American Character vs. Authoritarian Nature

>> Stephen Kotkin: It's not what we do, it's who we are that scares them. The problem with China, Russia and Iran is that we are a superior system. We have legitimacy, political legitimacy, and a lot of their people want a system like ours.

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>> Stephen Kotkin: I have to say this, remembering our roots, our constitution, our allies and friends, sometimes things can be old fashioned and still be the future.

It's a little bit absurd. You had the Secretary of State, you had the Secretary of Defense, and then, like, what? There was no bag in the back. I was looking for the bag to carry out here on stage. I'm thinking, that's probably why I'm back there. I'm probably going to carry their bags.

This is a moment where I think we have grounds to question the boot camp leadership. Just saying, like Secretary Mattis said, I was once your age, and I remember when electricity was introduced, I know it was this revolution. So I'm only gonna make three points, if that's okay.

I know I'm getting a little bit close, so let me just take out breath spray. Yeah. Anyhow, so just three points. One is, it's not what we do, it's who we are that scares them. We cannot reassure them. The problem with China, Russia and Iran is that we are a superior system.

We have legitimacy, political legitimacy, and a lot of their people want a system like ours. We have tremendous problems, we have all sorts of disappointments. We could all go through the shortcomings, but at the end of the day, they're afraid because their systems have to survive in a world dominated by us, and that's the threat to them.

They correctly perceive this threat and nothing we do can change that equation for them. They are afraid because we are who we are and we have the institutions we have and we have the power that we have, and we have the leadership that we have and we have the friends that we have.

So you engage them, you try to reassure them, you try to say, we're not trying to take your regime down, but in fact, our very existence is the threat to their regimes going down. That is the deepest and most fundamental problem they face. They are obsessed about this and they do everything to maintain the power of their systems, which means they must undermine our system, undermine our alliances, they must undo the American led order for themselves to survive in the long term.

And so when we think we're gonna reassure them, we're gonna have measures that say, let's build some trust with them. Yes, we can try to build some trust with them, but we can't overcome this fundamental challenge which is not our policies, but our existence is a threat to the survival of those regimes.

They correctly perceive this and they act accordingly. So they're obsessed that we are pursuing regime change, and they accuse us of pursuing regime change. We don't pursue regime change. We're afraid to do so because we think it's, quote, escalatory. So we're charged with the crime we're not committing, because, again, regime change is what they fear.

And their ability to survive in an American dominated world with our values, institutions, allies, partners and friends is existential. That's the first point. The second point is that the American led international order is vulnerable in three places. This has been true for 30 years, and I've been given this lecture for 30 years, or seems like longer.

The three places it's vulnerable are guess where? Yeah. Crimea, Ukraine, Israel, South China Sea, Taiwan. It's because those places are up against the revisionist powers that are afraid for their survival. That would be Russia abutting Crimea, Ukraine, and now controlling large chunks of it. Iran in the case of Israel, and of course, China in the case of the South China Sea and Taiwan.

They're probing those three areas of tremendous vulnerability, and they've been probing them for some time now. And all of a sudden we're surprised at this. We should not have been surprised at it. So that vulnerability in those three places is why the world looks chaotic now. But it was something that could have been foreseen, for example, if American K through 12 had geography.

I know some of you are not from America, so you do know some geography. We only learn geography when we're deployed. When we're deployed or when we watch the television news. To the extent that there still is. I don't know. I don't watch TV but there might still be news on TV.

And then they have these maps about places where Americans are being sent or our allies are fighting on our behalf. Okay, so it was clear that those three places were vulnerable because Russia, Iran, China want to evict America from Europe in the case of Russia, from the Middle east, in the case of Iran, and from East Asia, at least the first island chain, maybe more, in the case of China.

They want American power out of there. And so they are trying to evict us, taking advantage of those three vulnerabilities. If they can succeed and we can go home, they are safer as regimes, whether they control the territory or not, whether they reconstitute this ancient empire or they don't have the fantasy to reconstitute the ancient empire.

Eviction of America from those three places is the goal. Iran works predominantly through proxies because in 1979 the average age of Iran was 17. With 17,18,19 year old boys, you can do a lot. You can have a revolution, you can take over an embassy, you can fight a slaughterhouse war with Iraq and just send the cannon fodder to die.

Average age in Iran today is 37. So they can't do this anymore. So they need proxies to be able to evict American power and evict Israel from the Middle east. And those proxies are 17, 18, 19, 20 years old. And where are they? They're in Yemen, they're in Gaza, they're in Lebanon.

Yes, and those people who have legitimate grievances in some cases and illegitimate grievances in other cases, you guys can adjudicate that yourselves. Those people are unwittingly instruments in Iran's goal of evicting American power from the Middle East by attacking Israel and delegitimizing Israel. Anyway, the China stuff also too obvious to go into same story, right?

Evict American power from East Asia. Remember, China's geography is really complicated. They have no California. Now if you went to the economic panels, you probably think that's a great thing to not have a California. The lunacy governance that we have here in California sometimes. But no California means no West Coast, no highway onto the Pacific as we have it, right?

They have just one coast, the east coast, and it's completely hemmed in by our allies. The East Coast of China is totally hemmed in to by people who are friends or allies with us and their west coast is desert concentration camps and I could go on rather than a high tech industry defense industrial complex and highway to allies and trading partners.

So for them everything's at stake on this one coast that's actually hemmed in when we have the two coasts and our coasts are not hemmed in there as east huge highways. Anyway, okay, I won't go more into that. Let me just make my third point, if that's okay, and then we'll go to Q&A.

I know you have a lot of questions, especially for the general. I do. I'm sitting here thinking I have questions I want to ask him. I can only imagine you. And I'm in the way of that. So third and final point is what do you do about this?

What do you do about this? Do you stake your international order on the three places of vulnerability? In other words, is the international order at stake in your ability to defend Crimea, Ukraine? Is the international order at stake in your ability to defend Israel? Is the international order at stake in your ability to defend Taiwan and other friends and partners allies on the first island chain, right?

Is the international order at stake in these three areas of vulnerability, or is it not at stake, and therefore it's not existential, and therefore you could, quote, accommodate rather than go to the wall to defend these places, right? That's a question for your generation to face. To the extent that we messed that up, you're gonna have to fix that.

You're gonna have to figure that out. But let me just close by explaining the difference between capitulation and provoking war. So capitulation is pretty easy to criticize, right? Chamberlain, Munich, 1938 who thinks capitulation is a good idea? Capitulation is not something we have to spend a lot of time on, although a lot of people in our political system are in favor of capitulation.

I understand that the Russians want us to capitulate. I understand the Iranians want us to capitulate. I understand the Chinese want us to capitulate. I don't understand why we want us to capitulate. But anyway, that's again, for you to figure out. The other problem is standing strong, what we would call hawkishness, standing up for American values.

And there's also a problem with that, believe it or not. The problem with that is when you declare that you're gonna rebuild your strength and power, you then create a dilemma for your adversary. Your adversary is now looking at you saying you're going to be stronger soon. And so I may have a window of opportunity in which I can go after you now, because you're only going to be stronger later.

This is called World War I. This is called World War II. So the irony of announcing that you're gonna become better prepared for war is sometimes an invitation to the other side to go now, because you're gonna be better prepared in the future, and they're gonna lose that window up of opportunity they may have now, provided they are ready, they also might not be ready.

So between these two polls, capitulation and all in, there's something called deterrence plus diplomacy. And that's of course what the general practiced when he was on the inside of George Shultz, long serving member of four different cabinet positions, including secretary of state under Ronald Reagan. That's the sweet spot.

The sweet spot is you're strong. You have deterrence so that they don't think they can come after you. But you have diplomacy, and your diplomacy is skilled and full of leverage. It's not just talking. It's not just dialogue, right? George Shultz could go to the negotiating table, because behind George Shultz was the Pentagon, the secretary of defense, the president, who happened to be Ronald Reagan at the time, and deterrence, as secretary of state.

Shultz liked to say, the shadow of force cast over the negotiating table makes negotiation a lot easier. But just force without negotiation is insufficient. The diplomacy has to be just as strong as the deterrence diplomacy is, using your leverage, your advantages, to get a deal and to get a deal that's more favorable to you, your friends, and your allies.

We have to share the world with China, the planet. China's not going away. You have to share the planet. What are the terms? What are the terms of sharing the planet? Are the terms concentration camps in Xinjiang? Are the terms what happened to Hong Kong in your lifetime with the national security law, as it's called, infamous law?

Are those the terms, or can we negotiate with them better terms to share the planet? Because if the terms are Xinjiang concentration camps, I don't like those terms. I want better terms. I want terms that are about peace and prosperity, but at the same time, I can't not negotiate, because then I leave myself open to misunderstanding and provoking war.

And so the capitulators, the doves, and the all in the hawks, they're valuable, they're important, they're part of a free and open society, and I interact with them. But I'm looking for that narrow space in between them which is deterrence plus diplomacy and requires tremendous investment on the deterrence side and tremendous investment on the diplomacy side, because again, it's not something we can fix.

They're afraid for their survival because of the world that we built. And so we need to understand the existential stakes for them, especially in these three areas of vulnerability, where they're probing what are we going to do about that, if anything? And that's going to be up to you guys to fix.

Anyway, thank you for your attention. We're now good for questions.