To submityours at the q a button located at the top of your screen. Todays briefing is from general hr mcmaster, senior fellow at the hoover institution. It was the 26th National Security advisor to the president of the United States and served as Commission Officer in the army for 34 years before retiring as Lieutenant General in june 2018. His latest book is entitled battle grounds. And it will be released in september and its available for preorder now on amazon. Thanks for your serviceand thanks for joining us today. Its great closure to be with you and to be with everyone. I know youve been watching these briefings regularly and the coverage of the aspects involved with covid19. A lot of our discussions have been focused on the pandemic and our economy and today with you i like to discuss the rest of the world, particularly the geopolitical threats that have been accelerated by covid19. Im going to ask you to take a tour around the world which should be a lot of fun. Lets start with china. What you post coronavirus china usrelations look like . I think it looks like an intensification of the competition that was ongoing the Chinese Communist party prior to the covid19 places and this competition is based on what is motivating the Chinese Communist party which is primarily and first and foremost the parties desire and effort to extend and tighten its grip on power as well as to realize its dream of nationalrejuvenation. That competition i think is intensifying for five different ways and first i think we can all see just in recent days intensification of the Information Warfare that the Chinese Communist party iswaging against the United States. With a narrative that the United States and other free and open democratic systems are staleand china has succeeded. This is in part to mask their responsibility for how rapidly and how widely this pandemic spreads. And that Information Campaign by the Chinese Council will intensify their also becoming more aggressive militarily. In the South China Sea in the last couple of days they formed these municipalities. This big landgrab in the South China Sea intimidating the malay, Malaysian Navy and so forth and a lot of violations of taiwanese airspace and what youre seeing i think is a result of this kind of behavior is a backlash internationally and i think thats a positive trend. Germany tried to charge china hundred 30 billion. You see a backlash against china and two thirds of americans in a recent poll have a negative view of the Chinese Communist party. So i guess the question and what we ought to track now is out of this competition play out and what are the intervals associatedwith this . China has acted in an egregious manner. Of course, harassing the doctors to try to warn about this and then in recent days, resting people who advocate for the Chinese People having a say in how their government. In hong kong and on the mainland. So i think what youre seeing is really the Chinese Communist party racing to put in place this orwellian state. What effect will that happen across the chinese population that is becoming more critical of the party and particularly the way that handled this crisis . Or is this going to happen against the backdrop of a swollen economy, china not being able to make good on the promises made to its own people under this program of National Rejuvenation and the economy contracts, i think there would be a tendency to double down on practices that actually exacerbate the weakness and vulnerabilities in that economy, especially doubling down on support for state owned enterprises and so forth so what does this mean . I think we are in a decoupling competition and the United States and other free and open society ought to do everything we can to protect ourselves against the efforts of the communist party to subvert our freemarket Economic Systems and our democratic form of governance and do everything we can to strengthen our systems to strengthen the Global Economy that is not directly connected and were dependent on the Chinese Communist party. So i think the assessment of supply chain vulnerabilities will continue and i think youre going to continue seeing this decoupling out of china because the Chinese Government is not a trusted partner, not a good place to do business and we can no longer have some of our critical supply chains vulnerable to disruption by the Chinese Communist party. So the coronavirus is going to accelerate the decoupling owing on between the west and china but john asked are there any other immediate implications of coronavirus for how the us or western policy will change. I think its going to bring free and open societies together and i think it will be hard to greet internationalcooperation with the chinese of the communist party. I hope what will happen is countries will protect themselves better against chinas efforts to gain a predominant position in the emerging Global Economy by capturing Critical Infrastructure including 5g infrastructure and i hope that theres going to be an effort among countries that have been vulnerable to chinese influence and the socalled debt trap associated with the one belt Road Initiative to protect themselves against china attempting to create a servile relationship with these countries. So ive already seen a high degree of International Cooperation and i know thats not a common narrative but there is a lot of cooperation going on to the european union, uk, japan and the us on confronting the policies and i think its going to grow as this crisis abates. From china to north korea, whats going on there and how has the coronavirus impacted the relations ofnorth korea with the rest of the world . As we cope with this crisis we are taking our eye off some of these other key issues and the coronavirus has in many ways accelerated the trend of isolating the north korean regime under the campaign of National Pressure and in many ways covid19 has been the best enforcement mechanism for Un Security Council sanctions against north korea for its nuclear and Missile Programs. And i think of course, the last couple of days rumors of kim jong uns illness or demise that seem to have been exaggerated butyou never know whats happening within the north korean region. Its clear the kim regime is under increasing pressure. They report no cases in north korea which is not believable. And youve seen some signs of the crisis and the affected having in pyongyang, reported british spying within pyongyang and the dynamic is this kind of new elite within pyongyang. Those who have been able to improve their quality of life , the quality of life under the kim regime and have more to lose if north Korea Remains in the status of a pariah state, isolated economically and diplomatically from the world. So i think we ought to realize north korea hasnt slowed down in its efforts to try to coerce us into making concessions to the sanctions regime. They fired more missiles to date and they havent any Previous Year and so far the Trump Administration thankfully and correctly has resisted what would have been a tendency to repeat the past pattern of failed efforts. To get north korea to denuclearize to responding to provocation with a relaxation of sanctions and payoffs just holding for negotiations from the beginning, we cant afford to do that again and you know what follows are the long drawn out negotiations that resulted in a weak agreement and a weak agreement that locks in the status quo as the new normal and we repeat the same pattern with the next publication so i think maximum pressure, theres a thesis to it and the thesis is that maximum pressure can lead kim jong un to conclude he is safer without Nuclear Weapons than he is with them and that policy is still intact and i think its in large measure been reinforced by the covid19 experience in north korea. Russia is another significant area of the world this was supposed to be a big year for president putin and now we have the coronavirus but what will this mean for the future of russia itself and relations between russia and the west . This could be the biggest challenge to putinsrule and it was supposed to be a big year. Where having this celebration of victory , also a celebration of putins ability to deliver and rewrite the constitution and extend his rule until 2030 36 and instead what they had at the beginning is a stagnation in the western economy and then an economic crisis brought about by a severe drop in oil prices. This is even before covid19 it russia and now of course covid19 has exacerbated it. The kremlin will be seen as complicit in the oil prices initially at least with the price war with saudi arabia and then of course when the bottom falls out, its a severe economic crisis even before covid19 begins to expand with russia. I think putin will come under additional pressure if covid19 expands to the areas where the Health System is just not going to be robust enough to respond to it. So i think covid19 didnt create these trends but i think its exacerbating these trends. I look back a few months ago when putin tried to control you could run in the moscow municipal elections. There were huge protests against putin and mass arrests. And killing protesters so i think that the pressure on putin certainly is going to mount and i think something we will be watching is who will emerge as a potential new leader of russia, not that putin will lose power but i think power is certainly going to shift away from him to others. And hopefully among others who view russias future more as the line with europe and the west and with the Chinese Communist party. Or a student of authoritarian governments and we talkedabout china and north korea and russia. Does the pandemic strengthen the hand of authoritarian leaders . I think its weakening their hand and this is something we should try to capitalize on. Look at how china handled this initially. Suppress the human transition , transition aspect of this disease, the most dangerous aspect of the disease. Lied to their own people. Lied to the international audiences. Subverted the world health organization. Stopped internal travel before they thought of it and now theres this hamhanded approach to promote china as the solution to the problem. In china let alone the rest of the world, there is a real backlash against china for this. Lets go to another authoritarian regime, north korea which apparently has no cases which is impossible. And then it ran. I ran because of its servile relationship with its patrons in china, didnt shut off travel and they got infected in a big way and then the government denied it. Didnt put into place any measures that were necessary and of course also in iran, there had been protests against the government and the corrupt order that runs it ran. And i think covid19 will make it worse for iran and as well as help ran how its perceived elsewhere from iraq to lebanon to syria to yemen. So i really think its going to redouble this benefit of dictators. In exchange for oil, venezuelan oil, provided belowmarket prices which in russia and china would sell at a profit. Thats not working out now. Russia has had to bail out and that doesnt play well back in russia and that is exacerbating the sentiment against putin. I think guaido has an opportunity in venezuela as a leader who will actually help them get them out of this crisis and really the key factor to watch is venezuelans. Especially among the former tribe. Will they begin to attribute their grievances to the maduro regime . Site think its that for dictators, i really do. I think what were seeing is the benefit of a we open a democratic system as to satisfy americans, governors initial response to this and so forth. We have selfcorrecting mechanism. We have a say in how we are governed. And in the societies that dont, really, as the peoples voices are stress, the only opportunity to change made turn out to be a revolution of some kind. Im optimistic about democracy, free societies, as long as we Pay Attention to ourselves and to every can to strengthen our democratic processes and institutions. Before we go to the middle east, john asked an interesting question that has to do with this Information Warfare activities going on [inaudible] in terms of russia and iran. His question is basically should the u. S. Be doing more directly to offset this disInformation Campaigns going around the sources and growth of the pandemic . I think we should. I think the best response would be from our investigative journalists and from our open press. Russia and iran, they see are free and open society as weakness. They see freedom of speech, freedom of press as weakness. Thats our strength strengthenk without to be very active at exposing really, our media should be, at exposing their nefarious activity and dishonesty and disinformation efforts. But also i think government does have roles to a certain extent transfigure how to bypass these firewalls. I think we should try to bypass their firewall and reach the people with information that can allow them to maybe for the own judgments based on the truth rather than disinformation and propaganda. I think its abhorrent by the way that use social Media Companies dont take down, dont take down blatant statesponsored propaganda and disinformation in the United States when i dont even get to have access into the chinese market. I think theres a lot more we can do to defend ourselves, but after the question directly, heck yes, i think we should do more to expose this disinformation propaganda. Lets go to the middle east, the big lh, iraq, iran, syria. How has the virus and the pandemic affected that region . Just we think he cant get worse in the middle east, it does get worse in the middle east. It is a humanitarian crisis of colossal scale that we are witnessing across the region. We already talked little bit about iran but what iran is going through a crisis that is of the regimes own making. It is a prized state because it acts like a terrorist organization rather than a nationstate. Its sort of, its reaping what it deserves at this stage in connection with a corrupt Economic System where those associated with the Supreme Leader at the top of the families and top of these criminalized networks as well as the Islamic Revolutionary guard corps with members being the Beneficial Owners of a lot of what the iranian companies. They are suffering from insulation and alcove with. Their external adventures in the region, the support for houthi insurgents in yemen, their support for assad with a proxy army in syria, support for hezbollah, the militias in iraq, the terrorist organizations that pose a threat to israel. This is really going to have to draw the question, as it was before covid and before the utter collapse of oil prices, among the iraqi iranian people. Where is the party of this people . Is this government, the government they want in the future . I think iran is in a real crisis. Iran at three choices when the United States holdout the jcpoa and reimpose sanctions. Those three choices work first, they could become like the grinch at christmas. Their hearts could become bigger, come to the negotiating table, stop the proxy wars. That was going to happen because it wouldnt be consistent with the revolutionary ideology that drives the region. The second thing is trying to wait out donald trump. Thats not working. They are in an economic crisis. The third to escalate and thats what theyre doing at a think covid has hidden from our attention anyway our real escalation by the iranians and iraq and in the gulf. That escalation has resulted in about 20 attacks on u. S. Forces since the january 3 killing of Qasem Soleimani and with a strike in iraq. So what you are seeing is u. S. Forces consolidating and your sink also reprisals against iranian militias inside of iraq picky also saw just yesterday the president tweeting that we will sink iraqi Islamic Revolution guards corps navy vessels that harass our ships in the gulf. I think iran is going to continue to push it and pushed beyond i think theres a chance for an escalation that will result in a in a reprisale directly against iran or iranian assets. I think the Trump Administration demonstrated with the Qasem Soleimani strike them when their proxies attack us we know what their redress is. I think its a dangerous time in the gulf as a result but what youre seeing in iraq is a country in crisis is a backlash against iran as well. You have had the political cris associated with the iraqi peoples dissatisfaction with their government, the next permission was supposed to form the government, he is blocked by the iranians. Now you have a good leader, certain not iranian public. Hes an effective