The aspen institute. I am the executive director of the Strategy Group and formed and its a great pleasure to see this crowd. You will all be on cspan so be on your best behavior. We are here to launch an important book on the future of the u. S. China relationship called the struggle for power u. S. China relations in the 21st century. I want to say a word about that but first, recognize distinguished guests. I want to recognize the cochair of the organization, former secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice whos here with us. And youl you will be hearing fm secretary rice and about half an hour she will be one of our conversationalists. The harvard emeritus professor could not be here with us but is very much part of this effort. I want to pay tribute to the former secretary of defense and a very good friend of mine, secretary bill and mrs. Janet calling. Welcome. [applause] i also want to pay tribute to one of the people who form the embodies bipartisanship was involved in every effort to bring people together across partisan lines and that is the former National Security advisor steve hadley who is here today as well. Our director is rahm emanuel, my close friend. We worked together. You will be seeing on stage as one of the people doing the interview us. Our subject is china. I think all of us agree that our relationship with china is going to be the greatest challenge we face as a country in the next several decades and its an important moment in that relationship we establish full diplomatic relations in 1979, jimmy carter. For most of the time in both republican and democratic administrations we all felt in both administrations we were seeking cooperation with china. That was the basic strategy. In recent years there is no question both countries have swung from cooperation to the strategy of competition and that competition gets to the heart of our Vital National interests overseas. We are competing for Strategic Military predominance in the indo pacific with the United States has been a power with thh japan, south korea and australia for 75 years but the chinese are making a concerted effort to cut into that military power. We are competing to see who will dominate the next generation of military technology and two years ago the Strategy Group spent three days thinking about that subject. Aei is going to be militarized. Quantum computing is going to be militarized. Biotechnology is going to be militarized. Which country will get their first in the new generation of the three technology is going to define power in the world in the next several decades. We also certainly computing is the numberone an number one ano economic power in the world. You have seen president of trump with this trade negotiations and buffets deal that was Just Announced last week that certainly computing for economic primacy and for the respect of the United States are very much support thmuchin support of prep has tried to do to get to the heart of the difficulties. Will the chinese agree to live on a level Playing Field in terms of trade with the United States, japan, europe and the European Union. Finally, if you think about these battles ive just talked about, strategic predominance in the indo pacific, trade, there is a battle and i certainly would want to talk to the secretary about this, the battle of ideas. Brimming with selfconfidence about the authoritarian model of how the country has organized. He thinks it should be exported and others should adopt it and Vladimir Putin thinks the same way and americans disagree, europeans disagree, japanese disagree. Its not a cataclysmic battle armies if th its the battle of systems and ideas about how we thinthink society should be organized. The one cautionary note we spent three days republicans into democrats ananddemocrats and ins together debating this issue we produced this volume that all of you i hope have a copy of it if you dont, there are Copies Available in the back which is being launched today. We produce it on a nonpartisan basis, the ethos of our organization is we are americans and believe in our Country First and dont believe partisanship should interfere in the analysis of the strategic challenges like this. The cautionary note would be are we overestimating chinas strength and underestimating chinas weaknesses. Are we even underestimating the ability of the United States and its allies in europe and asia to cope with this threat peacefully and successfully. We have someone here and Condoleezza Rice who spent the first part of her career thinking about an empire that crashed, the soviet union, and there were times when we were working together, steve, myself, and in the 70s and 80s we overestimated the strength of the soviet union. Do we have the selfconfidence to think the United States and its allies have a way forward for success in the 21st century. I commend this to you we have republicans, democrats and independents and we will hear from four people. My colleague rahm emanuel will interview mike, an adviser to President Trump. Shes really smart and hes at the Hudson Institute and was a pleasure to spend three days with him earlier this year. The second interview i will interview my close friend and former boss, Condoleezza Rice, about these issues. The third interview im going to interview Kathleen Hicks who is one of i think the smartest young strategists we have in the United States on the positioning of the American Military in on the ability to respond to these threats. She sets the sis and forth, interviewing a force of nature ambassador for campbell for president obama with the assistant secretary of state for east asia, architect of the strategic pivot that the United States must make to the indo pacific compelling thinker on these issues and so we had four conversations and we thank you for being here without further ado, emmanuelle and mike. [applause] thank you all for being here today. I have to say when we were in aspen last august, i thought we had one of the best discussions we had at a Strategy Group for r the substance, diversity of opinion and being respectful of each others differences of opinion. You will see we have a slightly different formats today than we would otherwise what they bunch of big panels. We wanted to highlight a couple of our authors indicated each of them in opportunity for what they are trying to say. And mike of course needs no introduction. [laughter] yes i do. But im going to do it anyway. Fellow at Hudson Institute, senior Government Official in the Reagan Administration and elsewhere. Currently i would say you are always modest but you are the number one outside adviser to the administration on china, back channeling if i could say you took six trips preparing for the trade deal. So, [inaudible] [laughter] we will stipulate to that. But so, i wanted to start broad and then later go in today. Im not asking you to speak for the administration, but you know a lot about what they think. What is the Trump Administrations objective, what is the goal is to level the Playing Field and try to get along and muddle through, is it pushing back like we did on the soviet union, is the goal that you get a different system, what are we driving for . The first point to make sorry. So i can edit my remarks. The first point to make about the Trump Administration is the multiple voices within it, who from the point of view of the standards established by the previous administrations seamlessly link the debates often on the front pages of the wall street journal you will read Something Like yesterday in the Oval Office Someone said this, someone said that. So this is an administration thats very difficult for outsiders to understand who speaks for the administration. So, in my view it is the president alone and one thing we are learning from the ukrainian impeachment discussion seems to me is the permanent bureaucracy up to and including the cabinet secretaries are not necessarily involved in the president s concerned with. So, my observation i was not a Trump Campaign supporter. My candidate lost but i was still in adviser to the Transition Team and what i observed from the beginning as a president elect at the time was deeply personally interested in china. This surprised me. I thought during the campaign when he would frequently say phrases like china is raping our country, but thi that this is jt campaign rhetoric. It works in some counties and that is the end of it. But in fact the president has acted as i say in my chapter. People here in the room and others, we should all be thrilled the president himself is taking china very seriously. Many president s havent come in at the hazard to that is that everybody around him then wants to influence his view and find out what his view actually is. And over three years i have come to understand about the president s approach to china, he thinks its himself as a dealmaker, and he wants to make a deal within some sense another company that happens to be run by another ceo. So his focus from the beginning during the transition. He has unfortunately made a phone call and the chinese began to punish the administration for its phone call and would not have a summit anywhere until the president clarified his views but the way he did that set the tone for the next three years and he said that a request in a phone call, im going to abide by our policy that removed the obstacle for the summit. Im not quite sure where you want to go on this. You know the president as much as anyone on this coming and its possible there are multiple goals o but is it wantg as a total outside observer i live in california and i sometimes hear from the administrations pronouncement we are looking for china to release theyll and sometimes i hear they are just trying to create a fair Playing Field so that companies can compete and that we can have our own influence and find a way to get along. Ive been advocating the president should give a speech on china himself an answer these kind of questions are raising. The Vice President has given talks in great detail. But they have created questions about what exactly is he saying. But soon thereafter People Associated with the administration, steve gannon in particular and distinct from china which i am not a member of committee began talking about decoupling is exactly our goal. And in fact it is happening inadvertently. Said, if the president were to give a speech on china himself, i think you and others in the room would be well advised to suggest what should be clear to. There is considerable ambiguity. My own view of this invites me into the oval office to witness some of these debates and there they are all they all are. He uses me as kind of a foil and doesnt take off befor equal bes when the room wants me to be there and who doesnt so the debate continues, and i think that the president i will not ask you the obvious. If he did this as a businessman, when i joined the Transition Team i quickly placed my order with amazon. Com for all 14 bugs the president has coauthored several of them have the sanctions were he lays out some of his thinking. Next time a president comes in and youre working for him or her i recommend you read all of them before you go to the next meeting. And they are pretty tough. He lays out a good china that he would like to see and then he implies something Steve Schwarzman also said several times on television that is whole course of u. S. China relations to a large degree is up to china and the debate that they are having. They have steve, peter navarro, Stephen Steve mnuchin. Let me go next this site becausbecause they represent ab0 year marathon that is now required reading in all of washington and is an excellent book. When you go to china i see the hardliners winning and its harder and harder for the reformers who want domestic reform and purposes much less anything for political reform to get the ear of the president and the worry is that the hardliners on both sides are winning and that is driving us apart. Is that what you see tax yes. Its also what Henry Kissinger warned about the very last chapter of his book on china that the bike there and he forecast the unfathomable war on the scale of world war i to the u. S. And china is on both sides people into power. And i got the title 100 year marathon in fact from one of these. I know pretty well and doctor kissinger spent a whole page on the particular hardliner. On the first visit we had a Cocktail Party i took him over to the pentagon but he said this will never happen. It is a fringe element to reflect a stream of thinking. It will never happen, but it did. I think that by the way they have known a great deal about the hardliners all along. But the general estimate has been that they were not very powerful. And in many ways, all of us felt that some of the Foreign Ministry in beijing telling us these hardliners have no power. Nobody listens to them. Sort of the ones you rollout. But you raised kissinger as a reform that happened in november. Kissinger famously said we are in the foothills of a cold war with china. That doesnt mean we need to go all the way. Where do you see the administration going . Do you see them pushing towards a cold war or wanting to come back from that . Select many ways through you think through that what through go through war with military. There are little micro indicators like the South China Sea and what degree do the navigation controls observed innocent passage rules where they dont turn on their weapons radar, they dont go in circles, there is five criteria for how you can make passage without challenging the countrys actual territorial claims. It seems to me as i understand from the navy spokesman, we have not aggressively challenged the chinese with these kind of maneuvers. I dont know if you have seen us this reference the study on exactly how we approach the issue of the Navigation Missions that could change if the trade deal goes sour and its very voluntary on both sides. I could envision a cold war breaking oucold warbreaking outr lack of a better word and when you look back at the details of how the first cold war started, its not as if the two sides in 46 set up a bit of a cold war. Its a series of blunders. At some point you had the article and we did launch it and you think we are not quite there yet. With the phrase about the foothills i think that it can be avoided but it takes two sides and the intricacies of the trade agreement could have laid out the foundation for the cold war. I do want to get to the trade agreement since you were so instrumental in getting it through it is a real accomplishment. Let me give their because you mentioned freedom of navigation in the South China Seas and in the u. S. At least in the news cycles we have been so fixated on the trade and i just want to get your views on the other parts of the relationship, whats happening diplomatically and on the security sphere you spending a lot of time in your paper which was excellent talking about our allies in asia and what each of them are doing on the military side. I thought that this paper was excellent and made some good points about what they are already doing and what we should be doing more with our allies. When you see the administrations defense policy, you see some of that but also in my view inconsistently you see them asking japan to more than triple its payments and south korea the same thing, triple the contribution. How do you view that and is a part of a Cohesive Strategy or is that multiple people not working together . This is where the president has strong views in his books in 20 years earlier. So, the notion that we are being ripped off by our allies is a very poor donald trump view. If you want to associate yourself with him, we are going to see him in the oval office. You are there all the time. I never there. If i say we need to work with our allies and we share values and can you say they are ripping us off again, we need to ask them to go 500 more. Who is the president going to listen to and im afraid this calculation goes on around of secretary colin other secretaries to try to get the president to go along with them. We had a lot of firings. People who were close advisers that have been fired now in the first three years including cabinet secretaries and there is a pattern. If you say things or do things that are kind of a yesterday and the bass doesnt agre base doese president doesnt agree, it is a good way to get fired. If you tell us about your valianthe press about yourvaliar allies that is a good way to get fired, too. I feel the crucial part of the strategy is to bring our allies along, to listen, to get their ideas. It is absolutely crucial so in my chapter for the book, i tried to describe what the administration is doing with each country in asia but others opposed my point of view and think im kind of a deep state infiltrator to think this way its not just the treaties that our partners and