John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs | All-In Summit 2024

(0:00) Announcement from Friedberg! (0:21) Sacks intros John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs (1:32) What is the Deep State Party, and what are their goals? (13:56) Should America leverage its power against dictators? (22:07) The China threat: avoiding the escalatory path to nuclear war (36:08) India's growing role; are China's wounds self-inflicted? (47:07) Conflict in the Middle East and the path to peace Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Friedberg?

  Hey everybody, Friedberg here. What you're about to hear is a panel discussion from our All In Summit, recorded in LA on September 10th. We're going to publish some of the best conversations once a week over the next month. If you want to see all the talks, subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/AtAllIn and follow us on X at TheAllInPod.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  One of the most influential and controversial thinkers in the world.

• 0:26Speaker 02

  He is known as one of the world's leading experts on economic development.

• 0:32Speaker 02

  One of the most famous political scientists in history.

• 0:41Speaker 03

  We're talking about moral and political principles here. I would suggest that all four wars could be ended quickly.

• 0:48Speaker 04

  Great power politics is now back on the table.

• 0:51Speaker 03

  If we are anything as a world community, we have to implement what we've said.

• 1:06David Sacks?

  I'm excited for this panel. We're going to talk about foreign policy. We have, I think, two of the most interesting, eminent, renowned thinkers about foreign policy. Professor John Mearsheimer from University of Chicago and Professor Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia. So, great to have you guys here today.

• 1:26David Sacks?

  It's a, it's a, it's a big world and there's a lot of things happening, so let's just jump into it. The big news over the past week was that Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris for president. I think for people who see the world in partisan political terms, this might have been surprising, but I don't think that you guys were that surprised by that. Do you see an underlying logic to this? Jeff, why don't I start with you?

• 1:51Speaker 03

  I think it's obvious, there's basically one deep state party, and that is the party of Cheney, Harris, Biden, Victoria Nuland, my colleague at Columbia University now. And Nuland is kind of the face of all of this because she has been in every administration for the last 30 years. She was in the Clinton administration wrecking our policies towards Russia in the 1990s. She was in the Bush administration, junior, with Cheney wrecking our policies towards NATO enlargement. She was in then the Obama administration as Hillary's

• 2:35Speaker 03

  spokesperson first and then making a coup in Ukraine in February 2014. Not a great move, started a war. Then she was Biden's undersecretary of state. Now, that's both parties. It's a colossal mess and she's been Cheney's advisor, she's been Biden's advisor, she and makes perfect sense. This is the reality. We're trying to find out if there's another party, that's the big question.

• 3:10David Sacks?

  John, what's your thought on that? Do you see any difference between Republicans and Democrats?

• 3:15Speaker 04

  No, I like to refer to the Republicans and the Democrats as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. There's hardly any difference. I actually think the one exception is that former President Trump, when he became president in 2017, was bent on beating back the deep state and becoming a different kind of leader on the foreign policy front. But he basically failed. And he has vowed that if he gets elected this time, it will be different and he will beat back the deep state. He will pursue a foreign policy that's fundamentally different

• 3:56Speaker 04

  than Republicans and Democrats have pursued up to now. And the big question on the table is whether or not you think Trump can beat the deep state and these two established parties. And I'd bet against Trump.

• 4:08Speaker 06

  John, and Jeff, but let's start with John. Can you actually define for us, for me, I don't understand when people say "deep state", what it is. I almost viewed the term comically. We have one of our friends in our group chat who we call "deep state", who's... Deep state? He's really in the deep state. But we say it as a joke. But for maybe the uninitiated, what does it actually mean? What are their incentives? Who are they? Jeff, maybe you want to start, or John, you want to start?

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll say a few words about it. When we talk about the deep state, we're talking really about the administrative state. It's very important to understand that, starting in the late 19th, early 20th century, given developments in the American economy, it was imperative that we develop, and this was true of all Western countries, a very powerful central state that could run the country. And over time, that state has grown in power. And since World War II, the United States, as you all know, has been involved in every nook and cranny of the world, fighting wars here, there, and everywhere. And to do that, you need a very powerful administrative state that can help manage that foreign policy.

• 5:22Speaker 04

  But in the process, what happens is you get all of these high-level bureaucrats, middle-level and low-level bureaucrats, who become established in positions in the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence community, you name it. And they end up having a vested interest in pursuing a particular foreign policy. And the particular foreign policy that they like to pursue is the one that the Democrats and the Republicans are pushing. And that's why we talk about Tweedledee and Tweedledum with regard to the two parties. You could throw in the deep state as being on the same page as those other two institutions.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  There's a very interesting interview of Putin in Figaro in 2017. And he says, "I've dealt with three presidents now."

• 6:13Speaker 03

  They come into office with some ideas even. But then the men in the dark suits and the blue ties, and then he says, I wear red ties, but they wear blue ties. They come in and explain the way the world really is. And there go the ideas. And I think that's Putin's experience. That's our experience. That's my experience, which is that there's a deeply entrained foreign policy. It has been in place, in my interpretation, for many decades. But arguably, a variant of it has been in place since 1992. I got to watch some of it early on because I was an advisor to Gorbachev and I was an advisor to Yeltsin.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  And so I saw early makings of this, though I didn't fully understand it, except in retrospect. But that policy has been mostly in place pretty consistently for 30 years. And it didn't really matter whether it was Bush Senior, whether it was Clinton, whether it was Bush Junior, whether it was Obama, whether it was Trump. After all, who did Trump hire? He hired John Bolton. Well, the pretty deep state. That was the end of... They told, you know, he explained, this is the way it is. And by the way, Bolton explained also in his memoirs, when Trump didn't agree, we figured out ways to trick him, basically.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  And what are their incentives? Is it war? Is it self-enrichment? Is it power? Is it all three? Is it some combination?

• 7:37David Friedberg?

  Yeah, is it just, is there a philosophical entrenchment? Or is it just this inertial issue? That like, once a policy begins, it's hard to change and the system's just working with 10,000 people working towards it?

• 7:51Speaker 03

  You know, if I were lucky to sit next to the world's greatest political philosopher, which I am, he'd give you a good answer, which is that, the right answer, which is, if you want to interpret American foreign policy, it is to maximize power. And he gives a, John gives a, an explanation of that. We have some differences, but I think it's a very good description of American foreign policy, which is that it's trying to maximize global power essentially to be global hegemon. I think it could get us all killed. This is because it's a little bit delusional in my mind, but not, not the, not, not his

• 8:36Speaker 03

  interpretation of their idea, but the fact that they hold that idea is a little weird to me. But in any event, that's the idea. And every time a decision comes inside that I've seen, I'm an economist, so I don't see the security decisions the same way, but every decision that I've seen always leans in the same direction for the last 30 years, which is power as the central objective. So Clinton faced an internal cabinet, really debate, should NATO be enlarged? This is a, this is a post-Cold War phenomenon? It's, well, I'll, I'll let John take that.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  Two very quick points. First of all, I do believe that the people who are in favor of this foreign policy do believe in it. It's not cynical. They really believe that we're doing the right thing.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  I've met them, yeah, yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  The second point I would make to you, and this sort of adds on to what Jeff said. Jeff said power has a lot to do with this, and as a good realist, I of course believe that. But it's also very important to understand that the United States is a fundamentally liberal country, and we believe that we have a right, we have a responsibility, and we have the power to run around the world and remake the world in America's image. Most people in the foreign policy establishment, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, they believe that. And that is what has motivated our foreign policy in large part since the Cold War ended. Because remember, when the Cold War ends, we have no rival great power left. So what are we going to do with all this power that we have?

• 10:17Speaker 04

  What we decide to do is go out and remake the world in our own image.

• 10:23David Friedberg?

  So that's a values point of view, though, right? There are values that they hold dear, that many do hold dear, that liberalism, democracy does ultimately, I believe I've heard this, reduce conflict worldwide, that there's an importance that we've never seen to democratic nations since World War II go to war, and that there's a reason why we want to see liberalism kind of breed throughout the world, and it's our responsibility for global peace to make that a mandate.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Let me step in for one moment.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  Okay, sure. Very quickly.

• 10:57David Friedberg?

  And by the way, I'm, what do you call it where you pull the spirits of the voice of others, but I'm just trying to... Channeling. Channeling, that's the word.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  I want to be very clear. I am forever thankful that I was born in a liberal democracy, and I love liberalism. But the question here is, do you think that we can run around the world imposing liberal democracy on other countries, and in some cases shoving it down their throat, doing it at the end of a rifle barrel? And my argument is, that's almost impossible to do. It almost always backfires, like Iraq, Afghanistan, so forth and so on. And secondly, you begin to erode liberalism in the United States, because you build a deep state, right? And you want to understand that a lot of the complaints here about cracking down on freedom of speech and so forth and so on are related to the fact that we have this ambitious

• 11:50Speaker 04

  foreign policy. Those two things go together in very important ways.

• 11:54David Friedberg?

  What an irony.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  Let me disagree just a bit, because we agree actually on the behavior, and I've learned, I'd say, most of that from you, that it's power-seeking. Truly, John, in my work, 40 years overseas, I don't think the US government gives a damn about these other places. I don't think they really care if it's a liberal democracy, if it's a dictatorship. They want the right of ways, they want the military bases, they want the state to be in support of the United States, they want NATO enlargement. I don't, I know you've written, and there are some who believe in state-building...

• 12:37Speaker 03

  God, if they do, they are so incompetent, it's unbelievable. But...

• 12:45Jason Calacanis?

  Professor Sax...

• 12:46Speaker 03

  You know, I'll give you an example, if I could, just one example. I'm a friend with one of the only PhD Afghani economists, senior person in the US academia over the last thirty years. You would think that the State Department, if they were interested in state building, would ask him one day, one moment, something about Afghanistan. Never happened.

• 13:14Jason Calacanis?

  One question.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Never happened.

• 13:16Jason Calacanis?

  Not even one question?

• 13:17Speaker 03

  Never happened. He asked me, "Can you get me a meeting with the State Department?" They were completely uninterested. This is about power. You're too idealistic, John.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  They don't care about the other places. They may feel we should be whatever we want, free and so forth, but freedom, I've seen with my own eyes the coups, the overthrows, the presidents, democratic presidents led away. They don't care at all. This is Washington. Be a realist, come on.

• 13:53Jason Calacanis?

  Professor Mearsheimer, when we talk about power, there are other people in the world who are trying to accumulate power. We live in a multipolar world right now, and they have, in some cases, very nefarious or bad intent, and they do not have democracy. So it's one thing to, you know, tell people in Afghanistan, "You need to evolve, you know, to be a perfect democracy like the one we have here." I think we all agree, that's unrealistic and insane and not practical. But what about the free countries of the world uniting together to stop dictators from invading other free countries? Is that noble? Is that a good use of power and a good framework for America to evolve to?

• 14:37Speaker 04

  No, I don't think so. I think that what the United States should do is worry about its own national interest. In some cases, that's going to involve aligning ourselves with a dictator. If we're fighting World War II all over again, it's December 8th, 1941, you surely would be in favor of aligning with Adolf, not with Adolf Hitler, with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union against Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Sometimes you have to make those kind of compromises. As I said before, I love liberal democracy. I have no problem aligning with liberal democracy. But when you begin to think in the terms that you're thinking, you end up with an impulse

• 15:20Speaker 04

  to do social engineering around the world, and that gets you in all sorts of problems.

• 15:24Jason Calacanis?

  Well, what I'm proposing is, when dictatorships invade other countries, then we take action.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  It depends.

• 15:31Jason Calacanis?

  To maybe defend them.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  It depends.

• 15:33Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, of course.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  I mean, when Russia invades Ukraine, basically what you're saying is you want to go to war on behalf of Ukraine against Russia? Are you in favor of that?

• 15:44Jason Calacanis?

  No, I would say diplomacy would obviously be what we'd want to exhaust, but if they do roll into other free countries, I think there's an argument for the free countries of the world to get together and say, "Two dictators, we're not going to allow this."

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Could I come in here? Could I clarify a few things? Yeah. Look, first of all, almost all the time that we intervene, it's because we view this as a power situation for the U.S. So whether it's Ukraine, or Syria, or Libya, or other places, even if we define it as defending something, believe me, it's not about defending something, it's about a perception

• 16:35Speaker 03

  of U.S. power and U.S. interest, and it's in objectives of U.S. global hegemony. And if we analyze the Ukraine conflict just even a little bit below the surface, this is not a conflict about Putin invading Ukraine. This is something a lot different that has to do with American power projection into the former Soviet Union, so it's completely different. Second, if we decide we're

• 17:06Speaker 03

  The police, which we do.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  You can't imagine how cynical bullshit we use to justify our actions. We used the cynical bullshit that we're defending the people of Benghazi to bomb the hell out of Libya to kill Muammar Gaddafi. Why did we do that? Well, I'm kind of an expert on that region and I can tell you, maybe because Sarkozy didn't like Gaddafi. There's no much deeper reason, except Hillary liked every bombing she could get her hands on. And Obama was kind of convinced, "My Secretary of State says, 'Go with it,' so why don't we go with the NATO expedition?" It had nothing to do with Libya. It unleashed 15 years of chaos,

• 17:55Speaker 03

  cheated the UN Security Council, because like everything else we've done, it was on false pretenses. We did the same with trying to overthrow Syria. We did the same with conspiring to overthrow Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in February 2014. So the problem with this argument is, we're not nice guys. We're not trying to save the world. We're not trying to make democracies. We had a committee, by the way, of all the luminaries you could mention, but they're the neocon crazies, but they're luminaries. The Committee for the People of Chechnya. Are you kidding? Do you think they even knew where Chechnya is or cared about Chechnya?

• 18:38Speaker 03

  But it was an opportunity to get at Russia, to weaken Russia, to support a jihadist movement inside Russia. This is a game. But it's a game that John has described better than anyone in the world. It's a game of power. It's not that we're defending real things. If you want to defend real things, go to the UN Security Council and convince others, because the other countries are not crazy and they don't want mayhem in the world. But we play games, so they say, "That's a game, Iraq," which was obviously a game before we went in. It was a... Obviously Colin Powell could not move his lips without lying that day. Obviously, and so they said no.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  But if we're real about our interests, then you go to the UN Security Council and then it's not just on us. It's actually been a collective security issue.

• 19:29Jason Calacanis?

  Professor Mr. Hammer, if we were to take Jeffrey's position here that we are exerting power for the sake of, you know, our reputation and in fact to weaken dictatorships, if I'm summarizing correctly here, is that not a good strategy to weaken dictators around the world who might like to invade other countries? Is there a framing in which you could see that being for, you know, a world where democracy and people living freely has gone down in our lifetimes? Is that not noble? Is there not a justification somebody can make for it? I'm not saying I have that, but I'm just trying to steal me on the other side of this. Is weakening dictators and despots a good strategy?

• 20:11Speaker 04

  It depends.

• 20:12Jason Calacanis?

  Well, let's talk about the two that we have, you know, Xi Jinping, I think you wanted to get to eventually, and then Ukraine and Putin. Are these people worth trying to, you know, contain or even weaken?

• 20:25Speaker 04

  Well, in terms of China, I'm fully in favor of containing China.

• 20:30Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so containment check.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  It's containment. I'm not interested in regime change. I'm not interested in trying to turn China into a democracy.

• 20:40Jason Calacanis?

  Not going to happen, yeah.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Not going to happen. We tried it, actually, and I thought it was foolish to even pursue a policy of engagement toward China. With regard to Russia, I don't think Russia is a serious threat to the United States, and indeed, I think the United States should have good relations with Putin. It's a remarkably foolish policy to push him into the arms of the Chinese. There are three great powers in the system: the United States, China, and Russia. China is a peer competitor to the United States. It's the most serious threat to the United States. Russia is the weakest of those three great powers, and it's not a serious threat to us. If you are playing balance of power politics and you're interested, as the United States, in containing China, you want Russia on your side of the ledger.

• 21:26Speaker 04

  But what we have have done in effect is we have pushed Russia into the arms of the Chinese. This is a remarkably foolish policy. And furthermore, by getting bogged down in Ukraine, and now bogged down in the Middle East, it's become very difficult for us to pivot to Asia to deal with China, which is the principal threat that we face.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  I think, David, could I just say, two-thirds right, perfect.

• 21:59Jason Calacanis?

  So you gave him a B? Or B+?

• 22:03Speaker 04

  A minus.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  I'd always give him an A minus.

• 22:05Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, that's that great inflation?

• 22:07Speaker 03

  I just wanted to add a footnote, which is that China's also not a threat. It's just not a threat.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  We're gonna get to it.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  China's a market, it's got great food, great culture, wonderful people, civilization 10 times older than ours, it's not a threat.

• 22:25David Friedberg?

  Well, as an economist, can you talk about the impact of a cold or hot conflict with China from an economic perspective, given the trade relations?

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, it would wreck California, for one thing. It would destroy the economy that you guys are making, completely. This economy has been the biggest beneficiary of China's rise, probably in the whole world. So it's crazy. Maybe if you're worried, if you're really worried about whether a worker in Ohio has a particular job on a particular assembly line, then you can be anti-China. If you're worried about the tech industry, about California, about peace and the future, you should be pro-China, that's all.

• 23:05David Friedberg?

  So why has it become so universal to assume that we are already in a state of conflict with China on not just party lines, but like, almost any spectrum you could kind of, like, consider?

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Because John said it exactly right, and he predicted it better than anyone in the whole world in 2001. He said, "When China becomes large, we're going to have conflict." Because that's John's theory. And it's right, as a description of American foreign policy, that we are for power. They are big, therefore they're an enemy. They're an enemy of our aspiration to global hegemony.

• 23:43David Friedberg?

  Two cities trapped, two cities.

• 23:44David Sacks?

  Let's let John jump in here.

• 23:46Speaker 04

  Do you want me to, is it okay if I talk about this?

• 23:49David Sacks?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, I think that, well, it's interesting. I mean, you and Jeff, I think, arrive at similar conclusions about Ukraine, but different ones on China, right? Because Jeff is an economist and I think sees the world in fundamentally positive some ways, based on the potential for trade, economics, basically. Whereas you see the world as more of a zero-sum game based on the balance of power. Why don't you just explain that difference?

• 24:16Speaker 04

  Okay. It is very important to emphasize, as David was saying, that Jeff and I agree on all sorts of issues, including Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. But we disagree fundamentally, as he just made clear on China. And let me explain to you why I think that's the case, and then Jeff can tell you why he thinks I'm wrong.

• 24:37Speaker 04

  It has to do with security, whether you privilege security or survival, or whether you privilege prosperity. And economists, and I would imagine most of you in the audience, really care greatly about maximizing prosperity. For someone like me who's a realist, what I care about is maximizing the state's prospects of survival. And when you live in an anarchic system, and in IR speak, that means there's no higher authority, there's no night watchman that could come down and rescue if you get into trouble. And this is the international system. There's no higher authority. In that anarchic world, the best way to survive is to be really powerful. As we used to say when I was a kid on New York City playgrounds, you want to be the biggest and baddest dude on the block.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  And that's simply because it's the best way to survive. If you're really powerful, nobody fools around with you. The United States is a regional hegemon. It's the only regional hegemon on the planet. We dominate the Western Hemisphere. And what China has begun to do, as it's got increasingly powerful economically, is translate that economic might into military might.

• 25:47Speaker 04

  It is trying to dominate Asia. It wants to push us out beyond the first island chain. It wants to push us out beyond the second island chain. It wants to be like we are in the Western Hemisphere. And I don't blame the Chinese one bit. If I was the National Security Advisor in Beijing, that's what I'd be telling Xi Jinping we should be trying to do. But of course, from an American point of view, this is unacceptable. And we do not tolerate peer competitors. We do not want another regional hegemon on the planet. In the 20th century, there were four countries that threatened to become regional hegemon like us. Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  The United States played a key role in putting all four of those countries on the scrap heap of history. We want to remain the only regional hegemon in the world. We are a ruthless great power. Never want to lose sight of that fact. And the end result of this is you get an intense security competition between China and the United States. And it revolves around the concept of security, not prosperity. I think this is... Just very quickly. So what you see beginning to happen is that it's in all domains where the competition takes place, especially high-tech. We do not want them defeating this,

• 27:15Speaker 04

  defeating us in the high-tech war. We are competing with them economically. We are competing with them militarily. And this is because the best way to survive is for us, the United States of America, to be the only regional hegemon on the planet.

• 27:34David Sacks?

  So Jeff, let me set it up for Jeff here. So Jeff, you and John, I think, agree that the game on the board is power-seeking. I think what John is saying is there are smart ways and dumb ways to pursue power. Containing China is a smart way. What we're doing in Ukraine is a dumb way. Whereas it seems like you're saying that all power-seeking behavior is bad. That's not the game we should be playing. We should somehow opt out of that. Is that kind of where you're going?

• 28:04Speaker 03

  It's a, it's not a bad way to say it, but I would, I would put it in another way. I read a very good book, John's.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  And, and John described, I'm gonna quote him, but he can quote himself afterwards. He, he said that the regional hegemon's don't threaten each other, actually. Why? Because we have big ocean in between. I deeply believe that China is not a threat to the United States. And I deeply believe the only threat to the United States, period, in the world, given the oceans, given our size, and given the military, is nuclear war. I deeply believe we're close to nuclear war.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Because we have a mindset that leads us in that direction. We have a mindset that everything is a challenge for survival, and that escalation is therefore always the right approach. My view is, a little bit of prudence could save the whole planet. So, why I don't like Ukraine is that I don't see any reason in the world that NATO has to be on Russia's border with Ukraine. I was, as I said, Gorbachev's advisor and Yeltsin's advisor. And they wanted peace, and they wanted cooperation. But whatever they wanted, they did not want the US military on their border.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  So if we continue to push, as we did, we would get to war. John explained that better than anybody. We're now at war, and even this morning, there is further escalation. Blinken has said, "Well, if the Iranians give these missiles, then we will give missiles to hit deep into Russia." This is a recipe. And then we had Bill Burns, the CIA director, say, last week, an absurdity that he knows, but CIA directors never tell the truth. If they do, they lose their job. But he said, "Don't worry about nuclear war. Don't worry about Saber rattling." My advice to you is worry a lot about nuclear war. And so, be prudent. You don't have to put...

• 30:31Speaker 03

  The US military on Russia's border, okay? And my advice to Russia and to Mexico, and I'm going to Mexico tomorrow, I'll give them a piece of advice. Don't let China or Russia build a military base on the Rio Grande. Not a good idea for Mexico. Not a good idea for Ukraine. Not a good idea for Russia. Not a good idea for China. Not a good idea for the United States. We need to stay a little bit away from each other so that we don't have a nuclear war. By the way, I do recommend another good book, and that is Annie Jacobson's Nuclear War: A Scenario. It takes two hours to read. The world ends in two hours in the book.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  And it's a very persuasive guide that one nuke can ruin your whole day, as they say. Jeffrey, can I? My, my strong advice on this, therefore, is recognize China, first of all, is not a threat to the United States' security. Big oceans, big nuclear deterrent, and so forth. Second, we don't have to be in China's face. What do I mean by that? We don't have to provoke World War III over Taiwan. That's a long, complicated issue, but this would be the stupidest thing for my grandchildren

• 31:52Speaker 03

  to die for imaginable, and I resent it every day when we play that game. We have three agreements with China that say we're going to stay out of that, and we should. And then China would have no reason for war either. China, and then on the economic side, let me just reiterate, because I was asked yesterday, and there was some surprise, was it good to let China into the WTO? I said, of course. It enriched all of you, by the way. It enriched me. It enriched this country. It enriched the world, including enriching China. That's normal. Economics is not a zero-sum game. We all agree on that.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  I believe that security doesn't have to be a zero-sum game either. We can stay a little bit away from each other. And China does not spend its time bemoaning America being a Western Hemisphere hegemon. They don't. That's not their greatest interest, to bring down American power in the Western Hemisphere.

• 33:01Jason Calacanis?

  Jeff, what about the energy?

• 33:02David Sacks?

  Hold on, let's let John respond to this.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  Just very quickly, most of you have probably never asked yourself the question, "Why is the United States roaming all over the planet, interfering in every country's business?" It's in part because it's so powerful, but it's also because it's a regional hegemon, which means we have no threats in the Western Hemisphere, so we are free to roam. The great danger, Jeff, if China becomes a regional hegemon and doesn't have to worry about security--

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Then they behave like us.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  Then they behave like us.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  Can't we do better?

• 33:37Speaker 04

  But my point to you, Jeff, is let's prevent that from happening by preventing them from becoming a regional hegemon. We don't want them to have freedom to roam. You were talking about them putting military bases in Mexico. That's our great fear.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  It's not my great fear. They have no interest in doing so because they don't want to get blown up either.

• 33:59Jason Calacanis?

  They do seem to have a big interest, Jeff, in Africa, India, Russia, and they are--

• 34:03Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, say it again.

• 34:05Jason Calacanis?

  China has a major--

• 34:08Speaker 03

  Doesn't have military bases there.

• 34:10Jason Calacanis?

  Well, they're building nuclear power plants and trade, and they're building debt loads with those countries.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  Let's go compete that way. I'm all in favor of that.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  But Jeff, that's because they're not a regional hegemon yet.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you try to prevent them from being a regional hegemon, we're going to end up in World War III because, as you say yourself, that this can absolutely spill over into war. I don't want it to spill over into war on the theory that maybe someday they behave differently. That's not a good theory for me, that part.

• 34:42David Sacks?

  So, John, can we contain China, prevent them from becoming a regional hegemon, without directly defending Taiwan? I mean, isn't that where the rubber meets the road?

• 34:53Speaker 04

  No, it's not just Taiwan. I mean, one could argue, there's sort of three flashpoints in East Asia that you folks should keep your eye on. One is obviously Taiwan, two is the South China Sea, and three is the East China Sea. And I think, David, that the place where a conflict is most likely today is not over Taiwan. I could explain why I think Taiwan is not a serious problem at the moment or for the foreseeable future. The South China Sea is a very dangerous place. We could end up in a war, for sure, even if we did not defend Taiwan. So Taiwan, you don't want to overemphasize. I agree with Jeff that we definitely don't want a war, and we certainly don't want a nuclear war. And he is absolutely

• 35:38Speaker 04

  correct that there's a risk of a nuclear war if a war breaks out of any sort between China and the United States. Many of us in the audience remember the Cold War, and this was an ever-present danger in the Cold War. But my argument is that this is inevitable, because in a world where you don't have a higher authority, and you care about your survival, you have a deep-seated interest, as any state in the system, to be as powerful as possible. And that means dominating your region of the world.

• 36:08Jason Calacanis?

  There is one player on this chessboard that hasn't come up yet, and maybe we could skate to where the puck is going. You know, when you talk about the South China Sea, okay, sure, South Korea, Japan, Australia, all of those major players there, they're just a couple hundred million people. But then, China is in population decline. Xi apparently is self-destructing in terms of trade. Seems like containment's working pretty well there because of all the self-inflicted wounds. But the fastest-growing country, the fastest-growing economy, the quickest to develop is India. And they seem to have a very pragmatic approach. Hey, they'll buy cheap oil from Putin, and they are their own sovereign country with their own point of view. Would we not be really well-advised over the next 10 to 20

• 36:50Jason Calacanis?

  years to make that our priority, and India's role in this? How do you look at them?

• 36:55Speaker 04

  Well, we definitely view India as an ally, right? It's part of the Quad, which is this Rube Goldberg-type alliance structure that we put together in East Asia that includes Australia, Japan, the United States, and India. And...

• 37:11Speaker 04

  India is smartly maintaining its good relations with Russia. The Indians understand, like Jeff and I do, that the Russians are no great threat. But from India's point of view, the real threat is China.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:25Speaker 04

  And there are two places where India cares about China. One is on the India-China border, up in the Himalayas, where they've actually had conflicts. Right? And there's a real danger of war breaking out. The second place, which is maybe even more dangerous, not at the moment, but will be over time, is the Indian Ocean, because the Chinese are imitating the United States. They not only want to be a regional hegemon, they want to develop power-projection capability. So the Chinese are building a blue-water navy that can come out of East Asia, through the Straits of Malacca, through the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf. And once you start talking about going through the Indian Ocean, the Indians get spooked.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  And that's when the Americans and the Indians come together.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Okay, let's think of this from an engineering point of view, if we could. Why are the Chinese developing the navy? Because for forty years, I've read essays on all of the choke points in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Indian Ocean against China. That's our policy, choke points. Look at the Malacca Straits, look what we can do here. First island chain. This is American strategy. Can we keep the Chinese submarines out of the Pacific Ocean? First China, first island chain, and so forth. So, of course, they react.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  They're rich, they're gonna build a navy so that they can get their oil on which their economy runs. Can we be a little bit sensible with them and decide how we're not gonna have choke points and then we don't have to have a nuclear war, which is really gonna ruin our day? That's the point. We can think a little bit. We can understand it from their perspective, we can understand it from our perspective. Deconfliction.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  By the way, I don't believe India is an ally. India is a superpower. India is gonna have its own very distinctive interests, thank you. It's not going to be an ally of the United States. I happen to like India enormously and admire their policies. But the idea that India is gonna ally with the United States against China is in somebody's dream in Washington, because it's another delusion in Washington, because they should get a passport and go see the world and understand something.

• 39:59Jason Calacanis?

  But Jeffrey, if they're making our iPhones...

• 40:04Speaker 03

  These are my failed students in Washington right now, because they didn't listen to their professor.

• 40:10Jason Calacanis?

  Jeffrey, we're making our iPhones in India now. Is that not significantly important?

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Say it again.

• 40:17Jason Calacanis?

  We're moving iPhone production. Cooper, maybe Cooper, you're into economics here and that impact. You've got Apple moving out of China. You've got Japan funding people leaving China to Vietnam and to India. Is that not the solution here? As we decouple from China, it seems like they come back to the table. We had Xi Jinping kick all the venture capitalists, all investment, out of China. He got rid of all the education startups. And then, whatever, two or three years later, he's in San Francisco asking all of us to invest more money and saying, "Where'd you go?"

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Okay, first of all, invite me back 10 years and we'll see how smart all these decisions are.

• 40:53Jason Calacanis?

  Xi Jinping's?

• 40:54Speaker 03

  It's incre... No, I'm talking about, yes, we've moved to India, that's our great ally, and then we're gonna have other issues, believe me.

• 41:02Jason Calacanis?

  Well, and Vietnam, yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  Okay, I think you said that Xi Jinping's trade policy is self-imploding or something.

• 41:09Jason Calacanis?

  It seems like there's a lot of self-inflicted wounds.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  No, it's not. Let me explain what the wounds are.

• 41:14Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  The wounds are the United States' deliberate policy to stop you from selling things to China and to stop China buying things from you. That's not self-inflicted wounds.

• 41:26Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, no, you're wrong here. You're wrong here.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Wait a minute, just to say, let me say, please. Because it's very important for the economy of the people in this room. This is a decision that was taken around 2014.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Try this in the nuclear age, you don't get a second chance. So this to me is the most definitive fact of our lives. Which is, we are now in a war, direct war, direct war, not proxy war, direct war with Russia, which has 6,000 nuclear warheads. I can't think of anything more imbecilic than that. Aside from the fact that I know step by step, because I saw it with my own eyes, how we got into that mess because we thought we had to meddle up to, including, putting NATO into Georgia in the caucuses of all places, and Ukraine.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  So we made that because we have to meddle because we couldn't let good enough stand. If we do the same with China, there will be a war. But it's not like reading about the Crimean War, or World War I, or World War II. That's my difference. This is a fine theory that explains a lot of things, but damn if you can make ChatGPT, or you can make Optimus, or you can make all the rest, we can avoid nuclear war. So just do a little bit better than saying it's inevitable.

• 45:05David Sacks?

  All right, so we only have a minute left, so I want to give it to John.

• 45:09David Friedberg?

  I just want to ask.

• 45:10David Sacks?

  He had a question.

• 45:11David Friedberg?

  I know, but we only have a minute left, and it sacks his panel.

• 45:13Jason Calacanis?

  We gotta add five minutes, this is the best panel I've ever been on in my life. Can we just add 10 minutes? We gotta add five or 10 minutes, the best panel, is this the best panel ever?

• 45:22David Sacks?

  I feel like John never had a chance to respond. Wait, before, okay, we got five minutes, so before, before we leave this topic, John, your book is called The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. You clearly understand the tragic aspect of how great power rivalry, great power competition, can lead to disaster. What Jeff is saying is we're now in the nuclear age, and it's gonna lead to nuclear war. So do we have to be on this path, or is there a way off of it?

• 45:50Speaker 04

  Two points. In my heart, I'm with Jeff. In my head, I'm not with Jeff. I wish he were right, but I don't believe he's right. To answer your question head-on, I believe that there is no way out. We are in an iron cage. This is just the way international politics works. And it's because you're in an anarchic system where you can never be sure that a really powerful state in the system won't come after you and inflict a century of national humiliation on you. So you go to great lengths to avoid that by trying to gain power at the expense of another power. And that leads to all sorts of trouble. Can war be avoided? I like to distinguish between security competition,

• 46:35Speaker 04

  which I think is inevitable, and war, which is where security competition evolves into war. I think war can be avoided, and we were thankfully successful in that regard during the Cold War. And hopefully, that will be the case in the U.S.-China competition moving forward. Can I guarantee that? No. Does this disturb me greatly? Yes. But again, this is just the tragic aspect of the world we live in.

• 47:03David Friedberg?

  Let me just ask one, because we're a little bit... I know we were going to try and talk about Middle East for a good chunk of this. So I just want to scenario propose, or kind of give you guys a scenario, get your reaction. Because it is kind of what feels to be the most imminent theater of conflict. The West Bank. The Israelis are buttressing the settlements. There's a lot of checkpoints. Things are getting very tense. They're running raids. And it's becoming a very difficult place to live for Palestinians. And there's a real concern that the West Bank collapses.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  And Israelis.

• 47:36David Friedberg?

  And Israelis. But there's a real risk that the West Bank collapses and turns into a real conflict zone. If that happens, the Jordanians are sitting right there. And they're not going to let Palestinians get slaughtered. They're going to have to do something. And they're such a strong ally of the United States. Does that trigger a theater of response? Where what is Saudi going to do? Are others going to be drawn to the region? Does the collapse of the West Bank or the conflict that seems to be brewing in the West Bank become this kind of tinderbox for everyone showing up and getting involved? And create some sort of regional issue that we get drawn into in a bigger way?

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Can I start and have John have the last word? I work each day at the UN and discuss this issue with ambassadors from all over the world. There is, over the last 50 years, an agreement on what would make for peace. And the agreement is two states, maybe with a big wall between them, on the 4th of June 1967 borders, with a state of Palestine being the 194th UN member state, and its capital in East Jerusalem, and control over the Islamic holy sites. And that is international law.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  The International Court of Justice just reaffirmed that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal. The International Criminal Court is likely to find, or ICJ is likely to find, that Israel is in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which I very much believe it to be in violation. So my own solution to this is implement international law. Two states, build the wall as high as you need to build, but you give Palestinian rights, you establish a state of Palestine, you stop the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, you

• 49:40Speaker 03

  stop the Israeli apartheid state, and you have two states living side by side. Israel is dead-set against that. The entire Israeli political governance now is dead-set against that. Hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers in the West Bank are dead-set against that. Smotrich, Ben-Gavir, Galant, Netanyahu are dead-set against that. So my view is it has nothing to do with what Israel wants. It has to do with enforcement of international law. So I want to see this imposed, not because Israel agrees to it, but because it is imposed. And there is one country that stands in the way of imposing this.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  Not Iran, not the Saudis, not Egypt, not Russia, not China, not any country in the European Union, one country and one country alone. And that is because of the United States of America. And the Israel lobby, somebody wrote a very good book about that too that I know. The best book ever written about it by John. And that's what stops the solution that could bring peace. And I believe we should bring peace because not only would that bring peace to the Palestinians and peace to the Israelis, but it would avoid potentially another flashpoint that could easily end up in World War III.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  Let me answer your question about escalation potential, the Jordanians coming in. Israel faces three big problems, aside from problems with centrifugal forces inside the society. One is the Palestinian problem, which is both in Gaza and in the West Bank, that's one. Two is Hezbollah, and three is Iran. I think there is virtually no chance of what you described happening, which is if the Israelis were to go on a rampage in the West Bank, similar to what they've done in Gaza, that the Jordanians would come in, or the Egyptians, or the Saudis. They simply don't have the military capability.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  This is a scenario where the Israelis completely dominate. So in terms of escalation with regard to the Israel-Palestine problem, I don't think there's much potential. Hezbollah is a different issue, but mainly because it's linked with Iran, right? And Iran is the really dangerous flashpoint, because as you know, the Russians are now closely allied with the Iranians, the Chinese are moving in that direction as well. And if Israel gets involved in a war with Iran, we're going to come in, in all likelihood. Remember, when the Israelis attacked the...

• 52:30Speaker 04

  The Iranian Embassy in Damascus on April 1st. On April 14th, the Iranians retaliated against—

• 52:40David Friedberg?

  A reciprocal response.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, but we were involved—

• 52:43David Friedberg?

  We were forewarned, weren't we?

• 52:45Speaker 04

  Yes, we were forewarned, but the point is that we were involved in the fighting. Right? We were involved with the Israelis, with the French, the British, the Jordanians, and the Saudis. We were all involved in the fighting. So this gets at the escalation problem. Now, to counter the Iranian escalation scenario, the fact is Iran does not want a war with the United States, and the United States does not want a war with Iran. And it's the Israelis, especially Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been trying to sort of suck us into a war, because he wants us, the United States, to really whack Iran, weaken it militarily, and especially to go after its nuclear capabilities, because as

• 53:29Speaker 04

  you well know, they are close to the point where they can develop nuclear weapons. So the Israelis are the ones who want us to get involved in a big war with Iran. That's the escalation flashpoint. And the $64,000 question is whether you think the United States and Iran, kind of colluding, can work together to prevent the Israelis from getting a sudden—

• 53:52David Friedberg?

  That question will be answered based on the next— who leads the next administration.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  Well, if you believe that it matters who leads the next administration, that's true.

• 54:04David Friedberg?

  On that note— Take it up. Thank you.

• 54:07Jason Calacanis?

  Let me just say, Jeffrey and John, now I know why Sachs will not stop talking about you two.

• 54:15David Friedberg?

  Thank you.

• 54:15Jason Calacanis?

  This was the most amazing panel of the event so far. Give it up for Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer. All right. Wow.