Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor on U.S.-China

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Next, we turn to Taiwan, where people voted for a historic third term for the Democratic Progressive Party. President-Elect Lai Ching-te won more than 40 percent. So, what does it mean for relations with Mainland China and diplomacy with other nations like the United States? Matt Pottinger is a former U.S. deputy national security adviser, and he’s joining Walter Isaacson to discuss this now.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And Matt Pottinger, welcome back to the show.

MATT POTTINGER, FORMER U.S. DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Thanks for having me, Walter.

ISAACSON: So, we had those elections in Taiwan, somewhat of an unnerving surprise if you’re worried about our relationships with China. Very much of a government that will try to keep its democratic independence from China. Tell us how to assess it and what happened there.

POTTINGER: Yes, well, what you had was the democratic expression of the society that’s one of the most successful democracies in the world. People showed up in huge numbers. Percentages of turnout that should really be the envy of the democratic world. And what people decided to do was something unusual. This is the first time that the — a party has been returned for, in essence, a third term of office after it had really been in sort of eight-year cycles that the opposition would switch with the ruling party. But I think what you’re seeing is, in part, the opposition vote was split between a couple of candidates which helped boost Vice President Lai to the presidency. But he still obtained 40 plus percent of the vote.

ISAACSON: The president-elect has said that this was an expression of democracy over authoritarianism, the great struggle in this world today. Do you think he’s going to be able to get along with China? Or is that going to provoke China to try to assert more control over Taiwan?

POTTINGER: Yes. Look, the truth is, if Beijing had played things differently, and they still have the opportunity to play things differently, they probably could have had a somewhat productive relationship with the current, outgoing president, President Tsai Ing-wen. When President Tsai was elected eight years ago, she made — she went out of her way to, in some sense, buck her party platform in order to extend an olive branch to Beijing. She made clear — you know, she did several of the things that Beijing would have wanted to hear. But Beijing decided rather than to build on that and start a dialogue with her government, they froze her out. And for eight years, they have not actually engaged in any kind of productive dialogue. Barely any dialogue at all, other than perhaps a little bit of back-channel diplomacy. And so, here we are again. You know, Beijing’s preferred candidates did not win for a third time in a row. Beijing could actually open a dialogue and I — my guess would be that Vice President Lai, now President-Elect Lai would be willing to entertain the idea of some kind of dialogue. I just don’t think Beijing’s going to offer it. Beijing is more interested in control than in dialogue. And so, unfortunately, I think that Beijing’s going to miss yet another opportunity here.

ISAACSON: And to what extent do you think that this could lead to a military confrontation over Taiwan? And what would the timetable be? Does this speed up that timetable?

POTTINGER: So, Xi Jinping has made clear that he’s impatient. He doesn’t talk the way that his predecessors did about there being time. So long as Taiwan doesn’t declare formal independence, that time is on Beijing’s side. That’s not how Xi Jinping sees it. But the other thing is that Xi Jinping has really changed the game. It — a lot of his predecessor’s rhetoric about Taiwan was designed to restrain Taiwan, to ensure that Taiwan did not declare independence. Xi Jinping is not trying to maintain the status quo the way that the rhetoric might have suggested by some of his predecessors. Instead, what he’s trying to do is compel Taiwan to move toward unification under the People’s Republic of China, and that is not something that the vast majority of people in Taiwan want to see.

ISAACSON: If China right now decided to blockade Taiwan, or decided to move on it in a military way, what would the — what do you think the U.S. should do, and does the U.S. have the capacity right now to fight a war?

POTTINGER: Yes. Well, look, the lesson from Ukraine is that deterrence would have been a whole lot cheaper than war. So, let’s succeed at deterrence. We can do that. We know how to deter. We did it during the Cold War. It’s why the Cold War stayed cold. But we were spending twice as much, Walter, in the 1980s under Reagan as a percentage of GDP on defense as we’re spending right now. This is a mistake. This is a mistake. We need to be showing that we have decisive capabilities, conventional capabilities, that, in fact, we already have the technology and the platforms to deliver. It’s just that we haven’t been building enough of these anti-ship missiles. We haven’t been making sure that our attack submarines are cycling out of port and maintenance quickly enough to be a real problem for Beijing. Let’s focus on that. Look, if Beijing ends up pulling the trigger, it makes that fateful decision that Vladimir Putin has made. I actually believe that President Biden has been pretty clear. I don’t think he was speaking off the cuff. You might be able to say that he’s speaking off the cuff once or twice. But President Biden has now said four times, quite deliberately, that he would back Taiwan militarily in order to prevent a — what he called an unprecedented military attack on Taiwan. I think we should take the president at his word.

ISAACSON: Well, the president said that, and that goes against what was official, I think, U.S. policy, which is sort of a strategic ambiguity. Well, we don’t quite say outright that we would get involved militarily if there were an attack by China on Taiwan. Should we change U.S. policy and make it unambiguous that we give defense protection to Taiwan?

POTTINGER: You know, I would argue that President Biden already has made that shift. You know, it is not the staff of the president, but the president under Article 2 of our constitution who makes our foreign policy. I think we should take President Biden literally, take him at his word. And in essence, he has already removed at least a lot of that fog of ambiguity from the policy. I think it would be unwise for any other presidential candidate to back away from the position that President Biden has staked on this. And I think that that will actually help keep the peace. You know, wars begin with optimism. It’s one of the things that we often overlook or forget, because it sounds counterintuitive. But if you look at the beginnings of wars throughout history, whether they were launched by, you know, a democracy like the United States or by dictatorships, it often starts with this idea, this kernel of optimism that, my goodness, I think that through war, we can achieve things that we couldn’t achieve through diplomacy A and B. I think the war will go really well for us. This is a miscalculation that all sorts of governments make, including our own, has believed that wars will be short and decisive when in fact they turn out to be murky, incredibly costly, and long. The troops don’t come home by Christmas the way that leaders often promised.

ISAACSON: So, you are an adviser to President Trump. You’re on the National Security Council. What is his view, do you think, and what should it be? What would it be on this notion of being unequivocal that if China goes after Taiwan militarily, we will defend Taiwan militarily?

POTTINGER: Yes. Well, look, I mean, I can speak for what the policy was during President Trump’s last term in office. He — I think that over the course of his time in office, he came to appreciate how problematic a crisis in the Taiwan Strait would be for the U.S., for our economic prosperity, for our alliances with Japan and South Korea and the Philippines and Australia and others. So, he was careful to, you know, not say exactly what he would do. I remember him actually saying, look, I’m not going to say what I’m — what exactly what I’m going to do, but Xi Jinping needs to understand that this would be a pretty serious matter. So, in essence, I think President Trump was sustaining that tried-and-true policy of, as you called it, strategic ambiguity. I think that President Biden has now moved the needle to something that is more than ambiguous.

ISAACSON: You mean less than big ambiguous.

POTTINGER: Yes, it is less ambiguous, in essence. So, I don’t know what president Trump’s policy would be in a second term. But I think it would be a miscalculation on Xi Jinping’s part to test any U.S. president.

ISAACSON: Let me ask you something personally. I mean, you worked with Trump both on that and on COVID as it came out of — you know, across from China to the U.S. And I’ve read a lot of the things you’ve said. And you too have a bit of ambiguity now in your feelings about the Trump administration. So many people you worked with, like Defense Secretary Esper and others, has said he would be dangerous now. Tell me what your thoughts are about looking at the possibility of a second Trump term.

POTTINGER: I don’t want to predict how this is all going to turn out. What I will say is that any president who indulges isolationism, any president who doesn’t have the back of American allies, whether they are in the Western Pacific, like South Korea and Japan and the Philippines, or whether they’re in Europe, our incredible alliance structure with NATO, it’s the most successful, you know, multilateral alliance probably in history, any president who does not have the back of those alliances and institutions will be welcome, in essence, by America’s adversaries. Because America’s adversaries view those alliances as the primary obstacle to them achieving their aggression — you know, their aggressive, expansionist, revanchist ambitions. So, President Trump in his first term, I think, did maintain the strength of those alliances. He put a lot of fear into our allies, particularly in Europe, where they were afraid that the United States would back away. But in the end, those allies stepped up, spent more money, and President Trump reaffirmed those alliances. I very much hope that that would be his policy in a second term, if in fact he’s elected come November.

ISAACSON: Well, wait. Wait a minute. I mean, he has not been supportive of either Ukraine or NATO in this current situation — this current invasion by Russia into Ukraine. And I think I’m hearing you say that that really worries you, but you’re parsing it a bit too carefully there.

POTTINGER: Oh, look, I don’t think we should turn our back on Ukraine because it — the cost of Ukraine falling is going to be radically higher than the cost of us supporting brave Ukrainians to fight a war for their national survival. That — if Ukraine falls, the cost to NATO of even just continuing to deter Russia from going further is going to be dramatically greater than the relatively small — I’m sorry, but it is in real terms, a pretty small investment. We’re not putting American lives at risk. We’re not shedding American blood. We’re helping brave Ukrainians defend their country so that we don’t end up with Russia threatening our NATO allies and pushing us to the brink of a third world war. I think it would be unwise to turn our backs. Europe has to do a lot better. President Trump, I give credit, particularly in his first term, to basically pointing out how European support for their own alliance structure has fallen short. I think that there’s an opportunity to get the Europeans to do more for their own defense. But at the end of the day, he did still stick with that alliance structure.

ISAACSON: Well, wait. Don’t you worry about the rising isolationism? There’s a rising isolationism on the populist right of the Republican Party from —

POTTINGER: Yes. it’s funny. There’s — I agree with you. And it reminds me of the 1930s. The isolationism is not limited to that — a sizable chunk of the Republican Party. It’s — there’s a different brand of it that is sort of sneaked up on us in the Democratic Party as well. It has different motivations and it has different expressions. But nonetheless, we’re in a very 1930s moment right now, Walter, where, you know, as I’ve been reading a lot of 1930s history over the course of the last several months, I’ve been struck by the similarities. And I’m hopeful that we learn the lessons, remember the lessons that we learned in blood that had to be written in blood in the 20th century so that we don’t fall into the trap of isolationism, believing that the two oceans are going to keep us safe from the sorts of dynamics that we’re seeing play out in Europe or in the Middle East, or if we really play our cards badly in the Western Pacific as well.

ISAACSON: The Chinese foreign minister has been talking about trying to help negotiate the Palestinian — the Hamas-Israel situation. We’ve spent a lot of time over the past 60 years trying to establish the U.S. as a primary player in the Middle East. Do you think it’s a good idea for us to want or to allow China to be involved in the Middle East and to try to sort this out? Is that in our interests?

POTTINGER: Well, look, I think that we have to start — the question almost answers itself when you consider the fact that Beijing has been one of the agitators that has inflamed the problems that we’re dealing with in the Middle East right now. Beijing is the chief propaganda and diplomatic supporter for Russia. Russia has provided a lot of diplomatic and possibly material support for Hamas. Remember, right after the massacre of the innocent Israelis on the 7th of October, Vladimir Putin’s government hosted a trilateral meeting in Moscow between the leaders of Hamas and leaders of Iran. Beijing has provided propaganda support for Hamas through platforms like the Chinese Communist Party controlled TikTok platform. We’ve seen Beijing standing up for, you know, basically undermining Israel and it’s need for security, even Israel’s borders have been erased from Chinese websites like alibaba.com and baidu.com. So, Beijing is an agitator here. It is not interested in maintaining stability. If we — if you read the speeches of Xi Jinping, he talks quite a lot about chaos. He said in a speech in 2021, chaos is the defining word for our era. And then he went on in that speech to make clear that he thought that was something advantageous to China in its ambitions that chaos was something bad for western democracies. And as he said, you know, the West is fading and the East is rising, China’s authoritarian agenda. So, I don’t think that China’s really interested in being a constructive partner with us in the Middle East or pretty much any other part of the world.

ISAACSON: Matt Pottinger, thank you so much for joining us.

POTTINGER: Thanks, Walter. Thanks for having me.