and up until the Soviets and the Nazis in the last century. And so I think that’s basically the right way to look about it, if that’s the way, then I think the way to think about how we should think about our foreign policy from a just war point of view is what is a legitimate goal? And are our actions in pursuit of that goal?

You both need to have the goal be itself legitimate. One, you could pursue an evil goal rationally and proportionately, but would still be evil. Vice versa. You could pursue a legitimate goal in a way that is irrational and disproportionate and is itself an evil act. It’s sort of evil in say, and then evil in the way, it’s jus in bello and jus ad bello. Basically, or jus in bello and jus ad bello. So, I think those, and by that standard my view is that the strategy of denial that I advocate for is the most consistent, because it has a more it is a sub reasonably and efficiently high aspiration to be, ensure the just goals of the American people: our freedom, our security, and our prosperity. But it’s not so high that it basically consumes everybody else’s legitimate goals.

So, if you’re thinking in the just war framework or the natural law kind of framework, you have to recognize the legitimate goods of others, and so, protecting our own security, freedom, and prosperity does not necessarily in any way require that others suffer. That may be instrumentally necessary under certain circumstances. But it’s not the same thing as saying, ‘Well, I’m Genghis Khan, my only way of satisfying my good is to have womenfolk driven before me and hear their cries and lamentations,’ right? That’s a bad goal.

So, I think, my goal is good. I think it’s better than George W. Bush’s goal of saying we’re going to end terrorism in the world, because I think that is an unreasonably high goal, but I also think that if you set the goal too low, you say, ‘well, all we want is physical survival.’ That’s not high enough. Some people might say, ‘well, it’s not worth fighting for our freedom and it’s not worth fighting for economic security and prosperity.’

I don’t think that’s fair either. And then, if that’s the case, then we need to have a strategy that’s rationally and proportionately linked to that, and I think that’s what the strategy of denial does, which is based on a balance of power? So, it’s not domineering. It’s a reasonable conception. And then the use of military force is tailored to that conception, and actually the application of military force.

And there may be situations in which a high degree of violence, and it could be quite lethal for our opponents and, God forbid, ourselves, but it’s rationally correlated to that goal: the restoration of a balance of power or the sustainment of a balance of power through an anti-hegemonic coalition. And basically guided by the line. From Clausewitz who in some ways is actually a very moral thinker, who said that the political object should always be present in the military conception. That you should… it should never become divorced, because then you can pursue things without… Not everything in our history necessarily stands up to scrutiny.

I do think, for instance, the atomic bombs do… The bombing campaigns maybe not in every particular, I think… The campaigns of the federal army in the latter part of the Civil War generally stand up. But not everything. We don’t have an unblemished record, but I think it’s a sufficiently demanding but not an unreasonable… it’s not a kind of an otherworldly or sort of Quaker, all due respect to any Quakers in the house… it’s not… it’s not something that cannot actually be put into practice by a government.

So, I think that’s where we are. I think what that means, actually, is that, in this situation today, I basically believe that failing to take steps to put us in this situation where we can defend and where we can… where the reasonably anticipatable goal of failing to prepare is to make war more likely… That is actually not only not correct from a strategic point of view, but it’s actually immoral.

If the President, for instance, and he’s not the only one—there are Republicans too—if they are actually anticipating the consequences of their actions, it is possible that we are neglecting our defenses in the Pacific, thereby making war more likely by making Chinese aggressive action more rationally palatable for them. That itself is, I think, an immoral act at some level. It’s not like burning down a city, but it’s something we should not regard as an innocent mistake.

This is something I’ve been thinking about. I have a good amount of respect for Jake Sullivan. Recently, Sullivan said there is a profound weight of responsibility on people in high positions, and he mentioned that the Middle East has never been quieter.

Personally, I wasn’t clairvoyant and didn’t know this was going to happen, but it’s a heavy responsibility. It’s really important that people who assume these positions of responsibility are prepared to be judged. In some cases, things happen that are hard to anticipate or are just bad luck, but our failure to prepare adequately for threats facing the U.S. is an anticipatable problem. There is a fundamental mismatch between the strategy we’re pursuing and the resources we are allocating for it. We need to use all the resources available. Those of us who served in previous administrations or this administration should be judged by that standard.

So maybe with that I’ll open it to questions or comments, criticisms. Thank you. All right, seems to have carried the room, this is good. Yeah, in the back.

Q&A

Question: Hi, Ethan Coffey from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. It’s the anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative with China. I wondered whether you think the U.S. should compete with China in that kind of investment to increase its global power and encourage friends of the U.S. to do the same, or if a different approach should be taken.

Answer: We need to present economic opportunities for countries. The Chinese are making a play for now, and the Chinese and Russians probably have their own structures. There’s a lot of capital available to be directed by the central government in the United States, and by using the federal government and European economies. Our appeal will be as people get a sense of what’s entailed by taking a lot of money from the Chinese and how they use it as leverage. Maybe American, British, European, Japanese, South Korean, and Australian capital will be more attractive.

I think the economic dimension, or economic statecraft dimension, is often exaggerated because it’s very difficult for states to use economic leverage to achieve decisive, coercive outcomes. We’re seeing that now in our case with Russia. This makes me more sanguine about Belt and Road than many people, because I don’t think China is getting significant benefits from Belt and Road.

Sullivan wrote an article a couple of years ago with a different view. What we’ve seen is that many countries are saying, ‘I’m not interested in continuing with the Chinese,’ or, ‘I’ll take money from them but I’m not going to do exactly what they say,’ and ‘I didn’t know they’d have a 99-year lease on this base.’

What really matters is the military balance. Otherwise, things are likely to equilibrate. Even in impoverished countries like those in East Africa, there’s pushback against Chinese economic influence. I don’t think that’s the primary threat we face.

Question: Isaac Weber, Patrick Henry College. Piggybacking on that question, if the Chinese are not getting as great a benefit from the Belt and Road Initiative, especially in Africa, what kind of policy changes can we expect from the CCP, and how does that impact the U.S. strategy?

Answer: Good question. If economic statecraft and leverage are not as effective or coercive as desired, China might accept the limits on their ability to influence other countries or look for other means to pursue their coercive strategy. They are building tools to coerce countries with military force. The economic condition is part of that, but ultimately Taiwan is not going to give up because of Chinese investments.

Many small Taiwanese companies have invested in the mainland, and it has backfired. The same is true in India, Japan with rare earth issues, South Korea with THAAD deployment, and actions against companies like LTE, and the Philippines. We see the Philippines standing up to China now. Australia is a great example. My concern is that China might then use its military for these purposes.

Question: Do you see this as regionally applicable, extending beyond China’s local sphere of influence, such as in Africa or South America?

Answer: Well, I think, I mean, I think China’s first focused on Asia because Asia is its own theater and it’s the now-decisive theater of… of geopolitics because it’s where the vast majority of global GDP is increasingly going to be. If you control Asia, then you’ll be able to, have a much better position to dominate places like Africa and the Middle East.  

Question: So, if we can expect more military bent of Chinese policy, does the United States need to have a stronger, military stance towards its allies and pseudo allies in the, Eastern Pacific Ocean?  

Answer: Western Pacific, you mean? Yes. Absolutely. 

Question: Actually, if I could ask a question, my name is James. I work at Providence. I’d love to know what your take is on the sort of China decline thesis, that maybe as some people in the room have seen, China’s population is now declining. It seems like they have some kind of real estate crisis. Very few months… and I’ve read a number of writers from a variety of, across the aisle, saying that China has recently, or just about now in fact peeking in power, and whether that’s a well-assuming in the long term, it is a positive thing for us in the short term. It could make them more dangerous, more prone to aggression. What do you think of that?  

Answer: Well, first of all, we don’t know the future and so we need to prepare for the downside in which China is… continues to be strong and grow in strength. Because if we’re balancing the outcomes, if… If China actually does decline, then we’ve kind of overprepared, but if China continues growing and we understand that’s the worst of the four quadrants, right?  

Secondly, I’m not convinced China’s in decline. I don’t think that’s born out yet. I mean, it’s possible. But if you read for instance, people like Michael Pettis, who’s the guy who’s writing on… He’s said I think, Carnegie Beijing whose analysis of the Chinese economy I think has been pretty born out of the last couple of years… they’re not predicting that China’s falling apart. What they’re saying is that China’s going through a significant slowdown.  

Now it’s possible that China grows old before it grows rich. Personally, if China’s still growing at 2 to 3% GDP, I think it’s going to grow in relative share of global GDP. I mean, we’re not growing consistently at… at 2% over the last 25 years or so. Certainly not the Europeans, or the Japanese,  and the Chinese have enormous, latent catch-up opportunity with… Large portions of their population that are not at the frontier. For instance, like the real estate thing is… There’s a lot of debate about this and I’m not an expert on it.  

Not bailing out the real estate sector makes some sense because they’d have an inflated real estate sector and at some point there has to be a correction. So, are they going to have a slowdown? I don’t think China is going to be growing at 7% anymore. I think that’s pretty clear. But I think the notion that China’s in decline, and decline is a relative concept, right? China’s population is contracting quite rapidly, but from 1.4 billion people. Japan’s population is contracting, Taiwan’s population is contracting, South Korea’s population is contracting. The native-born population of European societies is contracting. So that’s a common demographic issue around the world. So, I think the reasonable basis… The reasonable prognostication from a strategic point of view is 2 to 3% growth could be faster, could be slower, but the idea of China collapsing or something like that…

And the other thing is, I don’t think the Chinese think they’re in decline. If anything they think we’re in decline. I think from a national power point of view, I don’t really see that borne out. If they were going to move, they would probably think that they were in decline. I’m not sure I see any evidence of that yet.

Question: Great, thank you. My name is Isa Monero and I am from Biola University. So, at the beginning of the Ukraine war, Russia was going into this war as the better or the higher, more capable of the two nations. They were regarded as the second most powerful military in the world. And they’ve been unable to conquer or take over all of Ukraine. Do you think that might be the same case with China? It still remains largely untested, but it projects a lot of power. Do you think it might just be a facade? It might not necessarily represent their actual power?

Answer: I mean, it’s possible. I don’t think we should bet on it because that’s not, you don’t bet on winning the lottery. A couple things. The Chinese problem for attacking, say, Taiwan, is much different from the Russian problem. So Russia’s about four times the population of Ukraine? China is about 75 times the population of Ukraine. Ukraine is a very large country with very large land borders not only with Russia but with NATO countries like Poland, which makes resupply easy, or at least plausible.

Taiwan is a tiny island. It’s just a fraction of the size of the People’s Republic, so the big problem the Chinese face is getting across and sustaining operations across the Strait, which is a very formidable problem. But, fundamentally tractable. We’ve done it before. And so, I think, if I were China, and I imagine they’re just as, if not smarter than we are, probably smart, maybe smarter, the lesson you would take from Ukraine is that Putin did two things.

He fundamentally underestimated the Ukrainians. He overestimated his own forces and then he underestimated what was going to be involved to conduct the military operation that they ended up pursuing now. Whether I don’t know what Putin’s plan was, did he intend to take over, fully take over Ukraine? I don’t know. I mean, because to put like 130,000 troops to take a country of that size doesn’t really add up. So I don’t exactly know what he had in mind. I don’t talk to him, but my guess is that Putin thought, what it looks to me like is he thought he kind of had the country wired and that the Ukrainians were going to collapse. And they were going to come on side. So it was kind of a show of force plus invasion. Show of force. I don’t know. That’s kind of giving it the most generous interpretation from a strategic point of view.

If I’m China, I basically say I’m not… China, I’m not going to try that because that fails very poorly. Now Putin’s stuck two years later in a quagmire stalemate in Eastern Ukraine. It’s not going well for the Ukrainians either, but that’s not where Putin wants to be. That’s not where China wants to be.

So I think if they’re going to go in, they’re going to go in much bigger and more decisively to make sure they don’t screw up in the early days. The other thing we should bear in mind is our military has been engaged heavily in essentially counterinsurgency, stabilization, counterterrorism operations for the last generation. Our Navy has not had a fleet action since Okinawa. Our Air Force has not had, even remotely close to a period… I mean, there was some air-to-air stuff, I think in the 1990 War. It was pretty mild, not for the people involved, but… And then over North Vietnam and in Korea, but really, large scale… For instance, the Israelis have gone up against the Syrians and others over the last couple of generations.

We’re not exactly sure how things would go down and there’s a lot of… Actually, I would say that the assumption is that our side is a lot better than the Chinese. It could be… it’s also possible we’re overestimating our own ability. For instance, during World War II, the United States Navy was famous for damage control, basically the ability to repair. The carrier Yorktown was damaged at the Battle of Coral Sea. It sailed back to Pearl Harbor and Nitz, or whoever said, you got to go out in a couple days, because you got to go out… There’s a Battle of Midway, we have this intelligence and they turned around the Yorktown in 3 or 4 days.

Now we can’t repair submarines. We’ve got 40% of our submarine fleet waiting for maintenance and the Bonhomme Richard burned to the waterline, burned out, and had to be ditched a couple years ago because the fire control was poor on the ship. I think it’s reasonable to give our side some level of qualitative advantage, but I don’t think we should rely too much on it.

Question: Hi. Anan Mwal with the Roosevelt Group. Elbridge, you’ve had a front row view to all the problems in the Pentagon that have brought us where we are. Be it the state of military readiness, the defense industrial base, the shipbuilding base, our depleting stockpiles, all the FMS and backlog with Taiwan. And of course, you’ve also focused on how it’s not just money but also manpower that is facing getting distracted from the larger China issue. If you were the president and there’s one issue where you could bring all the top-level attention to be on it… the Sec. Def., the Joint Chiefs, the service secretaries, the undersecretaries, and let’s just, for the sake of the argument assume that even the authorizers and appropriators are doing the right thing at the right time, what would be the one thing you would focus on to make sure that we don’t face a moment against China?

Answer: No, thanks, that’s a great question. I think being ready for a war against China would be focused on Taiwan, if Taiwan survives the coming years. Or, if not Taiwan, the perimeter behind it. That is the orienting strategic rationale. The biggest thing, there are specific weapon systems like munitions, torpedoes, anti-ship cruise missiles, air defense. Those known issues, where I would put political capital, and I’ve been surprised the president hasn’t done this, is towards a resuscitation of the defense industrial base at a fundamental level. They’ve put band-aids on the problem, but we have a broken leg, or pick your metaphor, we need major surgery.

We need to produce large numbers of weapons and platforms quickly. Not only for ourselves but also for Israel, ideally for Ukraine too. South Korea, India, Japan, Taiwan, etc. We don’t have… in 1973 when we launched the airlift, this was after Vietnam, for Israel, we had a huge defense industrial base that we could rely on. That has really shriveled since then. I think that’s… and that’s something that I think across the political aisle, not just Republicans and Democrats but also new Republicans versus old Republicans. The old-time more neoconservative Republicans should like it because it’s important for our national security, but the new right people should like it because we’re talking about reindustrialization.

If we are able to produce a lot of stuff like that, then we will be in a lot better shape. That’s probably the biggest thing, yeah.

Question: So, piggybacking off of that question, I’ve seen a lot of reticence… it’s one thing to have a set plan, a set strategy, both operationally and morally, for what we need to do especially in preparing for this crisis, but I’ve seen a lot of reticence not just on the home front but even here in this city among policymakers that have a stake in it. So why do you think… and having a front row not just to the Pentagon but also the White House and the political administration and this one… where do you think this reticence comes from and what can we be doing today to try and wake people up to the operational needs that we can be focusing on here and now?

Answer: I think that’s the right question, something I think about a lot. I think it’s hubris. If you look at the President, and there are Republicans who commit the same mistake… commit the same crime, sin, whatever, he said we’re America.

We’re America. Okay, and they’re China. I think a lot of these people don’t take China seriously enough. Now it’s possible that China could be a paper tiger, but it’s possible if you look at the numbers and how economic actors are acting. It’s the first pure economy we’ve had in 150 years. I was very struck. Robert Kagan, if you want a different perspective from the kind of liberal imperialist perspective, his argument is for global liberal hegemony. America should be the global liberal empire, which I don’t think is necessary and I don’t think it’s attainable, but at this point I think it’s criminally irresponsible.

Twenty years ago we could have argued about whether it was a good idea, but now it’s incredibly dangerous to pursue that approach, especially without the material resources to back it up, which is essentially what we seem to be doing right now.

Kagan made a very telling error in the Wall Street Journal. He said China’s not that big of a challenge because it’s smaller relative to the U.S. economy than the U.S. was to the three Axis powers in 1941. That’s wrong. China is larger. The United States alone was larger than all three of the Axis states in 1941 in economic terms. During World War II we were allied with the Soviet Union, the British Empire, and a few other countries. China is bigger relative and by some measures in purchasing power. They have two, according to the Office of Naval Intelligence, 200 times the ship-building capacity of the United States.

We’re America, okay? I love America. I think it’s great. I think we’re the greatest country, but getting back to reasonably anticipatable consequences, just beating your chest and saying we’re America isn’t going to cut it. The things that have happened so far are woefully inadequate to meet that challenge. I think a lot of it is age. A lot of leaders who came of age in the 90s… people call Biden and some of these other guys “Cold War.” Biden was not a major figure in foreign policy, he was more active in domestic policy. He became more active in foreign policy in the 90s, and that’s his mindset. A lot of the Republicans who are leading figures are shaped by the experience in the 1980s, when it was the unipolar moment and we were much more powerful than anybody else. We could kind of do what we wanted and the consequences of failure were negligible.

That’s not the world we’re living in anymore. The rate at which China has grown is unprecedented, really. The scale and rate of growth is significant. Jake Sullivan has probably a more realistic assessment, but he’s not President.

Question: So how do we wake both current leaders and future leaders in this city up to this threat? What can they be doing to focus?

Answer: That’s the core thing. There are different ways to attack that problem. One is to try to undermine the basis for hubris, to understand that the Chinese are a more formidable threat than we are. I was accused of being a declinist, which is a term I think is stupid because it’s not a real category. What is a declinist? It’s if you’re a real declinist it’s the people who ignore the problem, who are like, “Hey we’re… we’re America we can do whatever?” No, the non-anti-declinists are the ones who recognize the problem. If you have a cancer diagnosis, you get treatment, change your diet. That’s how you survive.

I think my advocacy is not succeeding. We’re failing relative to the standard of success which is effective deterrence. Ultimately, we need a clear victory against China, meaning defeat of Chinese aggression. I don’t think that’s what we’re doing. If I’m measuring myself by the standard, we need to measure ourselves by the effectiveness of our deterrence and readiness to face China. I think that’s something to look back on. There should be a record of people like me saying what needs to be done, so it wasn’t like they didn’t know.

Question: Thank you. Isa Jones from Biola University. My question is more on the subtle ways China may be fighting against the U.S., like Confucius classrooms, buying farmland. How effective is that more subtle warfare? Should we be concerned, and how can we combat that more subtle warfare?

Answer: I tend not to be as worried about that. It’s connected, young people have different views, but I tend to think that the market of ideas at some level, and I don’t want to sound like Wall Street Journal, but the wrinkle the Chinese face in that context with things like soft power is people say “oh the Confucius Institutes are everywhere,” but it’s one thing for Confucius Institutes to be out there and like, here’s a book by Confucius, Chinese Opera, history of China, how to do calligraphy.

Once you try to translate that into “you cannot say anything bad about Tibet,” that’s when it breaks down. People enjoy learning about Chinese Opera but don’t agree that you should be able to shut me up about Xinjiang or Hong Kong.

The whole political warfare thing becomes acute in the context of Taiwan because the Chinese have been flooding Taiwan with propaganda for generations. The Taiwanese have moved away because they can see what happened in Hong Kong. That doesn’t mean they survive because China has an incredible military, but they’re not going to. I worry a lot less about this political warfare stuff than a lot of people do.

Question: Hi, Ryan Zner. I’m a consultant with the Religious Freedom Institute. At the beginning of your remarks, you spoke about a possible depletion of resources in Ukraine. I imagine it would be similar in Israel. There’s a clear deterrent effect to those activities. Is there a clear and knowable point of diminishing returns for that deterrence effect in Ukraine and Israel? How would we determine it?

Answer: Yeah, I don’t think there’s much of a deterrent effect, honestly. I mean, because I go into this in my book, I have a more contextualized idea of deterrence. I think the Chinese are, if they’re thinking about Taiwan, they’re thinking about the specific context of U.S. capability and resolve to act on Taiwan. Information provided about U.S. support to Ukraine is a tertiary factor.

The best example is Vice President Pence making the point: if the Ukraine issue were dispositive for how Taiwan is going to be resolved, think about it. Who cares the most about Taiwan other than Taiwan? China. China is directly involved in the Ukraine conflict. They’re just happy to let it go along. That’s their optimal outcome, because the value of the depletion of American stockpiles, money, in resolve, is far higher than any bankshot deterrence effect. What’s going to deter them is the sense that the Americans, Taiwanese, and Japanese have the ability to sink, shoot down, kill, or whatever, enough PLA soldiers in the appropriate amount of time to defeat the invasion, and whether we have the resolve to do that. That’s the main issue.

Question: So the point of diminishing returns has been real?

Answer: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Great. Thank you. Thanks everyone.