TRANSCRIPT:

Kahl: You're listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. I'm your host, Colin Kahl, the director of FSI.

Today I'm bringing you a discussion I had with an amazing group of FSI scholars during Stanford's 2026 Reunion Homecoming weekend. We surveyed many trends and threats facing the world today, including the development of bioweapons, challenges to democracy around the world, the war between Russia and Ukraine, Chinese ambitions against Taiwan, and the U.S.-Iran conflict.

These are complicated issues and the challenges to addressing them are real, but so are the opportunities for resolving them. We're going to hear from Drew Endy, a world-recognized expert on bioengineering and biosecurity; Didi Kuo, who specializes in comparative politics, democracy, and the role of political parties; Abbas Milani, a leading voice in Iranian studies and one of the most authoritative contemporary scholars on what's happening to Iranian society; Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and expert on European defense; and finally, Oriana Skylar Mastro, a scholar of the Chinese military and Indo-Pacific security.

It was a great conversation, and I hope you find it as informative as I did. Here's the panel.

[BEGIN EVENT RECORDING]

Kahl: All right, so I'm going start and we're going to go down the line, and then I'll ask another round and we'll go down the line.

So, Drew, starting with you: what's one thing that the world should understand — maybe something they currently don't understand, or maybe they think they understand, but they're getting wrong — about biosecurity, biotechnology, and how it's poised to change everything.

Endy: So let's start with what we know. Somebody died in Russia of a plague. We have soldiers coming back from the front lines in Ukraine with resistant bacteria. We have Ebola in DRC; it's going to be the worst we've seen in a while, that outbreak. And I had COVID two weeks ago for the fourth or fifth time, I've lost track. It's so last decade, but it's going to kill 50,000 Americans this year, plus or minus. You know that, right? Everybody knows that.

I'm as you mentioned from bioengineering, bioengineering is the youngest engineering department at Stanford. We're twenty some years old. The second youngest is Computer Science. When I moved here to Stanford, research was being done—you know, Karl Deisseroth, who got the Nobel Prize recently—put one gene from a bacteria into neurons to use light to control neurons. That was work he did twenty years ago in bioengineering.

What do you think we've been doing? We've been getting better at bioengineering. One thing that's changing is how we manufacture. If you can encode a way of manufacturing something in the DNA, you can grow what you want where you can operate the biology.

When you leave this room, take a look at a leaf on a tree and think about it from an engineer's perspective. It's a solar panel that makes itself and recycles itself. It's pulling 120 terawatts of net energy on the surface of the earth. We have a capability in front of us to change how we make most of the things we need. We had an internet over the last fifty years that got built for communication resilience. We're going to have a “bio net”: download and grow — download DNA code, grow what you want, you can get it encoded where you are, for manufacturing resilience.

I was flying back from Washington on Wednesday. I was on seat 20A in United, window seat exit row, and I decided to design a genome. And so I opened up Claude on my laptop and I started feeding it PDF files of different genetic sequences and we started dancing. And before I landed at SFO and before my battery went to zero, I had designed a synthetic genome for a bacteria. 

What people are sleeping on a little bit is we're making biology engineerable for good reasons. I don't wake up in the morning thinking about how am I gonna make a WMD? But it's a domain that's becoming engineerable and it's a domain we haven't secured yet. And so it's like, hmm.

In so many different dimensions, we are on this journey of profound, profound change.

Kahl: Speaking of things that are radioactive, Didi, our politics. What's one thing that the folks in this room should understand that maybe they aren't currently tracking?

Kuo: So I actually think Americans and Stanford alum really do understand what's going on. Well over 70 to 80% of Americans are concerned about the state of democracy, both at home and abroad. They're concerned about levels of corruption, about attacks on freedom of speech, on attacks on election integrity, sometimes for very different reasons. But I guess I would yes and that sentiment.

First, this is not an American story. This is happening globally. We are almost entering our twentieth year of what our colleague Larry Diamond calls the global democratic recession, which means a lot of the democratization and optimism of the 1990s has either become stagnant or even been undone.

And that is a problem because even in places that were once thought immune from problems of democracy, we see leaders pursuing the same strategies: going after their opponents, weaponizing the state, repressing civil society. So you know that people are unhappy with their governments, which is often why they elect radical leaders in the first place.

But the second thing that I would say — in addition to understanding that this is global and that that's something we need to kind of drill down and investigate — is that there are actually signs of hope from around the world.

We know that democratic backsliding can be reversed. And we've seen some of those strategies be very successful abroad. And I think we've seen signs of them start to be successful here.

First, we know that massive collective action, civil resistance, and nonviolent protest can really work to bring attention to the things that Americans care about and to stop the worst kinds of violence and repression.

The second thing is institutional defenses, when people who are suddenly finding their jobs politicized or trying to be eradicated or undone, and they try to safeguard their jobs and their roles in various positions, whether they're bureaucrats or judges, tax officers, people who work at universities, law firms, et cetera. That also has a huge effect on stopping democratic erosion. 

But the number one thing is to vote in elections. The number one antidote to democratic backsliding is baked into our very system, and that is democracy itself.

We know that leaders often try to attack elections, but that you can actually create these pro-democracy coalitions across people with very different ideological and policy values and alignments and say, we're actually going to protect this fundamental process of democracy so that we can live to fight another day in the future and try to get all of our policy issues sorted out then.

And I think that we've seen the signs of that here in Minnesota earlier this year, and certainly a lot of mobilization and excitement about the midterm elections and about elections happening in Israel and Brazil and in other places around the world, France, are going to have democracy on the line. But people, when they are threatened, will work to protect democracy.

Kahl: All right. Abbas. Few people, seriously, in the world understand the dynamics inside Iran and Iran's impact on the region in the world better than you. What is one thing we could better understand about the conflict in the Middle East or Iran more generally?

Milani: One thing you can understand is that according to some in the Iranian regime, World War Three has already started. It is between Iran and Israel and the United States, and that Iran is winning. That's their version of the reality.

What I think the world doesn't get about Iran is that it is indeed a very paradoxical society. She talked about democratic backsliding. Iran has been a democratically forward sliding society in the last twenty five years.

I would seriously say, and I've written about this several places, that Iran at the societal level is right now arguably the most democratic society in the Muslim Middle East. And every day people are more and more fighting for democracy, from women to minorities to men who are siding with women. Iran has had — in spite of having the most misogynist set of laws on the books — I think arguably has the most active, progressive, prudent women's movement. in the last thirty years.

The Life Women Liberty movement is remarkable. So I think only comparable to the African American movement for civil rights in sixties and seventies in terms of its success.

So you have a paradoxical society, a profoundly despotic society, every day becoming more organized in its despotism. Today we have virtually a military dictatorship in Iran, but at the societal level it is a very dynamic society that wants democracy, women who wants equality.

There are two Irans: the Iran of the Iranian people and the Iran of this regime. And the world policy, U.S. policy doesn't seem to get this very important schism that is at the heart of the Iranian society, the paradox that exists.

Kahl: Steve, unfortunately there's also the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. There's been a lot of news on Ukraine. There is always every week, but it seems like the last week has been pretty newsworthy. What should we be understanding more about the current war?

Pifer: Well, I would say Russia is not winning the war on the battlefield in Ukraine, and the campaign now is shifting to target Ukrainian cities and Ukrainian civilians. Ukraine's pretty much stabilized the battlefront.

As they developed over the last two years, drones that can strike more deeply into Russia, they focused on Russian oil refineries. And they've probably . . . I think the IAES estimate was about thirty percent of Russian refining capability now has been taken offline. Now the Russians rebuild it, the Ukrainians attack it again. But that's a legitimate military target.

I mean, those fuels go to power the drones, they go to power the planes, they go to power the Russian tanks. It hasn't yet pushed the Russians to the point where the Russians have begun to negotiate in any more serious way, but it was increasing economic pressure on Russia.

Over the last nine and a half months since January 1st, Russia's gained a net total of about a hundred square kilometers of Ukrainian territory. For perspective, that's less than the size of the city of San Francisco. Ukraine is the size of Texas.

And to do that, the Russians are paying an enormous cost. Thirty to forty thousand Russian soldiers are either killed or severely wounded every single month. And given that failure on the battlefield, what you see is that the Russians are now shifting the campaign to Ukrainian cities. And the hope is that they can weaponize winter, winter's cold against the Ukrainians and break their will. So they target electric power plants, they target large steam facilities that heat the major cities, they target water facilities.

And they do a lot that's simply harassment. So I have on my phone here when I was in Kyiv about two years ago, I downloaded an air raid app. In the last several weeks for Kyiv, they're getting six to ten air raids every single day. And when that goes off at four o'clock in the morning, somebody has to say, do I drag my family down to the bomb shelter for the third time tonight, or do I tell them to sleep and we play the odds?

Now it's going to be a difficult winner for Ukraine. But I think Ukrainians have shown they're resilient. I think the Russian effort's going to fail, and this war unfortunately is going to continue well into 2027.

And the unfortunate thing here is that President Trump has significant leverage that he could use to push the Russians to negotiate a settlement to this war. And he has chosen not to use it. In fact, we've seen even last night by waiving new sanctions on Russia, he's actually gone over to the Russian side. And I think that's going to be a very dark stain on Americans' global reputation.

Kahl: There's conflict of instability in the Middle East, horrible events in Europe. For years, folks in Washington have wanted to pivot to Asia or the Indo-Pacific to focus on the emerging challenges there.

Oriana, what could we better understand about the storm clouds that might be gathering (or not) in the Indo-Pacific, especially across the Taiwan Strait?

Mastro: So I'm gonna cheat a little bit and say everything. I do a lot of research and writing about China, Taiwan, about the Indo-Pacific security, and China is such a complex place. And we have to have nuanced understandings about what is happening there, what is happening across the Taiwan Strait. And in most of the public debate, you either get an extremely dovish view or an extremely hawkish view, and the reality is somewhere in the middle.

For example, it is true that the United States is now distracted with wars in Ukraine and Iran and elsewhere. We have spent 147% of China's full military budget on those conflicts already. So it's very hard to compete with China conventionally in the military sphere when we are being less disciplined about how we're spending our time and effort.

At the same token, it is not the case that because we are distracted today, China has a higher likelihood of taking Taiwan by force. What convinces the Chinese whether to do that or not is not so much whether the United States is distracted in another part of the world, but on their own military competency.

Xi Jinping just did a huge purge of the most senior military leaders there that are currently either missing or at house arrest. So it's not the case that they're waiting for a moment, a window of opportunity.

It's the same thing when you look at China and Russia and what that means for Taiwan. Should we be concerned about China-Russia? Of course we should, but not because these two countries are going to fight a war together. That kind of misses the mark.

Instead, they help each other in peacetime build up their militaries in ways that makes it really hard for us to deter China from using force and if there's a conflict to compel China to stop fighting. I think we see that already in Ukraine; a little bit of Chinese support can go a really long way.

And the last example I will give about this nuanced balance is about the economy. It is true that the Chinese economy is not doing well. But there's no evidence to suggest that that convinces the Communist Party that they have to do some sort of wag-the-dog maneuver to use force in a Taiwan contingency to distract the public. If anything, their strategic culture goes the opposite way; when they have problems at home, they focus inward.

So all of this is to say I'm very vocal about my concerns about the likelihood of conflict over the Taiwan Strait. I think the Chinese have been very clear that they're preparing, they're building their military, they don't want to wait forever to solve this issue. And it's an issue that cannot be solved without force.

But not for all the reasons that potentially we hear in the news for why we should be concerned.

Kahl: Thank you very much. I think one of the things, the common threads across is the urgency around all of these issues. Dynamics in Washington may change a bit, but the reality is whether one loves President Trump or doesn't particularly like what he's doing, he's the president for the next two years. And a lot of really important decisions that impact the world will happen in that two year period.

So, Drew: if you had five minutes with the president on your issue, what would you try to get the president to do that he's maybe not doing enough of, or get him to stop doing what he's doing too much of?

Endy: A couple of things I'd like him to do, but on on this topic today, I'd say, Mr. President, there's never been a better time to secure biology. We could actually know what airborne viruses are in this room right now. We'd need a little machine with a box about the size of that podium and we'd be running it and doing air sampling. Now's the time to secure biology.

I'd pick on his statement from the UNGA over a year ago, where in the middle of a speech he declared that all nations should stand together to end the scourge of bioweapons. I'll take that.

I'd like the president of China and the President of the United States to duet. If I had the magic teleprompter, they should be saying that together, because that by itself will be insufficient. We need to get a duty to notify in place, a hotline for bio threats. If you have the emergence of a pandemic potential outbreak, we talk to each other. Never again do we have the Wuhan ambiguity. And we probably need that biodefense hotline with Moscow as well.

What does that look like operationally? With nuclear security, we've got the NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Agency Administration. $30 billion dollars a year. That, through the weapons lab, gets our nuclear force ready to go.

I'd argue we should have an NBSA: a National Biosecurity Agency. It would be about $10 billion dollars a year. It's not going to run on the high side. We don't put it in the weapons lab, because that'd be really bad. We do it in the public to the greatest extent possible.

So, Mr. President, there's never been a better time to secure biology. We can do it. It can be an enduring legacy. The returns are amazing. I have some other things I need him to do, but like on this topic, we can secure biology.

Kahl: All right. Didi, five minutes with the president.

Kuo: I doubt I would have any impact, but I would make appeals to two things that seem to matter to him. One is money. Okay. So he really likes to make money off of public office. That's called corruption.

But putting that aside, I would probably say something like capitalism is a source of American entrepreneurialism and growth, and that slowing down the rate of democracy, undermining the impartiality and rule of law, and undermining our administrative state, not funding science, stopping immigration of talented PhD students are going to be bad for American capitalism in the long run.

We know that democracy and capitalism flourish and do well when they go together. And I'm not sure that that would have an impact, But I would say that the rise in patrimonialism, transactionalism, and wheeling and dealing that we see around the world is one that's going to make the world inherently less safe. There will be far less inclusive growth and rising inequality is just going to lead to massive instability around the world, as we've already seen.

The second thing I would appeal to, like Drew, is legacy. I would actually say go focus on the arch and on the ballroom because liberal democracy is the single greatest achievement of this American project over the past 250 years. Liberal democracy is historically very hard won and rare. Most people have lived and died under something like empires.

Second of all, it's the result of massive decades, if not centuries, of popular mobilization of the kind we are now seeing in Iran.

And third, it has provided tremendous hope and inspiration to people around the world who want to live in freedom and try to secure it. That is what makes America great.

We have adapted and been flexible about what our democratic values are over time to expand to become a truly multiracial democracy. And he is messing it up a little bit.

And so I would say, sir, please go golf, go enjoy your life. And your legacy can be a positive one if you just stop attacking the thing that makes us the best country in the world.

Kahl: Play more golf and it makes America great again. Abbas, five minutes with the president on Iran.

Milani: I would say that you might think you can solve other problems instinctively with the instincts of a gambler. With Iran you can't. It is an old, complicated problem. Every administration has tried to solve this problem for the last forty-five years and it is not that simple. You can't bomb your way out of Iran's nuclear problem. You cannot bomb your way into a democracy in Iran. Iranian democracy has to be made by the people of Iran.

Don't threaten to destroy the civilization of Iran, which is one of the greatest civilizations in the world. If you destroy Iranian civilization, you are destroying part of the greatest legacy that we have, which is wisdom, which is prudence, which is philosophy. So these kinds of threats work against the people of Iran ridding themselves of this regime.

The only way we are going to have peace in the Middle East is if we understand how powerful that desire for democracy, the desire for amity with the United States is amongst the people of Iran. These kinds of politics, these kind of rhetorics, placing the decisions about this into hands that know nothing about this area, who are financially involved in this area. And they are dealing with people who know all too well how to use financial weaknesses of leaders to get what they want.

Look at what that kind of money has done to soccer.

That same thing is happening to American foreign policy. That is a dead end, Mr. President. Allow the processes that have made this country what this country is, work. Otherwise, that legacy is going to be that you'd fought a regime, you brought a lot of destruction, but you left a regime that is weaker domestically, but regionally has much more power

It controls two of the choke points of the world economy: Bob al-Mandab and the Strait of Hormuz. You went in there without thinking that they would close the Strait of Hormuz. Every indication was that they would do that if you attacked them. And particularly attack killing the top leadership. They were on record that they were going to close the Strait of Hormuz.

I would have told them, read what other administrations have done. Read what Colin Kahl probably told the president when somebody suggested to Biden that they should attack. I wouldn't be surprised if Colin was in the room and said, “Don't do it.”

I would say that you can truly leave a historic legacy if you can bring about the Abrahamic Accord. But to bring about the Abrahamic Accord, you need to convince the Israelis that Palestinians also have a right to a state. Without that, the Abrahamic Accord won't happen. With Abrahamic Accord, I think you will move the needle historically in the Middle East.

Kahl: I will just say: Abbas and I have talked about this a lot. We as Americans, we are a very powerful country and we are also problem solvers and we like to believe that we can solve world problems. We often cannot. It's also the case that some problems are not solvable in the near term. You have to muddle through and manage, which is super unsatisfying. The historical record is that pretty much everything that has happened was not only predictable, it was predicted, which is I think the most unfortunate aspect around a lot of this stuff.

Steve, two years ago, Trump said if he's elected he would solve the Ukraine war in twenty four hours. So we're twenty four months since the last election. If you had five minutes with the president on the Russia Ukraine conflict, what would your advice be?

Pifer: Well, I've written a lot over the last eighteen months about the Trump policy towards Russia-Ukraine. Polls show like eighty-five percent of Americans do not trust, do not like, do not respect Putin. Polls show that Americans support Ukraine. And I think if you actually took a poll in Congress, you would find most in Congress share those views. And I would tell the president, Mr. President, your policy in terms of buying diesel from Russia, not putting more pressure on Russia, and now turning it against Ukraine by cutting off some of the intelligence sharing: it’s wrong.

It's wrong morally. It's wrong strategically. And it's wrong in terms of your effort, your proclaimed desire to try to mediate it into this war. It's wrong morally because Russia is clearly the aggressor. It was Russia that seized Crimea with military force in 2014 and then went on to get involved in fighting in Donbas. It was Russia that launched the invasion in 2022. Ukraine is the victim.

It's wrong strategically, because if Russia prevails in this war, either they win on the battlefield, or perhaps they benefit from a bad peace deal. That's going to embolden Vladimir Putin. And that means a greater Russian threat to Europe and to vital American national security interests. I don't think Mr. Trump understands that at all.

But it's also wrong in terms of his effort to try to mediate a solution. But if you look over the past year, the Ukrainians have indicated readiness to make some pretty painful concessions to achieve peace, including perhaps accepting the de facto loss of a lot of territory. The Russian position has not budged.

Recently Russian officials have said there's been no change in the Russian position since 2024. And part of the problem is Mr. Trump's failure to use his leverage to push the Russians to negotiate. And this is why the decision to start buying diesel fuel from Russia is so bad. We're now basically sending American dollars that are going to feed part of that Russian military machine by releasing some of the financial pressure on Russia that might force them otherwise to adopt a different course.

And what I worry about that is: of course it's bad implications for Russia-Ukraine, but in other places where they look at this, not only in Moscow, but in Beijing, other capitals where they see us as the adversary, they're looking at this as not a sign of American strength. They're seeing it as a sign of American weakness and they're looking at saying, “Gee, look how well people like Putin can play Trump.” That's not good for our foreign policy.

Kahl: So twice this year already, President Trump has met with Xi Jinping. Once in China, once here in the United States, they're likely to meet again at some point this year. Despite all the competition and rhetoric, there does appear to be an effort between the two leaders to have a detente or a pause, a timeout on some of the rougher edges of the relationship. If you had five minutes with the president on China issues or Taiwan issues or China Taiwan issues, what would your recommendations be?

Mastro: This is one area where I think we oversimplify. We think that China's policies are because of Xi Jinping. And that if we had a different leader in China, everything would just be rosy again. But Xi Jinping is a product of the system. So for me, it's not the case that if Xi Jinping left, the next leader would be like, you know what? I think it's better for China to just do everything the United States demands of it and be number two in the world.

I would tell the president that U.S.-China competition is not about the United States or about China. But that power is actually bestowed upon either country by the rest of the world. Whether or not the United States is a great power, whether or not China is a great power, largely depends on how the rest of the world sees these two countries and sees the benefit, or the costs, of one of them having more power than the other.

Now, the United States as a global superpower, this is largely beneficial for many countries in the system. But first, we have to be honest that it's not the best system for everybody. To Didi's point, there's a lot of autocracies out there that would prefer that it wasn't the United States that is in charge.

But secondly, there's a whole part of the world—the majority of the world, the developing world—that the United States has ignored for decades and decades and decades. And that Trump has gone even a step farther by reducing what I would say the little amount of development aid, soft power that we had in this part of the world.

Now, I can tell you one thing for sure: this is a number one priority in China. Xi Jinping wants to be the leader of the developing world. So, are the Chinese wrong or are the Americans wrong to basically decide the value? But I can say in terms of a business sense, this is the area where you're gonna have the most returns.

Now, from my own biases, I am—not here on this stage—but still in the military. I've been in the military for seventeen years. I believe in the effectiveness of the use of force at international politics. Otherwise, I wouldn't dedicate so much of my life to serving uniform.

But that being said, diplomacy, soft power, developmental assistance, all these other things that the United States used to do more of . . . having a U.S. information service . . . these make a huge difference.

And so I would tell him to invest so much more in the other tools of power. China lists twelve types of tools of power, which military power is only one of them. And they're just as serious about the other ones.

And as much as the allies and partners periodically can be annoying about stuff, they are the source of U.S. power. In many respects, the U.S. military cannot project power without them. And so this isn't a favor that the rest of the world is doing for us that over a hundred countries allow U.S. access, bases, and overflight. This is something that the United States needs to maintain its position and to protect its interests abroad.

So don't only meet with Xi Jinping and shake hands and roll out the red carpet and say, “Okay, since I met with him and we have now a comfortably tense relationship, everything is going well.”

Take a look at the rest of the world and figure out how to maintain what has historically been U.S. dominance of the international system, a U.S. led liberal order. How do we go back to being sure that that is something that my kids are going to enjoy afterwards?

Kahl: I want to ask our last lightning questions. Everybody in this room is super committed to Stanford in all sorts of ways. What do you think Stanford could be doing more of, maybe could be doing better to help the world understand or address these issues? Abbas?

Milani: I think we are in one of the most remarkable moments in history. We are in the process of not just gradual incremental change or historic change. We're in the process of what can only be called epochal change. The changes we are about to witness and are witnessing are only, in my view, comparable to Renaissance, where everything about everything changed. We are in the process of experiencing that.

In that first phase of modernity, America, I think, is the most successful example of a democratic secular society. Going into this new phase, that model needs to be saved. American democracy needs to be saved. American democracy can only be saved if it has a more global view, a more inclusive view, and a more tolerant view. We need to begin this at Stanford. We need to teach the culture of tolerance in classes.

It is increasingly difficult to discuss difficult topics in class. I'm not talking about bioengineering. You can get away with anything in bioengineering. But try to have that level of discussion about the Arab Israeli problem, the Iranian problem, American democracy problem, race problem, gender problem. You get into serious difficulties. We need to defend that. Democracy requires defending.

I come from a place that went from an authoritarian regime to a pseudo-totalitarian regime. I came from Iran in 1986, a country that was literally at war with the United States. And twenty-two years, ago I became head of the Iranian studies program at Stanford. That would not be possible anywhere else in the world. I know the value of democracy, and I don't think at Stanford we're doing enough to defend this most valuable cherished gift that we have.

We need to cultivate, strengthen that culture.

Kahl: Didi.

Kuo: Every morning when you wake up and read the news, it can be a bummer. And I will say coming to work makes me feel better. And that's because FSI is a really special place where the approach to these topics is scholarly.

Therefore, we understand, you know, this is a kind of unique historical time, but it's one that we can really try to understand with an interdisciplinary lens and an understanding that our goal is to take academic knowledge and get it out into the world: use it to try to improve outcomes, provide policy recommendations, engage with the media or with thought leaders and people who can actually shape the public understanding of these issues.

And that is something I see creating a lot of purpose among my colleagues and creating special places outside of academic disciplines for those of us who care about engaging with the world to really unite academic knowledge with public understanding.

But the second thing is also focused on students. In California, we are super far from Washington, D.C. So if you go to Georgetown, for example, you have a lot of students who know what government is, they're going to get an internship. Over here, sometimes all the students know is Silicon Valley's over there. They're going to solve the world's problems through the private sector. I don't know, man. We have governments for a reason. AI, climate change, all of these issues are going to need to be tackled through regulation, not just through the moral binds or whatever that the president thinks that we can regulate AI with.

So I think that any way of encouraging public service and engagement with government—whether that's local, national, or international, going to other countries—is super important. And once students get a taste and a flavor of that public service, they get really into it. It's just that it's far for us, geographically, to engage. And I therefore think it's really important to encourage those kinds of opportunities.

Kahl: Amen. Steve?

Pifer: Yeah, well let me start with I some things I think that Stanford does and FSI do well. I think we do a good job on Russia-Ukraine of explaining to students what's going on, why it matters. And it's not just Stanford speakers, but we bring a lot of people in.

So on Wednesday, we had an American and a Ukrainian who are based in Kyiv. They came to talk for an hour and a half on Ukraine's innovative defense culture, where under the pressure of war they're just doing incredible changes in terms of how fast they react to things and get new weapons into the field.

There's a lot of . . . I won't list everybody, but a lot [of us] write, speak, do media on this to try to educate the broader public. We have a law school professor who organized a group of his students to track down and identify American law firms that are helping Russian oligarchs hide their wealth in the United States. And that was part of a broader effort that Stanford was running with the International Working Group on Sanctions, where we did about twenty-six papers advising on how sanctions on Russians could be tightened. So I think there's a lot of things that are being done that are good.

The more difficult challenge I think we have is how do we talk to the U.S. government? When people like Colin were in during the Biden administration, I think we had a lot of access. The administration didn't agree with everything we asked them to do, but there was a dialogue there.

I'm not sure anybody FSI has on the Russia Ukraine thing any kind of contact with people who matter in the Trump administration. So it's difficult to have the kind of conversation where you might suggest here are some ways to move forward. But I think that's going to be one of the real challenges is how can we affect government policy directly?

Kahl: And I think this is a really important point because I think this can be interpreted as basically saying, well, okay, when Democrats are in, people can have access. But it's not actually about partisan politics. It's about this particular administration's approach to outside expertise and which voices they tend to listen to. One can agree with it or disagree with it. It's it just is a thing, which is traditionally places like universities and think tanks and other sources of analysis outside of government are just not prioritized in this

Pifer: After I left the government in 2004, we had lots of access as outsiders to the Bush administration. They welcomed that dialogue. I don't think this administration does.

Kahl: Oriana.

Mastro: That's a perfect segue to what I wanted to say about policy impact about how do we talk to the U.S. government? It's not only the U.S. government. As someone who works on China, the amount of which professors and students are engaging with China is less and less over time because all of these things have become politically difficult.

And to me, Stanford is an environment in which you should be able to take those risks. This is a place where you can have dialogues with the Chinese. This is a place where policy, political officials should feel like they can come and talk and engage with these issues.

And so to try to have that kind of interconnectivity in May, I launched this policy lab on the Indo-Pacific. I call it “policy-guided.” What that means is instead of sort of doing all this research and then writing an op-ed and hoping someone reads it and then maybe it has some impact, I identify the decision makers that have influence on that research area early on in the process, and I engage with them throughout the whole process so that they have a stake in making sure that they're getting the information they need when they need it.

And part of that is educating students not only on the substance on Indo-Pacific, but also skill sets. So part of that is we just launched something called the Commander Series, where I bring combatant commanders—so these are four-star generals who are in charge of every region of the world—to campus every quarter. They give a big public talk, which again, given the political environment, given everything, did come with some convincing. We now have three lined up for this year. But it's possible. It's possible to continue to engage. And then in addition to the public talks, ask them to do private master classes with the students.

Like having that exposure to students to do kind of the real world work and to have that direct policy impact, is it harder? Yes. Is it still possible at a place like Stanford? Absolutely.

Kahl: I want to really foot stomp something because at the intersection of what Oriana and Steve just said: yes, there's a degree to which we're not as plugged into Washington as maybe in previous administrations. But the flip side of that is, actually, Stanford is a safer space for conversations among those parts of Washington that want to have conversations outside of Washington because we are further away.

We are seen as less ideological. We're not seen as particularly partisan. We're seen as a font of technical knowledge because Silicon Valley plays its own role in the current ecosystem for better or worse. So that's also an opportunity, not just a constraint.

Endy: I love this question. We heard that we're in a moment of epochal change not seen since the Renaissance. That's stunning. I'm going to carry that for a long time.

I wonder what Mr. and Mrs. Stanford think of us. If they appeared today and saw what we are now, how would they react? One of the things I go back and read is the purpose they wrote in the charter of the university. And there's a sentence, this really interesting sentence. It says: “to have an influence in behalf of humanity.”

And the first time I read it, I thought it was a typo. I thought it was supposed to be “on” behalf of humanity. But it says “in behalf of,” which really means out there doing stuff. And I think we could do a lot better in that regard.

I think we're pretty good at being Stanford. I think we could do a lot better in behalf of humanity. And FSI and CISAC is very much about that. But what does that look like? And and so I'll check some things out that may seem adjacent, but I think they're important. Number one.

I used to be chair of undergraduate admissions and financial aid for the university. We're not need-blind for international applicants. We are for domestic, but not for international. We could do it, but we always manage to not do it. This would be a good year to do it.

The second thing I think we need to do is we need to bring Stanford out into the United States. I used to teach a version of Introduction to Bioengineering to five hundred high school students in Title I high schools. And they were registered as Stanford students as high school students in low income high schools throughout the country.

I think we could have a service requirement for undergraduates where they're teaching fellows in high schools as upperclassmen helping with this. We could have five thousand extra students a year as high school students. So I think there's some macro moves the university could make that would amplify what FSI and other places are doing, and we need to get on with it.

Kahl: This is such a great place to end because the panel today was global threats and essentially what we can do about them. And I think what you heard, and frankly, where I think FSI is unique, not only at Stanford, but in the world in many respects, is that so many of the things that we read about or that we watch on YouTube are at the cross currents of these huge geopolitical changes, these world changing technological developments, and contentious domestic politics in the future of democracy here and around the world. Like these are the things that all of us care about.

Just as people as Americans, we are deeply invested at FSI. And I think what you've heard is like we can choose to engineer a world of abundance and opportunity, or we can create a lot of dangerous things that make life worse. We can choose to defend freedom in the United States and around the world, or we can choose not to. We can choose to wield American power with wisdom and with a degree of restraint, or unwisely with hubris, like an international wrecking ball. 

These are choices. These are not inevitabilities. These are choices. And I think at FSI, we believe we can help empower the right choices, especially by empowering our students. The thing that keeps me most optimistic when we have conversations like this — I think everybody up here would agree — is how awesome our students are, and how much more incredible they are at, you know, as twenty-year-olds than we were as twenty year olds.

And what I often say is smart and incredible as all these people on stage and all the other people you encounter, all the people in this room are, we're not going to solve the world's problems.

The best we can do is keep the problems solvable and empower our students to solve our problems. And the good news is our students are completely capable of doing that.

So thank you very much, and thanks again to our panelists.

[END EVENT RECORDING]

Kahl: You've been listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on what's happening in the world, and why.

The January 3, 2026, U.S. “Operation Absolute Resolve” in Venezuela to capture and remove President Nicolás Maduro has raised urgent questions about its repercussions for the U.S.-China competition, Taiwan Strait security, American strategic priorities in the Indo-Pacific region, and U.S. allies and partners.

In two new episodes of the APARC Briefing series, Stanford scholars Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and APARC faculty affiliate Oriana Skylar Mastro, a center fellow at FSI, join host Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the director of APARC, to unravel what happened in Venezuela and the implications of the U.S. actions in Latin America for Taiwan, security and alliances in the Indo-Pacific, and U.S. relations with stakeholders in the region.

Both scholars agree that the U.S. mission in Venezuela is a precedent that likely emboldens rather than deters China in its Taiwan calculus, warning that the shift it represents in U.S. national security policy might detract from American capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region at a crucial moment. They also provide sobering advice for U.S. allies struggling to adjust to rapidly shifting geopolitical realities under the second Trump administration.

A Shocking Action in World Affairs

There is no dispute that the Maduro government has been deeply authoritarian, deeply corrupt, and deeply illegitimate, says Diamond, author of Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency. Yet the United States “has probably violated international law to intervene forcibly in the internal affairs of Venezuela and remove its political leader," creating enormous implications for the international community. If it does not pursue a strategy of systemic democratic change in Venezuela, “all of this will have been for naught, and it will have paid a tragic price in terms of international precedent and international legitimacy,” Diamond argues.

Beijing is already using the operation as a "discourse power win," depicting the United States as crushing sovereignty and international law, Mastro notes. Moreover, in addition to Venezuela, President Trump continues to make statements about Greenland, reiterating its importance for U.S. national security and his interest in acquiring the territory, which has alarmed European partners and exacerbated strains with NATO.

“For the first time since WWII, some European countries have declared the United States to be a security threat,” Mastro says. “So I am curious to see if the Chinese try to bring along the Venezuela case as well, to convince U.S. allies and partners to distance themselves from the United States, which would have significant repercussions for the global order and for the United States' role in it.”

A Risky Strategic Reorientation

By unilaterally bypassing international norms to wield power in its own "backyard," the United States may have set a precedent that China can now exploit to justify its own ambitions in Taiwan as a legitimate exercise of regional dominance.

Diamond remarks on this line of thought: “If the United States, as a hegemon, can just do what it wants to arrest and remove a leader, in its kind of declared sphere of influence, what's to stop Xi Jinping from doing the same in his sphere of influence, and with a democratic system in Taiwan, whose sovereignty he does not recognize?” 

On the other hand, many commentators have argued that Operation Absolute Resolve serves as a deterrent to Chinese aggression. Granted, there is no doubt that the operation was a remarkably successful military attack showcasing the capabilities of U.S. special forces, notes Mastro, who, alongside her academic career, also serves in the United States Air Force Reserve, for which she currently works at the Pentagon as deputy director of research for Global China Strategy. Nevertheless, she emphasizes that the United States cannot carry out a similar attack in Asia.

“There is no situation in which we ‘neutralize’ Chinese air defenses and then somehow do some sort of infiltration,” says Mastro, author of Upstart: How China Became a Great Power. The U.S. intervention in Venezuela, therefore, “does not tell us a lot, operationally, about what the United States is capable of in a contingency via China.”

More troubling, Mastro identifies the Venezuela operation as demonstrating a fundamental shift in U.S. strategic priorities, with the raid conducted just weeks after the Trump administration released its 2025 National Security Strategy, which prioritizes restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” Mastro characterizes it as “the one region where U.S. dominance faces no serious challenge.” Thus, Venezuela suggests “the Trump administration means business about the renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere, and, unfortunately, that makes me concerned that there might be strategic neglect of the Indo-Pacific moving forward,” she points out.

Diamond stresses that, virtually throughout the entire presidency of Xi Jinping, dating back to 2012, China has been rapidly building up its military capabilities, prioritizing those specifically suited for coercing, isolating, or potentially seizing Taiwan. Against this backdrop, “I am much more fearful about the future of Taiwan in the week following U.S. military action on January 3 in Venezuela than I was before that action.” 

Mastro agrees with this assessment about the ripple effects of the operation in Venezuela. “I would say that it probably emboldens China.”

Frank Advice for U.S. Allies

For U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, as well as allies and partners in Europe, both scholars offer pragmatic counsel for coping with the Trump administration.

Diamond urges U.S. allies to manage Trump diplomatically while staying focused on core interests, namely, prioritizing the preservation of the alliances and strengthening autonomous defense capabilities to demonstrate commitment and hedge against potential U.S. retrenchment.

“It takes constant, energetic, proactive, imaginative, relentless, and in some ways deferential working of the relationship, including the personal relationship between these leaders and Donald Trump [...] The future will be better if the leaders of these countries internalize that fundamental lesson about Trump.”

Mastro is equally direct about the limited alternatives ahead of U.S. allies: "You don't really have an option. That Chinese military – if it gives the United States problems, it definitely gives you problems. There's no hope for a country like Taiwan without the United States. There's no hope for Australia without the United States."

Counterintuitively, U.S. assertiveness may indicate its insecurity about the balance of power with China. “It seems to me that the United States also needs to be reassured that our allies and partners support us [...] And if we had that confidence, maybe the United States would be less aggressive in its use of military force.”

Watch the two APARC Briefing episodes:

🔸 What the U.S. Raid in Venezuela Means for Taiwan and Asia - with Larry Diamond >

🔸 Does Venezuela Provide China a Roadmap for Taiwan? – with Oriana Skylar Mastro >

Follow the link for a full transcript of "Global Threats Today: The 2024 Edition."

Illiberal Actors Are on the Move  |  Amichai Magen

Around the world, we are seeing a new axis of influence coalescing. Some have called it the "axis of misery" or the "axis of resistance." It is composed of Russia and Iran and North Korea, with a lot of Chinese involvement as well. It is transforming our international system in unbelievable ways. It is united by the desire to dismantle the liberal international order, and we're starting to see the nature and the interconnectivity of this new axis of chaos much more clearly. 

You see North Korean soldiers fighting for Putin in Ukraine. You see Putin helping the Houthis attack international Western shipping in Yemen. We see North Korean tunnel technology turn up in Lebanon with Hezbollah and then with Hamas in Gaza. The interconnectivity is something that we really need to know much more about.

Historically, emperors, kings, dukes, used to spend 50% of their resources on preparing for war or waging war. But in the post-Second World War era, we built a critical norm that we've called the liberal international order. And the miracle of the liberal international order is that we've managed to take global averages of defense spending from about 50% to a global average of about 7%. And the resulting surplus wealth has allowed us to invest in education, health, and scientific discovery.

What is at stake now is the possibility of a return of a norm where states are destroyed and disappear. And we have currently three states in the international system, at the very least — Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — that are at risk of annihilation. To that end, we must articulate a positive strategic vision for the Middle East that will strive towards a two state solution, that would give the Palestinian people the dignity and the freedom that they deserve alongside a safe and secure Israel, and that will leverage the new spirit of cooperation that exists in the Middle East.

If we allow the norm of the non-disappearance of state to erode and collapse, we will go back to the law of the jungle, where we will have to spend so much more money on the wrong things. That is what is at stake in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and with Taiwan.
 

Challenges to Democracy Come From Within |  Didi Kuo

Many people think that the threat to democracy comes from outside our borders, particularly from countries like Russia and China that are asserting themselves in new and aggressive ways.

But the real threat to democracies that we're seeing across the globe is coming from within. Leaders come to power through democratic means, but then they begin to erode power from within. They attack the electoral system and the process of democratic elections, and they take power from other branches of government and aggregate it to themselves within the office of the executive. 

The good news is there are examples of countries like France, Brazil, and Poland where illiberal leaders have been stopped by pro-democracy coalitions of people who came together. These coalitions don't necessarily agree with each other politically, but they've come together and adapted in order to foreclose on these anti-democratic forces. 

That flexibility and adaptability is the reason democracies succeed. We see this over and over again in the the United States. When our institutions have become out of date, we've changed them. We extended suffrage, first to Black Americans who were formerly enslaved, then to women, then to Native Americans. We eliminating poll taxes and rethought what it means to have a multiracial democracy. We have a long track record of making changes.

Today in 2024, some of our democratic institutions are antiquated and don't reflect our contemporary values. This is a moment where we should lean into that flexible strength of democracy and think about institutional reforms that will both strengthen our system against illiberal creep and help us better achieve the ideals that we aspiring to as a people.
 

Ukraine Is Not Fated to Lose |  Steven Pifer

There's a narrative that's taking place that Russia is winning the war, Ukraine is losing, and it's only a matter of time. And it is true that Russia has captured a bit more territory than they occupied at the start of the year. But they've only achieved that at enormous cost.

As of September, the Pentagon says Russia had lost 600,000 dead and wounded soldiers. To put that in context, in February of 2022 when this major invasion began, the total Russian military — not just the army, but the total Russian military — was 1.1 million people. And the British Ministry of Defense earlier this week assessed that Russia now is losing 1,200 soldiers killed or severely wounded per day. You have to ask how long that's sustainable.

When I talk to Ukrainians, they still regard this war as existential. They're very determined to win, and we need to do a better job of supporting that. A stable and secure Europe is vital to America's national security interests, and you're not going to have a stable and secure Europe unless there's a stable and secure Ukraine. So we need to both provide them the weapons they need and relieve some of the restrictions we currently have and allow the Ukrainians to use those weapons to strike military targets in Russia.

Because we have to ask ourselves: what does an emboldened Vladimir Putin do if he wins in Ukraine? I don't think his ambitions end with Ukraine, perhaps not even with the post-Soviet space. There's going to be a much darker Russian threat hovering over Europe if Putin wins. So let's not count the Ukrainians out.
 

China Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon  |  Oriana Skylar Mastro

There is a lot of discussion right now about the fact that the economy in China is slowing down and its demography is undergoing significant changes. What I'm here to tell you is that the challenge of China is not over, and is not going to be over any time soon. China has built power in a different way than the United States, and we have to reassess how we understand that power if we want to effectively deter, blunt, and block them from acting out in ways that threaten our partners and allies.

Since the 1990s, China has developed a significant amount of political, economic, and military power. They've gone from having an economy smaller than France’s  to the second largest in the world. They've gone from not being involved in international institutions to a great degree, not even having diplomatic relations with major countries like South Korea, to now having stronger and greater diplomatic networks, especially in Asia, than the United States.

What we really need to understand is that the U.S.-China competition is not about the United States or about China; it's about the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world sees us and how China interacts with us. The balance of power is shifting, and we have to be a lot smarter and a lot faster if we want to make sure it shifts in favor of our interests.

The United States hasn't had a comprehensive strategy towards the developing world in a long time. And we are running out of time to get that balance right in Asia. We don't have the right stuff. We don't have it in the right numbers, and it's not in the right place. Some of this is about deterring war over Taiwan, but it's also about generally maintaining peace and stability in Asia.
 

We're Doing Better (But Not Enough) on Climate Change |  Marshall Burke

Many people don't recognize how much progress we're actually making on climate issues. Emissions have fallen by 20% since 2005. We're actually speeding up the amount of substantial progress being made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dealing with the core climate change problem, which is the human emission of greenhouse gasses.

In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act and the subsequent implementation of various rules the Biden administration has championed has given a huge boost in transitioning our economy to greener energy technologies, transportation technologies, and other kinds of infrastructure. We're moving a lot of cash to get that done, and the president is trying to get as much of it out the door as he can before his term ends.

Globally, the progress has been less rapid. Emissions are roughly flat. But overall, we're still making progress. I co-teach an undergraduate class on climate change, and we've had to update our slides on how much warming we're expecting over the next century. We thought it was going to be four degrees Celsius. Now we think it's going to be something between two and three degrees Celsius.

But the flip side of that is that we're still going to get warming of two to three degrees Celsius. We're already experiencing warming of about a degree Celsius, which is about two degrees Fahrenheit, and it's projected that we're going to get another three to five degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That is a lot of warming, and we are not prepared to deal with it. We need to do much more on mitigation and much more on adaptation if we're going to meet the realities of living in a changing climate.

So we've had progress on the one hand, but there's still a lot of work left to do in the coming decades.
 

Get additional analysis from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

This commentary originally appeared in The New York Times.

For a half-century, America has avoided war with China over Taiwan largely through a delicate balance of deterrence and reassurance.

That equilibrium has been upset. China is building up and flexing its military power; hostile rhetoric emanates from both Beijing and Washington. War seems likelier each day.

It’s not too late to restore the kind of balance that helped to keep the peace for decades, but it will require taking steps to ease China’s concerns. This will be difficult because of Chinese intransigence and the overheated atmosphere prevailing in Washington. But it is worth the political risk if it prevents war.

Deterrence came in the form of the implied use of U.S. military force to thwart a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Reassurance was provided by the understanding that the United States would not intrude on decisions regarding Taiwan’s eventual political status.

The United States and its regional allies must continue to create a robust military deterrence. But U.S. leaders and politicians also need to keep in mind the power of reassurance, try to understand China’s deep sensitivities about Taiwan and should recommit — clearly and unequivocally — to the idea that only China and Taiwan can work out their political differences, a stance that remains official U.S. policy.

During the Cold War, Beijing and Washington signed a series of communiqués related to Taiwan. One of them said the United States “reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” This and other wording was deliberately ambiguous, but it was accepted by all sides as a commitment to avoid rocking the boat. China still views this arrangement as binding.

To be clear, it was China that began rocking the boat first.

Since 2016, when Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party was elected president of Taiwan (succeeding a more China-friendly administration), Xi Jinping has repeatedly brandished China’s military power with large-scale military exercises and other pressure tactics apparently meant to discourage independence sentiment on Taiwan.

U.S. political figures have rightly responded with rhetorical support for democratic Taiwan, by supplying it with weapons and by strengthening the U.S. military presence in the region. But the American reaction is also pouring fuel on the fire.

I have worked on U.S. defense strategy in various military roles for more than a decade. I recently traveled to Beijing, where I met with Chinese government and military officials, leading academics and experts from Communist Party-affiliated think tanks. During these talks it was clear that Beijing is far less concerned with U.S. efforts to enhance its military posture in the region — the deterrence side of the equation — than with the political rhetoric, which is seen in China as proof that the United States is moving away from past ambiguity and toward supporting Taiwan’s de facto independence.

They have plenty of evidence to point to.

In December 2016, Donald Trump became the first U.S. president or president-elect since the normalization of China-U.S. relations in 1979 to speak directly with a Taiwanese leader, when Ms. Tsai called to congratulate him on his election victory. President Biden has, on four occasions, contradicted the U.S. policy of ambiguity by saying we would support Taiwan militarily if China attacked. The number of U.S. Congress members visiting Taiwan — which China views as overt support for the island’s independence — reached a decade high last year, including an August 2022 trip by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House at the time and the highest-ranking U.S. official travel to Taiwan since the 1990s. That has continued this year: In June a nine-member congressional delegation, the largest in years, arrived in Taipei.

Provocative legislation has not helped. Last year the Taiwan Policy Act, which articulated support for Taiwan’s role in international organizations, was introduced in the Senate, and in July of this year the House passed a similar act. House Republicans introduced a motion in January to recognize Taiwan as an independent country.

Actions like these put great pressure on Mr. Xi, who won’t tolerate going down in history as the Chinese leader to have lost Taiwan. That would be seen in Beijing as an existential threat, potentially fueling separatist sentiment in restive regions like Tibet and Xinjiang.

For now, lingering doubts over Chinese military capabilities and the specter of U.S. and allied retaliation are enough to restrain Mr. Xi. But if he concludes that the United States has broken, once and for all, from its previous position on Taiwan and is bent on thwarting unification, he may feel that he must act militarily. The United States might be able to build the necessary military power in the region to deter a Chinese war of choice. But the level of dominance needed to stop Mr. Xi from launching a war he sees as necessary might be impossible to achieve.

Reassuring China would require Mr. Biden to reiterate that the United States does not support Taiwanese independence or oppose the island’s peaceful unification with China and that, ultimately, Taiwan’s fate is up to Taipei and Beijing. It would mean moving away from attempts to create international space for Taiwan and chastising Beijing when it pulls away Taipei’s diplomatic partners. The White House would also need to use what leverage it has to discourage members of Congress from visiting Taiwan and threaten to veto provocative legislation.

There would doubtless be blowback in Washington and Taipei, and Mr. Xi may already have made up his mind to seize Taiwan, regardless of the U.S. stance. But a politically neutral position on Taiwan is what the United States has followed for decades. Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George H.W. and George W. Bush advocated peaceful dialogue between Taipei and Beijing to resolve their differences.

There also are longer-term repercussions to consider: If the combination of deterrence and reassurance fails and China attacks Taiwan, it will set a precedent in which Chinese leaders kill and destroy to achieve their goals. But if a pathway remains for China to eventually convince Taiwan’s people — through inducements or pressure — that it is in their interest to peacefully unify, then that may be a China that we can live with.

In the best-case scenario, the United States and China would reach a high-level agreement, a new communiqué, in which Washington reiterates its longstanding political neutrality and China commits to dialing back its military threats. This would avert war while giving China political space to work toward peaceful unification. That might mean using its clout to isolate Taiwan and eventually convince the island’s people that it should strike a deal with Beijing. But it isn’t Washington’s place to prevent the unification of the two sides — only to ensure that doesn’t happen through military force or coercion.

A war between the United States and China over Taiwan could be the most brutal since World War II. As politically difficult as it may be, U.S. leaders have a duty to try to prevent conflict, and that means speaking more softly but carrying a big stick.

This commentary first appeared as part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Interpret:China series. 

Tensions at the Taiwan Strait are at an all-time high. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit marked the highest level of exchange between U.S. and Taiwanese officials since 1997. China used the visit as a pretext to conduct large-scale military exercises encircling the island, coupled with rhetoric about how it could successfully use force to unify if it decided to do so.

The dynamics between China and the United States over Taiwan are eerily like those laid out in Zuo Xiying’s balanced, informative article. Zuo accurately captures the U.S. deterrence strategy toward Russia before its invasion of Ukraine—highlighting key components such as threatening economic sanctions and international isolation, as well as providing training and equipment to Ukraine to enhance its ability to defend itself. But deterrence failed, the reasons (according to Zuo) being that the United States did not do more to reassure Russia of its peaceful intentions and that ultimately costs are difficult to calculate ahead of time. Once war broke out, as Zuo also points out, the United States escalated its involvement by providing military aid to Ukraine, which increased the costs of the war to Russia.

What does all this mean for U.S. deterrence strategy with respect to Taiwan? Zuo recognizes that “for China, the Russia-Ukraine conflict acts as a mirror. . . . China needs to not only study in depth how the United States deters and how it punishes Russia, but also to carefully analyze how Russia perceives the United States’ threats and to derive experience and lessons from therein.” But he leaves the reader wondering what those lessons are. He hints in his discussion on Ukraine that a U.S. strategy to build up Taiwan’s defenses is unlikely to deter China; however, he also indirectly suggests that China may be underestimating the costs of war. Successful deterrence, Zuo notes, “requires not only that the United States itself has powerful forces and strong resolve but that it can make the other side accurately feel the threat and have an accurate calculation of the costs and benefits. But the real world is complicated, and it is difficult to have both conditions present at once.” In other words, he thinks there is an intermediate step needed in a deterrence strategy. The United States has to not only issue a credible threat, but also make the other side accurately assess the costs and benefits of certain actions.

Zuo does not seem optimistic. He implies the United States needs to increase efforts to paint a more specific picture of what it would do if war broke out—but that, even if it did, the message still might not get through. The reader is left with an acute understanding that if there is war over Taiwan, failures in both Beijing and Washington will be to blame.

This opinion article first appeared in the Washington Post.

Most world leaders, including President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, agree that the defense of Taiwan is crucial for regional security. But most options for improving deterrence will take too long. Building Taiwan’s self-defense, developing more U.S. firepower in the region, creating the economic resilience to make severe sanctions feasible: None of these will come to fruition before 2030.

Japan could change the game now. Allied forces, responding immediately and en masse, have a chance of thwarting a Chinese invasion, according to a recent report from the Center for Strategic & International Studies. But, in meetings with high-level officials in Tokyo last month, I sensed a mismatch between talk and walk. Japan must broaden its vision of self-defense to encompass priorities and declaratory policies that will avert calamity in the region. Tokyo cannot wait until war breaks out to start the tougher conversations.

Here’s why.

Sign up for APARC newsletters to receive our experts' analysis >

First, without Japan, the United States could be outgunned in a fight to defend Taiwan, notwithstanding Washington’s new basing agreement with the Philippines. A combined U.S.-Japan fleet, on the other hand, would boast more than three times as many aircraft carriers, cruisers and destroyers as the People’s Liberation Army Navy. The quality of many Japanese ships approaches that of its U.S. counterparts. Eight of Japan’s destroyers field a state-of-the-art Aegis weapons system used by some of the more advanced ships in the U.S. Navy.

Second, Japan’s involvement could mitigate some of the geographic vulnerabilities of the United States. Adding Japanese bases more than doubles the locations from which the two countries together could conduct operations. Japan’s southwestern islands are closer to Taiwan than mainland China. Take Yonaguni Island, just about 70 miles from Taiwan’s east coast. On it are intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets, as well as anti-ship and anti-aircraft capabilities. Operating from these bases in the defense of Taiwan, allied forces would have more opportunities to quickly target an invading force. That would make attacks on U.S. bases in Japan, such as Kadena, at the southernmost tip of the archipelago, less attractive to the Chinese. Such strikes would no longer completely cripple an air effort.

Third, Japan has military strengths that would make a fait accompli almost impossible for China. Though Japanese diesel submarines are slower than U.S. counterparts, they could reach the Taiwan Strait in just two days. U.S. submarines departing from Hawaii would take at least a week; from San Diego even longer. This makes Japan the first line of defense for Taiwan. Japanese boats could also monitor key choke points through which Chinese navy submarines would be attempting to exit the First Island Chain in the western Pacific. This would free up the quieter submarines of the U.S. Navy to wreak havoc on amphibious vessels and escort ships.

In short, Tokyo could contribute significantly to a military effort to deny China the ability to take Taiwan by force. To do so, Japan must increase its stockpile of torpedoes and long-range strike weapons, as planned. Tokyo must be willing to go after the amphibious invasion force and targets on mainland China — a very controversial proposition indeed.

On the surface, it looks as if Japan is moving in the right direction. The government took the groundbreaking historic step of increasing defense spending to 2 percent of Japan’s gross domestic product over the next five years. This meant a whopping 26.3 percent increase in 2023 alone. The greatest increase in the past was in 1986, by nearly 50 percent.

Last year, former prime minister Shinzo Abe stated that the security of Japan is connected to Taiwan. He said a Chinese use of force against a U.S. vessel defending Taiwan could legally trigger the deployment of Japan’s military (known as the Self-Defense Force).

Indeed, a 2015 law allows Japan to engage in collective defense when presented with an existential threat. This provides plenty of flexibility for Japan to fight alongside the United States without the need for a constitutional amendment. The officials I spoke with in Tokyo were firm that Japan would respond if China attacked U.S. bases such as Kadena.

But all these initiatives concern self-defense. Japan does worry that military activity around Taiwan could extend to the security of its southwestern islands. Or that if China takes Taiwan, it would be emboldened to take the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, which Tokyo administers but which China also claims. There are even concerns that Okinawa, a group of 160-plus islands that is home to 1.4 million people (and dozens of U.S. bases), could then prove enticing to Beijing.

Crudely, Japan seems to be prepared to push back against only Chinese assets that are clearly poised to attack its sovereign territory. Those heading toward Taiwan? Not so much.

While a degree of strategic ambiguity makes sense, too much could backfire. If Japan is clearly unwilling to defend Taiwan, then improvements in Japanese military capabilities will do little to deter conflict across the strait. Japanese officials don’t need to say they would attack any Chinese invading forces, but they need to let their counterparts know it is a real possibility. The officials I met were unwilling to send such strong messages; some insisted reassuring Beijing was more important.

Tokyo must make clear at home and abroad that defending Taiwan is no longer off the table. The prospect of Japan engaging in offensive operations in the defense of Taiwan would stay Chinese President Xi Jinping’s hand. Only then would recent monumental changes in Japanese politics fulfill their potential in contributing to peace and security in Asia. If Ukraine has taught us anything, it is that deterrence is costly, but war is worse.

Click the link for a full transcript of “What We Need To Talk About When We Talk About Taiwan.“

The Likelihood of Invasion

In stark terms, Oriana Skylar Mastro, a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, believes there’s a 100% chance China will use some sort of force against Taiwan in the next five years. For the last twenty years, China has been making concerted efforts to modernize its military and increase its capabilities not only to assert force against Taiwan, but to deter intervention from the United States.

In the majority of scenarios, the United States wins in a conflict with China over Taiwan. But the United States also carries a distinct geographic disadvantage. The distance across the Taiwan Strait between the island and mainland China is approximately 100 miles, which is roughly the distance between Richmond, Virginia and Washington D.C. If China moves quickly, PRC forces could take Taiwan before U.S. forces have time to move into position.

When considering possible outcomes in Taiwan, it is equally important to consider the motivations driving Beijing’s ambitions. The leadership on the mainland has been planning and thinking about how to retake Taiwan since 1949. With the modernized capabilities coming online, the balance of power has shifted in China’s military favor, and the cost-benefit calculus favors Beijing’s ambitions. The long-term planning stage is now reaching its end, and the prospects of direct action are increasing.

The View from Taipei

Political leaders in Taiwan recognize the growing danger they face across the Strait. In Larry Diamond’s assessment, the end of Hong Kong's autonomy and the suppression of the “one country, two systems” model, the rising military incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone and coastal waters, and the whole rising pace of Chinese military intimidation has sobered Taiwan and visibly impacted Taiwanese public opinion.

Concerningly though, while the political elite recognize the real and present danger of the situation, polling of the general Taiwan public suggests that the vast majority of citizens still feel like an attack or an invasion by China is unlikely. Similar majorities suggest that they would be willing to fight in Taiwan’s defense, but volunteering for military service remains at a minimum.

To maximize safety, Taiwan needs to find ways to strengthen itself in its ability to defend, resist, and deter China, while still avoiding any appearance of moving toward permanent independence or any other action that could be deemed by Beijing as a provocation, says Diamond.

What the United States Can Do

When it comes to the defense of Taiwan, the strategic crutch hobbling the United States is geography. Most of the U.S. Pacific forces are not in Asia. The majority are in Hawaii and California, as well as a few bases and airfields in Japan. To be able to effectively deter China, the U.S. needs far greater forward deployed military capability in order to be able to either stop or stall the movement of Chinese troops into Taiwan, says Mastro.

Taiwan needs greater onshore military deterrence capabilities as well. One such strategy is the “porcupine approach,” which increases the number of smaller mobile lethal weapons. By Larry Diamond’s assessment, increased citizen participation in military training is also crucial, with an emphasis on weapons training and urban defense tactics. The U.S. could support these aims by overhauling the current system for weapons procurement to speed up the production and delivery of weapons systems not just for Taiwan, but to the benefit of U.S. defense and other contingencies as well. Working with leadership to create strategic stockpiles of food, and energy should also be a priority, says Diamond.

The U.S. also needs to put much more effort into its diplomatic efforts on behalf of Taiwan. Many U.S. allies and partners are reluctant to ostracize China because of economic ties and concerns over sparking their own conflict with China in the future. A key ally in all of this is Japan. If Japan fights with the United States on behalf of Taiwan, it is a guaranteed win and enough to effectively deter China. But much more needs to be done much more quickly in order to secure those guarantees and present them in a convincing way to Beijing.

“The clock is ticking,” Larry Diamond says. “And the problem is we don’t know how fast it’s ticking. “Taiwan is moving in the right direction. But we need to move faster than we're moving.”

This commentary originally appeared in The Economist.

But even with all these improvements, it is unclear whether China could take Taiwan by force. China has not fought a war since 1979, when it made heavy weather of a “punitive” invasion of Vietnam. An amphibious attack, and to a lesser degree a blockade of the type the exercises off Taiwan were simulating, would demand complex joint operations (involving army, air force and navy), which in turn require impeccable logistics and command and control. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, launched a massive organizational reform to improve in these areas, and the PLA undoubtedly has. But the war in Ukraine may have given him heightened anxiety, given that the Russians struggled precisely with logistics and command.

For this reason, we should see the massive exercises off Taiwan less as a signal, and more as a rehearsal for combat. Mr Xi wants progress on the Taiwan issue, and domestically talk in the press is shifting from peaceful reunification to armed reunification. Chinese leaders knew the PLA had to conduct a series of large, realistic exercises to identify issues and hone their capabilities. If China had done so out of the blue, instead of using Ms Pelosi’s visit as a pretext, international opprobrium would have been stronger.

China will seize the opportunity to practice as much as possible. It has announced already that this round of exercises will continue and that another round in the Bohai Gulf/Yellow Sea is next. And it won’t just be large-scale exercises. It is unlikely that Beijing will return to its previous level of operations. Instead, China might attempt to normalize greater Chinese activity around Taiwan. That makes war more probable. Through a series of exercises the PLA, and the party leadership, might gain confidence that China’s forces are ready to take Taiwan sooner than they would otherwise have thought.

Of course, this all depends on how the exercises and operations go. From the outside, this is hard to assess. The missiles landed where they should have in recent days, and there were no accidents. But we don’t know how much and how well different groups are communicating with each other. To prepare for joint operations, air-force units need to operate in close proximity and coordinate with ground troops and amphibious elements. The PLA needs to practice providing supplies, such as prepositioned fuel stocks, and bringing munitions and medical supplies to forward locations such as Fujian, the province directly across the Taiwan Strait.

This is where the real trouble lies. If activities in the vicinity of Taiwan become more routine, not only does this heighten anxiety in Taipei (and probably other regional capitals as well) but it helps to disguise any preparations for a real military campaign. China needs an element of surprise to be able to take Taiwan before America has time to mobilize adequate forces in the region to defend the island. If China’s forces are simulating formations, blockades, attacks, and amphibious landings, it will be harder to decipher when they are preparing for the real thing. Ms Pelosi’s visit has allowed Beijing to move to a new level of military activity unchallenged, which will make it harder for America to defend Taiwan. No signal of America’s commitment to the island can fix that.