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--:-- Host: As tensions between the U.S. and China continue to escalate, the U.S. is preparing to send as many as 200 more troops to Taiwan for training, the largest deployment to the country in decades. In this episode, we talk with international affairs expert Victoria Coates about the heightened situation in Taiwan and the role the Ukrainian war is playing in U.S.-China relations.
--:-- Host: It's February 25th, and this is a Saturday Extra edition of Morning Wire. Do you love Morning Wire? Well, you can shop the collection at dailywire.com slash shop. Start today with your favorite podcast and coffee from your very own Morning Wire mug. Or rub the news you need to know with Morning Wire t-shirts, hoodies, and tote bags. That's dailywire.com slash shop.
--:-- Host: Joining us to discuss the heightened tensions between the U.S. and China is Victoria Coates, International Affairs Senior Research Fellow at Heritage. Hi, Victoria.
--:-- Victoria Coates: Hi, thanks for having me.
--:-- Host: So we learned this week that the U.S. is going to send as many as 200 more troops to Taiwan for training. Does this move signal a further escalation between the two countries?
--:-- Victoria Coates: Well, I mean, what we're seeing in the entire Pacific is an escalation, which in many ways began with Secretary Austin's visit there earlier in the month or the end of January, rather, when he announced some expanded basing of the United States in the Philippines. And so I think, you know, you see both sides starting to ratchet up their presence, their activities. And given the tensions that exist elsewhere between the United States and China, notably in Ukraine, this creates just an ever more dangerous and difficult environment.
--:-- Host: The Wall Street Journal described this troop increase as the largest deployment of American forces in Taiwan in decades. What kind of training will these troops be doing?
--:-- Victoria Coates: Well, they can do a whole range of things. My understanding of the plans that China would have for the evasion of Taiwan are really cyclical. It depends on the weather. It depends on the tides. So you're going to have some people who are going to be watching for a naval assault, an aerial assault, training on the kind of defensive weapons, missile defense systems. All of these things are enormously complicated. And the more you can help train the indigenous forces to operate them, the fewer Americans you would need in harm's way should hostilities break out.
--:-- Host: And I would add that a lot of the training that we did during the Trump administration of the Ukrainian forces is what has supported the Ukrainians in their fight, which has been much more effective against the Russians than was anticipated. So this is really valuable time well spent.
--:-- Host: Now Biden has publicly said we defend Taiwan militarily if China invades but his team has then walked that back to strategic ambiguity Where does the U stand and do the mixed messages damage the president credibility?
--:-- Victoria Coates: Absolutely. I mean, and that confusion is, I think, part of why we are having such a problem with China right now. You know, China's not going to be our friend. They're not going to be our partner in any constructive way. But if they have clarity on where the United States stands, you know, they know how to act accordingly. And they're hearing, on the one hand, very conciliatory statements out of the State Department. We had Secretary Blinken preparing to go to China to talk about both Ukraine and climate issues earlier this month. The unpleasantness over the spy balloon postponed that. But up until the 11th hour, Secretary Blinken was bending over backwards to try to preserve that trip.
--:-- Host: Then on the other hand, you have these really quite bellicose statements out of the president, which I don't know that, I mean, if we want to change our position on China, it will mean changing our legislative structure. It would mean recognizing Taiwan as an independent country, allowing Taiwan to open an embassy, a formal embassy in the United States. You know, I might be supportive of these changes if they were presented as part of a larger coherent strategy. But if they're just sort of one-offs from the president trying to look tough, I don't think that's helpful at all.
--:-- Host: Now, the Secretary of State Antony Blinken met this week with his counterpart Wang Yi in Munich. Blinken warned against sending weapons to help Russia in their war against Ukraine. But the next day, Yi was actually in Moscow meeting with Putin. Are the Chinese thumbing their noses at the U.S. here?
--:-- Victoria Coates: Oh, absolutely they are. And you notice that Blinken also came out of that meeting in Munich saying that the Chinese did not apologize for the spy balloon. Well, I'm sure they didn't. But why is the United States Secretary of State announcing that to the world, that they basically, as you said, thumped their nose at the United States and then Yi took off for Moscow?
--:-- Host: And we have the announcement that Xi is going to follow, that there's going to be some kind of Russia-China summit in Moscow this spring, which is really quite shocking. And I think then the sort of cherry on top of that Sunday was the reporting from the Wall Street Journal last night that the United States is considering releasing intelligence that documents Chinese arms transfers to the Russian. Well, that's tantamount to saying that you have such intelligence. If you're considering releasing it, it means you've got it. And if the Chinese are indeed now escalating their engagement in Ukraine to actually arming the Russians, I think that means that not only did deterrence against Putin fail a year ago, you know, a year into the mission, deterrence is failing against Xi.
--:-- Host: Let's turn to that Chinese Bible. And do we have any idea what intelligence China gathered, if any, and what are the implications of China's incursion into U.S. airspace?
--:-- Victoria Coates: Well, I think it'll depend on what was in the actual payload, if they were able to recover that in a condition that they can start to dissect it. But certainly its trajectory took an extraordinary course over many of our most sensitive military installations. And I think that's far from being a coincidence. So even if the thing was just snapping pictures, it's a problem because now they gained additional intelligence. They also know that the administration is extremely cautious about shooting something like that down if it does penetrate into U.S. airspace. So why wouldn't they try again?
--:-- Host: You know, even if, as I said, they just get a couple of things, that's all the more data for them to digest and examine. So I think that that episode for the American people was really a clarifying moment when the threat from communist China was brought home, that this isn't some abstract thing far away. This is happening in our own country.
--:-- Host: As you've highlighted, this is connected to Ukraine in many ways. And you've written that it's really important that we continue to support Ukraine and get a victory against Putin there. Why is Putin's defeat so important?
--:-- Victoria Coates: Well, I would say it's actually more important today than it was even a week ago, because at this point, if Putin wins and China is seen as the enabler of Russian victory, you have a joint Russia-China win, and then you have a joint U.S.-NATO and Ukraine defeat on the other side of the ledger. And that, I think, is going to be deeply dangerous, because what would Chairman Xi have learned from that? He would have learned that maybe NATO is a paper tiger. Maybe the Americans aren't able to muster the will to actually win this.
--:-- Host: And what's in a way maddening about it is we absolutely could bring our hands for six weeks and go into endless negotiations with Berlin and Paris about everything we do or do not want to send. This could have been over last summer. If once it was clear the Ukrainians could win, we had gone all in and said, okay, let's get this over. Let's not do this again, and let's not do it in the Pacific. The administration chose not to do that.
--:-- Host: We're starting to see some polls that show some flagging support among Americans for the Ukrainian war. Should the Biden administration update the American people on their strategy to end the war?
--:-- Victoria Coates: I think it is far past time to do that. I think that's why you're seeing support lag. It's not support for the Ukrainian people who've been very brave and stalwart in this fight that's lagging. It's a lack of understanding about what the administration is doing. And I really found it quite shocking last week when the president announced the large package of civil sort of support for Ukraine, in which he said we would be putting something in the pockets of the Ukrainians. I mean, it's like, what are we doing? Giving them an allowance? Why is that the job of the U.S. tax payer?
--:-- Host: I think we should be focusing on lethal military aid to allow them to win this war. I think if we're going to do civil society support, that absolutely should come from Brussels, not from the United States. But, I mean, this is their neighborhood. I think they need to really step up and take care of these issues.
--:-- Host: And I think there is an unease with the American people. This notion that we're creating a welfare state in Ukraine. You know what? It's like we're giving them COVID checks or something. It just it really doesn't sit well when you're asking people to support a war effort to have this kind of activity going on.
--:-- Host: Putin has now suspended Russia's last remaining nuclear treaty with the U.S. the START treaty. What is the significance of this move? How significant actually is it?
--:-- Victoria Coates: Well, I'm of two minds on this one because on the one hand I have been a staunch opponent of the New START treaty since it was submitted for Senate ratification in 2010. I thought it was a terrible idea at the time. You know, the Heritage Foundation opposed it correctly, in my opinion, and it was rammed through in the lame duck after Obama suffered some fairly serious losses in the Congress in 2010, which just shows you we should never have a lame duck session.
--:-- Host: But this thing was pushed through. And the problem with it is that the Russians, they didn't even negotiate it in good faith. They've always been cheating on it. And it, of course, has no ramifications for the Chinese. So they can go off and have as many warheads as they want. And you wind up with the United States unilaterally restricting our activities, I guess, for the good of humankind, but it's certainly not good for the American people.
--:-- Host: So I don't like the treaty to start with. But in this case, you had Biden issue a five-year extension with no additional negotiations or protocols to Putin at the very beginning of the term in 2021. And so it looks as if Biden is pleading with Putin to stay in the treaty and Putin's taking the strong road and telling him to bug off.
--:-- Host: So, you know, you have kind of the worst of both worlds on this. But for the treaty itself, I'd say good riddance. But and we should certainly not continue to follow its protocols. But it was another, as with the Brittany Griner release, it was another PR victory for Putin.
--:-- Host: One final question. What should the administration do next? You've said they need to inform the American people about their strategy. But what other steps should they take?
--:-- Victoria Coates: Well, one thing they could do is make extremely clear that anybody who insists Russia in this, you know, murderous, horrific war should be seen as complicit in it. And, you know, all of the very crushing sanctions, which will be indeed painful for the United States, but particularly in the case of China, but it's part of a process that has to happen anyway. I mean, we have to decouple ourselves from China. We have to break our dependency on China.
--:-- Host: What better cause to do it in than to punish China for, you know, basically not only banking Putin's invasion, but now also arming it. So there's very good reason to cut them off from our financial system. And my guess is, given their dependency on it, they're going to change their behavior pretty quickly.
--:-- Host: That's the kind of tool you could use, which is not kinetic. It's not putting U.S. boots on the ground in Europe, but it would really get their attention. And if we had done that last March, April to Russia, you know, in a really serious way, rather than the much less effective sanctions regime that was imposed, you know, I doubt you'd see Xi doing this now.
--:-- Host: So I would have done it a year ago, but better late than never. And I think that's how you prevent China from stepping in and trying to be a tipping point in this war to Russia's favor.
--:-- Host: Well, Victoria, thank you so much for joining us. That was Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Victoria Coates. And this has been a Saturday Extra Edition of Morning Wire.
