School of War - Ep 187: Richard Fontaine on the “Reverse Kissinger”

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and co-author of No Limits? The China-Russia Relationship and U.S. Foreign Policy, joins the show to discuss Beijing-Moscow cooperation and the prospects of the U.S. driving a wedge between them. ▪️ Times      •      02:05 Introduction     •      02:21 Sino-Soviet split      •     06:20 Spheres of influence      •      09:17 Domination       •     13:20 Stabilizing effect        •      22:15 Xi & Putin      •      28:19 Pacific expansion         •      35:20 More resources       •      41:06 America in, Russians out, Germans down Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

A little over 50 years ago, Henry Kissinger flew on a secret mission to Mao Zedong's China and initiated a diplomatic process that rocked the fundamental logic of the Cold War. China and America, for the first time since the triumph of the CCP in the Chinese Civil War, established relations. President Nixon went to Beijing, and the Soviet Union suddenly had to deal with the potential of U.S.-China alignment in its war plans. Not a great day from Moscow. Well, today you hear a lot of talk about whether or not the same move can be played in reverse. Can we settle our differences with Russia to enlist them as a potential partner against

Xi Jinping's China? My guest and I discuss the prospects of the reverse Kissinger today and the realities of Chinese-Russian cooperation. Let's get into it. It is the city for war. This is to walk the invasion of Hawaii. In him, a bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the great situation in France.

We'll fight on the beaches. We'll fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome back to the show today, Richard Fontaine. He's the CEO of the Center for a New American Security, a long career in government prior to his association with CNAS, including being foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain, service at the State Department, the NSC. He is the author very recently of a very interesting Counsel on Foreign Relations Report, No Limits, the China, Russia, Relationship, and U.S. foreign policy. along with Ambassador Bob Blackwell, who has also been on our show.

Richard, thank you so much for coming back. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. So why don't we just dive right into it? A lot of talk about a reverse Kissinger, if you're out and about in Washington, D.C. these days. What do you say just a bit about what that would be and give us a sense of what you think the prospects of it are? Well, the original Kissinger, of course, was the exploitation of the Sino-Soviet split. the U.S. did not have diplomatic ties to the People's Republic of China. After the Sino-Sovia split,

largely on ideological but also on geopolitical geographic grounds, China and the Soviet Union were at least competitors with each other. And Nixon, really. And then Henry Kissinger decided that that rift could be exploited for American benefit began a process of talks and eventual normalization with the People's Republic of China, which led ultimately to the relationship with China that we have today. And by many accounts, the closer relationship with China was beneficial to the overall competition, which was U.S. Soviet during the Cold War. Now there's a lot of talk about a reverse Kissinger. The idea was, well, by opening to China, the United States peeled China away from Russia. and now by opening to Russia, we can peel Russia away from China.

For a variety of reasons, I think that's extraordinarily unlikely to be successful, not least because there's no rift to exploit between the two the way there was before. The U.S. didn't create the rift, it exploited the rift, and for other reasons besides. But nevertheless, the reverse Kissinger is certainly in the air as a potential concept these days. So you quote in the introduction to report former national security advisor, Brzynski, saying this is some 30 years ago, quote, potentially the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an anti-hegemonic coalition united not by ideology, but by complementary grievances. That's pretty prescient. Yeah, I mean, if he had just thrown North Korea in, he would have, you know, gone four for four. But the fact that he said that 30 years ago, I think it was prescient and also shows the gravity of this alignment when it was first imagined and now is quite real on what it means for the United States. I mean, and also his point about not being bound by ideology, I mean, the Chinese are at least nominally communist, a Leninist party.

the Iranians are Islamist and the Russians are, you know, more of a kleptocracy sort of thing. But there's glue that holds them all together. And one of the biggest ingredient in that glue is opposition to a U.S. dominated international order that these countries believe does not give them the space and the legitimacy and the spheres of influence and the power and the status that they believe that they deserve. and now they're willing to do something about it. Well, you know, anyone who's listened to the show will know that I'm basically sympathetic to your skepticism, but let me play it out for a minute and solicit your response.

You know, couldn't one say, for example, that one of the reasons why it would be difficult to overcome the barriers to a closer Russia-US alignment that could then give us some flexibility with China, you know, is the failure to grant this sphere of influence, like you point out? And so why don't we just grant it? Why don't we just grant it? By the way, we might do the same thing with the Chinese. And so, you know, perhaps even more ambitiously than reverse Kissinger, we could move right through the reverse Kissinger to a world order strikingly different from the one we've had for the last 80 years. It is a genuine spheres of influence order where the United States, Russia, and China with perhaps some medium-sized next-tier players set the terms of the game according to their own conception of interests. And if we would just take that step, that is to say, you know, concede that the Russians, by virtue of their power, have some rights to a sphere of influence, well, then we can make progress. Yeah. So I think that would be the price of a genuine effort to do reverse Kissinger or, I don't know,

what the going, the full Monty maybe would be, you know, not only grant Russia the sphere of influence in Europe and Central Asia and in its. so-called near abroad, but also, hey, throw in a sphere of influence for China in East Asia as well. I mean, you know, the first objection of that approach is that, you know, it has been longstanding U.S. policy to avoid the domination of either end of Eurasia by a hostile power. And it's in part because twice when that happened, the United States had to cross the oceans and put ends to war in those regions. And we have feared what might come down the line, exclusionary trade blocks, which would significantly diminish the standard of living in the United States,

or the imposition of a hierarchical regional order that together, if you had the productive regions of Eurasia under hostile control, then the United States would sort of be sequestered in the Western Hemisphere, unable to protect itself forward and so forth. So there's a variety of reasons why the United States is considered spheres of influence worlds and rejected it. And then there's kind of overall, you know, when you have spheres of influence, you tend to get wars at the seams. Because it'd be one thing if everybody could sit down at one point and say, these are the spheres of influence, forever they shall be thus. No change of leadership or circumstances or economy or military power. Anything else will change anything. And it will always be this way. But we know that's

not the way the world is. And so when you have spheres of influence, there tend to be disagreements on the scope, at least over time, and that's where you end up getting the wars. And again, wars in Eurasia are something that have drawn the United States in now multiple times. And so the American approach, which I think is a right one, has been to avoid those wars in the first place by avoiding having those regions under the domination of a single, potentially hostile hegemonic power. So one more round of this. Sorry, but you're a particularly good articulator of these arguments. I want to get to actually the substance of the report, which is how the Chinese and the Russians mutually conceive of their cooperation and relationship, which is really interesting.

But before that, you say, we avoid, we have worked to avoid the domination of either end of Eurasia by hostile power. Okay, fine. But they're only hostile because we are backing the rights such as they are of smaller states, our traditional allies who are close to them. We would just cut that Gordian knot. Why would we assume their ongoing hostility? What if Eurasia is simply dominated by powers that are,

maybe they're not friends, but they're not enemies either? They're just other great powers. Why the assumption that domination means a power, the act of domination somehow implies that that power is hostile? Well, I mean, I think there are, there would be still differences between the United States and very liberal powers like China and Russia, even if we granted them spheres of influence,

influence. And then, of course, you would have the problem of ambition. Again, what is the scope of that sphere of influence that is being dominated by maybe a not today, but previously hostile power and maybe a hostile power in the future? Do those powers want political domination of their regions? Do they want exclusive trade blocks? And it's conceivable that the United States is sort of hunkers down, guess in the Western Hemisphere. And we say, well, that's our sphere of influence. And we, I don't know, somehow cut a deal where the Chinese are not the number one trade partner in most countries in the Western Hemisphere anymore and don't project influence and all of this. But even then, you would have a world with the other two great powers dominating regions. And the nature of those

great powers are illiberal and certainly with a view of the open economic system very different than what has been ours traditionally. Is that a world we want to live in? Not if we have an alternative, right? And I think we have an alternative, and that's the one that we have pursued for a very long period of time. So trying to buy the goodwill of Beijing and Moscow by giving them grants of territory that, frankly, doesn't belong to us in the first place,

and then hoping for the best indefinitely, to me, would not be the wisest course of action, shall we say. I've always favored the phrase, you run the show or the show runs you. It's a shorter way of putting what I just, tried to say at some length, you know, and it's a potentially irrevocable position if we were to do that and it went wrong. And within living memory, it's worth reminding ourselves that we have seen, you know, full-scale war in Europe by one country that wanted to dominate Europe and other countries

that did not want to be dominated by that country. We saw full-scale war, of course, in Asia in the same way. And we also saw the effort to impose exclusionary trade blocks, which has been one of the quickest ways to get in the United States into a war, not for 80 years, but for 200 years. So, or more. So unless we're willing to abandon what we believe protects our way of life at home, what we believe protects our prosperity at home, and what we believe makes us strong in the world, then spheres of influence is not the way to go. Sorry, I had said that was the last round, but this is really a lot of fun, even if it's not the way I had intended to go.

And I think valuable. This very sort of, we'll call it a classic account of American strategy or an account of a classical American conception of strategy that you're giving right now, you know, it harkens back in some ways to pre-nuclear strategy, right? How have nuclear weapons affected everything you're outlining? And in the same, one obvious way in which we have to account for a difference is up until 1945, if one hostile power had in fact consolidated the war-making potential of Eurasia, it was far from fancy. They might one day seize the United States as a matter of some debate in the 1940s,

very realistic prospect. That seems less likely today for the obvious reason that we would nuke them. Similarly, though, you could say that maybe nuclear weapons would play a chaos, generating role in the kind of disorder you would face as the world transition to these spheres of influence as smaller countries get and potentially even use nuclear weapons. You could also see it as having a stabilizing role as well. I mean, who's really going to invade France in the year 2025, knowing what the consequences might be.

So how does the existence of nuclear weapons affect this classic account that you just gave? Well, in at least two ways. One, it has had a stabilizing effect among the nuclear powers. I think one of the, even if you just look at the basic facts, the U.S. and the Soviet Union decided at least after the Cuban Missile Crisis that it would be a really, really bad idea for them to go to war with each other because they looked into the nuclear abyss and saw what it portended. and pulled back and made an effort to stabilize their relations so that they would engage in proxy wars and competitions and all kinds of dashedly acts, but they wouldn't go to war directly. Now, you'd like to not have a Cuban missile crisis to realize that, but nevertheless,

it did have a stabilizing effect. And had nuclear weapons not been in force and it was just conventional, then there may have been some US-Soviet conflict or clash at some point, because that fear would not have have been there. And I think that the same thing is true now. I mean, obviously there has, whether you want to call it stabilizing or dampening, but I mean, Joe Biden, I guess famously said he wanted to help Ukraine, but not elicit World War III and basically means a nuclear,

a nuclear exchange. So that's one on the stabilizing side. On the other, though, it can also have an emboldening effect, right? So, you know, imagine what would the America's reaction have been if Hitler was trying to dominate Europe, but he had nuclear weapons on ICBMs that could reach the United States. Would that have changed our calculation to enter that war? Maybe, you know, and then would you have had a Europe under Nazi control? Maybe people think, well, if it's somebody else's sphere of influence is not that bad, tend to the other side of that equation of Europe dominated by Nazis or, you know, Asia dominated by the Japanese. But, you know, draw this line of the Russian sphere of influence wherever you want and you say, okay, well, that's final. And then imagine that the Russians decide to push

that envelope out. And they say, but if you come back against us, we're going to escalate to the nuclear level. Called her bluff. Yeah, we don't believe you. But you'd have to think about it pretty hard. And you think about it pretty hard because they can reach the United States with nuclear weapons. That's different from the wars at the seams of the spheres of influence that obtained before when it was non-nuclear powers involved. And so I think it almost paradoxically has a bit of a stabilizing effect, but a potentially bit of an emboldening effect. That's really interesting.

Yeah, I mean, I'm with you in being opposed to a Nazi-dominated Europe. That's a very part. You really took a stand there. Well, you joke, but as you were well aware, like the re-litigation of World War II is well-advanced. on the right. This used to be something you encountered more frequently on the left. But Tucker Carlson all but said a week ago or so now that he's not sure, he's not sure Europe is better off with the West having one. I always thought that if there's one thing we could all agree on, it's that

we didn't want Nazis in charge anything. And that seems so obviously true that I'm not even going to take time to articulate the case against Nazi rule in Europe. I mean, give me a freaking break. But anyway, but yes, you know, maybe we're not there. I guess just the last thing since we're on these kind of abstract questions of, you know, border and all its other kind of stuff, which is sort of fun and bringing out a bit of my inner think tanker here. But I think, you know, the U.S. at least, the policymakers at least privately, should also be honest about what it is that we want and what we don't. We will often say publicly presidents, you know, secretaries of state, etc. The United States rejects a spheres of influence world. We do not tolerate spheres of influence

that countries have the right to choose our own alliances. Well, maybe, right? I mean, what we really oppose is the domination of either end of Eurasia by a hostile power that has a sphere of influence, right? So that doesn't mean that if Canada decided it wanted an alliance with China, that we would let it happen. We wouldn't. And if you can you can read the words of, of, of, John F. Kennedy, when he articulated the case for Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis, not getting to choose its alliance with the Soviet Union, he could have said, well, look, every country has the right to choose their alliance, of course. So we don't do spheres of influence. And so, you know, if they went out an alliance with the Soviet Union, we're not going to do anything

about it, even though they tried to overthrow Castro repeatedly before the nukes were even there. And he articulated the case, and it was a classic spheres of influence. He counted. He said, this is geographically close and therefore dangerous to the United States. if we had a nearby power that was aligned with a foreign adversary, and we have long, his civilizational historical ties with this particular country, and we're not going to let this happen. So is it hypocritical? Well, if you say no spheres of influence for anybody anywhere, then yeah, probably, but, and that's what we do say sometimes, but again, what we really, our interests are in preventing spheres of influence that are dominated by strong, hostile,

foreign powers in Europe and Asia. I take your point about not wanting to articulate the case against Nazi rule. May that forever be. And yeah, in a way, what we're discussing is sort of abstract and think tankery. But actually, I've come around to the view in the last, I don't know, you're or two, Richard, that there's some value to reciting the argument from interest of our preferred strategy at a high level for the simple reason that people don't seem to remember the argument anymore. So it often gets made in this language of, it's like an incantation of liberal values,

sort of religious language of the liberal international order and this and that, which leads to these sort of tensions in the argument, like the one you just pointed out where we say we're against fears of influence. But actually, you know, when you look at it more carefully, it's more complicated than that. There's some value to reciting these arguments because you have to make the argument in 2025. Things that you could assume are given are not so much anymore. Yeah, I mean, I think there's the danger of incantations among those more on the left. You know, if you sort of announce there is a rules-based international order, then it is obvious that there will be one, right?

And then on the right, there's a danger of dismissing this. I mean, you often hear people say, well, I've never seen anybody who's been willing to fight and die for the liberal international order. Well, have you, though? Because, I mean, what are we really doing in Ukraine? for example. I mean, yeah, we care about Ukraine. We care about Ukraine for reasons that are related to our interests, right? And that is the prohibition against the forcible acquisition of another country's territory is a cardinal rule of what, the rules-based international order. And we worry that if that were to fall, then the next would be aggressor would be emboldened to do it somewhere else,

and essentially somewhere that's more costly to the United States. Is that the rules-based That's an element of the rules based international order. That's what we're involved in. We know people Americans fighting there, but we're sure putting a lot into other people fighting for that. And, you know, so I think there's a danger on both sides. And sometimes it gets so abstract that people sort of roll their eyes and they get this kind of airy, fairy sort of thing.

But again, it's like everything else in life, what is the available alternative? And the alternative to an international order that has some rules in different domains, maritime, non-proliferation, territorial, trade, all this other stuff, and that those rules fundamentally reflect U.S. interests, even if sometimes they're only honored in the breach, that is a better world than if you have rules that don't reflect our interests or you have a chaotic world where there are no rules at all. And that precisely is the world we saw in the first half of the 20th century in a different. work out too well for anybody. So to go from 50,000 feet down to, let's say, 25 and back to the

question of Western China cooperation, be it resolved, there is this axis of sorts, and China and Russia are the principal members, and also that prospects for pulling it apart are, let's just say, limited in the short run. What is the actual nature of this relationship? How do the Chinese see it as benefiting them? How do the Russians see it as benefiting them in Moscow? Just help us understand the world and the relationship from their perspectives. Well, China and Russia have been getting closer together as countries and governments for a good 10, 15 years or so. Xi Jinping really ushered in a bit of a new era when he came to power, both at the personalization of the relationship with Putin and they've met many times and talked many times and announced many things. And almost

any indicator of closeness or collaboration between two governments has gone up in the last few years. So you can look, for example, at joint military exercises. And, you know, those are significantly greater in the last couple of years than they were in the years prior. You can look at their economic relations. They trade more. You can look at investment. There's more of that. You can look at technology transfers.

There's more of that. They're almost diplomatic coordination, including, you know, things that you can actually measure. Like at the UN, it was the case 10 plus years ago that Russia and China had only jointly vetoed one UN security resolution. And now they, in the last few years, they've jointly vetoed multiple UN Security Council resolution. So they're organizing and coordinating their diplomatic activity. They're also coordinating and amplifying their anti-American and kind of anti-Western messages, whether it's real things that they think they can sort of spin to the U.S. disadvantage, like on Gaza or Ukraine or something, or if it's just stuff that they make up and throw out there to the global south.

So what China gets out of all of this is energy flows from Russia, which, by the way, tend to go over land. And so they're not vulnerable to the way that seaborne energy traffic would be if China was in some military contingency one day. And by the way, those come at discount prices now since the war. in Ukraine. They get the benefit of some Russian military technology, probably in submarine quieting technology and in air defense systems, certainly, and maybe the benefit of some of the Russian lessons learned from their military activities. Of course, the Chinese have not engaged in those kinds of activities. And so they have things to learn. The diplomatic coordination, the sense that this is not just China pushing back against what it sees is an unfairly Western-dominated international

water, but it's together with the other great powers. If you sort of imagine there's three great powers in the world, well, it's two, two against one, and maybe they've got others with them. You know, the Russians, China has been an absolute lifeline for Putin and for the Russians after the invasion of Ukraine when so much of the Western trade and technology transfer was cut off. China really has made up for most of that, certainly in terms of trade, according to U.S. government officials, if China was not providing the components and the dual-use goods to Russia, that it is, then Russia would be close to unable to continue to wage the war in Ukraine the way it is. So it benefits from that. And of course, Russia also benefits from China's solidarity and pushing back

against this narrative that, you know, based on what it did in Ukraine, China has, the rather Russia has been isolated in the world and has turned into a rogue state. And they say, well, look, we've got, you know, China with us. And then they try to bring these other countries along. So there's a lot that they get from each other in very concrete terms. And I think that's one more reason why the idea of sort of driving a wedge between the two is very unlikely. As somebody who's been looking at this and thinking about it for some years, what do you think is the actual view of Russia's activities in Ukraine in Beijing for Xi or those around Xi? What is their actual attitude to what's going on?

What is their desired end state? How do they evaluate the same? situation. I believe they, well, let me back up. It has been publicly reported that the Chinese, the U.S. told the Chinese ahead of the invasion of Russia, you know, we understand Russia's going to invade Ukraine. We've gotten all this intelligence. We've tried to talk some sense into them. They won't listen. Can you do it? And then we subsequently picked up the Chinese telling the Russians, not only that they wouldn't tell them not to invade Ukraine, but that the Americans were trying to get them to tell them to not invade Ukraine and they wouldn't. Now, that said, I don't think the Chinese

thought, one, that this invasion was going to go as far as it has. I don't think they knew that they were trying to take Keeve and topple the government and take over, you know, the biggest country in Europe. And two, that the Russians would be so inept in doing this. So you could either be, you know, overly ambitious or overly inept, but both at the same time is highly disturbing to a quasi-ally ally, and that's exactly what the Chinese have seen. That said, I think they see themselves in terms of the support for Russia and Ukraine as sort of half-pregnant, because if Russia were to suffer an obvious major defeat, then what the Russians will tell the Chinese is, look, this is not about Ukraine. This is about Moscow, and it's about ultimately Beijing, because what the West wants is to dominate

Ukraine politically, and then to foment a color revolution in Moscow. and overthrow the government here. And if they do that, guess who's next? It's going to be Beijing. So there's, you know, we've got to stop them here. And so I think that's the main reason why the Chinese continue to support this to such a degree. But they can't be happy with the way this war has gone or the fact that three years in, you know, Russia has 20% of Ukrainian territory instead of the somewhat less than 20% it had when all of this

began and absolutely extraordinary price. Just to flip the question, what do you take Moscow's attitudes towards Chinese expansionism and the Pacific to be, whether that's in regards to Taiwan is at the top of everyone's list, but also, you know, potential conflicts with the Philippines, with Japan. What's the view from Russia there? I don't know how much they ultimately care. I mean, the Chinese, generally speaking, want a stable international environment so that they can continue to grow stronger and they can pursue their economic aspirations and things. And there's willing, there are, I think they're willing to do if they believe they're pushed in order to not have a benign international environment.

But largely speaking, they've got a significant interest in maintaining one if they can on their terms. the Russians, I think, are just highly risk tolerant right now. And in a way, upheaval helps them. I mean, if anything, it tends to drive the price of energy up, and that makes their, you know, economy do better. They have less to lose in the way things are because they're declining power in many ways and so forth. And so I don't know what they think about, you know,

the prospect of, you know, I don't know if they have a specific opinion on, you know, Second Thomas Scholl or or Sabina Scholl or something like that. But not only have they not. not tried to restrain the Chinese with respect to Taiwan, they've actually signed communicate saying that they have the same position as China on Taiwan. In the South China Sea, not only have they not tried to dissuade the Chinese from its domination and militarization in the South China Sea, they've actually conducted joint maritime exercises in the South China Sea.

So it doesn't seem to be a set of concerns that gets them out of bed in the morning. I'm struck by your assertion that China, as compared at least to Russia, that maybe that's sets a low bar, it can then cross it, seeks a kind of stability in the international system, given, you know, given exactly the flashpoints that you just referenced in the Chinese role in making them flashy. Not to say, you know, we've seen multiple rehearsals now over the course of the last, I don't know, a couple years of essentially blockade scenarios with them actually, you know, doing the steps on the dance floor with the PLA Navy and other assets. these are not necessarily activities that contribute to a sense of regional,

let alone global stability, no? Yeah, that's totally true. I mean, that's why I was saying they want stability. I think they want stability, but they don't only want stability. And they want other things too. And there are some things that I believe they're willing to forego stability in order to achieve. I think with an example like the South China Sea, the Chinese would see that. as achieving most of what they wanted, both in terms of stability and in terms of their more

narrowly construed interests, right? Because they didn't go to war. They didn't stop commercial traffic in the South China Sea. They didn't stop overflights in the South China Sea. You know, it didn't harm their economy, but they successfully militarized and have claimed a vast swath of the Western Pacific that they now basically have to accrue to their own national power. And so that's, I think, a way, you know, let's put it this way. It's a very different approach thus far than Russia has taken by not only invading Ukraine in 2022, but having fought a war in the Dombos and invading Crimea and invading and attacking Georgia back in 2008 and having tried to foment coups in various countries and, you know, and sabotage operations

and upending a U.S. presidential election and all these other. Let's think about the long run here. What if they have some level of success in downgrading the American role in Eurasia? Or let's just say they have some success in at least maintaining their own positions. They don't suffer any major setbacks in the years to come. The conventional wisdom is that the broad trend would favor China over Russia in terms of capacity for national greatness. The Chinese economy in the last few years calls that a bit into question. and things are not quite as rosy as they seem to be maybe five years ago.

Nevertheless, I don't think anyone would bet Russia over China in terms of relative national power in years to come for all sorts of reasons. How do you think about that fact, and maybe more interesting as a question is how did they think about that fact in terms of the future of their own relationship? Is Russia somehow willing to live with becoming, as Stephen Cock can put it in a recent Foreign Affairs article, a satrappy of Russia, or excuse me, of China? Yeah, I think they are if, and now they may not use that characterization themselves. But, you know, for years, there was a rejection of the notion that China and Russia were

growing closer together and that were aligning because people said, well, you know, Russia, given its sense of greatness and certainly Vladimir Putin, given his own personal ego and his sense of his own civilization and country will never accept becoming a junior partner to China. What are they now? I mean, China could stop the war in Ukraine if it cut off Russia from components and technologies and all these other things.

Russia could cut off Chinese energy and they go buy it somewhere else, right? So it could make life somewhat more difficult for China. But there are things that Russia is dependent on China for now. And that is a junior partner status, And it doesn't seem to be accruing to, you know, much anxiety and hand-wringing among the Russians that would lead you to think that this is somehow unsustainable. So, yes, I think Russia is a declining power. I still think China in the ways that certainly we care about it most is rising still, despite their economic problems.

I mean, their military power and budgets continue to increase. And certainly their foreign policy activism and ambition seem to increase as well. So you're likely to see China become stronger, at least in some important ways, and Russia become weaker in some important ways, but them stay glued together. And it really would be a senior partner, junior partner, although the Chinese are very careful, never to say that out loud. This is always a society of equals for diplomatic sensitivities. This is starting to move in the direction of what the hell are we going to do about all

of this, having outlined the problem a bit. what does this all mean for American war planning, whether that's at the highest level in terms of nuclear modernization, now that it looks like we're going to have, you know, our war plans have to account for two nuclear arsenals that we would have to, two major nuclear arsenals that we would have to contend with rather than just one in the form of Russia. But also these questions of, you know, are we going to fight one war, two wars, half a war, one and a half wars, Coch had a great line. I don't know, I keep going back to foreign. Maybe it's because you're a report as a CFO report, but a great line recently. in an interview, sorry, this was the New Yorker. Interview in the New Yorker, he says, I don't know if any of you people have ever seen one and a half wars.

I certainly never have. But how does all this affect the Department of Defense and Congress's decisions about our military? Well, one, I think it means that we need a significant increase in defense spending. Even if China and Russia weren't working together as closely as they are, but just were operating in the way that they are in their respective regions. Plus, you have all the other issues going on in the Middle East, and there are other parts of the world.

I mean, the world's a big place. There's a lot going on. It's a more dangerous place with more actual and would-be adversaries than was the case, certainly in the 1990s. But if you look, for example, as a percentage of GDP, we're not that far off of where we were. We're a little bit north of 3%, not that far off of where we were at the end of the 90s

at the height of the peace dividend. So I think we need more resources. And then there's a whole, we could do a whole show on what you do with those resources and everything. else. But I think it means a couple of other things as well. I mean, one, I don't know, I've played in a lot of U.S. China war games. You probably have played in U.S. China war games. The idea that we would be fighting an all-out war with China and then a simultaneous war with Russia in Europe is enough to

make you toss and turn at night. And, you know, just winning the war with China is, you know, is no easy task once you start actually looking at the level of resource intensity would be included and things like that. So what does that mean? Well, it means, among other things, the United States might be able to place some sort of, if we had simultaneous conflicts, God forbid, some sort of backstop role in Europe, but that the Europeans would need to take on significant responsibilities on their own, which they are currently not capable of doing.

And so these are the conversation we need to have with Europe today, which is if you imagine that nightmare scenario, and that's what defense planners are supposed to do, what are the kind of capabilities they would be investing in today? Not what is the picture that they just sort of imagine might happen that they would worry about, but what does it mean today? So if you had, you know, a U.S. force that was wrapped up in the Pacific with some backstop role in Europe and the Europeans had to hold the line, how? How would they hold the line with what numbers of troops, with what concepts, with what doctrines and specifically was what capability. So that's one of the things I mean. On the nuke side, you know, we're in three body problem territory now where, you know, new start's going to expire in 2026, can't be renewed.

Wouldn't have been straight line renewed anyway, even if it could be. But when that falls, then for the first time since 1972, there will be no governing arms control agreement between Moscow and Washington. So unless there's a successor, it will be unrestricted. And of course, given that you have China trying to increase its arsenal and going, you know, at least toward parity, if not at parity, by the end of this decade beginning of the next decade, you know, it gets back to this all, well, if you have two adversaries that each have something along the same numbers of strategically deployed warheads as you do,

well, then how many do you need? and how do they react to whatever it is you do? There's no easy answer to the three-body problem, at least none that I've heard. I would love to think that there's some arms control agreement that could somehow solve this in a way that would not have all three of our countries devoting vast quantities of resources and building nuclear weapons. I mean, if we go back to the, you know, what do we have, 1550 in terms of strategically deployed warheads. And if you go back to the Cold War, I think we peaked at around 30,000 or something. something. So we have a lot of room to grow if we let ourselves. But I guess that's a long way of saying. There's no obvious answer to the three body problem today. But that's the kind of thing

that needs to be really thought about and figured out between now and 2026 when New Start Expares. Yeah. There was nuclear artillery back in the day, Richard. Yeah, nuclear backpacks. Nuclear. I always wonder what would be like to be the guy who like pulled the cord. Yeah, no, I always wanted that too. Like, you know, you have a nuclear weapon in your backpack. And your job is to carry it in the right direction and then, I guess, get away as far as you can, you know, make sure the bus is on time and, you know, all of that. We're being a piece, but I mean. You didn't have full faith that your chain of command cared as much about that part of the

proposition. On the question of Europe's conventional deterrence that you just raised, where we're obviously like long past overdue, urgent emergency measures, which just don't seem to come to pass so that should the balloon go up in the Pacific, the Europeans can kind of handle them. The reality is, you know, there will be a rapid and immediate pivot to Asia in such a scenario.

It will happen at last too late, but it will happen. And for years, everyone, you, me, senators, administrations have been telling the Europeans this. Well, it's only in the last few months that we seem to see, because in some ways of the actions

and rhetoric of the Trump administration, we seem to see potentially significant steps in a good direction. I find myself having a, like, a strangely mixed reaction to like news of German deficit spending hitherto unconstitutional to support an expanded military because, you know, the kind of European expanded capacity that I've long wanted and would be comfortable with would be tied to structures of American power that would keep it well under control. The prospect of expanded European capacity or

capacity for NATO members plus weakening American control. control or influence is very unsettling to me and prompts me to make Gallo's humor type remarks like, oh, German and Japanese rearmament, what could go wrong? Which sounds silly, but in a way is, I think not. No, so that, but that's because you've read history. And these things are less and less obvious with each passing year. I mean, NATO, you know, famously the, the formulation was keep America in, keep Germany down and keep Russia out. We argue over the keep America in and keep Russia out. We forget is the Germany down because Germany down. I mean, that seems so unlikely. I mean, we're, you know, cajoling and urging and yelling at Germany just to, you know, get enough planes to move

its troops around, forget dominate a government or dominate a continent. But the notion has been we want the Europeans to be as militarily capable as possible within a structure that is dominated or at least has some sort of veto by the, political by the United States. We don't quite spell it out that. But that's the reality because twice we saw what happened when a country in Europe decided that it wanted to have the continent's strongest military and then wanted to exercise that military. And other countries unable to fight back ultimately had to draw the United States into the war. We never want to see that happen yet. Again, this seems so far away from the Germany we talk about now. But it's that structure of American power part that is, you know, very important.

because imagine, like, let's just completely draw this out. And who knows whether this would happen or how long it would take. But imagine that the United States literally abandoned Europe. We're getting all the troops out. We will not defend it. And Russia's there. And the Germans and the French believe what they have said recently about the threat that Russia opposes.

For their own survival, they're going to have to, Germany in particular, is going to have to build a military sufficient to defend itself against Russia. That is precisely. independently against Russia. That's precisely the outcome we've been trying to avoid for all these years. So a much stronger Europe with much more defense spending, much more defense capability, but wedded within a structure of alliance that the United States plays a dominant role in is what has kept the peace. So yes, exhort them, plead, but don't abandon them, I guess is my. I suppose that the bright side is, I don't know if you, I think I saw it in the FT, but it may have been

quoting or translating from Der Spiegel or something, but this account of Germany's struggles with recruiting right now, even pre-build-up, and they had this, you know, German officer reporting that, you know, German recruits these days, it's pretty rough going because even once you got them, and this is like, this is actually a quote, like, they cry a lot, you know, they're not, they're not really up to, they're not really up to the rigors of modern military service. Though, again, I, by the way, I agree, I would enthusiastically or grimly, depending on how you look at it, associate myself with remarks you just made. The example I often go to, which sort of surprises people is the polls, not because I have a

garage against the polls. I think they've been great, actually. But, you know, do you want to tell me what Polish politics look like in 20 years? Well, this, or German politics. I mean, you know, I guess there's some enthusiasm in some quarters for the AFD, but when the AFD is getting 20% of the vote, then, you know, at a minimum, there are currents in German politics, the lights of which have not been productive, shall we say, for either Europe or the United States over the centuries or the century over the decades. So you don't know what those

politics are going to be like. That said, I mean, in the near term, and maybe this is a reflective of sort of your mixed feelings about the, you know, what's happening in Europe and what's catalyzing and all this other stuff. I mean, if you want to put kind of a best case scenario, but still plausible possibility. Imagine that the war in Ukraine ends sometime in 2025 or early in 26. There's a freeze of the fighting largely along the lines where the fighting has been taking place. There's a non-recognition policy by the United States and Ukraine and Europe toward the territories

that Russia would claim to have annexed, kind of allah the Baltics, during after 1945. In that world, Ukraine and Poland emerge as the two most powerful militaries on the continent. You got Turkey, South. I mean, first of all, that's a significant sort of pull of political military influence to the East and Europe, the likes of which we have not previously seen. But you have there and then with Finland a pretty strong European back, you know, sort of delimitation from Russian ambitions. And of course, this would only work if Ukraine was hypermilitarized, not demilitarized, like the Russians won. and if it had some sort of security guarantee from Europe, not neutralized like the Russians want.

But so I don't know whether those outcomes are likely, but those are plausible. And that ultimately may work out to a more secure Europe that is actually further east than when this entire episode started. And of course, you would have on top of that more capable Western European militaries. Now, not as capable as we would want, but still compared to where we started here when they were below 2% of GDP and all this, and a less capable Russian military than we started because of the significant losses they've taken and metamaterial over the last three years. So, anyway, that's a best idea. I'm picturing that I have it as a go-to gift for my text chains, one of those final shots of the life of Brian. Yeah.

Or they're on the crosses and there are always look on the bright side of life. Exactly. And on that note, Richard Fontaine, it has actually been a very, very interesting conversation. I appreciate you making the time. Thanks for having me. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.