April 20, 2025 • 55 mins
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Hoover Institution | Stanford University
The Hoover Institution held a Fireside Chat With Stephen Kotkin & US House Select Committee on China on Thursday, April 17th at 8:00am PT/11:00am ET.
Speakers:
Committee Chairman John Moolenaar, US Representative for Michigan's 2nd congressional district
Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi, US Representative for Illinois's 8th congressional district.
Professor Kotkin, Kleinheinz Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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[MUSIC]
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (00:03):
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Chairman, forallowing me to introduce both you as
well as our distinguished guest today,Stephen Kotkin.
Confession from the start.
I'm a super fan of Professor Kotkin,one of the foremost historians
in the world with regard to greatpower competition as well as
(00:27):
authoritarian regimes,including in the former Soviet Union,
the current Russian Federation andof course the Chinese Communist Party.
I should tell you, Professor Kotkin,my wife is also a super fan.
She's an anesthesiologist.
The joke is that we bothput people to sleep.
(00:47):
She's actually taking a little breakin between operations from the OR
to watch this particular webinar.
I think a lot of people from hopefullyaround the community, both in Stanford,
but also people who paid close attentionto our committee are watching today.
I'll just say a little bitmore about Professor Kotkin.
(01:09):
He's a senior fellow at the HooverInstitution and a professor of History and
International Affairs Emeritusat Princeton University.
He has written award winning books onJoseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.
I think that his insights with regardto the Chinese Communist Party and
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Xi Jinping in particular, based on hisknowledge of this former Soviet Union,
but also current affairs both in Russiaand in China, are extremely insightful.
It gives me great pleasure towelcome him to our committee.
(01:50):
And of course,I'd like to introduce our chairman and
my friend John Molnar of Michigan as well.
>> John Moolenaar (01:59):
Well, thank you, Raja, and it's always good to be with you.
Appreciate your leadership forour committee.
And it's just really important as wecontinue to work in a bipartisan way,
to really focus on the threat ofthe Chinese Communist Party and
the economic front, the military front,as well as human rights.
(02:20):
And you've been a greatpartner in this effort.
And I really appreciate the opportunityto be with you today and
also to engage with Professor Kotkin.
And you know, one of the things that,you know, we talk about some, and
I know Professor Kotkin'sbeen a real leader on is,
is the fact that we'rebasically in a second Cold War.
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And that's shocking when you think of it.
But at the same time,it's better than a hot war.
And it says that there are thingsthat we can do to prevent a hot war.
And the stakes are different now.
Back in the first Cold War,the tanks, missiles,
the Iron Curtain were all very visible.
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Now the challenge is more complex,it's economic, technology,
information, ideology, all wrappedup in the ambitions of a regime
that really seeks to reshapethe global order on its own terms.
And when you think about the daysof the movies about the KGB and
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the Russian influence,that seemed very clear.
There's really no counterpartin the sense of the KGB villain,
no household name forthe China Ministry of State Security,
but clearly the Chinese surveillance and
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operations are veryclear around the world.
In the United States, Professor Kotkin,
you've argued that Americans needto consider a real sacrifice.
Higher prices, lost apps,national service.
Because this is so serious, I want todig into that more with you today and
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really understand your views onthe threat as well as what we as
Americans need to do to continueto bring light to this issue.
But sacrifices we may need tomake to continue to advocate and
fight for our way of life.
So it's an honor to be with youall today and thanks so much.
>> Stephen Kotkin (04:30):
It's a great honor, the invitation, Chairman John and
Ranking Member Raja.
And I commend you for the vital workthat you're doing in our Congress.
On behalf of us, all of us,the American people,
let me offer just two opening bulletpoints to start the conversation and
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then we'll see where youguys want to take it.
The first bullet point will be aboutthe nature of the system and its.
Its specificity.
And the second will be about itsintentions, aims, motivations.
There's something called a Leninistregime or a Leninist system,
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which is based upon the monopolyof the Communist Party and
the insertion of the Communist Party intoall institutions, public and private.
That's something that is uniqueto the Leninist regimes.
Not every Leninist regime is identical.
There are cultural differences andhistorical legacies to consider, but
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there's a basic pattern, andthat's what I just like to clarify.
In the first bullet point,you cannot be half Communist,
just like you cannot be half pregnant.
You either have the full monopoly of theCommunist Party or your system unravels.
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We saw this in Hungary in 1956when they began to try to open up
the political system to democratizethe Communist Party's rule.
We saw it in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
We saw it with Gorbachev inthe Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The Chinese Communist regimestudies this history.
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It's one of the main subjects forall party members.
It's a critical subject at the Partyschools that all the cadre attend.
So they know this history well.
And the reason they study it isbecause they will not repeat it.
That is to say, they will notengage in political opening because
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there is what we call no political reformequilibrium in a Communist system.
What I mean is that ifyou start to open up,
there's no way to stabilizea reformed opened up Communist Party
system because you lose your monopolyagain, you can't be half communist.
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What that means is that you saywe're going to have debate within
the Communist Party, we're going toliberalize the system somewhat and
allow some debate in the party.
And some smart aleck comes along andsays, well,
I want a different party,I don't want the Communist Party.
And you say no, no,no debate within the party's monopoly.
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And that person and others begin toinsist that yes, okay, debate, but
debate means not retaining the communistmonopoly but overthrowing it.
So it becomes a kind ofunintentional suicide to engage in
political reform ina Leninist system as Hungary,
Czechoslovakia andthe Soviet Union showed.
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Because again, there's no placewhere you can stop the process and
be stable again with an opened orpartially opened political system.
Because people in the system don'twant the communist monopoly.
If you open it up and let them talk aboutthat, they want to form other parties.
We've seen that again andagain in each historical case.
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And as I said,the Chinese are experts on this history.
Even economic reform, which is possiblein a communist system presents a threat.
So, so they can do,unlike political reform,
they can do a significant amount ofeconomic opening, economic liberalization.
They need the private sector like oxygen.
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It provides the wealth, it providesthe jobs, it drives their GDP growth and
their employment numbers.
But they don't like independentsources of wealth and power,
which is what the privatesector gives you.
And so, they're constantly in thisquandary of being desperate to
encourage private sector dynamism,but being threatened,
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their monopoly on power, being threatenedby the private sector's success,
independent sources of wealth and power.
Jiang Zemin tried to square this circlewith what he called the three represents.
He was the leader after Deng Xiaoping.
And by the three represents hemeant that private sector business
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people would be allowed tobecome members of the party.
In other words, we would co opt theprivate sector and regain control over it
for the party, for the party's monopolyby admitting them into the party.
This failed.
It only further increased the corruptionaround the party's position.
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And so Jiang Zemin's three representsbring the businessman into
the party failed.
And so predictably,Xi Jinping decided to put the party back
into the private businessesas a form of control.
Instead of co optingthe businesses into the party,
force private businesses to accept partysupervision inside their boards and
(10:13):
often with their highermanagement structure.
So that's the stage we are now.
The upshot of all of this is that theCommunist Party has self imposed limits
on what it can do politically andhow much it can open up.
And that includes even the economy.
(10:34):
So when we talked about the engagementpolicy and potentially transforming or
helping to encourage the transformationof the Communist Party to a more open,
potentially rule of law direction,
we neglected to understand thatthat's suicide for a Leninist regime
because you can't be half communist,you can't open up and survive.
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To open up politically is a suicidal pathand they're not going to commit suicide.
In fact,Deng Xiaoping never promised that he would
liberalize the system politically andhe never did so.
And Xi Jinping even more so.
Okay, so that's my first bullet point,that we must be realistic about the nature
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of the system and its limitations if we'regoing to engage with them in diplomacy,
deal making, etcetera what they cannot dois what we've been asking them to do for
multiple decades, which is to openup their system politically and
move towards rule of law, because thatthreatens the system's existence.
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Okay, point number two,bullet point number two.
What are the aims,the key goals of such a system?
Well, clearly it is survival,the survival of the party's monopoly.
And Xi Jinping, butnot only Xi Jinping alone is
committed to the survival of the party,no matter what,
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as anybody would be if theywere in charge of that system.
The second goal, however,
is to restore the perceivedgreatness of China more broadly.
And so these two reinforce each other,make the world safe for
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the Communist monopoly, andremake the world not just so
that the regime survives, but that Chinaattains its rightful place in the world.
We have this debate in our countryabout what does China really want?
What does Xi Jinping really want?
Does he just want to regainChina's dominance in East Asia?
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Does he want global power?
And that's a false question,because the appetite, Chairman John and
Ranking Member Roger,the appetite always grows in the eating.
And so whatever your initial aimsmight be, if you succeed in them,
you get hungrier andhungrier and hungrier.
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The appetite grows in the eating.
So whether Xi Jinpingpersonally envisions East Asian
dominance alone ora more global dominant position,
if he achieves the first,he's on the way to the second.
And so we must assume as policymakers,as I said,
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that the appetite grows in the eating.
Now, the competition with China,therefore, is not a misunderstanding.
This is not something that wecan talk through very easily.
This is a fundamental clashof interests and values.
The existence of the Americansystem ipso facto threatens
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the survival of the Communist Partybecause it's a freer,
it's an open, successful alternative.
So whatever US policy might bemore aggressive towards China,
less aggressive towards China, China hasthe same dilemma independent of US policy.
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US policy cannot fix this dilemma for
the Communist Party,which is that if regime survival,
let alone regaining China's perceivedrightful place in the world,
are the goals, the US stands in the way.
When the US was formed inthe late 18th century,
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not long thereafter,China went into the tank.
China had a long period of external, but
especially internal depredations.
And so for 170 years or so,from around 1800 to 1970s,
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China, as I said, declined,went into the tank.
That's exactly the time of the riseof America to superpower status.
So China being the most powerful,
largest economy in the world up throughthe late 18th century, goes into the tank.
America rises.
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China comes out of that longtunnel in the 1980s, 90s, 2000s,
and lo and behold,America is there now, it's a superpower.
When China had previously beenthe world dominant power, America,
America didn't exist.
And when America started,It was just 13 fledgling
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colonies on the eastern coastwith a population of 3 million.
Not the superpower that it is today.
So for China, this dilemma is new, thedilemma of how to manage American power.
Just as it's important forus to understand.
Understand how to manageChinese place in the world.
So again, we can't assume that thisis a misunderstanding for them.
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It's existential that they somehow figureout how to make the world safe for
their survival of their regime and
how to make China attain itsperceived rightful place.
And America stands in the way of that.
And therefore, it's not our policy,
it's the nature of the Chineseregime that is the challenge.
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And so we can be more accommodating, lessaccommodating, we still have a challenge.
That's not to say we can't managethe Chinese regime better or worse.
We can certainly do better orworse with this challenge, but
it's not a challenge that we canattribute to misunderstanding.
So therefore,in conclusion to these two bullet points,
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let me just say that we haveto share the world with China.
China is not going away andAmerica is not going away.
That's not the question.
The question is what are the terms ofhow we're going to share the world?
Are the terms the kind of internalrepression that the Chinese
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practice at home, Is it Xinjiang orwhat happened to Hong Kong?
Are those the terms ofsharing the world with China?
Or can we, through better policies andinvesting in our strengths and
in our allies and relationships,can we help build leverage so
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that we can get more favorableterms in the prospect of needing to
share the world with this Leninistregime that is afraid for
its survival andthat has a hard time reconciling our
position in the world with their survival?
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Anyway, those are my opening remarksabout the nature of the regime and
how the appetite grows in the eating.
Back to you.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (18:02):
Thank you.
John, do you want tostart off the questions?
>> John Moolenaar (18:05):
Well, first of all, thank you for those insights and
a couple questions I wanted to ask you.
You don't use the term Marxist Leninist.
I'm wondering if you would explainwhy that is you refer to Leninist.
And then secondly,what lessons from the first Cold War with
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the Soviet Union should we draw andin this relationship with China.
>> Stephen Kotkin (18:34):
Thank you.
Excellent questions,predictably, Chairman John.
So Marxist Leninism sometimes getsus into trouble because people then
respond by saying, well,they don't really believe in the Marxism,
they're not really Marxists,they're just faking it.
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They're paying obeisance to the ideology,but
they're really just about power andabout getting rich.
And so therefore,
it's not really a Marxist Leninist regimethe way that the Soviet Union was.
Ideology is dead.
And so that's only a partial truth.
A Leninist regime has a certainStructure as I outlined,
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whether people adhere tothe Marxist ideology or not.
And so you can be completely cynicalabout the Marxism and yet you can have
a Leninist political structure withthat communist monopoly on power.
Now we can debate the extent to whichthey adhere to Marxist ideology.
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And that debate is a worthy debate.
But what I'm trying to do by callingit a Leninist regime is avoid
the dismissal that comes fromcalling it Marxism-Leninism.
Because then people say, aha,they don't really have that ideology.
Your analysis is wrong.
Marxism has two components,fundamental components.
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One is anti capitalism and the otheris what they call anti imperialism or
anti Westernism, sometimes justreduced to anti Americanism.
You can actually throw offthe anti-capitalist part of Marxist and
you can stay with the anti-imperialism,anti-American piece.
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So all throughout the time that wethought that they were capitalists,
not anti-capitalists, not really Marxists,
they retained the otherpiece of Marxist ideology,
which was the anti-imperialism,anti Westernism, anti-Americanism.
In addition, the anti capitalismpiece never went away fully.
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It was always there inparts of the party system.
And in fact,you can argue that Xi Jinping himself
has more Marxist leanings than Jiang Zemin
might have had in terms of the ideology.
Again, they're both Leninist inthe structure of the system.
(21:14):
So we can have a fruitful debate,Chairman John,
about the extent to whichthey're Marxist or not.
But I think there is no debate onwhether or not it's a Leninist system.
Now, on the Cold War andthe first Cold War and
the Soviet case,there are a couple of lessons.
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One is what are the options forgreat power competition?
In other words, if you look at notjust us with the Soviet Union, but
if you look at history in the full sweepwhen great powers face each other,
what are the policy options?
What's the full array?
And there are only four.
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One is hot war, which you two havealready alluded to, is the worst outcome.
And that's certainly the case.
Hot war between great powers iscatastrophic even when you win.
There were 55 million deaths.
That's the minimum,the low estimate in World War II.
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55 million is a really big number,it's a multiple of World War I.
And if we, God forbid,ever got to World War Three,
we would get a multipleof that 55 million.
And so even if you win,you lose in some sense.
Of course there is a victor anda vanquished in most wars.
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But what I'm saying is that the costof winning can even be intolerable.
So avoiding hot war is the gamethat is the uppermost to manage.
The second policy option is appeasement or
what might be called capitulationwhere you keep giving in,
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giving in, giving in as Churchillsaid you get hot war anyway even if
you try appeasement because againthe appetite grows in the eating so
you think you're reducing tensions butyou're only encouraging
the other sides appetite ambitions toask and seek more and more and more.
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So appeasement capitulationis the second after hot war.
It also doesn't lookvery attractive to me.
The third is what I callPygmalion Pygmalion as you know from
the George Bernard Shaw play isabout finding a street urchin this
girl who's a street urchin anddoesn't have manners and
putting her through etiquette school andand making her a lady or
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what might be called a responsiblestakeholder in the international system.
This is highly seductive.
It's very tempting for us to wannatransform from the outside these
grand Eurasian civilizationsthat predate the.
The United States by millennia.
Whether it's Russia, Iran, or China,
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Pygmalion doesn't really work,it's an illusion.
Because they don't want to be transformedby us into a responsible stakeholder
of the international system,because that's our international system.
They want to shape the internationalsystem not for our benefit, but
for their own benefit.
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So Pygmalion involves a degree ofself delusion in a different way
from appeasement, but also unsuccessful.
So if you don't want hot war andyou don't think appeasement works and
you've seen the Pygmalion fail again andagain,
where you try to transform themto be more like you, responsible
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stakeholder in the international system,what does that leave?
Well, it leaves what you guyscall strategic competition or
what could be called Cold War.
The beauty of Cold War isthat it's not hot war.
I think ranking member Raja made thatvery statement at the outset of this
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conversation.
In addition, Cold War doesn'tmean only tension, there was
a tremendous amount of cooperationin the Cold War between the US and
the Soviet Union, in science,in space, in many, many areas.
So you can compete,you can have high tension, but
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you can also managethe rivalry through Cold War.
Cold War is an achievement.
If we get to Cold War,that means we've avoided hot war and
we're trying to managethis strategic competition
in ways that are to our advantage.
Again, share the world.
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But what are the terms?
The final lesson I would mentionhere is that we won the Cold War and
the prize was an aggressive Russia.
So the idea that you can windefinitively and then you're done,
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that there's some type of hot warvictory equivalent in a Cold War,
is not true historically.
What you end up with is a differentversion of the strategic competition.
Russia is much smaller geographicallythan the Soviet Union.
It's much farther from Europe.
It doesn't have the same sizemilitary industrial complex,
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it doesn't have the same sizescientific and technical complex,
the same number of Nobel Prizes,and yet, nonetheless,
we find ourselves jaw to jawwith the Russians yet again.
So I think we need to understandwith China again that managing,
getting into a Cold war andachievement and
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managing the strategic competitiondoesn't necessarily mean
that one day you declare victory andyou go home and you're done.
What it means is that you get toshape the external environment
in ways that favor your system andyour friends and
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that disadvantage them withoutprovoking them into hot war,
and that you don't become morelike them in the process.
George Kennan's number one lesson wasthat if you become like the other
side in competing against the otherside's authoritarianism, you lose.
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Losing is becoming andacting more and more like them.
They do censorship,we do censorship, right?
They put government controlsover parts of the economy.
We put government control.
We need to play to the free andopen society strengths, the dynamism,
the market economy, the separation ofpowers, the free and open society.
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We need to be who we are if we'regoing to compete with them.
And the more that we act like themin the name of competing like them,
Ken and said,the less we're actually winning and
the more we have to reevaluate what we're doing.
So compete every way we can in allthe domains that Chairman John outlined,
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but make sure we play to our strengths.
We remain who we are and
we don't become like them inthe name of competing with them.
So there are a lot of lessonsfrom the first Cold War,
including the fact thatCold War is an achievement.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (28:49):
Professor Kotkin, that was a very illuminating answer.
I want to talk a little bitabout Taiwan because we spent
a lot of time on this committeetalking about Taiwan and
basically deterring the CCP from kind ofmoving coercively with regard to Taiwan.
(29:12):
You've spoken extensively about,
quote, unquote, rolling the iron dice and
regimes making the ultimate kindof move on sovereign entities.
We saw that, obviously,with Ukraine and Russia.
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Russia invading Ukraine.
And then interestingly,you've also talked about how historically,
you thought, for instance, In WorldWar II, Adolf Hitler was a gambler,
whereas Stalin was more ofan opportunist and a little more.
Much more cautious.
And you've seen various degrees of that indifferent authoritarians over the years.
(29:59):
How would you assess Xi Jinping?
Where do you.
Where do you put him on the spectrumin terms of is he more of a gambler,
is he much more cautious andmore of an opportunist?
And recently he has basically called.
He's purged so many levels of the pla,I've lost track.
(30:22):
He seems to fire somebody every otherweek under the guise of corruption.
I'm not sure if it's true or
whether he's just taking out people whomight disagree with him politically.
But nonetheless, can you just assessXi Jinping from your standpoint
in terms of history, but also in termsof what you're seeing right now today,
(30:47):
and how we should bethinking about Xi Jinping.
>> Stephen Kotkin (30:50):
Yeah, great question.
Of course, many people are betterplaced than I am to evaluate him.
I've never met him.
Some many other of ouranalysts have met him or
been in the same room with him andfollowed his career closely.
So I'll just say the following,the answer to your question was contained
(31:14):
in your question, calculated riskversus uncalculated risk, right?
The gambler versus the opportunist.
So uncalculated risk, what we saw withHitler versus more calculated risk,
the opportunism that we saw with Stalin.
They both want to grab what they can, but
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one wants to grab it withoutpaying high costs, necessarily.
And the other wants to grab it comewhat may, whatever the cost might be,
including blowing up his own country andblowing up the world.
And so which one of thosecategories is Xi Jinping?
Well, it's hard to say,
because it's not like we havedirect access into his thinking.
(32:00):
It's not like he's broadcasting his views,he's sitting down and
talking with journalists, or
he's having town hall meetings like ourcongressmen have with their constituents.
Even the second and third echelonin the Chinese regime have a very
hard time understanding what'sgoing on inside the regime.
(32:22):
The first circle,the first echelon, is very narrow.
Xi Jinping doesn't necessarily revealto them what's on his own mind,
let alone to the second and third echelon.
He stays separate from them.
They only have access tohim when he summons them.
There are very few constraints,direct regime constraints on him.
(32:45):
And so figuring out histhinking is a challenge for
the regime, inner circle forthe members in the second and
third echelon, buteven in some cases higher than that.
It's gonna be hard for us as well.
But for us,whatever his thinking might be,
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whether he's predominantlya calculated risk taker and
an opportunist,versus he's willing to incur more risk,
our goal is to increasethe sense of risk for him.
So often people talk about howif he takes back Taiwan and
(33:27):
quote, reunites historic China,then he goes into
the history books as the greatleader who reunited China.
And I say, okay,what if he tries that and it fails?
And he goes into the historybooks as the person who lost
the Communist regime in China.
(33:48):
What if he goes into the historybooks as China's Gorbachev,
not because he tried to reform andopen the party politically
like Gorbachev did, andunwittingly committed suicide, but
because he was excessively aggressive,took higher risks than
(34:09):
he understood he was taking, andtherefore put the regime at risk.
So our deterrence on Taiwan must be,
as you understand better than anyone,
better than I do, not only military.
Yes, military is absolutely critical.
(34:30):
Getting those Tomahawkmissiles into Japan,
getting the anti shipcapabilities into theater,
planning the hellscape likeAdmiral Papara, our Indo PACOM commander.
And everything else that we're doingmilitarily is absolutely crucial,
including in conjunction with our allies,the Japanese,
(34:53):
the South Koreans, the Filipinos.
Very impressive work that we've beendoing and that needs to continue.
But also deterrence is political.
We need to have the messageto the Chinese regime and
ultimately to the Chinesepeople that anything against
(35:14):
Taiwan is to put the existenceof the regime at stake.
In other words,play in the political sphere,
make sure that our deterrenceis both military and political,
that we message and we take actions,whether covert or overt,
that show the Chineseleadership the Second and
(35:36):
third echelon of the regime,Chinese business circles,
the Chinese population,to the extent that we can reach them,
that he's playing with the futureof the Communist Party.
We can do this in so many ways.
We need to up our game herein political deterrence.
(35:58):
Ultimately, these regimesare about their own survival.
And soif he thinks his regime will survive with
an aggression vis a vis Taiwan,that's one calculus.
If he thinks his regime is at riskover that because it could fail and
because the regime could unravel ifits legitimacy could be undermined,
(36:23):
that's a different risk.
And that's the risk that wehave to enhance and play in.
Political deterrence has to be atleast as energetic, at least as smart,
and at least as aggressive acrossall fronts that we have now.
Having said that, we're stilldealing with one decision maker.
(36:46):
We're still dealing with one guy making$100 trillion decision effectively.
And so ultimately,
we have to be ready should thatdecision not go the way we hope.
But in the meantime, we can affect thatdecision by raising the calculus of risk
(37:07):
in the minds not just of him, but all theinterest groups and the society at large.
What that means is thatwe can't do this alone.
Just like I adhere to Matt Pottinger and
Liz Economy's views on Xi Jinping andthe nature of the regime,
(37:29):
our colleagues at Hoover,Matt Pottinger and Liz Economy.
I also adhere to Kurt Campbell andRush Doshi's understanding of,
most recently in the newedition of Foreign Affairs,
of how we need to aggregate our powerin order to manage this challenge.
(37:49):
We are a superpower across the board,an economic superpower,
a military superpower,a free and open society,
an energy superpower,soft power superpower.
But we have something nobody elsehas ever had in world history.
We're an alliance superpower, we're analliance, friends and partners superpower.
(38:12):
We have nearly 80 treatyrelationships with other countries,
some multilateral, some bilateral,
not all of them are atthe level of the defense pact.
But nonetheless, we just have a hugenumber of people who are voluntarily
entering into relationships withus that carry mutual obligations.
(38:37):
Yes, they need to be enhanced,they need to be revisited,
in some cases to be enhanced, andthey need to be brought into 21st
century conditions, whether that'son the digital side or other sides.
Yes, there needs to bea rebalancing of responsibilities.
All of that is fundamentally true,that you can't just stand pat with
(39:00):
your relationships as if they'rejust going to continue on autopilot.
But that is also a superpower thatthe Chinese, by the way, do not have and
never will have because there's notrust inside authoritarian regimes,
let alone between them, in order to havemutual obligations in a crunch moment,
(39:22):
we have that kind of trustin our relationships.
So I'm very optimistic that we can do thisright, rebuild the military industrial
complex and get that military deterrenceright that you guys are working on,
but enhance much more energeticon the political deterrence and
talking about that risk calculationin their face so that they understand
(39:47):
the level of risk, the existentialrisk for the survival of their regime.
That's what gets their attention.
>> John Moolenaar (39:54):
Well, thank you.
Professor Kotkin,just to build on your comments, does.
The policy of strategic ambiguity,does that lessen our capabilities?
Does that deter ourability to message clearly
on the political front in this regard?
>> Stephen Kotkin (40:16):
Very, very good question.
Again, as expected.
Chairman John.
So the status quo works forus, it's the Chinese Communist
regime that's trying tochange the status quo.
The status quo is our victory.
Taiwan is a self governing entity.
(40:38):
It is democratic, vibrant,open society and economy.
And its people.
Even before what the ChineseCommunist Party did to Hong Kong,
but more energetically afterwhat happened to Hong Kong,
its people don't want anypart of Communist rule.
(40:59):
And so that's a win.
Our job is to preserve the status quo.
If we give the Communist Partyin China a pretext for
changing the status quo,we are playing into their hands.
We have to be very careful.
Whether we believe strategicambiguity still exists,
(41:21):
is a good idea,is working to our advantage.
What's working to our advantage,Chairman John, is the status quo.
That's our high moral groundthat we need to stand on.
And it avoids providing a warrationale to the Chinese.
So if we change the status quo onour side, then they can blame us.
(41:43):
Then it's not themchanging the status quo.
It's not them being aggressive, it'sthey're only reacting to what we're doing.
So I'm in favor of the status quo, andI'm against providing a pretext for
them to accuse us of changing the statusquo, and therefore, acting aggressive.
(42:04):
You know, with war,as we've seen in Ukraine,
if you take it, you can't have it.
You get a smoking pile of rubble.
What's happened in Ukraine isthe coal mines are flooded,
the agricultural fields are mined,the metal factories
(42:28):
are flattened in rubble,the ports destroyed.
A very, very tiny part ofPotyomkin village has been rebuilt
in those Russian occupied areas.
But for the most part,they own a moonscape.
So you take it, you can't have it.
So the goal of the Chinese Communist Partyis not to take Taiwan by military force,
(42:53):
because if they take it,they can't have it.
It's to get it to have it.
And so they want to take it withoutthe military confrontation.
They want to just have it handed to them.
For example,like Czechoslovakia was in 1938,
the part of Czechoslovakiahanded over at the Munich Pact.
(43:16):
So for them,war is actually a problem too.
Not just that it puts the regime at stake,but
then they get a smoking pile of rubble.
And so we need to message that as well.
We need to make it clear thatthey cannot win this militarily.
(43:38):
They don't get Taiwan, they get rubble.
And so we also need to be careful thatnot focusing excessively on the military
aggression, of course, but focusing more,as your committee has been,
on the quarantine slash blockadescenario where they enforce
a customs post on the other sideof Taiwan, not in the straits,
(44:02):
but on the other side, andchallenge us to run that blockade and
challenge us on whether weare adhering to a one China policy or
not by enforcing from theirside the customs post.
Again, we can manage that.
It's not going to be easy,but we can manage that.
But we should be less focused on strategicambiguity as the problem set and
(44:28):
more focused on preservation ofthe status quo, which is a win.
So if we elongate the status quo,if the status quo keeps getting longer and
longer and longer,if the short term keeps getting longer,
until it's the long term,that's a win for us.
That's the space in which we have to play.
(44:50):
And all of our actions have tobe geared to that enhancement,
preservation of the status quo, notproviding a pretext for them to attack.
They will attack if to deny usan independent Taiwan in law.
If Taiwan declares itsindependence in law,
(45:14):
the Chinese will destroyTaiwan under the proviso if
I can't have it, nobody can have it.
Pretty much what Putin isdoing in Ukraine, right?
Ukraine doesn't have another Ukraine,
Putin doesn't actually need Ukraine,he can just wreck it and win that way.
(45:35):
And China could do that vis a vis Taiwan,to deny Taiwan independence in law and
to deny Taiwan role in the Indo Pacificwith its partners like the United States.
So I want to avoid that outcome.
I don't want to avoid thatoutcome through appeasement.
I don't want to avoid thatoutcome through self delusion.
(45:58):
I wanna avoid that outcome throughstrength in the military and
the political sphere.
But I want to talk aboutpreservation of the status quo.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (46:07):
Can I jump in, John?
>> John Moolenaar (46:08):
Absolutely.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (46:10):
You know, professor,
we talk about the strategic competition.
I want to ask just two related questions.
What does winning the competition looklike to you and what's realistically?
And then secondly, there's so
much economic turmoil happeningwithin China right now.
(46:38):
I'm.Just curious, how do you view that in
terms of how Xi Jinpingprioritizes dealing with that for
the purposes of preservingregime stability?
Do you see any cracks whatsoever?
Anything that would giveyou cause to believe that
(47:02):
the CCP would be concerned forits own survival,
to deal with that more thankind of moving aggressively
on other countries,including its neighbors?
>> Stephen Kotkin (47:19):
Again, that's one man making that $100 trillion decision,
ranking member Raja, right?
So it's very hard to give an answerto that because he's the only one
giving that answer and he himselfmay not know what that answer is.
Or that answer may be one answer today anda different answer tomorrow, right?
So hard to say.
(47:40):
China is an unbelievable civilization,
enormously successful,culturally phenomenal.
The food, the art, the design,the economic dynamism,
the entrepreneurialism of the people.
It is a remarkable civilization.
(48:02):
And what they've achieved in the last 40years in the American led order, with
America providing a tremendous lendinghand to what they've been able to achieve.
But nonetheless,they've been able to achieve it, and
we have to give them their due.
They are very formidable, and as I said,
(48:24):
they're not going away andthey are a manufacturing superpower.
And they have a gigantic poolof skilled labor that can move
from one industry to another.
And they have skilled peoplein ways that we used to have,
and we don't have as many now.
(48:46):
We talk about bringing manufacturingback to the United States,
but we don't talk aboutwho's going to work in it.
Where is the AI inflectedvocational training?
Where are the million new mathteachers in the United States?
Math is our number one strategic import,which we import from South Asia,
(49:11):
China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam,because we don't do enough math at home.
We only have a million and a half mathteachers total for 340 million people,
we need another million math teachersright now and we need vocational training.
AI inflected vocational training and
(49:32):
so think about this, there are 33, 32,
33 million young peoplein the United States.
18 to 24, 32 million, roughly about 13million of them are in higher education,
so there's 19 million people whoare 18 to 24 who are not in higher ed.
(49:56):
What are we doing for them?
Where's the AI inflectedvocational training?
Are we populists orare we pretending to be populists?
Moreover, of the 13 million in higher ed,
how many are in the Ivy Leagues orthe Ivy Plus?
Including University of Chicago,including Stanford, but
(50:17):
the Ivy Leagues as well, that's 100,000.
So we have a national conversationin education about 100,000 kids.
They're great kids, they're amazing kids,
I'm teaching them out here at Stanford,they walk on water.
But I have 13 million in higher education,not 100,000 and
(50:38):
then I have 19 millionnot in higher education.
So winning is investing in those people,winning is investing in ourselves.
Winning is making sure that when we talkabout rebuilding industrial capacity,
we have the trained people forthe 21st century to work those jobs,
(51:00):
I don't have to tell you guys this.
You remember that America, becauseChairman John Reckon, member Roger,
we grew up in that America, right?
My father worked in an embroidery factoryand I went to school and here I am sitting
in the Hoover Tower in the middle ofStanford campus in Silicon Valley.
That's who we are, that's what wehave to regain and remember and
(51:23):
that's what winning looks like.
If we do that, if we invest in ourselves,
if we understand what made us great, and
if we get to a point where our friends andallies.
And those rebalancedrelationships are good for
(51:44):
the 21st century,nobody can beat us, absolutely not.
So winning is not planning an Americanflag in the middle of Chinese territory,
it's not the Chinese vanishfrom the face of the earth.
It's that America becomes America again.
That's what winning looks like.
(52:04):
It's investing in ourselves, playingto our strengths, most of all being
ourselves, not being like China,that's what I understand winning to be.
As far as whether the Chineseare going to roll the iron dice or
not, again,that's one guy making that decision.
But on our side, it's a whole societymaking the decision of how to respond.
(52:30):
It's our universities, it's our scientificestablishment, it's our Congress, it's our
judiciary, it's our executive branch, it'sour NGOs, it's our business community.
Look at all the sources ofpower in the United States,
the more that they are energized,
the more that they are the levelthat they can be at.
(52:52):
The more we provide opportunity at home,an opportunity abroad for
our friends and partners, the more we win.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (53:01):
Wow, thank you Professor John,
do you wanna close andor I can close as well.
>> John Moolenaar (53:11):
Well, I just wanna say thank you, Professor Kotkin, and
appreciate the Hoover Institution andall the work you're doing and
the students who have tuned in today andreally appreciate this discussion.
Very thought provoking and Raja, thankyou for inviting me to be part of it.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (53:32):
Well, first of all, I just want to say a big thank
you to Professor Kotkin and the HooverInstitution for working with us.
Thank you, Chairman John,and everybody for watching.
I think that what is moststriking about this conversation
is that just in the past,let's say 80 to 100 years of history.
(53:58):
We can kind of glean lessons that need to
be applied right now toboth prevent a hot war,
as the professor alluded to, butalso to win the competition.
And I think we can only dothis on a bipartisan basis or
nonpartisan basis,whatever you want to call it,
(54:22):
we have to be united becauseI think that's in part
the thing that the Chineseleast expect about us.
Somehow they view usas hopelessly divided.
I'll just close with this saying,I guess Wang Huning,
who I guess is the Xi Jinping whisperer,
(54:46):
he wrote a book titledAmerica Against America.
And we cannot expect towin this competition with
the Chinese Communist Partyif we end up being what
Wang Huning described us as,tribal, partisan and divided.
(55:07):
And we have to play against type andbe the opposite now more than ever.
And so, John, thank you so much foryour leadership in that regard.
You're kind of leading the way and
helping us be the best partof Congress that we can be.
So if we can do that and be united inour approach with regard to the ccp,
(55:31):
I think that our chances of winningthis competition go up dramatically.
And Professor Kotkin, thank you for
helping to hang a lantern on that andother important points today.
And thank you to our audience forjoining us.
[MUSIC]
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (00:03):
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Chairman, forallowing me to introduce both you as
well as our distinguished guest today,Stephen Kotkin.
Confession from the start.
I'm a super fan of Professor Kotkin,one of the foremost historians
in the world with regard to greatpower competition as well as
(00:27):
authoritarian regimes,including in the former Soviet Union,
the current Russian Federation andof course the Chinese Communist Party.
I should tell you, Professor Kotkin,my wife is also a super fan.
She's an anesthesiologist.
The joke is that we bothput people to sleep.
(00:47):
She's actually taking a little breakin between operations from the OR
to watch this particular webinar.
I think a lot of people from hopefullyaround the community, both in Stanford,
but also people who paid close attentionto our committee are watching today.
I'll just say a little bitmore about Professor Kotkin.
(01:09):
He's a senior fellow at the HooverInstitution and a professor of History and
International Affairs Emeritusat Princeton University.
He has written award winning books onJoseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.
I think that his insights with regardto the Chinese Communist Party and
(01:29):
Xi Jinping in particular, based on hisknowledge of this former Soviet Union,
but also current affairs both in Russiaand in China, are extremely insightful.
It gives me great pleasure towelcome him to our committee.
(01:50):
And of course,I'd like to introduce our chairman and
my friend John Molnar of Michigan as well.
>> John Moolenaar (01:59):
Well, thank you, Raja, and it's always good to be with you.
Appreciate your leadership forour committee.
And it's just really important as wecontinue to work in a bipartisan way,
to really focus on the threat ofthe Chinese Communist Party and
the economic front, the military front,as well as human rights.
(02:20):
And you've been a greatpartner in this effort.
And I really appreciate the opportunityto be with you today and
also to engage with Professor Kotkin.
And you know, one of the things that,you know, we talk about some, and
I know Professor Kotkin'sbeen a real leader on is,
is the fact that we'rebasically in a second Cold War.
(02:41):
And that's shocking when you think of it.
But at the same time,it's better than a hot war.
And it says that there are thingsthat we can do to prevent a hot war.
And the stakes are different now.
Back in the first Cold War,the tanks, missiles,
the Iron Curtain were all very visible.
(03:03):
Now the challenge is more complex,it's economic, technology,
information, ideology, all wrappedup in the ambitions of a regime
that really seeks to reshapethe global order on its own terms.
And when you think about the daysof the movies about the KGB and
(03:25):
the Russian influence,that seemed very clear.
There's really no counterpartin the sense of the KGB villain,
no household name forthe China Ministry of State Security,
but clearly the Chinese surveillance and
(03:46):
operations are veryclear around the world.
In the United States, Professor Kotkin,
you've argued that Americans needto consider a real sacrifice.
Higher prices, lost apps,national service.
Because this is so serious, I want todig into that more with you today and
(04:09):
really understand your views onthe threat as well as what we as
Americans need to do to continueto bring light to this issue.
But sacrifices we may need tomake to continue to advocate and
fight for our way of life.
So it's an honor to be with youall today and thanks so much.
>> Stephen Kotkin (04:30):
It's a great honor, the invitation, Chairman John and
Ranking Member Raja.
And I commend you for the vital workthat you're doing in our Congress.
On behalf of us, all of us,the American people,
let me offer just two opening bulletpoints to start the conversation and
(04:51):
then we'll see where youguys want to take it.
The first bullet point will be aboutthe nature of the system and its.
Its specificity.
And the second will be about itsintentions, aims, motivations.
There's something called a Leninistregime or a Leninist system,
(05:13):
which is based upon the monopolyof the Communist Party and
the insertion of the Communist Party intoall institutions, public and private.
That's something that is uniqueto the Leninist regimes.
Not every Leninist regime is identical.
There are cultural differences andhistorical legacies to consider, but
(05:36):
there's a basic pattern, andthat's what I just like to clarify.
In the first bullet point,you cannot be half Communist,
just like you cannot be half pregnant.
You either have the full monopoly of theCommunist Party or your system unravels.
(05:56):
We saw this in Hungary in 1956when they began to try to open up
the political system to democratizethe Communist Party's rule.
We saw it in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
We saw it with Gorbachev inthe Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The Chinese Communist regimestudies this history.
(06:19):
It's one of the main subjects forall party members.
It's a critical subject at the Partyschools that all the cadre attend.
So they know this history well.
And the reason they study it isbecause they will not repeat it.
That is to say, they will notengage in political opening because
(06:42):
there is what we call no political reformequilibrium in a Communist system.
What I mean is that ifyou start to open up,
there's no way to stabilizea reformed opened up Communist Party
system because you lose your monopolyagain, you can't be half communist.
(07:05):
What that means is that you saywe're going to have debate within
the Communist Party, we're going toliberalize the system somewhat and
allow some debate in the party.
And some smart aleck comes along andsays, well,
I want a different party,I don't want the Communist Party.
And you say no, no,no debate within the party's monopoly.
(07:27):
And that person and others begin toinsist that yes, okay, debate, but
debate means not retaining the communistmonopoly but overthrowing it.
So it becomes a kind ofunintentional suicide to engage in
political reform ina Leninist system as Hungary,
Czechoslovakia andthe Soviet Union showed.
(07:51):
Because again, there's no placewhere you can stop the process and
be stable again with an opened orpartially opened political system.
Because people in the system don'twant the communist monopoly.
If you open it up and let them talk aboutthat, they want to form other parties.
We've seen that again andagain in each historical case.
(08:14):
And as I said,the Chinese are experts on this history.
Even economic reform, which is possiblein a communist system presents a threat.
So, so they can do,unlike political reform,
they can do a significant amount ofeconomic opening, economic liberalization.
They need the private sector like oxygen.
(08:37):
It provides the wealth, it providesthe jobs, it drives their GDP growth and
their employment numbers.
But they don't like independentsources of wealth and power,
which is what the privatesector gives you.
And so, they're constantly in thisquandary of being desperate to
encourage private sector dynamism,but being threatened,
(09:02):
their monopoly on power, being threatenedby the private sector's success,
independent sources of wealth and power.
Jiang Zemin tried to square this circlewith what he called the three represents.
He was the leader after Deng Xiaoping.
And by the three represents hemeant that private sector business
(09:25):
people would be allowed tobecome members of the party.
In other words, we would co opt theprivate sector and regain control over it
for the party, for the party's monopolyby admitting them into the party.
This failed.
It only further increased the corruptionaround the party's position.
(09:49):
And so Jiang Zemin's three representsbring the businessman into
the party failed.
And so predictably,Xi Jinping decided to put the party back
into the private businessesas a form of control.
Instead of co optingthe businesses into the party,
force private businesses to accept partysupervision inside their boards and
(10:13):
often with their highermanagement structure.
So that's the stage we are now.
The upshot of all of this is that theCommunist Party has self imposed limits
on what it can do politically andhow much it can open up.
And that includes even the economy.
(10:34):
So when we talked about the engagementpolicy and potentially transforming or
helping to encourage the transformationof the Communist Party to a more open,
potentially rule of law direction,
we neglected to understand thatthat's suicide for a Leninist regime
because you can't be half communist,you can't open up and survive.
(10:58):
To open up politically is a suicidal pathand they're not going to commit suicide.
In fact,Deng Xiaoping never promised that he would
liberalize the system politically andhe never did so.
And Xi Jinping even more so.
Okay, so that's my first bullet point,that we must be realistic about the nature
(11:21):
of the system and its limitations if we'regoing to engage with them in diplomacy,
deal making, etcetera what they cannot dois what we've been asking them to do for
multiple decades, which is to openup their system politically and
move towards rule of law, because thatthreatens the system's existence.
(11:42):
Okay, point number two,bullet point number two.
What are the aims,the key goals of such a system?
Well, clearly it is survival,the survival of the party's monopoly.
And Xi Jinping, butnot only Xi Jinping alone is
committed to the survival of the party,no matter what,
(12:05):
as anybody would be if theywere in charge of that system.
The second goal, however,
is to restore the perceivedgreatness of China more broadly.
And so these two reinforce each other,make the world safe for
(12:26):
the Communist monopoly, andremake the world not just so
that the regime survives, but that Chinaattains its rightful place in the world.
We have this debate in our countryabout what does China really want?
What does Xi Jinping really want?
Does he just want to regainChina's dominance in East Asia?
(12:50):
Does he want global power?
And that's a false question,because the appetite, Chairman John and
Ranking Member Roger,the appetite always grows in the eating.
And so whatever your initial aimsmight be, if you succeed in them,
you get hungrier andhungrier and hungrier.
(13:11):
The appetite grows in the eating.
So whether Xi Jinpingpersonally envisions East Asian
dominance alone ora more global dominant position,
if he achieves the first,he's on the way to the second.
And so we must assume as policymakers,as I said,
(13:32):
that the appetite grows in the eating.
Now, the competition with China,therefore, is not a misunderstanding.
This is not something that wecan talk through very easily.
This is a fundamental clashof interests and values.
The existence of the Americansystem ipso facto threatens
(13:55):
the survival of the Communist Partybecause it's a freer,
it's an open, successful alternative.
So whatever US policy might bemore aggressive towards China,
less aggressive towards China, China hasthe same dilemma independent of US policy.
(14:16):
US policy cannot fix this dilemma for
the Communist Party,which is that if regime survival,
let alone regaining China's perceivedrightful place in the world,
are the goals, the US stands in the way.
When the US was formed inthe late 18th century,
(14:39):
not long thereafter,China went into the tank.
China had a long period of external, but
especially internal depredations.
And so for 170 years or so,from around 1800 to 1970s,
(14:59):
China, as I said, declined,went into the tank.
That's exactly the time of the riseof America to superpower status.
So China being the most powerful,
largest economy in the world up throughthe late 18th century, goes into the tank.
America rises.
(15:20):
China comes out of that longtunnel in the 1980s, 90s, 2000s,
and lo and behold,America is there now, it's a superpower.
When China had previously beenthe world dominant power, America,
America didn't exist.
And when America started,It was just 13 fledgling
(15:43):
colonies on the eastern coastwith a population of 3 million.
Not the superpower that it is today.
So for China, this dilemma is new, thedilemma of how to manage American power.
Just as it's important forus to understand.
Understand how to manageChinese place in the world.
So again, we can't assume that thisis a misunderstanding for them.
(16:08):
It's existential that they somehow figureout how to make the world safe for
their survival of their regime and
how to make China attain itsperceived rightful place.
And America stands in the way of that.
And therefore, it's not our policy,
it's the nature of the Chineseregime that is the challenge.
(16:32):
And so we can be more accommodating, lessaccommodating, we still have a challenge.
That's not to say we can't managethe Chinese regime better or worse.
We can certainly do better orworse with this challenge, but
it's not a challenge that we canattribute to misunderstanding.
So therefore,in conclusion to these two bullet points,
(16:54):
let me just say that we haveto share the world with China.
China is not going away andAmerica is not going away.
That's not the question.
The question is what are the terms ofhow we're going to share the world?
Are the terms the kind of internalrepression that the Chinese
(17:14):
practice at home, Is it Xinjiang orwhat happened to Hong Kong?
Are those the terms ofsharing the world with China?
Or can we, through better policies andinvesting in our strengths and
in our allies and relationships,can we help build leverage so
(17:34):
that we can get more favorableterms in the prospect of needing to
share the world with this Leninistregime that is afraid for
its survival andthat has a hard time reconciling our
position in the world with their survival?
(17:54):
Anyway, those are my opening remarksabout the nature of the regime and
how the appetite grows in the eating.
Back to you.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (18:02):
Thank you.
John, do you want tostart off the questions?
>> John Moolenaar (18:05):
Well, first of all, thank you for those insights and
a couple questions I wanted to ask you.
You don't use the term Marxist Leninist.
I'm wondering if you would explainwhy that is you refer to Leninist.
And then secondly,what lessons from the first Cold War with
(18:28):
the Soviet Union should we draw andin this relationship with China.
>> Stephen Kotkin (18:34):
Thank you.
Excellent questions,predictably, Chairman John.
So Marxist Leninism sometimes getsus into trouble because people then
respond by saying, well,they don't really believe in the Marxism,
they're not really Marxists,they're just faking it.
(18:54):
They're paying obeisance to the ideology,but
they're really just about power andabout getting rich.
And so therefore,
it's not really a Marxist Leninist regimethe way that the Soviet Union was.
Ideology is dead.
And so that's only a partial truth.
A Leninist regime has a certainStructure as I outlined,
(19:19):
whether people adhere tothe Marxist ideology or not.
And so you can be completely cynicalabout the Marxism and yet you can have
a Leninist political structure withthat communist monopoly on power.
Now we can debate the extent to whichthey adhere to Marxist ideology.
(19:43):
And that debate is a worthy debate.
But what I'm trying to do by callingit a Leninist regime is avoid
the dismissal that comes fromcalling it Marxism-Leninism.
Because then people say, aha,they don't really have that ideology.
Your analysis is wrong.
Marxism has two components,fundamental components.
(20:06):
One is anti capitalism and the otheris what they call anti imperialism or
anti Westernism, sometimes justreduced to anti Americanism.
You can actually throw offthe anti-capitalist part of Marxist and
you can stay with the anti-imperialism,anti-American piece.
(20:29):
So all throughout the time that wethought that they were capitalists,
not anti-capitalists, not really Marxists,
they retained the otherpiece of Marxist ideology,
which was the anti-imperialism,anti Westernism, anti-Americanism.
In addition, the anti capitalismpiece never went away fully.
(20:51):
It was always there inparts of the party system.
And in fact,you can argue that Xi Jinping himself
has more Marxist leanings than Jiang Zemin
might have had in terms of the ideology.
Again, they're both Leninist inthe structure of the system.
(21:14):
So we can have a fruitful debate,Chairman John,
about the extent to whichthey're Marxist or not.
But I think there is no debate onwhether or not it's a Leninist system.
Now, on the Cold War andthe first Cold War and
the Soviet case,there are a couple of lessons.
(21:35):
One is what are the options forgreat power competition?
In other words, if you look at notjust us with the Soviet Union, but
if you look at history in the full sweepwhen great powers face each other,
what are the policy options?
What's the full array?
And there are only four.
(21:55):
One is hot war, which you two havealready alluded to, is the worst outcome.
And that's certainly the case.
Hot war between great powers iscatastrophic even when you win.
There were 55 million deaths.
That's the minimum,the low estimate in World War II.
(22:16):
55 million is a really big number,it's a multiple of World War I.
And if we, God forbid,ever got to World War Three,
we would get a multipleof that 55 million.
And so even if you win,you lose in some sense.
Of course there is a victor anda vanquished in most wars.
(22:37):
But what I'm saying is that the costof winning can even be intolerable.
So avoiding hot war is the gamethat is the uppermost to manage.
The second policy option is appeasement or
what might be called capitulationwhere you keep giving in,
(22:59):
giving in, giving in as Churchillsaid you get hot war anyway even if
you try appeasement because againthe appetite grows in the eating so
you think you're reducing tensions butyou're only encouraging
the other sides appetite ambitions toask and seek more and more and more.
(23:20):
So appeasement capitulationis the second after hot war.
It also doesn't lookvery attractive to me.
The third is what I callPygmalion Pygmalion as you know from
the George Bernard Shaw play isabout finding a street urchin this
girl who's a street urchin anddoesn't have manners and
putting her through etiquette school andand making her a lady or
(23:44):
what might be called a responsiblestakeholder in the international system.
This is highly seductive.
It's very tempting for us to wannatransform from the outside these
grand Eurasian civilizationsthat predate the.
The United States by millennia.
Whether it's Russia, Iran, or China,
(24:04):
Pygmalion doesn't really work,it's an illusion.
Because they don't want to be transformedby us into a responsible stakeholder
of the international system,because that's our international system.
They want to shape the internationalsystem not for our benefit, but
for their own benefit.
(24:25):
So Pygmalion involves a degree ofself delusion in a different way
from appeasement, but also unsuccessful.
So if you don't want hot war andyou don't think appeasement works and
you've seen the Pygmalion fail again andagain,
where you try to transform themto be more like you, responsible
(24:46):
stakeholder in the international system,what does that leave?
Well, it leaves what you guyscall strategic competition or
what could be called Cold War.
The beauty of Cold War isthat it's not hot war.
I think ranking member Raja made thatvery statement at the outset of this
(25:10):
conversation.
In addition, Cold War doesn'tmean only tension, there was
a tremendous amount of cooperationin the Cold War between the US and
the Soviet Union, in science,in space, in many, many areas.
So you can compete,you can have high tension, but
(25:33):
you can also managethe rivalry through Cold War.
Cold War is an achievement.
If we get to Cold War,that means we've avoided hot war and
we're trying to managethis strategic competition
in ways that are to our advantage.
Again, share the world.
(25:54):
But what are the terms?
The final lesson I would mentionhere is that we won the Cold War and
the prize was an aggressive Russia.
So the idea that you can windefinitively and then you're done,
(26:15):
that there's some type of hot warvictory equivalent in a Cold War,
is not true historically.
What you end up with is a differentversion of the strategic competition.
Russia is much smaller geographicallythan the Soviet Union.
It's much farther from Europe.
It doesn't have the same sizemilitary industrial complex,
(26:40):
it doesn't have the same sizescientific and technical complex,
the same number of Nobel Prizes,and yet, nonetheless,
we find ourselves jaw to jawwith the Russians yet again.
So I think we need to understandwith China again that managing,
getting into a Cold war andachievement and
(27:02):
managing the strategic competitiondoesn't necessarily mean
that one day you declare victory andyou go home and you're done.
What it means is that you get toshape the external environment
in ways that favor your system andyour friends and
(27:23):
that disadvantage them withoutprovoking them into hot war,
and that you don't become morelike them in the process.
George Kennan's number one lesson wasthat if you become like the other
side in competing against the otherside's authoritarianism, you lose.
(27:46):
Losing is becoming andacting more and more like them.
They do censorship,we do censorship, right?
They put government controlsover parts of the economy.
We put government control.
We need to play to the free andopen society strengths, the dynamism,
the market economy, the separation ofpowers, the free and open society.
(28:10):
We need to be who we are if we'regoing to compete with them.
And the more that we act like themin the name of competing like them,
Ken and said,the less we're actually winning and
the more we have to reevaluate what we're doing.
So compete every way we can in allthe domains that Chairman John outlined,
(28:33):
but make sure we play to our strengths.
We remain who we are and
we don't become like them inthe name of competing with them.
So there are a lot of lessonsfrom the first Cold War,
including the fact thatCold War is an achievement.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (28:49):
Professor Kotkin, that was a very illuminating answer.
I want to talk a little bitabout Taiwan because we spent
a lot of time on this committeetalking about Taiwan and
basically deterring the CCP from kind ofmoving coercively with regard to Taiwan.
(29:12):
You've spoken extensively about,
quote, unquote, rolling the iron dice and
regimes making the ultimate kindof move on sovereign entities.
We saw that, obviously,with Ukraine and Russia.
(29:33):
Russia invading Ukraine.
And then interestingly,you've also talked about how historically,
you thought, for instance, In WorldWar II, Adolf Hitler was a gambler,
whereas Stalin was more ofan opportunist and a little more.
Much more cautious.
And you've seen various degrees of that indifferent authoritarians over the years.
(29:59):
How would you assess Xi Jinping?
Where do you.
Where do you put him on the spectrumin terms of is he more of a gambler,
is he much more cautious andmore of an opportunist?
And recently he has basically called.
He's purged so many levels of the pla,I've lost track.
(30:22):
He seems to fire somebody every otherweek under the guise of corruption.
I'm not sure if it's true or
whether he's just taking out people whomight disagree with him politically.
But nonetheless, can you just assessXi Jinping from your standpoint
in terms of history, but also in termsof what you're seeing right now today,
(30:47):
and how we should bethinking about Xi Jinping.
>> Stephen Kotkin (30:50):
Yeah, great question.
Of course, many people are betterplaced than I am to evaluate him.
I've never met him.
Some many other of ouranalysts have met him or
been in the same room with him andfollowed his career closely.
So I'll just say the following,the answer to your question was contained
(31:14):
in your question, calculated riskversus uncalculated risk, right?
The gambler versus the opportunist.
So uncalculated risk, what we saw withHitler versus more calculated risk,
the opportunism that we saw with Stalin.
They both want to grab what they can, but
(31:35):
one wants to grab it withoutpaying high costs, necessarily.
And the other wants to grab it comewhat may, whatever the cost might be,
including blowing up his own country andblowing up the world.
And so which one of thosecategories is Xi Jinping?
Well, it's hard to say,
because it's not like we havedirect access into his thinking.
(32:00):
It's not like he's broadcasting his views,he's sitting down and
talking with journalists, or
he's having town hall meetings like ourcongressmen have with their constituents.
Even the second and third echelonin the Chinese regime have a very
hard time understanding what'sgoing on inside the regime.
(32:22):
The first circle,the first echelon, is very narrow.
Xi Jinping doesn't necessarily revealto them what's on his own mind,
let alone to the second and third echelon.
He stays separate from them.
They only have access tohim when he summons them.
There are very few constraints,direct regime constraints on him.
(32:45):
And so figuring out histhinking is a challenge for
the regime, inner circle forthe members in the second and
third echelon, buteven in some cases higher than that.
It's gonna be hard for us as well.
But for us,whatever his thinking might be,
(33:06):
whether he's predominantlya calculated risk taker and
an opportunist,versus he's willing to incur more risk,
our goal is to increasethe sense of risk for him.
So often people talk about howif he takes back Taiwan and
(33:27):
quote, reunites historic China,then he goes into
the history books as the greatleader who reunited China.
And I say, okay,what if he tries that and it fails?
And he goes into the historybooks as the person who lost
the Communist regime in China.
(33:48):
What if he goes into the historybooks as China's Gorbachev,
not because he tried to reform andopen the party politically
like Gorbachev did, andunwittingly committed suicide, but
because he was excessively aggressive,took higher risks than
(34:09):
he understood he was taking, andtherefore put the regime at risk.
So our deterrence on Taiwan must be,
as you understand better than anyone,
better than I do, not only military.
Yes, military is absolutely critical.
(34:30):
Getting those Tomahawkmissiles into Japan,
getting the anti shipcapabilities into theater,
planning the hellscape likeAdmiral Papara, our Indo PACOM commander.
And everything else that we're doingmilitarily is absolutely crucial,
including in conjunction with our allies,the Japanese,
(34:53):
the South Koreans, the Filipinos.
Very impressive work that we've beendoing and that needs to continue.
But also deterrence is political.
We need to have the messageto the Chinese regime and
ultimately to the Chinesepeople that anything against
(35:14):
Taiwan is to put the existenceof the regime at stake.
In other words,play in the political sphere,
make sure that our deterrenceis both military and political,
that we message and we take actions,whether covert or overt,
that show the Chineseleadership the Second and
(35:36):
third echelon of the regime,Chinese business circles,
the Chinese population,to the extent that we can reach them,
that he's playing with the futureof the Communist Party.
We can do this in so many ways.
We need to up our game herein political deterrence.
(35:58):
Ultimately, these regimesare about their own survival.
And soif he thinks his regime will survive with
an aggression vis a vis Taiwan,that's one calculus.
If he thinks his regime is at riskover that because it could fail and
because the regime could unravel ifits legitimacy could be undermined,
(36:23):
that's a different risk.
And that's the risk that wehave to enhance and play in.
Political deterrence has to be atleast as energetic, at least as smart,
and at least as aggressive acrossall fronts that we have now.
Having said that, we're stilldealing with one decision maker.
(36:46):
We're still dealing with one guy making$100 trillion decision effectively.
And so ultimately,
we have to be ready should thatdecision not go the way we hope.
But in the meantime, we can affect thatdecision by raising the calculus of risk
(37:07):
in the minds not just of him, but all theinterest groups and the society at large.
What that means is thatwe can't do this alone.
Just like I adhere to Matt Pottinger and
Liz Economy's views on Xi Jinping andthe nature of the regime,
(37:29):
our colleagues at Hoover,Matt Pottinger and Liz Economy.
I also adhere to Kurt Campbell andRush Doshi's understanding of,
most recently in the newedition of Foreign Affairs,
of how we need to aggregate our powerin order to manage this challenge.
(37:49):
We are a superpower across the board,an economic superpower,
a military superpower,a free and open society,
an energy superpower,soft power superpower.
But we have something nobody elsehas ever had in world history.
We're an alliance superpower, we're analliance, friends and partners superpower.
(38:12):
We have nearly 80 treatyrelationships with other countries,
some multilateral, some bilateral,
not all of them are atthe level of the defense pact.
But nonetheless, we just have a hugenumber of people who are voluntarily
entering into relationships withus that carry mutual obligations.
(38:37):
Yes, they need to be enhanced,they need to be revisited,
in some cases to be enhanced, andthey need to be brought into 21st
century conditions, whether that'son the digital side or other sides.
Yes, there needs to bea rebalancing of responsibilities.
All of that is fundamentally true,that you can't just stand pat with
(39:00):
your relationships as if they'rejust going to continue on autopilot.
But that is also a superpower thatthe Chinese, by the way, do not have and
never will have because there's notrust inside authoritarian regimes,
let alone between them, in order to havemutual obligations in a crunch moment,
(39:22):
we have that kind of trustin our relationships.
So I'm very optimistic that we can do thisright, rebuild the military industrial
complex and get that military deterrenceright that you guys are working on,
but enhance much more energeticon the political deterrence and
talking about that risk calculationin their face so that they understand
(39:47):
the level of risk, the existentialrisk for the survival of their regime.
That's what gets their attention.
>> John Moolenaar (39:54):
Well, thank you.
Professor Kotkin,just to build on your comments, does.
The policy of strategic ambiguity,does that lessen our capabilities?
Does that deter ourability to message clearly
on the political front in this regard?
>> Stephen Kotkin (40:16):
Very, very good question.
Again, as expected.
Chairman John.
So the status quo works forus, it's the Chinese Communist
regime that's trying tochange the status quo.
The status quo is our victory.
Taiwan is a self governing entity.
(40:38):
It is democratic, vibrant,open society and economy.
And its people.
Even before what the ChineseCommunist Party did to Hong Kong,
but more energetically afterwhat happened to Hong Kong,
its people don't want anypart of Communist rule.
(40:59):
And so that's a win.
Our job is to preserve the status quo.
If we give the Communist Partyin China a pretext for
changing the status quo,we are playing into their hands.
We have to be very careful.
Whether we believe strategicambiguity still exists,
(41:21):
is a good idea,is working to our advantage.
What's working to our advantage,Chairman John, is the status quo.
That's our high moral groundthat we need to stand on.
And it avoids providing a warrationale to the Chinese.
So if we change the status quo onour side, then they can blame us.
(41:43):
Then it's not themchanging the status quo.
It's not them being aggressive, it'sthey're only reacting to what we're doing.
So I'm in favor of the status quo, andI'm against providing a pretext for
them to accuse us of changing the statusquo, and therefore, acting aggressive.
(42:04):
You know, with war,as we've seen in Ukraine,
if you take it, you can't have it.
You get a smoking pile of rubble.
What's happened in Ukraine isthe coal mines are flooded,
the agricultural fields are mined,the metal factories
(42:28):
are flattened in rubble,the ports destroyed.
A very, very tiny part ofPotyomkin village has been rebuilt
in those Russian occupied areas.
But for the most part,they own a moonscape.
So you take it, you can't have it.
So the goal of the Chinese Communist Partyis not to take Taiwan by military force,
(42:53):
because if they take it,they can't have it.
It's to get it to have it.
And so they want to take it withoutthe military confrontation.
They want to just have it handed to them.
For example,like Czechoslovakia was in 1938,
the part of Czechoslovakiahanded over at the Munich Pact.
(43:16):
So for them,war is actually a problem too.
Not just that it puts the regime at stake,but
then they get a smoking pile of rubble.
And so we need to message that as well.
We need to make it clear thatthey cannot win this militarily.
(43:38):
They don't get Taiwan, they get rubble.
And so we also need to be careful thatnot focusing excessively on the military
aggression, of course, but focusing more,as your committee has been,
on the quarantine slash blockadescenario where they enforce
a customs post on the other sideof Taiwan, not in the straits,
(44:02):
but on the other side, andchallenge us to run that blockade and
challenge us on whether weare adhering to a one China policy or
not by enforcing from theirside the customs post.
Again, we can manage that.
It's not going to be easy,but we can manage that.
But we should be less focused on strategicambiguity as the problem set and
(44:28):
more focused on preservation ofthe status quo, which is a win.
So if we elongate the status quo,if the status quo keeps getting longer and
longer and longer,if the short term keeps getting longer,
until it's the long term,that's a win for us.
That's the space in which we have to play.
(44:50):
And all of our actions have tobe geared to that enhancement,
preservation of the status quo, notproviding a pretext for them to attack.
They will attack if to deny usan independent Taiwan in law.
If Taiwan declares itsindependence in law,
(45:14):
the Chinese will destroyTaiwan under the proviso if
I can't have it, nobody can have it.
Pretty much what Putin isdoing in Ukraine, right?
Ukraine doesn't have another Ukraine,
Putin doesn't actually need Ukraine,he can just wreck it and win that way.
(45:35):
And China could do that vis a vis Taiwan,to deny Taiwan independence in law and
to deny Taiwan role in the Indo Pacificwith its partners like the United States.
So I want to avoid that outcome.
I don't want to avoid thatoutcome through appeasement.
I don't want to avoid thatoutcome through self delusion.
(45:58):
I wanna avoid that outcome throughstrength in the military and
the political sphere.
But I want to talk aboutpreservation of the status quo.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (46:07):
Can I jump in, John?
>> John Moolenaar (46:08):
Absolutely.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (46:10):
You know, professor,
we talk about the strategic competition.
I want to ask just two related questions.
What does winning the competition looklike to you and what's realistically?
And then secondly, there's so
much economic turmoil happeningwithin China right now.
(46:38):
I'm.Just curious, how do you view that in
terms of how Xi Jinpingprioritizes dealing with that for
the purposes of preservingregime stability?
Do you see any cracks whatsoever?
Anything that would giveyou cause to believe that
(47:02):
the CCP would be concerned forits own survival,
to deal with that more thankind of moving aggressively
on other countries,including its neighbors?
>> Stephen Kotkin (47:19):
Again, that's one man making that $100 trillion decision,
ranking member Raja, right?
So it's very hard to give an answerto that because he's the only one
giving that answer and he himselfmay not know what that answer is.
Or that answer may be one answer today anda different answer tomorrow, right?
So hard to say.
(47:40):
China is an unbelievable civilization,
enormously successful,culturally phenomenal.
The food, the art, the design,the economic dynamism,
the entrepreneurialism of the people.
It is a remarkable civilization.
(48:02):
And what they've achieved in the last 40years in the American led order, with
America providing a tremendous lendinghand to what they've been able to achieve.
But nonetheless,they've been able to achieve it, and
we have to give them their due.
They are very formidable, and as I said,
(48:24):
they're not going away andthey are a manufacturing superpower.
And they have a gigantic poolof skilled labor that can move
from one industry to another.
And they have skilled peoplein ways that we used to have,
and we don't have as many now.
(48:46):
We talk about bringing manufacturingback to the United States,
but we don't talk aboutwho's going to work in it.
Where is the AI inflectedvocational training?
Where are the million new mathteachers in the United States?
Math is our number one strategic import,which we import from South Asia,
(49:11):
China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam,because we don't do enough math at home.
We only have a million and a half mathteachers total for 340 million people,
we need another million math teachersright now and we need vocational training.
AI inflected vocational training and
(49:32):
so think about this, there are 33, 32,
33 million young peoplein the United States.
18 to 24, 32 million, roughly about 13million of them are in higher education,
so there's 19 million people whoare 18 to 24 who are not in higher ed.
(49:56):
What are we doing for them?
Where's the AI inflectedvocational training?
Are we populists orare we pretending to be populists?
Moreover, of the 13 million in higher ed,
how many are in the Ivy Leagues orthe Ivy Plus?
Including University of Chicago,including Stanford, but
(50:17):
the Ivy Leagues as well, that's 100,000.
So we have a national conversationin education about 100,000 kids.
They're great kids, they're amazing kids,
I'm teaching them out here at Stanford,they walk on water.
But I have 13 million in higher education,not 100,000 and
(50:38):
then I have 19 millionnot in higher education.
So winning is investing in those people,winning is investing in ourselves.
Winning is making sure that when we talkabout rebuilding industrial capacity,
we have the trained people forthe 21st century to work those jobs,
(51:00):
I don't have to tell you guys this.
You remember that America, becauseChairman John Reckon, member Roger,
we grew up in that America, right?
My father worked in an embroidery factoryand I went to school and here I am sitting
in the Hoover Tower in the middle ofStanford campus in Silicon Valley.
That's who we are, that's what wehave to regain and remember and
(51:23):
that's what winning looks like.
If we do that, if we invest in ourselves,
if we understand what made us great, and
if we get to a point where our friends andallies.
And those rebalancedrelationships are good for
(51:44):
the 21st century,nobody can beat us, absolutely not.
So winning is not planning an Americanflag in the middle of Chinese territory,
it's not the Chinese vanishfrom the face of the earth.
It's that America becomes America again.
That's what winning looks like.
(52:04):
It's investing in ourselves, playingto our strengths, most of all being
ourselves, not being like China,that's what I understand winning to be.
As far as whether the Chineseare going to roll the iron dice or
not, again,that's one guy making that decision.
But on our side, it's a whole societymaking the decision of how to respond.
(52:30):
It's our universities, it's our scientificestablishment, it's our Congress, it's our
judiciary, it's our executive branch, it'sour NGOs, it's our business community.
Look at all the sources ofpower in the United States,
the more that they are energized,
the more that they are the levelthat they can be at.
(52:52):
The more we provide opportunity at home,an opportunity abroad for
our friends and partners, the more we win.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (53:01):
Wow, thank you Professor John,
do you wanna close andor I can close as well.
>> John Moolenaar (53:11):
Well, I just wanna say thank you, Professor Kotkin, and
appreciate the Hoover Institution andall the work you're doing and
the students who have tuned in today andreally appreciate this discussion.
Very thought provoking and Raja, thankyou for inviting me to be part of it.
>> Raja Krishnamoorthi (53:32):
Well, first of all, I just want to say a big thank
you to Professor Kotkin and the HooverInstitution for working with us.
Thank you, Chairman John,and everybody for watching.
I think that what is moststriking about this conversation
is that just in the past,let's say 80 to 100 years of history.
(53:58):
We can kind of glean lessons that need to
be applied right now toboth prevent a hot war,
as the professor alluded to, butalso to win the competition.
And I think we can only dothis on a bipartisan basis or
nonpartisan basis,whatever you want to call it,
(54:22):
we have to be united becauseI think that's in part
the thing that the Chineseleast expect about us.
Somehow they view usas hopelessly divided.
I'll just close with this saying,I guess Wang Huning,
who I guess is the Xi Jinping whisperer,
(54:46):
he wrote a book titledAmerica Against America.
And we cannot expect towin this competition with
the Chinese Communist Partyif we end up being what
Wang Huning described us as,tribal, partisan and divided.
(55:07):
And we have to play against type andbe the opposite now more than ever.
And so, John, thank you so much foryour leadership in that regard.
You're kind of leading the way and
helping us be the best partof Congress that we can be.
So if we can do that and be united inour approach with regard to the ccp,
(55:31):
I think that our chances of winningthis competition go up dramatically.
And Professor Kotkin, thank you for
helping to hang a lantern on that andother important points today.
And thank you to our audience forjoining us.
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