End game? Victory? Would you please read the European history of the last 500 years again? This kind of great power competition lasted centuries. You would think England was finished when revolution broke out and the king was executed. England was not and went on to become more powerful. You would think France was finished when revolution broke out and the king was executed. You got Napoleon. It was after all the great powers accepted reality and limitations to their own ambition that Europe had peace. Unless you accept the reality and limitations to your power, there will be no end to this kind of great power conflict. You need to read the history of Europe again. European history of the last 500 years.
Pottinger is a hawk who is determined to win a negative sum game against Beijing. The inevitable consequence is the growing risk of war between US and China that could have disastrous consequences for the rest of the world. But to Pottinger, such risks are tolerable because the US will come out on top. Any war will be fought close to Chinese shores,. China's economy will be dealt a severe blow, while US homeland security will never be at risk (unless the war grows nuclear) while its economy will suffer the least because US economy depends the least on trade among all developed countries. For people like Pottinger, this will be the best outcome that removes China as a threat to American hegemony once and for all, while a derailed Chinese economy will create significant internal strain that could even lead to the removal of Xi from power. From the US strategic point of view, it makes perfect Machiavellian sense, but for Taiwan, for China, and for developing countries that depend on trade, the consequences will be devastating.
The debate b/w Pottinger and Doshi is an important one. Of course we need coexistence to be the final result but I believe history taught us this lesson already: the detente policies of Carter admin toward USSR was itself a problem, and Reagan's hardline approach in the end leads to a more secure and prosperous world that included the economic development of China that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.
38:19 good point. I think to many other China Hawks have massively ignored the impact Ukraine has on our ability to deter China. Everything is connected and individual issues can never be thought of in a vacuum as I’ve seen happen more and more around the security concerns China poses. They manage to lose/ignore the massive capabilities we leverage from our global positioning and partnerships and ignore the tremendous consequences to our capabilities when we lose those networks and partnerships.
32:08 you say the answer to the question “do we have the capability” to back up anything we say about Taiwan. And I’d like to give an answer to this since you didn’t. Biden currently has the largest black budget in our countries history at around 99$ billion. Increasing it by a substantial sum over Trump. This budget is mostly aimed at developing deterrence against China of course. Biden has also done exponentially more to increase INDOPACCOM’s resources and capabilities. The amount of multi nation service integration that Biden has overseen has increased the effective combat force of INDOPACCOM more than all of what trump did under his 4 years of taking over Obama’s policy. That’s also ignoring the strengthening of our force posture in Europe in orders of magnitude over Trump and even reinforced CENTCOM more so than Trump has. Biden finally actually pulling us out of Afghanistan despite the horrible conditions left for him to do so by the Trump administration has freed up a lot of resources for him to redistribute to things you keep saying Trump wanted to. So why didn’t Trump come through on his campaign promise of getting us out of Afghanistan? Why did he instead put us in a position where it was way more difficult to pull out from there? Isn’t he supposed to be the master negotiator? If so why’d he get absolutely snuffed by the Taliban negotiators?
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End game? Victory? Would you please read the European history of the last 500 years again? This kind of great power competition lasted centuries. You would think England was finished when revolution broke out and the king was executed. England was not and went on to become more powerful. You would think France was finished when revolution broke out and the king was executed. You got Napoleon.
It was after all the great powers accepted reality and limitations to their own ambition that Europe had peace. Unless you accept the reality and limitations to your power, there will be no end to this kind of great power conflict. You need to read the history of Europe again. European history of the last 500 years.
Pottinger is a hawk who is determined to win a negative sum game against Beijing. The inevitable consequence is the growing risk of war between US and China that could have disastrous consequences for the rest of the world. But to Pottinger, such risks are tolerable because the US will come out on top. Any war will be fought close to Chinese shores,. China's economy will be dealt a severe blow, while US homeland security will never be at risk (unless the war grows nuclear) while its economy will suffer the least because US economy depends the least on trade among all developed countries. For people like Pottinger, this will be the best outcome that removes China as a threat to American hegemony once and for all, while a derailed Chinese economy will create significant internal strain that could even lead to the removal of Xi from power. From the US strategic point of view, it makes perfect Machiavellian sense, but for Taiwan, for China, and for developing countries that depend on trade, the consequences will be devastating.
The debate b/w Pottinger and Doshi is an important one. Of course we need coexistence to be the final result but I believe history taught us this lesson already: the detente policies of Carter admin toward USSR was itself a problem, and Reagan's hardline approach in the end leads to a more secure and prosperous world that included the economic development of China that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.
⭐️
38:19 good point. I think to many other China Hawks have massively ignored the impact Ukraine has on our ability to deter China. Everything is connected and individual issues can never be thought of in a vacuum as I’ve seen happen more and more around the security concerns China poses. They manage to lose/ignore the massive capabilities we leverage from our global positioning and partnerships and ignore the tremendous consequences to our capabilities when we lose those networks and partnerships.
32:08 you say the answer to the question “do we have the capability” to back up anything we say about Taiwan. And I’d like to give an answer to this since you didn’t.
Biden currently has the largest black budget in our countries history at around 99$ billion. Increasing it by a substantial sum over Trump. This budget is mostly aimed at developing deterrence against China of course. Biden has also done exponentially more to increase INDOPACCOM’s resources and capabilities. The amount of multi nation service integration that Biden has overseen has increased the effective combat force of INDOPACCOM more than all of what trump did under his 4 years of taking over Obama’s policy. That’s also ignoring the strengthening of our force posture in Europe in orders of magnitude over Trump and even reinforced CENTCOM more so than Trump has. Biden finally actually pulling us out of Afghanistan despite the horrible conditions left for him to do so by the Trump administration has freed up a lot of resources for him to redistribute to things you keep saying Trump wanted to. So why didn’t Trump come through on his campaign promise of getting us out of Afghanistan? Why did he instead put us in a position where it was way more difficult to pull out from there? Isn’t he supposed to be the master negotiator? If so why’d he get absolutely snuffed by the Taliban negotiators?
Great interview…
Pottinger clears a lot of confusing views! Thanks a lot to him for his tireless work!
Thank you