Russia, China and Other Global Players

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Hello, and welcome to the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

We're doing a news roundup for Saturday, which is not our usual, but we have a lot in the news and especially geopolitical news.

So we'll be talking about the Ukraine, China, Cuba, Finland, and Sweden in just a few moments.

But let's hear a few messages first and we'll be right back.

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Welcome back.

And this is again the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskie Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

He is also available at his website, victorhanson.com.

That's S-O-N.

So victorhanson.com.

Come join us there.

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Victor, I always ask you how you're doing.

Any initial thoughts on things, especially geopolitical, which is what we're going to be talking about today?

Well,

I'm interested in how Ukraine's going to end.

We'll talk about that.

Yeah.

The elections, et cetera.

don't get er started on day 17

day 17 of covet and i this damn virus has got its hooks into me and i yeah i kind of made a mistake going to lecture for five or six days back east it kind of put me back but i'm going to

eat it and somebody out there is going to call me or email me and say vicar I had long COVID.

I had it for three weeks.

And I found a magic supplement that is an American anecdote to the Wuhan virus.

I'm just teasing, but maybe there's something,

but as far as you said you got it, so I'm waiting for your help, but let's not talk about it now.

I just have one thing to say about the market for deadly viruses.

As far as they go, like I said, this one is less sloppy with precious bodily fluids than most viruses I've ever had.

So a lot of viruses, but this fatigue is like number one.

All right.

All right.

Yeah, let's go to the Ukraine war.

I just have one question on it or one observation, and then I'll let you go with it.

It seems that the threat of nuclear war and impending nuclear war has now changed from a rogue state such as Korea or Iran to this Russia problem that they might use tactical nuclear weapons.

I know that that's maybe unlikely, but nobody seems to be able to predict what Putin's going to do.

And from that, I'll let you take the Ukrainian war, but so,

for the Hoover Institution podcast, Goodfellows, that's the one that Bill Whelan hosts with Neil Ferguson, H.R.

McMaster, and John Cochran, all very fine colleagues of mine that I really admire.

And we did the Ukraine today, and it was very heated when that topic came up.

I don't know whether he's going to, he would even, I don't know if his people have pointed out whether his military would allow MBUs.

I don't know if he would do it.

But I do know this: that

for

a lot of people in the United States and in Europe want Ukraine not to have a ceasefire or negotiation.

It's up to Ukraine.

It's a sovereign country, but they want to expel all the Russians out of the illegally acquired borderlands.

That would be the Donbass and Crimea.

And they want to send them, we're going to send them 40 billion in XSAI.

But my problem with that is I think Ukraine is going to get back to the status ante quo bellum, that is where it was on february 14th or before that before the invasion that is ukraine will be a sovereign nation suffering terrible desolation and russia should pay for that i understand but to go to the next step to get them out of the primarily russian speaking areas or crimea will require whatever you talk about vocabulary the word is escalation because you're going to have to prevent the russians from supplying their forces along the border.

And that's their scaled-down, apparently, agendas.

And what does that mean?

That means you're going to have to sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet because they're supplying their forces in Crimea.

And then that means they need harpoon missiles from the United States.

And so let me get this straight.

So you're now saying that to save Ukraine or to get it pristine or to restore what it was before

2014, which is what people are talking about, you're going to have to escalate.

And that means give them the tools to destroy the pride of the Russian Navy, that is their Black Sea fleet, so it won't supply their forces through Ukraine or stop Odessa.

Or you're going to have to do, as is already happening, having Ukraine...

air and ground forces sneak into Russian lands and destroy depots and staging areas.

And that's where we are right now.

And that's something that I am very skeptical about.

This is the first war in European history in which there's a nuclear power directly involved.

You know, when I listen to everybody talk about, well, it's appeasement if we don't expel every Russian out of Ukraine.

Okay, that would be a wonderful thing to happen.

And but when you have the Secretary of Defense saying the purpose of this war is really a proxy war, that is to hurt Russia, or you have generals and Biden people leaking off the record, but leaking nonetheless, that we are giving intelligence how to kill Russian generals, or you have people leaking that Ukrainian commandos or with U.S.

intelligence are in Russian territory, then I think you're in areas that are uncharted.

Yeah, that sounds ominous a little bit, Victor.

Are you intending to sound that ominous or is it just me taking?

Well, I'm torn because Russia invaded Ukraine and they should pay a price for killing people and destroying things.

And they were trying to take over the entire country and only because of NATO weaponry and American help, as well as their courage, they failed.

So then the secondary agenda is to

expel Russians, apparently, from the lands that they've occupied illegally for the last eight years.

Okay.

But my concern or worry, I guess that's the right word, is for that agenda to be fulfilled that is that there should not be one single russian soldier on ukrainian land as was defined before 2014

they apparently feel that they have to attack the

black sea fleet and they have to attack staging areas and in depots inside russia And so you're basically attacking a nuclear power on its own ground, however justified.

Wait,

when you say they, are you talking about the U.S.

or the US?

I'm talking about the Ukrainians and their supporters and their supporters in Europe and the United States.

Got it.

And what I'm saying is that in a perfect world, that's okay.

So when we're in Korea in 1950

and the Chinese crossed the Yalu River, right?

and there's staging areas and there's Manchurian industries, there was a call to go across the Chinese border, the the Yalu River, and start bombing mainland China.

And that would have brought us in a nuclear standoff, people felt, with Stalin.

And so in Vietnam, there were Russian freighters in the harbors of Haiphong supplying troops that were killing American soldiers.

Not only did we not bomb those, we didn't...

go back and destroy those ships on the high seas.

And in Iraq, there were were Iranians coming across the border with shape charges that were supplying the insurgents that killed hundreds of Americans.

And we made the strategic decision not to go across the border into Iran to escalate and bomb strategic Iranian factories.

Maybe that was wise, maybe that was not wise, but to say that's not escalation is, I think, splicing words.

So that's what I'm saying.

I mean,

in a moral, just, logical, classical, strategic world, yes.

To get Russia out of the borderlands that it illegally occupied since 2014, you need to destroy their staging areas and their supply mechanism.

But to do that,

let's not mince words.

You are attacking Mother Russia.

You are saying to the Russian people, your leaders caused aggression.

We stopped the aggression, but now we're going to take the war home to you because we're going to destroy your fleet.

And I don't know where that,

when I say destroy the fleet, is I've been reading how that is defined.

Does it mean as soon as they leave Russian ports in the Black Sea?

I don't know.

I don't know what it means.

I don't know exactly what we are intending to do, but there is a request on the table from the Ukrainians to ask for our most sophisticated weapons, shortage ship weapons.

And those are harpoon missiles.

And apparently we've used them before, and they're responsible for some of the damage

that's already been incurred by the Russians.

And

it has an operational range, Sammy, of about 75, I don't know, to 120 miles, maybe 75 miles.

So you're talking about well into international waters if you're going to use those.

And I'm just saying, if you're going to do it, you should be prepared for an escalation, but don't just think, well, you know, they started it and they went in because they're not rational.

And everybody says, well,

so what?

Who cares?

Hitler wasn't rational.

We defeated him.

I have no problem with that.

And maybe there will be a coup and maybe a strong man who's a little bit more realistic will get rid of Putin and maybe and maybe and maybe.

But all I'm saying is that if Ukraine with US sophisticated weapons starts sinking the Black Sea fleet in international waters because they are on their way to supply troops or killing Ukrainian civilians, I understand that.

But let's just not be naive about what we're going to get into.

Yeah, okay.

Well, let's leave the state of the Ukraine war there then and turn then to China.

My observation of China, what I've seen recently is that it's divesting in the US.

So it's getting its attachments, financial attachments to the US.

It's breaking them.

And it recently had forced the exclusion of Taiwan from the World Health Organization summit.

So it's making these these moves that seem like it's positioning itself so it can do something with and to Taiwan.

What are your thoughts?

Yeah, I think they are.

I think, I mean, they're divorcing their financial exposure in U.S.

markets.

Why would they do that suddenly?

It's obviously so that they don't suffer the consequences that the Russians are suffering.

A lot of people are split on this.

I mean, on the one hand, they look at Russia and they think, oh my God, that was supposed to be shotgun all.

Four days, take Kiev, the war is over.

And now they're in a mess.

And look at these Western weapons.

They're so much better than what the Russians have, whether it's drones or javelins or stingers.

And they basically destroyed one-third of the expeditionary army of Russia.

And what would they do in Taiwan when we wouldn't go across the border?

We'd have to have an amphibious assault.

And the world apparently would pour weapons into Taiwan, and then the world would rally against us as they are rallying against Russia.

That said,

I think a lot of other people, and I tend to agree with this, will say, well, China feels it's not Russia.

It's got 1.4 billion people, not 140 million.

It's got an economy that's about

eight, nine times larger than Russia.

It's got a huge territory like Russia.

And it feels that it's not an ossified, calcified kleptocracy like Russia.

Not that it's not corrupt and evil, but but it's got 380,000 students in the United States.

It has joint ventures.

When you have people running for president like Mike Bloomberg, or you've got one of the richest Americans in the United, the richest Americans in history like Bill Gates,

or you have LeBron James, or you have all of these notoriety, you know, these celebrities, I should say, and all these wealthy people, and they're heavily invested in joint ventures to the extent that they can adjudicate what films come out of Hollywood.

China looks at all of that and they said, you know what, we have our pulse on the American popular culture and financial community and they are not going to react to us as they did to Russia.

And that is, it's kind of baffling because you see all the things we said about Russia, not that they don't try to interfere and they're evil, I get that, but they didn't commit Russian collusion as we accused them of.

They really didn't.

And the dossier that was pretty awful was false.

And Mr.

Dashenko was a liar.

And Mr.

Steele was a liar.

And Fiona Hill, who set Mr.

Dashenko up with Steele, is culpable.

And what I'm getting at is the way that Chinese look at it is they feel that the United States came down hard on Russia because they saw that it was a way to show the world that they hated Trump or whatever, and they had a pre-existing hatred.

And they feel they don't have that animus, that the left, being a communist, leftist regime, that there are people in the United States, whether for political reasons or the bogeyman Trump reasons or their own financial interest reasons, they will not come down on China the way that they did on Russia and the world would emulate that.

lackadaisical response.

That's what they say.

I don't know if that's true or not, but that is important because that means that they don't feel there's a deterrent to stop them, no matter how badly Russia does in Ukraine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, it seems to me that if China decided to do something with Taiwan, I'm not sure that the world would come in to help defend the Taiwan.

That's my instinctual feeling, but do you think the world would rally to help the Taiwanese?

I mean, I don't know.

I think they would pour.

Well, first of all, intelligence would show a buildup.

I think at that point,

Japan, South Korea, Australia, United States, and NATO would start sending in a lot of weapons.

I think we're doing that already.

And I mean javelins, stingers, patriots.

And they would start training them to follow the Ukrainian model of small teams, decentralized throughout the, a nation in arms, in other words.

And that would be to deter China from following the Russian paradigm.

And then I think they would be arming, I think they are, with harpoon missiles.

So that straight to Taiwan would be very vulnerable.

If you have, you know, harpoon missiles under tarps or camouflaged all over the coast of Taiwan, and one of them can take out a big ship with, you know, 5,000 troops on it.

That's a deterrent.

That's what we're doing.

But I don't know if I think China, what I'm worried about is I think China looks at the calculus and the cost of benefit analyses and says,

well, it's not going to get better for us.

because they're arming like crazy and they're sharpening their financial weaponry and deterrence by example example in Ukraine.

So at some point, you might as well move now than wait, because the longer that we wait, the tougher the nut will be to crack.

Yeah.

Victor, let's take a moment for some messages and then come back and we'll talk a little bit more about China, but let's listen to these messages first.

Welcome back.

Victor, I have one question on that.

What is your feeling?

We haven't seen China's military really act in the last, I don't know, 30 years, it seems like.

And its capability for itself, they must not really know the world as we look on them and their military.

It seems to me hard to gauge what they really would be capable of if they decided to make Taiwan a goal in some sense.

But what is your sense of that?

You know, when you look at the Chinese military, what are they capable of?

Well, the last time we really saw them in a major war, I think was, what, 1979, when they supposedly invaded to get rid of the Khmer Rouge that was being supported by Vietnam, and they invaded Vietnam, and they didn't do very well.

I mean, they had a lot of trouble.

Everybody talks about the million people who crossed the Yalu River.

surprise attack that forced the largest longest retreat in U.S.

military history, the Choison Reservoir retreat.

But what they don't talk about was within six months under Matthew Ridgway's resurgence, the U.S.

destroyed the Chinese expeditionary army, probably killed or inflicted a million casualties, dead, wounded, and missing on the Chinese.

And that was pretty much a static war after that.

In other words, and I think we probably could have gone back to the Yaolu if the American people had have supported it and they felt in a cost-benefit analysis that was worth it.

But my point is that China, like Russia, is not an expeditionary force.

They don't do well abroad, but they do do do well if you're stupid enough to go into their own territory.

And that's why I was concerned about these incursions into Ukraine.

But I would be surprised.

I mean, everybody thinks they're going to take Taiwan very easily.

I think it would be very, very bloody.

But the way the Chinese look at it is they think, you know, nobody said anything about Tibet.

Yeah, nobody said anything about Hong Kong.

We violated the agreement, swallowed it.

So we'll just take Taiwan.

And people said, oh, too bad.

Popo.

Sad that Taiwan's gone.

But, you know, know, it's part of China.

That's what they think.

I'm not sure that's going to be the reaction of the world, though.

Yeah.

How tightly do you think the Taiwanese or how deep do you think the Taiwanese would dig in to stay away from China?

So far, they haven't armed or spent the necessary amounts of money or acquired the material to really deter China.

I think the Ukraine has really shocked them.

So from what I understand in the media and talking to people, they are in a sort of a breakneck race to create enough weaponry and training to tell the Chinese, you don't know, have any idea what's going to happen when you set foot in our country.

Now, whether the Taiwanese would fight like the Ukrainians, I don't know.

Nobody knows.

And whether they'd fight like the South Koreans if they came into, you know.

Yeah.

And it's hard to, it's hard to.

We're getting into an age-old calculus where Western affluent leisured societies have enormous advantages in the long term with their superior technology, their superior logistics, their superior economies, their superior organizations versus their short-term liabilities that their affluence and leisure can breed indifference and contextualization and relativism.

And so it's very hard.

to know what they would do.

And we saw that with the United States.

After a while, I think people got the message that the United States at this particular point in our history will not do well going to Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya or anything because you can't unite the people and they feel why die over in the Arab of Libya or why die in Syria.

And so I'm not arguing whether that's a correct or incorrect thought.

I'm just saying that in an affluent postmodern Western society, they have advantages and they have disadvantages.

And I don't know how they'll pencil out vis-a-vis each other.

Well, maybe in the case of Taiwan.

Yeah, maybe maybe we'll find out in a few months or less, who knows?

But I would like to turn to Finland and Sweden that have bid to join NATO.

And it seems to me that this is really bad timing to decide to join NATO on the part of these two neutrals.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well, they would beg to differ, Sami.

They would think it's ideal timing.

Look, Sweden was neutral.

It's always been neutral.

It supplied iron ore and paid the freight until 1945 to Hitler.

And Finland, you know, it joined Hitler.

It didn't go into Russian soil, but it joined them in the siege of Leningrad to the extent that it was involved, they could stay on Finnish soil.

But when the Soviet Union invaded Finland, they had a lot of problems in fall of 1939, and they lost a half a million casualties.

And the Swedes have some of the best military technology in the world.

I'm not bragging because I'm Swedish Linux.

I mean, they're not quite

quite Vikings, obviously, but they're both tough peoples and they've relied so far on bridging the gap between East and West.

They know Russia's their historical enemy.

They don't want the West to draw them into confrontation.

They don't want to join NATO and be, you know, pledge to fight Russia for the sake of, you know, Moldavia or Romania or something.

Yes, but that's my bad timing statement.

They want to join NATO right at the time.

It could drag them into a war.

But you talk to those people on the front lines, that long border, and they think, you know what?

If he went into Ukraine, it would have been much easier to go into the Baltic states because they're close.

you know, they don't have the money, they don't have the resources, they're not historically as part of the Soviet or the Russian Empire as Ukraine.

But nonetheless, and they see these missiles landing pretty close to the Polish border.

And they said, we're looking around and we see what NATO is doing to help Ukraine.

And so they make two conclusions.

One,

Russia under Putin is capable of anything, anytime, anywhere, to anyone.

And two, flabby

sort of kind of maybe NATO is actually

kind of sailors of Lepanto.

My God.

they're provoking the the russians are sending weapons they're saying screw you russia we're going to send everything we can.

And they're talking about beefing up NATO budgets and everything.

So Sweden and Finland say NATO is getting back to where they should.

And Russia is very dangerous and it's not doing too well.

So let us join the winners and deter Russia from our shores.

They have a lot of other worries whether Russia will cut off natural gas or energy,

all that.

Yeah.

But for now, they feel that it's...

In a bad situation, it's the least bad of the two choices of staying neutral or joining NATO.

All right.

Let's go ahead and take a few minutes for some messages, and then we'll be right back.

And I have a few questions or a question at least on Cuba and policy toward Cuba.

We'll be right back.

Victor, the Biden administration is lifting sanctions with Cuba, money transfers and travel.

And my question is this bad timing.

In Cuba, they're starting to get a little bit angry with their government.

There was a last year uprising on July 11th where people were in the streets and there's still 750 people arrested.

From that, they've put restrictions on civil rights.

Insulting a government official can get you five years prison now in Cuba, or working for an unauthorized international organization can put you behind bars in Cuba.

So they are amping up their lack of civil liberties and the people are

ready for a new government or as the article I was reading said that communism is as dead as Castro, I believe, is what they said in Cuba right now.

So why would you loosen sanctions and give their government

some wiggle room, I guess, by reducing the sanctions?

What are your thoughts?

I think it's a little bit more complicated than that, because one day after we lifted sanctions, what did we do?

We went to Maduro and asked him to pump oil in Venezuela.

And so I think a lot of people felt on the left, well, if you're going to go to a communist government and beg them to help you out, then why are you punishing this other communist country?

Or if you're on my side of the conservative side, you're thinking this is part of a larger strategic pivot where we don't have any innate arguments with socialist communist countries because we in the hard left, the AOC, the Elizabeth Warren, the Obama squad, whatever they want to call them, we are sympathetic.

We're more sympathetic to what Castro did in Cuba than his opponents.

We're more sympathetic.

to

the Chavez-Maduro revolution than what came before it or might come after it.

So, ideologically, they feel that they kind of like Cuba.

All of our movie stars go there, they love it.

As long as they don't have to stay too long, they don't have to, you know, as long as Malibu or Bel Air doesn't, or Rentwood doesn't turn into Havana, they're happy with it for somebody else to suffer.

But I think that's it.

And it's part of a larger appeasement.

A lot of it has to do

with energy.

And that came up with the Interior Secretary the other day when she was asked why are we canceling u.s oil and gas leases offshore and in alaska and then we're begging a communist government in venezuela that has terrorist connections and drug connections and has been an enemy of the united states to pump more oil and the question was focused very germanely by a number of senators and that was do you think since apparently you're cutting back on oil leases because of your worry over the environment do you think that the global village's environment will be more endangered by increased oil development in Venezuela or in the United States?

I.e., who can remove or extract fossil fuels more cleanly and responsibly, the United States government or the government of Venezuela?

And of course, they have no answer to that.

No, there is an answer to that.

We can do it.

Yeah.

Well, I mean,

we can do it, but not in my backyard.

So I want my, you know, I want my hybrid to have its gas.

I just don't want to know where it comes from.

I don't want it to come from the Elk Hills Reservoir.

I don't want to come from an offshore Santa Barbara platform.

I'd rather have the Venezuelans screw it up if that's what they do.

And that's the attitude of the postmodern bi-coastal left-wing mind.

And so that is connected to Cuba.

You know, it would be kind of strange if somebody, you know, the left-wing mind would say, well, you're dealing with Venezuela.

How about poor Castro?

Castroites?

Why don't you lift sanctions?

It was unilateral too.

It was, what do we get in return for it?

Did Biden say, we will lift these sanctions if you give greater freedom of expression?

No, they were cracking down and they got rewarded for it.

So, you know, he's down to 37 to 39 percent approval.

And it's because everything

he touches is the anti-Midas touch.

It turns to dross, whether it's foreign policy, Afghanistan, laxity initially on Ukraine, followed by Bragadashiya's talk versus energy policy, crime, the border, inflation, et cetera.

This is just part of that larger mosaic of disaster.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, Victor, I think we're going to call it a day here.

Thanks so much for all of your wisdom on the international diplomatic scene.

It seems that our two big players, Russia and China, are slowly on the move, or maybe not so slowly in the case of Russia, but in ways that might end up being disastrous.

I hope that that is a wrong prediction myself, but thank you for all of your sober discussion of their military capabilities and aims.

So we appreciate that.

I know your listeners do.

Yeah, and I appreciate everybody for listening.

I always do.

And I hope.

I hope we can get through this Ukrainian crisis without a quote-unquote escalation to something Orwellian, like Dr.

Strange Levia, maybe.

That's my worry.

All right.

Thank you very much, Victor.

This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis-Hanson, and we're signing off.