Episode Info
- Season25
- Episode5
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Richard Armitage
Richard Armitage is a former Deputy Secretary of State for the George W. Bush administration and a Reagan-era Republican who has been deeply involved in America's security and defense policy in the Indo-Pacific region.
Episode Summary
Richard Armitage, a former Deputy Secretary of State for the George W. Bush administration and a Reagan-era Republican has been deeply involved in America's security and defense policy in the Indo-Pacific region, continuing to represent the United States in trips abroad, joining high-level delegations including a visit to Taipei in May to attend the inauguration of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te. Secretary Armitage sat down with One Decision's Julia Macfarlane and former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove to talk about the trip and how US policy and attitudes towards the threats from the East have evolved. They also discuss the rising alliance between Moscow and Beijing and Putin's increasing dependence on China as he continues to wage war in Ukraine. Plus, Julia and Sir Richard catch up on the week's news, including his take on the ongoing election campaign in the UK and his prediction on whether the Tories will do as badly as the polls say and Russian President Vladimir Putin's trip to Pyongyang to meet with North Korean President Kim Jong Un.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: You're listening to One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices made that shape our world. I'm your host, Julia McFarlane.
Dearlove: And I'm Richard Dearlove, former chief of British intelligence, otherwise known as MI6.
Mcfarlane: Together, Richard and I speak to the key decision makers, the power players, and influencers who shape some of the biggest events that impact us all. 2024 is already shaping up to be a crucial year for decisions. Since many of the biggest countries in the world are holding elections this year, the outcomes of some could determine global security and prosperity at a volatile and increasingly dangerous moment in time. But 2024 could also be a pivotal moment in the finely balanced relationship between the two main powers in our world today, the United States and China. President Biden has sought a different approach to his predecessor, President Trump, and has tried to temper cooperation with competition rather than hostility and potential conflict. Someone really in the know is Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state. He served under the Reagan and Bush senior administrations, but since then has continued an active role in diplomacy. And he was recently sent to Taiwan by the Biden administration as part of a delegation to support the new president William Lai. We'll get to that discussion shortly. But first, meanwhile over in the UK, the British people will be making their decision on whether to end fourteen years of Conservative Party rule or elect a new Labour government on the July 4. We've been covering the campaign on this podcast, and I asked Sir Richard how the latest developments, namely the launch of a rival political party into the mix, was going down. So Richard, we've heard so many times on the airwaves here in the UK, and we've seen across the papers so many people and so many outlets asking the question, are we seeing the death of the Conservative Party play out in real time? And for our international listeners, the British general election is quite the roller coaster. They've been getting more and more interesting in recent years, but basically the long standing, ruling Conservative Party is facing not only a predicted wipeout at the polls when we go to vote in early July, but Nigel Farage, that very colorful separatist politician who was one of the big Brexit champions back in 2016. He has basically created this new party alongside Richard Tice, and they are seen as real challenges to the Conservatives who not only face an absolute wipeout from Labour, but also losing a lot of votes to this emerging new right wing party. I mean, Richard, you have so many ins to the Conservative Party. You've got lots of connections. What are your thoughts about how the campaign is going?
UK ELECTION
Dearlove: Well, for the Conservative Party, as currently constituted and understood, the outlook according to the polls looks pretty bleak. I suppose in extremis, we might be heading for a Canadian moment. So I'm sitting here sort of thinking, can the Conservatives rescue the situation in the three weeks that are remaining before people go to the polls? And I'm beginning to think it's probably getting a bit too late, because unless they made some dramatic revision of their own manifesto, they're going to be, excuse the pun, they're going to be trumped. Literally trumped. What a choice of pun. They're going to be trumped by Tice and Farage. And I mean, the program they've announced, you know, people are saying, well, you know, they're a bit of a joke. They aren't a joke because it's actually very cleverly put together and pushes all the buttons that conservative voters would be expecting to be pushed in their favor in an election.
Mcfarlane: The Canadian example that you cited at the start of your answer there, it's that incredible Canadian Conservative wipeout. I think it was in the 90s. And what did the Conservatives end up with? I think, like, literally a handful of MPs left, like two MPs or something. And it's a day that lives in infamy for right wing parties all these decades later around the world. And it's this sort of warning that they all cite, oh, it, you know, it'll be just like the Conservatives' mass loss. And it is interesting because that loss was an absolute cataclysmic wipeout, and it remains to be seen how—
Dearlove: Yeah. But then Harper won the next election in Canada, so it was a total wipeout, and I've got a feeling that you could see something similar happen in the UK. Conservative party wipeout, I mean, I think basically what we're looking at probably is a takeover of the Conservative party by Reform, and that's my expectation at the moment. Because of the first past the post system, there's no proportional representation in the UK. It's a system that really favors the incumbent two parties.
Mcfarlane: Exactly. And a lot of people have said that most polls tend to put the Conservatives on anything from sort of 60 seats to just under 200 for the most generous of estimates. I think the latest one predicted around 88 seats remaining for the Conservatives. And I think a lot of people have made the point that at the moment, the Conservative Party doesn't know what it stands for at the moment, and it's having all these internal arguments. Do we go more to the right or do we go more to the center ground? And it is an interesting time for this party that, for our listeners who don't know, most governments in British history have tended to be Conservative governments. They, for a long time, have been election winning machines. And so it is a really interesting upending of British politics. But this Reform party led by Nigel Farage is a brand new party and our political system, new parties don't tend to really work in the UK. So Reform is absolutely a really interesting experiment, you know. Emmanuel Macron and his En Marche party that launched him into the presidency, that kind of thing doesn't really happen here in the UK.
Dearlove: No. That's correct. Look, I don't think the Conservatives are gonna do quite as badly as the polls are saying, and I wonder whether the outcome will be quite as dramatic because some of the people I'm talking to in the Conservative party say it's saying at the local level, they're just not seeing that reflection of the dire prediction of the polls, but I'm not suggesting they're going to win, they're just not going to do so badly. But whatever happens, I think the crucial issue now in the UK in terms of UK politics is what happens to the Conservative Party after the election, and you know we are probably going to have, almost certainly going to have a Labour government which will start off by being reassuring, but whether it remains reassuring and uncontroversial, particularly if it has a really big majority, it remains to be seen. Personally, you know, Starmer has reneged on so many of his previous political statements that I'm sure he'll do it again.
Mcfarlane: Well, one never knows. They may surprise you, Richard. Who knows? Stranger things have happened. There was something else that was really interesting that happened this week, which was Vladimir Putin made a very important trip to North Korea, to his friends in Pyongyang. While Kim Jong Un visited Putin in the Far East of Russia, in Siberia, last September I think it was. This was the first time that Putin or a leader of Russia has gone to North Korea since the year 2000. So I mean, for the first visit in a quarter century, it was a pretty important sort of symbolic optics involved in that trip this week. And, of course, at the center of it all is the fact that Russia is increasingly relying, getting closer to North Korea because the North Koreans are manufacturing a lot of the weapons that they are churning out for the war in Ukraine. And it was interesting that this very old Cold War era alliance is not just being resuscitated, but it is growing in intensity because obviously the North Koreans are sort of dealing with American pressure over their own nuclear program, and then the Russians are obviously pitted against Americans when it comes to the war in Ukraine. I mean, there obviously is a lot of symbolism involved in that relationship, but with regards to the Russians, they don't have a huge number of allies, do they? I mean, they have the Chinese, they have the North Koreans, they kind of have the Iranians, but they really are increasingly isolated, aren't they?
Dearlove: Yes. I think that's correct. But I think there's something else really important going on in Ukraine. In the past, we said that the advantage of time was on the Russian side. The longer the war went on, the more, you know, Russia's weight and preponderance would sort of overwhelm Ukraine's quality. But I think what we're looking at now is Russia having a temporal advantage, but that temporal advantage as it were having a finite ending as the West gathers its forces, gets its act together, and puts more weight behind Ukraine, and there have been quite a lot of significant moves about that recently. So I think that the Russians are really worrying about exploiting at this moment the advantage that they've got. And of course, when it comes to that, their allies, I wouldn't call them allies, but maybe those that support them, that support becomes very important because the preponderance they enjoy at the moment is, you know, the supply of military hardware, particularly artillery shells, and other technologies, and that's key to the Russians exploiting this better situation. But that is going to, as it were, be eroded. So it doesn't surprise me at all, the North Korean visit. I think they are important, particularly as suppliers of artillery ammunition. And of course, the Chinese relationship with Russia is absolutely crucial to Russia, but you would have seen at the G7 conference recently massive G7 pressure on China to reduce its engagement militarily with Russia at the moment. So there are sort of geopolitical forces around the situation. You know, it's giving it a new perspective, particularly in terms of timing and advantage. That's the way I would interpret these events at the moment.
Mcfarlane: And the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky made an appearance, and he also recently was in France for the D-Day eightieth anniversary of the Normandy landings. I have been told by people that there are some rumors that part of the reason why Zelensky is spending so much time abroad and is avoiding or postponing going back to Ukraine is that there are more threats against him, possible fears of assassination plots. We saw those at the start of the all out war breaking out in 2022. We then saw it a little bit later. And both those times, these cells or these assassination plots were swiftly identified and shut down. It seems like there are fears or rumors that this latest one is a little stickier to clamp down on. I mean, when you went to Ukraine recently, you had to go through a whole load of security and it was a very tightly managed operation when you were getting some access to top level Ukrainian leadership. What are your thoughts on the ongoing threat against president Zelensky? You know, as a former head of MI6, surely the CIA, MI6, surely Western intelligence agencies are assisting Ukraine in identifying who poses a threat to Zelensky's life and are also helping them put a stop to it.
Dearlove: Well, I can't talk about specifics, but let's just say, of course, the West, the primary, you know, intelligence support that Ukraine and Zelensky gets. That's important. I mean, bear in mind that there is a way in which you can look at the war in Ukraine and look at it as a civil war, given the intimacy of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine historically. And in that situation, you have to sort of understand, it's very difficult for the Ukrainians to identify, you know, if there's a fifth column of Russian support inside their own country, how to deal with that. And I think there's a real, you know, complexity, and that complexity isn't necessarily best dealt with by foreign intelligence services. It's best dealt with by the Ukrainians themselves, I mean, particularly their internal security. And, of course, they would be given all the help and assistance they would need. But on the other hand, I don't think you can ever be, you know, quite sure that the security situation is a hundred percent, particularly if there's a plot or a conspiracy. I mean, I hadn't heard anything about the reasons why Zelensky might have been out of the country for a long period of time. I mean, one way of, you know, dealing with the risk is, you know, to absent himself and then for his security people to focus on the problem without him being around. So in a way, it doesn't surprise me at all. You know, the Ukrainians were a little bit nervous of having me there, and they certainly made special arrangements for my security. But then on the other hand, you know, a minor problem, a very minor problem, and a routine one given the number of really senior Western figures that have been in and out of Ukraine on a frequent basis. And, you know, there are some people who would be prestige targets, as it were, for the Russians. But I think the Russians would be very careful, I think, in being aggressive against a foreign leader, a foreign politician in the country, not so careful, of course, about the Ukrainians themselves.
Mcfarlane: You mentioned that the Chinese were under increasing pressure over how they are dealing with their relationship with the Russians and to what extent they are giving support to Russia financially, militarily. And so it was really, really interesting to talk to the former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Now he is a Reagan and a Bush senior era politician, but he continues to be extremely active and he's very, very plugged in and even recently went to Taiwan on behalf of the Biden administration. He was part of a US official delegation, and he sat down with the new president of Taiwan, William Lai, to signal ongoing American commitment to Taiwan. And of course, the One China policy is something that both the Taiwanese, the Americans, the international community have to tiptoe a very, very careful line.
Dearlove: Well, I think that's a very important point, and I've recently been at some closed conference in London where this relationship was discussed and it's absolutely clear as you say that Russia is now very much the vassal state and hugely dependent on China and Chinese support. And that's why I think you see pressure being exercised towards China now to try to sort of discourage them and moderate their involvement in the Ukraine conflict in an American attempt or an international attempt to show China that if they continue with this, there's a real cost to China. But, you know, there is a benefit to China in this relationship with Russia. It isn't just one way. And the benefit, I think, is Chinese access to Russian military technology. That's the price I think that the Russians are paying, and it's important for the People's Liberation Army which lags behind Russia in developing its own capabilities. I mean, the Chinese have always tried to short track development like a weapon system, either by stealing from the West or getting them from somebody else. And in this case, clearly Russia is an important or will be an important or is continuing to be an important supplier to the People's Liberation Army. So I think that's a key aspect to it. The other thing is that, you know, there's been a real attempt by the Biden administration at least to improve the dialogue with China and to de-escalate it. And we've seen that in terms of what evidence has come out publicly at meetings and discussions. So there is a background where at least there's more of a dialogue at the moment between the Biden administration and Xi. So let's get to that brilliant conversation that we had with the former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD ARMITAGE
Mcfarlane: Now Richard, you were part of a Biden administration delegation sent to Taiwan around the time of their recent elections. What were you there to do and how did you find your trip?
Armitage: President Biden wanted us to give a strong message of support to Taiwan democracy, and in this case to President Lai Ching-te. And we did that to warn China to stop intimidating and bullying Taiwan, thereby reminding the whole world that China's the problem. Likewise, said that Taiwan is open to discussion, dialogue with China on the basis of dignity and mutual respect.
Mcfarlane: I mean, mutual dignity and respect is all very well in meaning and practice. But I mean, Sir Richard, China views Taiwan as its property, as a part of China at large. And so when it comes to Beijing, it's not going to be shy about actualizing its goals. Mutual dignity and respect be damned.
Dearlove: I think the crucial issue here, I mean, if there are enough incentives in place to discourage China from being aggressive. I mean, I think this boils down to the extent to which the US is prepared to stand behind Taiwan and back it up. I mean, I'd be interested, Rich, in what you have to say, because I mean, Biden did make a statement during this administration that he would actually deploy forces in support of Taiwan, and I don't think any former president has ever been quite so specific about Taiwan as that. They've always left the issue in doubt. But it seems to me that you have come in behind this new president and given him not just moral support but strategic and political support. Is that correct?
Armitage: I'll answer your question directly, but if I could send a little predicate here. Right now, China's, believe it or not, going through a bit of a rough patch. Her economy's bad. Her unemployment, particularly among youth, is out of control. Xi Jinping does not enjoy full support of the PLA. So what does China do when facing problems? They go back to their old playbook, which is to problem rounds on the question of Taiwan. And of course, Xi Jinping has said that the PLA has to be ready to use force on Taiwan by 2027. He did not say they would use force. For the US, the conditions under which force might be employed would affect the way the United States responds. If Taiwan were to declare independence de jure out of the blue and China did something, I think your response to the United States might be relatively muted. If on the other hand, out of the blue, China were to attack Taiwan, they could have much more robust response.
Mcfarlane: I think that's a really, really good point, Richard, and also the importance of the context that President Xi has quite a full plate of domestic issues that he is grappling with. I think it's a really interesting time to be talking about this because there has been quite a frenetic diplomatic effort carried out by the Biden administration the last couple of years. Very proactive stuff. Many senior members of the Biden administration have gone to China, not just the defense secretary and the secretary of state, but there have been lots of departmental and administrative leaders negotiating and opening up channels with their Chinese counterparts. There hasn't quite been a reset, but there has been a shift. There was the focus on alignment, investing and competing that Biden set out recently. We heard that big speech from Jake Sullivan at the start of the year that really emphasized those points. And we have seen some things improve after the events of that Chinese spy balloon made things take a back turn. The Biden Xi meeting in Bali and then the summit in California, the reestablishment of military to military communications after heightened tensions. Things certainly look like they're improving. But what do you make of it, Richard?
Armitage: Well, agree to a certain extent that the Biden administration has not taken their eye off the ball. And it is better to be talking with our lips and with our fist and our feet. But there's no expectation that anything is going to come out of these talks. And just keeping the ball in the air till we get past election and we see where we are. What has happened here has been the most fundamental of shifts in the US Congress to a rather virulent anti-China stance. Our friends in Beijing don't really understand this, which is surprising. I see the usual US-China hands. They come here and it's remarkable to me that they lost three or four or five years ago. I think COVID and the restrictions from COVID are partially responsible. But I think the second reason is because Xi Jinping is not interested in anybody's views on anything.
Dearlove: Rich, I'm fascinated by what you said earlier about maybe this dissatisfaction within the PLA with Xi Jinping. That's the case, with Xi Jinping in such a dominant position, that makes for quite a brittle political establishment in China. I agree with your analysis that they've got significant economic problems at the moment, but I thought that recently there were some sort of greener shoots in terms of the performance of the Chinese economy, but maybe they're not really significant. I mean, how do you view that overall situation?
Armitage: Well, China's attempt to export their way out of this is not going to work because the economic problems are structural and there's no one that I can identify or whom I can identify around Xi Jinping who has any training in the economy. And you look more broadly, things aren't going well for Xi Jinping. And Lee Kuan Yew, the late former prime minister of Singapore, one time told me that you don't have to worry about Xi Jinping. He's been rusticated, so we'll never have a return to the Cultural Revolution. Sir Richard, I didn't know what rusticated meant, but Lee Kuan Yew was not correct. And so, Xi Jinping's relationship with the Navy has undergone a fundamental change. The rocket forces still up in the air. I'm not as deeply understanding of the army and their relationship, but it has not been great heretofore. I do know, as you know, sir, Xi Jinping's investigation into the depth of corruption of the PLA was staggering to him.
Dearlove: I mean, I think that's absolutely fascinating. By the way, if you were at Cambridge, you understand precisely what rusticated meant because it means being sent down to the countryside, which was the sort of threat to terminate your student career.
Armitage: So Richard, I'm from Decatur, Georgia. You don't get more country than that.
Dearlove: I recently read China is suddenly playing very hard ball with Gazprom in Russia over the price that the Russians want to charge them on this new pipeline that's being built to take gas to the Chinese economy. The Chinese are really giving Putin a rough time, and they're not agreeing to the terms. They want really something incredibly cheap, and Putin at the moment is in a fix because he doesn't quite know what to do. This sort of also bleeds into the dimension of Chinese support for Ukraine, which many of us are deeply worried about. Do you have any perspective on that? These two potential global crises, one that's happening in Ukraine and Taiwan, they are definitely, in my view, interconnected strategically.
Armitage: Well, I think you and I have been around long enough, Sir Richard, to see ups and downs in the China-Russia relationship. And I think you're dead on that Putin went home, dragging his pipeline behind him, because it's becoming obvious to Putin that he's the vassal in this relationship. It's equally obvious to the, what I call, Putin pirates, the oligarchs, is that there's nothing for them in China. There is in Europe, nothing in China. So I think the combination of those two factors is going to make for a rather rough road, because Putin is not going to be liking being a vassal.
Mcfarlane: That's so interesting. So Richard, if you were to extrapolate that observation from Richard there, I mean, we saw that really interesting reshuffle in the Russian senior leadership. There was initially thought that Shoigu, the former defense minister, was sacked, but he may have been sort of moved sideways or even promoted to a new position on the National Security Council, and a new Putin loyalist installed in his place. I mean, is Putin increasingly vulnerable? Because for months we've been saying that he is consolidating his grip on parts of Eastern Ukraine. And in fact, with the Russian economy going on a war footing, he was hunkering down for the long term, and actually his position seemed to be, from the outside, increasingly stable. Do you think perhaps that there are potentially fractures appearing under the surface?
Dearlove: Well, I think one might draw a parallel between Xi Jinping and the PLA and Putin and the Russian, formerly Soviet military. They're having a really, really rough time of it in Ukraine. We're now talking about half a million losses, not necessarily that's casualties and deaths. I mean, these are staggering figures. Then, you know, he's shifted five or six of the senior leaders in the Russian military in the last three or four months. I mean, there's clearly something wrong and there's clearly something going on. He's also appointed a prime minister who's an economist, which indicates that logistics are becoming crucial in terms of keeping the war in Ukraine going. The other thing I would say is the advance on Kharkiv is not actually going very well. It's stalled and it looks as though maybe because of the supply of new weapons, mostly from the United States and the Ukrainians, that the initiative is going back onto the Ukrainian side. We can't see that clearly yet. These things, I think, very much play in to how Putin and Xi Jinping relate to each other. I think there's a massive downside for Xi Jinping if he gets too involved in Ukraine.
Mcfarlane: I mean, in a way, he almost has to sup with a long spoon with Putin over Ukraine because he's going to possibly pay a very high price for his own economy if he gets this wrong. Richard, I'm going to ask you a question, and so Richard, I would love to hear your thoughts on it afterwards as well. You've both spoken a lot about the new or not so rather new. I mean, Russia and China have had quite a long and complicated relationship, I think it's fair to say. They haven't always been the best or easiest of bedfellows, but now they have a much more clearly defined senior and junior partnership than it has been in recent years. And so from Beijing's point of view, what are the stakes involved in terms of Putin's longevity? And the question I'm really trying to ask is how dangerous is Putin's demise or the demise of the Russian Federation to China? And to what extent do you think Beijing will work to avoid Putin's downfall and a crumbling of the Kremlin regime?
Armitage: You have to look at the Great Wall. And I would say the threat then was from the North. I think in Chinese mindset, the threat is always from the North. That's part of their DNA. And it wasn't too long ago, the United States was selling weapons to China to help them to avoid Russian armor, etc. We only stopped because of Tiananmen. So I think, finally, more direct answer to your question, I think from China's point of view, since they don't know what comes after Putin, they would look at a Putin-less Russia with a great deal of trepidation.
Dearlove: Yeah, I think I agree with what Rich is saying. I think it's in China's interest at the moment to go with what they know. And of course there is this underlay in the relationship of a contested border between China and Russia. And I think that a weakened Russia or a disintegrating Russia will be destabilizing for China, but it also might realize some of China's territorial ambitions in the northern area. I mean, the claims are in abeyance, but that border has been historically very troublesome. There was even conflict over it, I think, if I'm right, Rich, in the 60s and the 70s, it wasn't much publicized, but there were certainly exchanges of artillery fire and that sort of thing across that border. So it's by no means a problem which historically is settled. I think this business of Putin seeing or beginning to understand that Russia is becoming China's vassal is also quite potent and certainly something that the West needs to worry about considerably. I think the other problem is that if things went better for Putin in Ukraine, I think that might encourage Xi also to be more aggressive in terms of promoting China's territorial interests, whether they were territorial or maritime, and China would become more expansive or expansionist. But we were always skeptical about the amphibious capability of the PLA. An invasion of Taiwan would be an incredibly complex, difficult military operation. There was always a question mark over how many years it would take the PLA to get anywhere near having the capability to mount a seaborne invasion. I don't know how you now view that issue.
Armitage: Sir Richard, a conventional attack, amphibious attack, would be seen by us, the preparations, the landing craft, etc. But there are other possibilities. For instance, if you look at the Kaohsiung Taiwan harbors, they're full of roll on, roll off ships, which allegedly could be carrying plywood, but in fact carrying APCs or tanks, which could immediately invest Taipei. And the question is, like Ukraine, would Taiwanese armed forces have the same will to fight?
Mcfarlane: Richard, you've drawn a really interesting comparison there in that question, that rhetorical question that you asked. If in the event of a PLA attack or invasion of Taiwan, would the Taiwanese have the stomach, have the willpower to resist like the Ukrainians have fought to resist from the Russians. And so, I mean, that begs the question, what in your mind are the parallels here? I mean, in one sense, I would have thought that the Taiwanese have a lot more of a shared cultural identity to the mainland Chinese. And yet at the same time, their independence or their autonomy has been very important to them throughout the decades. But it was striking to me that the three main contenders in the last presidential election, all of them seem to have quite a pragmatic position when it comes to China and to their sovereignty. And William Lai, his position was that Taiwan, it does have its autonomy and that's not something that's up for discussion, but we do want to stay open to talking with China. And I wonder if that was a way of him saying, we do have our sovereignty, we have autonomy, let's not wave a flag and get up Beijing's nose and antagonize them. Let's just keep things as they are. I mean, is there a parallel there to the situation with the Ukrainians? And do you think they would have the stomach to fight head on for their independence should the Chinese invade?
Armitage: In recent years, there's been a great movement towards Taiwanese identity. The Chinese treat the Taiwanese and Singapore in the same way. They say, they look like us, they speak Mandarin, therefore, they must think like us. Nothing could be farther from the truth. What is another truth, however, is during World War II, the United States drew up war plans to attack Taiwan, and we threw them out. We wanted to hit a much easier target called Okinawa. That didn't work out so well. But it gives you, I think, a basis for an understanding that a conventional attack on Taiwan is quite difficult. Shallow straits, easily mined, mountainous terrain, tough to fight in if you're an invader. So there are a lot of things that if we play our cards right with Taiwan, and they play their cards right, we can obviate that.
Mcfarlane: A military, that was really, really interesting. And Sir Richard, it was always fascinating to hear your thoughts alongside our very esteemed guests, so thank you as well.
Armitage: I'm honored beyond recall to be with Sir Richard.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Mcfarlane: The former deputy secretary of state, Rich Armitage, talking to us earlier, a fascinating and timely discussion of how Washington is trying to handle that delicate dance with Beijing, and of course, the profound implications around the world of China's new assertiveness. Now, after we said goodbye to Rich Armitage, I asked Sir Richard what he made of the deputy secretary's remarks.
Dearlove: And I was really, really taken aback when he said this. Xi is in difficulties internally in China. He also said very precisely and clearly that there was tension and stress between Xi and the PLA, the People's Liberation Army, the leadership of that. And I don't think Rich would have said that unless it was part of his briefing before he went to Taiwan. I think it's a very, very significant point he was making because, you know, we tend to see Xi as absolutely dominant, having rubbed out most of his opponents. But clearly, there are other perspectives. There always are other perspectives in China going on behind the scenes, which are rather opaque unless you have good intelligence on the relationships between the sort of key Chinese players. And of course, the reason why Xi may be in some difficulty is the very poor performance of the Chinese economy, which is always the sort of crucial test for civil, political, and social stability in China.
Mcfarlane: And okay, Rich didn't expand on that, and I wouldn't have expected to. A really important point, you know, on two areas: on the economy and his last reshuffle, Xi promoted people who above all other things have loyalty to him and to the Communist Party, not people who are very steeped in economic or banking backgrounds. And when it comes to the military, the PLA in modern times are pretty much largely entirely untested in a theatre of war. They are very good at suppressing protests. They are very good at clamping down on domestic issues, a bit like how the Russians had a lot of experience in Syria and sending barrel bombs down on hospitals. But when it came to sending their infantry to carry out a ground invasion of another country, as we saw in the opening weeks and months of the all out invasion in February 2022, they weren't actually very good as a ground army and fell at the first hurdle on all kinds of the important logistics of waging a war. And so what's very interesting about president Xi directing the People's Liberation Army to be battle ready to take Taiwan back by 2027, he will surely know that that's something that's easier said than done in practice.
Dearlove: Well, of course, they are battle ready, that's the point, and no one really knows how they would perform in a crisis. The other point which is important is that the PLA or the leaders of the PLA, the generals, were always heavily involved in the Chinese economy, and, you know, benefited enormously from corruption really. Xi has led, you know, this campaign against corrupt officials, and I think that's probably affected the self interest of the PLA and its leadership. So there's no question in my mind that there would be tension around Xi's anti-corruption drive, which of course doesn't apply to Xi's immediate acolytes or his own family. So there's a huge amount of, you know, hypocrisy surrounding that policy, and it's a nice means of rubbing up people that, you know, you see as competitors for power in the medium to long term. So I think there are dimensions to this on which we don't have any detail, but I think probably are very important in understanding what's going on inside China. We tend to sort of look at China and think, you know, it's an upward graph, things are, you know, they're becoming more assertive, more powerful. We never really think what the graph of the internal issues that are running around in Beijing, how that compares and how that is a sort of weight hanging over the Chinese leadership.
Mcfarlane: That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Drop us a line. Tell us your thoughts. What decisions have impacted you and where you live. You can write to us. Our email is 1decision@1decisionpodcast.com. From me and the team, thank you for listening and see you next time.
