Best Of: What Drives Putin and Xi

28:54Orville Schell:We'll be back after a short break. This September, Independent 20th Century presents more than 130 artists at the legendary Broyu Building at 945 Madison Avenue. The show will fill four floors of the modernist landmark on Museum Mile. See why Art News Magazine calls Independent 20th Century a staple of the season and experience historic modern art from around the world and one of New York's most iconic spaces, September 24th to 27th. To learn more, visit independenthq.com. And now back to my conversation with Stephen Kotkin and Orville Schell.

29:58Orville Schell:to treat it the way he does. Well, it's interesting, isn't it, that despite the fact that he comes from a family that was really laid low by the Maoist revolution and humiliated, that he still lionizes Mao. And I think here this gets back to this idea of the sort of yearning for a restoration of greatness. You know, the first thing Xi Jinping did when he came to power in 2012 was he took the entire Politburo across Tiananmen Square to an exhibit in the National Museum that was called China's Rejuvenation, as if to say, this is what I'm going to do for you. This is what we need. This is what we want.

30:42We need to be a great power. And this is my agenda. And actually, what he borrowed from Mao was the deep and abiding need for enemies. And that's the way he fueled this idea, I think, of rejuvenation. What I think he learned was you've got to keep beyond your toes. You have to learn how to be brutal. You have to learn how to compete and struggle and win.

31:08Orville Schell:And if someone happened to remind him of the human costs of some of those, the results of those policies, is that the cost of progress or rejuvenation? How do you think he processes that? I think he views the Chinese Communist Party as China's only saving grace. And if you lose the party, you know, Steve said, you turn yourself into a Gorbachev showover. And so he staked his fortunes on the party, even though the party turned on his own family. And in a certain sense, you know, wreaked havoc on his family and on China. Yeah. Remember, Dan, the alternative to one party dictatorship in their minds is not a liberal democracy.

31:53The alternative to a one party dictatorship at home is chaos, anarchy, implosion, warlordism, right? It's collapse. And so for them, even though that instrument has been used in ways that maybe had negative effects from their point of view, It's still the instrument, not just for Xi Jinping's own personal power, but also for preventing the alternative in their minds. And that alternative is not what we would see potentially or what some Chinese dissidents would see. It's an alternative that they fear. And to a certain extent, the rest of the population in both Russia and China share this view that as bad as one party rule or dictatorship in Putin's case, autocracy can be at times, that the alternative may be even worse rather than better.

32:51We probably need to understand that in their minds, that's the alternative that they need to hold at bay. It's also a pathway to the restoration of greatness, which I think both Putin and Xi deeply yearn for. Yeah, the state is their one instrument. They don't have the same type of dynamism in the open society and innovation society. And they don't have the friendships, the alliances across the globe that are voluntary. they don't have the instruments that we take for granted sometimes and that we even sometimes try to undermine crazily their instrument is the state the state is a coercive apparatus obedience or quasi-military style discipline in the political sphere suppression of political alternatives censorship which means not just suppressing some views but also promoting including other views very widely so that people accept a certain set of information and ways of looking at the world.

33:56So they have this coercive state as their instrument. They lack some of the other instruments that we have. I should also add that, you know, geography does play a role here. If you look at China, it has become a trading nation. It has followed in the footprint of the American style modern power. It followed that because it has Japan across the war. Deng Xiaoping is looking at the Japanese ashes as a result of World War II, literally, and then within a generation, generation and a half, second largest economy in the world. And how'd that happen? Well, it happened because they had access to the American domestic market and they manufactured things that American middle class wanted to buy.

34:42So Dung is looking at this right across the water. And he goes to Japan, by the way, before he comes to the United States, as Orville knows. But the limitations on this are severe. First of all, they have no California. Now, some people here paying taxes in California might rejoice at a statement like that. You know, no California. But for China, that means that they don't have that gigantic Western Ocean opening up into a region that they can trade with across that body of water. Instead, for them, the West is desert. It's ethnic minorities that are under severe repression. And so they're trying to build in Erzatz, California, through Pakistan and Burma.

35:29That's their way to get to the sea. but Pakistan and Burma they don't own those places those places are volatile and that's ultimately no substitute for the actual California and then even if you look at the one coast China does have their eastern coast it's not exactly open to the ocean the same way that the U.S. eastern coast is with the Atlantic as you know Dan it's closed in by what we call the first island chain which is dotted with American military bases and which has a lot of choke points that the Chinese are concerned about that could be closed down by the American Navy potentially or coalition alliance navies.

36:09And so for them, even their one coast is not fully open the same way that a maritime power like Japan or Britain, or of course the US would have. And so for them, they're trying to play this game partially with autocratic rule, whether the limited government with closed political system and closed society rather than a fully open one with repression and censorship rather than with the chaos and the berserk quality of an open society that we have here in America. So they're doing the trade part. They're finally building the Navy, by the way, right? They built the Navy out. They did all this without a Navy.

36:50They used our Navy to become a trading nation. But there are limitations in China's ability because of its system and its geography, which are interlocked, for them to play this game of modern power as successful as we do. And so if you look, the U.S. flipped Germany and Japan into the American voluntary sphere of influence and flipping Germany and Japan were decisive in that. And then following Germany in Japan. Eastern Europe came in in 89, as you know, which has been transformative. The trans Atlantic piece has only grown and the East Asian piece has also grown because of the successes of South Korea and Taiwan, not just economically as we know, but also the transformation into rule of law, pluralistic, open society, democracies.

37:43That's been astonishing. And so all of that happened in a recent time period. And China was great for millennia before that. But now they face the fact that U.S. power exists. So when they talk about the 18th century or the Tang dynasty or whichever one of their great historical periods they want to talk about, there was no U.S. power then. And so it's just a different game for them to play. So rolling back American power, right, that nine dash line in the South China Sea, that's no accident. They're hemmed in and they're trying to push out, trying to loosen the American alliance system and the American military bases along the first island chain.

38:30This is an intentional, clear as day, geopolitical strategy that they're unfolding. And we were naive about this, but it's rooted in the history and the geography, and they know that history and the geography, and we have to know it better. And so let's not allow them to flip Eastern Europe. Let's not allow them to flip Germany with economic ties. Let's not allow them to neutralize Japan. People speak about a multipolar world and it just drives me insane. And they say, how could you be against the multipolar world? Right. It's democratic. It's fair. And, and, and we all have to share the planet together, but then the polls are not the same.

39:12the u.s poll is open non-coercive and voluntary for the most part and people are asking to join like ukraine the chinese poll is coercive vassalage non-voluntary and it's about subordination to china you can ask putin about this himself and so when we speak about a multi-polar world in a positive sense, we are doing China propaganda here because the polls are not equivalent.

39:42Orville Schell:Orville, if you put that narrative to Xi Jinping or Wang Yi or someone around him, what would their rejoinder be? What would their analysis be? So Dan, the question I would like to put to Wang Yi and Xi Jinping is this. I mean, Steve has just sort of laid it out for us. Why are you doing this? Why when it's so demonstrably not in the interest of China, I should say also in Russia to invade Ukraine. Why does China, when it had a really good thing going and had everybody eating out of their hands, why does it go and alienate Korea over THAAD? Who alienates Sweden or Norway or India, one of the first non-aligned nations to recognize China, or even Australia?

40:30I mean, what's going on here is the question I would like to ask Xi. Why are you doing this? You had a really good thing going. You can have your little one-party state. Nobody was beating up on you. Just keep a little reform going, and we'll all share and care, and the global economy will go, and you'll get rich. And when Mao Zedong met with Kissinger and Nixon, he said, oh, Taiwan, settle it in 100 years, no problem. And Steve, you mentioned Deng Xiaoping stopping in Japan. on his way to restore diplomatic relations with Jimmy Carter. He said in Japan, he said, oh, he said, Taiwan, let's leave it for smarter generations to come to solve.

41:12Now, why is not that a good formula? You're absolutely right. China had its cake and it was eating it too. Yeah. So that's the question I want an answer to. I think it's fear. I think they understand at a fundamental level that our existence and our power and our open societies and our values and our alliances, even when we fail to live up to our promises fully, that it is an existential threat to their existence. And so it's not American policy. The issue is just our existence is existential for them. It's a bizarre situation where on the one hand, they're the principal beneficiaries. And on the other hand, there couldn't be a bigger threat than the international order that we created for them.

41:59And so maybe as Marxist-Leninists, they're not being fools. You know, when they take those cricket bats across the border with India and smash the heads of India and push India into the American camp, as you alluded to, it looks crazy, it looks idiotic, it looks worse than idiotic, and yet maybe it's rooted in a cynical but profound understanding of the way they fit into the world going forward. Well, this is exactly the understanding that I think we need to understand better, and it has two elements. One is China's sort of deep historical sense of grievance, And the other is, of course, what are the animating principles that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are guided by?

42:48In other words, what sets them off? Because in an autocracy, individual personalities of leaders get to write themselves very large. And I think there are some very mysterious questions that are very hard to answer. People always say to me, oh, you know, don't talk about ideology. I think you're absolutely right that when you have two such antithetical political systems, they cannot help but feel competition, even threat from each other. And I think that is sort of the radioactive core that helps, you know, make everything else so difficult to deal with now that Xi has really been, he's committed now to what he calls the, they have some words in Chinese that aren't quite the Chinese model.

43:35But there's no doubt about it. He thinks that the people's democratic dictatorship of the proletariat is a better form of democracy than what we have. And that is a source of immense contention and controversy between us. We can say to where blue in the face, we're not pro-regime change. We're not trying to contain China. But he's sure that the whole American establishment, that this is all we think about when we wake up in the morning. Well, you remember that this all began with John Foster Dulles, when John Foster Dulles said, we may not be able to win China over militarily, but we will get them by peaceful evolution, by soft power in one thing or another.

44:19And so this word, peaceful evolution, which sounds pretty good to us, is a total antichrist in China, because it's the color revolution, it's the underhanded way that they feel they're going to be undermined by the ideological differences and the preferences that people feel for one system over another.

44:38Orville Schell:Steve, that ideological dimension in Putin's case seems a little bit harder to decipher. He invokes kind of cultural conservatism, and he obviously obsesses over color revolutions in the way that Earl referred to, but it's a little less clear that he has some ideological commitment or a commitment to a kind of system that he thinks has broader relevance in the way that the Chinese Communist party does. Yeah, you know, it's different for Russia, Dan, because Russia is culturally European. China is not culturally European and doesn't care. It doesn't care about ancient Rome or ancient Greece, doesn't care about the Renaissance and the Reformation.

45:15It's China. It's got its own story, which in their minds is grander than Western civilization story. Russia is different because it's clearly culturally European, right? It's not Western institutionally because the West is not a geographic but an institutional matrix. Japan is not European culturally, but it's institutionally Western. Russia is not Western, but it's European. So for Russia, you have a kind of ceiling on the anti-Westernism. And so you can do anti-Westernism in Russia. It's mother's milk. And it's the way these regimes maintain their grip on society, their hold on power, and in Putin's case, the personal regime.

46:00But being completely cut off from Europe forever is a difficult proposition to sell in the case of Russia. And so we see now some grumblings, rumblings about potential vassalage to China here. And of course, Russia doesn't decide to become a vassal of China. That's China's decision. If China makes Russia a vassal, it becomes partially responsible for Russia. So I'm not sure we're there yet on the China side. But on the Russia side, you see the disquiet about being in some type of partnership, however we want to call it, with China indefinitely and losing the ties to europe and so for putin he has the same ambivalence i wouldn't say it's 50 50 ambivalence but it has vacillated over time where it's been uh more pro-western integration less anti-westernism earlier and far more anti-western and less pro-western integration now to a certain extent the 1990 attempt to integrate Russia into the West, which was sowed by illusions on both sides, it blew up.

47:21The attempt to integrate China into the West also blew up, but in very different ways, because China was never going to become culturally part of the West. It was always going to be, right, its own civilization in a deep and profound way. Russia was going to be its own civilization, but partially European, Western, to a degree that they were willing to explore. So for Putin and the rest, reaching for an ideology, the anti-Westernism is what's on the shelf. But is it anti-Westernism or is it anti-Americanism? And this is true for China to a certain extent as well. Because you can be anti-American, but you can have very good relations with Europe.

48:07You can divide the West. you can cleave off put a wedge in between europe and the united states the ukraine war blows all this up the biggest geopolitical consequence so far of the ukraine war was the destruction of china's wedge in the western alliance between the u.s and europe on china policy and the u.s and japan on china policy we could throw in australia here we could throw in the western pacific and so So China has strategically inflicted so much damage by its support for Putin's aggression in Ukraine. And it's not clear he can recuperate this. It's not clear that even if there is some type of solution in Ukraine and it's a solution where people stop dying.

48:59That's what I mean by a solution. Even if that happens, how will China be trusted again, given what it did with Putin over the Ukraine war? And so that strategic blunder or self-inflicted damage is, to me, potentially enduring. And so for Russia, it's already been a strategic defeat across the board. Sadly, Russia's strategic defeat is not a Ukrainian victory. But for China, it's also been a strategic defeat. And so how does he recuperate that? How does he get the wedge back in between America and Europe, between America and Japan? I'm not sure he does. And so, you know, Putin is a hedge for him.

49:43If it wasn't for Russian fissile material, the stuff you make nuclear bombs with, and China's program to build out a massive nuclear arsenal, which we think could potentially rival the Russian one and the American one in the fullness of time. There's a dependence on Russia for a lot of that, especially the fissile material and expertise. If it weren't for that, the cost of the hedge would so far outweigh the benefits of the hedge, and you would see a lot more vulnerability to Xi Jinping domestically over his choices. You could see more grumbling going forward about this bromance, the strategic bromance, the strategic partnership.

50:33But if it keeps costing China as much as it does and the Russian thing gets worse and worse and China is partially responsible for that Russian basket case and has lost Europe and Japan permanently, I'm not sure. They already have so many domestic issues that we didn't talk about. one-man rule is susceptible to mistakes in a much bigger way than competitive rule even competitive authoritarianism is so it has been very interesting to watch putin's miscalculation and she as it were doubling down with his own miscalculation on top of that paying a different kind of price right the ukrainians are paying the ultimate price here putin is paying a price Russia's paying a price, and China's paying a price.

51:25Orville Schell:We'll be back after a short break. Did you know that Foreign Affairs editor Dan Kurtz-Valen sends a free newsletter every Saturday? Visit foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight to get the editor's spotlight. A weekly email from Dan featuring more of the helpful context and clear analysis that you get here on the podcast. That's foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight. Sign up today.

51:54Orville Schell:And now back to my conversation with Stephen Kotkin and Orville Schell. Orville, as we've watched Xi Jinping's relationship with Putin over the course of the last 18 months, his reaction to the war in Ukraine, he certainly seemed a little bit on his back feet right after the war started. Just a couple of weeks before that, they'd stood together in Beijing and talked about a partnership without limits between Russia and China. He does seem to have been a little bit more proactive in trying to navigate some of the dynamics that Steve laid out. What is your sense of how he sees this picture at this point?

52:26Orville Schell:Do you think he sees a chance for advantage or is that kind of grim strategic outcome that Steve described more or less inevitable? I think he does feel a little bit betrayed and trapped, but he's not going to make any demonstrations of anti-Russian sentiment. I think the thing that really astounds me about both Xi Jinping and Putin is the lack of sense of agency that they have, that they seem to not understand that they are creating the very situation they most fear, and that the world is responding to them, not to nothing. They just think the world is this hostile place out here that likes to get together and have a Cold War 2.0.

53:13But in actuality, both of these countries have a lot more power than I think Xi or Putin recognize. And it wouldn't be very difficult, particularly in Xi's case, to kind of use that power in a different way and recognize that you do X, Y is going to happen. And if it's against your interest, then do something else. And it's very hard for them to give a little, to get a little, because they don't really have a very highly evolved notion of the essentially reciprocal nature of foreign policy and great power relations.

53:50Orville Schell:But Orville, if you're sitting, and these are smart people sitting in Beijing, when they're, as they observe the Russian experience and what Vladimir Putin has done to his own country's strategic prospects, they must see warnings in that. They must see certain courses that they would want to avoid. I mean, I think many do have a very highly evolved recognition of this. And I think Xi himself may even recognize it. But I think he's bereft of the ability to make that kind of critical. We thought of sort of flexible authoritarianism. And in a certain sense, that was true for a long time. It still remains to be true whether Putin can evince that kind of flexibility.

54:35And if it gets too brittle, of course, then it gets dangerous. Now, he did turn around on COVID, but I don't see a lot of flexibility in his playbook because I think he is so ginned up on his own big leader culture and his own fear of looking weak or surrendering. And he's so besotten with this notion of hostile foreign forces that it's very hard to make nice. you know dan everyone says we got to share the world with china we got to share the world with russia right they're not going away they were here before we were they're going to be here in the future we got to share the world and i say you're right and you want to know something else the ocean is wet i know that firsthand so the issue is not we got to share the world dan the issue is what are the terms that we're going to share the world with are the terms going to be the 14 demands they tried to impose on australia or the what they did to lote world and south korea over the missile defense system or what they're doing with the cricket bats on the other side of the line that's in dispute with india or we could go on right what they're doing in xinjiang what they did in hong kong are those the terms that we're going to share the world with them because if those are the terms i want to push back but at the same time i recognize like Orville does that we're in this together.

56:01It's a planet and it's the only one we've got and all the other cliche. But so the Soviets shot down KAL, the Korean civilian airline. They shot it down and we had evidence that they shot it down in real time. And we exposed that evidence publicly. And George Shultz went to Moscow. He didn't cancel the trip. Forget about some stupid spy balloon they shot down a civilian airliner denied it we proved they lied and schultz got on the plane anyway and schultz got off the plane and demanded an answer for what they did so china sends a spy balloon over the u.s and blinken cancels he should have taken that balloon what was left of it put it on his plane went to beijing and said here you can have it back now but this is what you did you got to define the terms of engagement you got to create leverage you have to make them be ashamed of things they do not we're ashamed that we shot the balloon down and we can't release the report about what was in it what would george schiltz have done with that balloon he would have done just what i said he would have put it on his plane he would have never canceled the trip and he would demand it an answer.

57:25And then he would have continued with the diplomacy. He wouldn't have broken off talks. The whole point of diplomacy is not that you talk, it's that you create leverage and then you use that leverage in conversation to try to make deals, deals which support your interest. You have to make concessions. You don't get everything you want, even with Gorbachev. Reagan didn't get every single thing he wanted. And yet that's diplomacy. That's not getting on a plane and begging for a meeting or whatever else it might be, or canceling a trip when they do something that they should answer for rather than we have to answer for it.

58:07Orville Schell:When you look at the diplomacy around the war in Ukraine, China has, I think, responding to some of the dynamics that Steve laid out around its relation with Europe, especially, made a big show of sending peace envoys, supporting peace talks. Can you imagine Xi Jinping making a serious effort to end the war in Ukraine? Do you see any substance to this, anything he will do to constrain Putin at any point? You know, I'm not sure I see evidence that Xi Jinping has this ability to date. And yet, as you, I think, are suggesting, it would be a stunning achievement for him. And if he really did want to reassure the world of China's constructive role, he could do something.

58:51And in fact, there are many areas where he could do something. But I'm not sure, and this is why I think we were having this discussion, is what is preventing him from playing a more constructive role in the world and a less destructive role in the world? I mean, why the belligerents? Why the wolf warrior diplomacy? No one believes that he's earnest in question of bringing peace to the Ukraine, but he could be. He's got a problem, Vladimir Putin, right? We see this Orville with North Korea. China can't give up North Korea. If it gives up North Korea, it ends up with unification of the Korean peninsula with the South, the same thing that happened in the German case as the winner of the Korean War.

59:38and then a U.S. military base even closer to China's border than it is now. And so the North Koreans drive the Chinese up the wall, as you know, but they bite the bullet. We could end up with a giant North Korea here with Vladimir Putin. Let's remember, he goes to Beijing, the Olympics, big ceremony, bromance, partnership with No Limits, and then he unleashes this crazy war almost the day he sets down back in Moscow, which upends China's strategic wedge with the Europeans. Then Xi Jinping makes a play and says, you know what, they're not going to use nuclear weapons. Remember that? Remember how China intervened to prevent the first use of nukes over this war and how that was supposedly a big diplomatic accomplishment for Xi?

1:00:31And how many days later does Putin announce that he's moving tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus? You know, so much for my friend and strategic partner. I've just semi humiliated him in public by making this announcement over Belarus. So I don't know what these guys are talking about one on one. But I'm getting a sense, Orville, that the problem is less Xi Jinping here, exerting his leverage than it is Putin. Let's remember that the Chinese didn't have much leverage when the war first broke out, largely because they haven't been supplying weapons to the Russians, which has been really important.

1:01:13At the same time, they've got leverage now that they didn't have before, because some very large percentage, perhaps as high as 70 % of Russian chips, semiconductor chips, are coming from China now. They're not coming directly, you know, they're going through Dubai, and then through the Dubai port, overland through Iran and other ways, across the Caspian, etc. Our friends in Virginia understand this a lot better than I do, although I was in the Emirates recently to discuss these questions. In any case, they have some leverage now. And so those semiconductors, whatever level they're supplying, it's a very important level for Putin.

1:01:54And the Chinese, of course, could tilt the battlefield in Russia's favor because they have munitions, drones, they could supply Russia at scale. And they not only have stocks, they have production facilities at scale in China. And so they could increase their leverage. But what does he get if he gives up Putin? Is the US going to repeal the Chips Act then? If Xi Jinping cashiers his closest friend, what does he get for that from the US? The entire U.S. full court press remains in place. There's no reciprocation for any potential abandonment of Putin. And so what Orville is referring to is correct, of course, that he's got the opportunity to bring peace to Europe and recuperate that relationship and reinsert the wedge between Europe and America if he brings peace to Europe, the great peacemaker of Europe.

1:02:50But to do that, he's got to put the screws on Vladimir Putin and bring Putin to heel. I don't know if he's tried yet. When he went to Moscow, if they discussed this, you know, what would be acceptable to you, Vladimir, as an outcome if we interceded here? But this is what I do know. If Putin signs a piece of paper, it's worth nothing. His promises are worth nothing. Unless he signs the piece of paper in Beijing. And then all of a sudden, that piece of paper becomes meaningful. So China being involved in the negotiations like Orville just alluded to, that it is a possibility for Xi Jinping to seize this.

1:03:35Ironically, we're self-interested in that, which is one of the reasons why President Zelensky of Ukraine has been a lot less dismissive of China's involvement here than we have been. Although I think we've turned the corner a little bit and become less dismissive of potential Chinese involvement. At least that's my impression from some conversations on the inside and some public statements. How do you then go forward? What does the relationship then look like? what are the terms of sharing the planet the engagement thing could never work because both sides had illusions and a policy based on illusions is destined to fail we had the illusion that they were going to liberalize politically and they had the illusion that we were going down whether it was the iraq war the global financial crisis or covid or or whatever right so we've both sowed illusions and our illusions have to a very great extent been shaken, right?

1:04:37You can't be disillusioned, Dan, unless you had illusions. So that's a much better basis for a relationship now when you have a more realistic picture of who the other side is and what their goals are and what their bottom line is and what their strengths as well as their weaknesses might be. But I just want to say that the puncturing of the illusions is a positive for me. Engagement blowing up and Xi Jinping rediscovering through this Ukraine war that the West is for real. Those are really positive steps now that need to be consolidated with effective diplomacy and with creating leverage and using that leverage and all the other things, alliance system that we've been talking about.

1:05:21So ironically, I'm actually more positive about U.S.-China relations now than I was during the heyday of engagement.

1:05:30Orville Schell:Orville, as you look at both the potential for the U.S.-China relationship, but also the interest that we in the United States have of preventing a full Sino-Russian alliance, full Sino-Russian convergence. What, as you look at our forward-looking options, would you be pointing policymakers towards in the next several years? Well, you know, I think both Putin and Xi recognize that if the world is decoupling, and I think it is, maybe not completely, but that's the trend line. They really only have each other. I mean, Iran, you know, a few other bits and pieces, maybe Pakistan or Hungary doesn't quite do it for an alliance.

1:06:13And China still does have some real cards to play, but they need some other big substantial power if we're going to be off in a new kind of a version of whatever you want to call it, a Cold War. So I don't think that they're going to be able to push each other hard enough to actually lead. um i interesting you're you're optimistic steve but you know your optimism i think is born out of a world of logic and reason you can see that it would be in the interests of nations to do things but i'm very interested in the psychology of these guys because i think that's running them as much as a realistic assessment of interest and this is what really frightens me because i think they They have very thin skin.

1:07:00I think they're very allergic to humiliation, very allergic to being shut out, disesteemed, all the things we've talked about. And I don't know what the remedy is for that. Yeah, leadership variable, you're right, Orville. You can lay out the structural landscape and then you need the leadership to kick in. And that's where the personalities, they impinge all up and down the whole story. he's got some very clever people in his regime. Wang Yi, he's shrewd.

1:07:35Orville Schell:And we should say this is Xi Jinping's top foreign policy hand at this point. He's no fool. But I don't think he has permission to actually think really innovatively and creatively. The issue here is what you said, or it's reciprocity. So we felt that the Chinese didn't reciprocate to us. That's one of the reasons we're angry. We gave them WTO admission and they failed to reciprocate. You know, they failed to do some of the reforms that they should have done in order to qualify to get into WTO in the first place. So now if Xi Jinping makes some concessions, if he says, you know, we got to walk this back, there's no sense of reciprocation on the American side.

1:08:18we now have a bipartisan commitment to standing up to china and so if xi jinping gets the advice from wang yi or others that there needs to be some level of rapprochement and for that the chinese have to take some steps here whatever those steps might be we could argue and discuss but there needs to be some level of movement in the in the western especially u.s direction Does the U.S. reciprocate or does it sort of smack the hand that reaches out? We understand that the Biden administration is trying. We see Jake Sullivan. We see Janet Yellen. Now we see Anthony Blinken. We see all their main actors and the various pieces are our fragmented U.S.

1:09:07power. We see them reaching out to try to reestablish. The most prominent one is the Pentagon, of course, because they want to de-conflict with hotlines and regular communication and all the things we had eventually with the Soviets. But is that really reciprocation, that kind of dialogue? Because, yes, you want to talk, but what do you want to talk about? You want to talk about things that we don't want to talk about with you. You want to contain us. You want to hold us back. You want to put these guardrails. Well, within those guardrails, you're going to full court press us. So why should we allow you to have guardrails?

1:09:47That's just conceding the terms of your policy, of your posture, of your Cold War, or whatever we want to call it. So there's a fundamental problem of the absence of potential reciprocation on the U.S. side, even if the Chinese logically figure out what it is that we're talking about here, that could alleviate the pressure on them that Orville has rightly said they've brought about on themselves to a very great extent. But I wonder if some catalyst moves some series of events, some random actions, something that we're not predicting, moves us to a point where we can then take advantage of the catalyst, of the unforeseen events, of the contingencies that pop up.

1:10:42Are we ready to do that on each side? Because right now we're stuck in this doom loop that Orville has elucidated, which has this deep psychological dimension. One, you know, it's a strange thing to say because to call it hopeful when it would also be a kind of a catastrophe. One thing that could actually help is if there is a real economic downturn, either in China or the globe, because those kinds of things remind people of interdependence and the need for interaction and some kind of keeping the fabric together. Short of something like that, I just don't see how we're going to get out of this rut to a place where we have a quid pro quo.

1:11:23If I was Biden and she, I would have a phone call and say, listen, each of us sends three people who are out of the government who are smart as hell. Let's lock them in a room in Singapore for a week, see what they can come up with by the way of a quid pro quo, a roadmap that you're alluding to, Steve. And then let's you and I get together and see if there's anything we can agree on here. But short of that, I don't think we've got much to work with. yeah well we're not rolling back AUKUS no we're not rolling back the alliances it's not as if we're going to say oh okay the hell with our alliance with South Korea or Japan we're not going to give up those base rights, the access rights in the Philippines there's just a whole lot of stuff we're not going to concede that's built in, that's baked in to whatever dialogue might be possible And so the issue then becomes, what are the questions that could spark mutual interest?

1:12:29It used to be thought that we would have climate change or, you know, fill in the blank, that there were a series of interests that they just had to be interested in because it was good for them and we had to be interested in. but the Chinese decided that they would not divide issues to ones we can't agree on and ones we can't agree on and proceed with the ones we can't agree on. They decided that it was all or nothing, right? Either we were going to walk, it was a whole package. You wanted to talk about climate? Well, we want to talk about your bases and your tech export controls and everything.

1:13:07So for me then, Orville, I don't know if this is a fantasy on my part or an insight or neither, but the issue is how do we get a concession where they're willing to divide some issues? That some issues are worthy of dialogue from their point of view, even if other issues can't be talked about, let alone resolved. And this is ironically what we had with the Soviet Union. We were able to talk about certain issues. but the Chinese know that history too, once again, and they're afraid of that history. The reason the Chinese detest the idea of a Cold War, there are many reasons. One reason is they don't want to be the Soviet Union, right?

1:13:49That's not a good place for them to be. The idea that there's going to be a Cold War and the U.S. is going to play the U.S. again in the movie. Well, you know, Orville, who's going to play the Soviets? The Chinese don't want to play the Soviets in that. And this separation of issues, where some issues are worthy of conversation while others are not going to be resolved. If we could get to that through a crisis, I hope not the kind of crisis you discussed, but some crisis whose consequences were less severe, and we could seize that as an opportunity and get to the point where we could have some issues where there's recognized mutual interest and where each side would have to make some concessions to make it work.

1:14:34And then we would have an actual dialogue that could expand and contract over time.

1:14:40Orville Schell:Before we put the two of you on a plane to Singapore to huddle with some Chinese counterparts along the lines of Oral suggested, let me close by getting each of you to just briefly give some consideration to what happens after these two enormous figures are no longer dominating their own countries and political systems in the way they are. Do you see the changes they have made to their systems as irreversible? Is this something that will continue to shade? Will we see the kind of system we've seen under these figures persist under different leadership after them? What does this look like after they leave the scene?

1:15:17Orville Schell:Steve, let me start with you on Putin. everybody dies cemeteries are full of indispensable men right as the cliche has Stalin died and Mao died but then Dan here we are Stalin died and Mao died and we're having a conversation Dan that we could have had back in the day about what happens after Stalin dies and what happens after Mao dies so that's not encouraging you know for Russia it's pretty clear they become like france or it's trouble as far as the eye can see france which has a bureaucratic absolutist tradition like russia france which has a convoluted complex revolutionary tradition like russia france which threatened all its neighbors for a long time but which doesn't threaten its neighbors anymore and is just a proud state that sees itself as a civilizational state, but is integrated into global structures, is a positive actor, and is not threatening its neighbors, right?

1:16:26If Russia ends up looking like that, it would be fabulous, not just for the world, but for Russians. We thought we were on that trajectory in the 90s, and of course we weren't. What could trigger that trajectory? How we could get there? We don't have time to run through the scenarios but you can see that where russia is now and what france looks like now that there's a bit of space between them and that's a lot of territory to cross to get to that otherwise we could end up with a gigantic version of north korea that's unfortunately the trajectory we're on now or even worse than that we could have a chinese puppet regime in moscow we could have disintegration, chaos, warlordism, God forbid, in Moscow.

1:17:19We could have another authoritarian leader who at least recognizes the independent existence of Ukraine, might be xenophobic, might be aggressive, but may conclude that the Ukraine aggression was a mistake. That would be the best possible outcome, certainly in the short term. It wouldn't solve the problem of Russia, but it would help solve the problem of Ukraine suffering. But you know, Dan, I'm not that good at predicting the future. Otherwise, I would probably be in your chair rather than in my chair where I study history.

1:17:55Orville Schell:Orville, how about China after Xi Jinping? Well, Xi Jinping too will pass. And I think it's important to remember as we contemplate that eventuality, both in Russia in China's case, but particularly in China's case, this country and society is one of the least resolved societies that I'm acquainted with. And what I mean by that is there are a lot of conflicting forces, historically speaking, which lie beneath the surface. And different times, different mixes of these forces express themselves. So there is a kind of a more open, democratic, cosmopolitan, sophisticated, global side of China. And I think with Xi Jinping's passage, it could give an opportunity for that side.

1:18:40I mean, my God, there's so many smart Chinese scientists and writers. I mean, this is not a country filled with idiots, but it's a question of leadership and who allows whom to write themselves a little larger in society. So I think China has a lot of potential, but I just think we're stuck with a rather retrograde leader that until he either wakes up or moves on, it's hard to see a change coming. And I may be surprised, but changes are incipient within China and there's potential for it to go in any number of directions. And we've never predicted one big change that's happened in contemporary China.

1:19:24Orville Schell:That is a relatively optimistic note to end on. Stephen Orville, huge thanks for this conversation and for all the really fantastic work you've done in our pages over the past few years, and that we'll continue to look to you to provide in the years ahead. So thanks so much for joining us. Well, thanks, Dan. It was really fun to do it with you. And Steve, I always enjoy talking with you. A great pleasure. I really appreciate it a lot. I learned a lot.

1:19:54Orville Schell:Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. The Foreign Affairs Interview is produced by Kanesh Tharoor, Molly McEnany, Ben Metzner, Caroline Wilcox, and Ashley Wood with audio help from Todd Yeager. Our theme music was written and performed by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arena Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.

1:20:42Orville Schell:We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview. Don't forget to visit foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight to sign up for Dan Kurtz-Valen's free weekly newsletter featuring more of the clear-headed analysis that you enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today at foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight.