On this episode, we begin by exploring the future of the Wagner group given the death of its leader, Prighozin. We also look at the slow progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and whether the conflict is headed towards a stalemate. Then, have we reached peak China? We discuss the causes and implications of China’s weakening economy. Finally, we explain what is so concerning about Republican Presidential hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy’s foreign policy proposals.
Topics Discussed in this Episode
Articles and Resources Mentioned in Episode
Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Breakthrough?
Peak China is Real: China’s Economy in Crisis
GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policy
Follow Us
On this episode, we begin by exploring the future of the Wagner group given the death of its leader, Prighozin. We also look at the slow progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and whether the conflict is headed towards a stalemate. Then, have we reached peak China? We discuss the causes and implications of China’s weakening economy. Finally, we explain what is so concerning about Republican Presidential hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy’s foreign policy proposals.
Topics Discussed in this Episode
Articles and Resources Mentioned in Episode
Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Breakthrough?
Peak China is Real: China’s Economy in Crisis
GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policy
Follow Us
Anita Kellogg: [00:00:00] Welcome to Kellogg's Global Politics, a podcast on current events in US foreign Policy and international affairs. My name is Dr. Anita Kellogg, an international relations scholar specializing in the relationship between economics and national security. I'm here with my co-host, Ryan Kellogg, an expert in energy investment and policy.
Ryan Kellogg: Thanks and glad to be back. This is episode 38 and we're recording this on September 3rd, 2023. [00:00:30]
Anita Kellogg: On this episode, we begin by exploring the future of the Wagner Group, given the death of its leader Prighozin, we also look at the slow progress of Ukraine's Counteroffensive and whether the conflict is headed towards a stalemate.
Then have we reached Peak China? We discuss the causes and implications of China's weakening economy. Finally, we explain what is so concerning about Republican Presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswarmy foreign policy proposals. First, who is gonna win in this year's Fantasy Football League? [00:01:00]
Ryan Kellogg: Well, hopefully not you.
That's all I, but those that, that don't know. So Anita is, we've done this league for as we're heading into the 12th year, or actually I, no, the 13th year and out of the 12th, she's won half of them, which is way disproportionate. Yes, it is a small eight man league. But you're viewed as the, the Bill Belichick of the league because of your winning ways.
Anita Kellogg: Because I used to have a much [00:01:30] higher percentage of wins and out of the last four years, I've lost three
Ryan Kellogg: of them. No, and the last four years you won two of them. So you're at 50%. You sure about that? Yes. I'm, I'm positive. I just looked at it. Okay. Well, so you still, you, I know you want to be the underdog or you wanna slip into that?
Yeah. And, uh, hey, don't, don't put so much hate on me, but sorry, I am sorry. You're still, [00:02:00] you, you're too successful. You basically, you're the Patriots, you're the Yankees. But
Anita Kellogg: I'm like the Patriots today because like,
Ryan Kellogg: yeah, it doesn't matter. People still hate the, the Patriots. People still don't like Bill Belichick.
Even if the Patriot's under threat anymore, I wanna
Anita Kellogg: be the Patriots under Tom Brady instead. I feel like, I feel like my strategies are not working out lately.
Ryan Kellogg: Well, I will say that you've never gone more than two years, right? Without [00:02:30] winning the championship. Right? So I guess the pressure's on for you.
Anita Kellogg: It's. It is. And so, so I guess we can go on to international relations, world politics. So, yeah, so the, our first talking point is the Russia Ukrainian conflict. And to begin with, on August 23rd, we learned that Yeni Prighozin was killed in a plane crash, along with [00:03:00] other top lieutenants of the Wagner group.
It's pretty clear that this was a Putin responsibility. It's, of course, you'll never tie it directly to him artificially. Right. But everybody knows it is. It's not that a bomb went off and that's what caused the crash. So, on one hand, I think it was, it was a surprise just because people had kind of settled into the surprise that Prigozhin not being killed.
Right? And so people had kind of had been surprised about that. And then it kind of settled into, well, maybe this [00:03:30] is, you know, he is that powerful and Putin doesn't wanna get rid of him. And then it conforms to the original expectation that, of course, Putin's gonna get rid of anyone who challenges his leadership that directly.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, I think it was that. It was that delay and the seemingly Putin laid out this hard line basically labeling him and the group as the enemy of the state, that they were gonna be banished under the deal to Belarus. But then within weeks we talked about it, he [00:04:00] was back at the Russia- Africa summit meeting with high level African leaders in St. Petersburg. And then right before, so he is actually coming back from a trip in Africa where obviously Wagner has, has massive operations. And that was his first, I think, official appearance on, on Telegram, on social media channels since the event. And it was there then after coming back, flying into St.
Petersburg, but then going from St. Petersburg to Moscow that the plane was, was targeted [00:04:30] and, yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. About the delay. I mean, I was hearing or reading something this week that talked about that's how Putin usually operates. And that was kind of what people hadn't gotten being surprised that Prigozhin was still alive, is that Putin never reacts right away.
That he gives them a couple months, maybe even, makes it seem like it's all good, we're good, we're partners now and then, you know, then you're gone.
Ryan Kellogg: Is that just like a form psychological torture where you're, you're [00:05:00] terrified for a long enough period of time before and think you're safe and then poop?
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe it takes a little bit to have totally covert operations. 'cause you wanna let your guard down. Yeah,
Ryan Kellogg: I will say, 'cause I think the initial speculation was it was just completely out, out in the open, the Russian military using a surface to air missile to shoot down the jet.
But then us intelligences kind of landed on that. It was an internal explosion within the [00:05:30] plane, which would take more time to, to set up kind of a more covert operation like that. Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, as former K G B Putin would be good at covert operations.
Ryan Kellogg: So that's,that's definitely more effective than the poisoning, which is about a 50 50.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, exactly. If that. So the big question is not only did Prigozhin be killed in that crash, but so were several other top lieutenants of the Wagner group, and so the big questions that remain is what is gonna happen [00:06:00] to Wagner? Is it going to continue to exist as some sort of separate entity? There are still some lieutenants there.
Will anyone take control or is Russia going to subsume it and just take over those operations? Speculation by different people, I think is the argument that was more convincing to me that Wagner continues to operate in some form, but it's very fractured and no individual will have the kind of power that Prigozhin has.
Of course, an [00:06:30] op-ed by Sean McFreight of the National Defense University asserts that the real legacy of Prigozhin is the creation of a modern mercenary business model. And this is too, is what I, I wonder the most, what Russia will do about, because it wasn't just about the mercenary military activities, but.
Also the sort of businesses that mine for minerals such as oil, natural gas, and gold. [00:07:00] And what, how does Russia take that over? Does it need a group like Wagner to do that, or can it directly those operations? I mean, I think that's kind of the space where I would see Wagner continuing to operate in or some other, but I think the reason why no leader has come out is no one wants to be targeted by Putin.
And so I don't think a leader will take control of Wagner until they feel like they're in with, truly in with Putin that Putin's not gonna just try to decapitate them as well.
Ryan Kellogg: [00:07:30] Yeah. And maybe it shows also, I mean, it's been reported. I mean, he's increasingly, I mean, since Covid increasingly alienated and on his own, so he doesn't necessarily have.
Within his core group, like a loyal enough lieutenant, which Prigozhin was, he's was Putin's personal chef years ago to take over these operations. But I, I can't help but thinking it can't be direct control by the Russian state because of what we talked about last time on the need for plausible [00:08:00] deniability.
Mm-hmm. And being able to operate with such a free hand within Africa at relatively low cost. It still has to be a private operator. So I don't know if maybe it does get more carved up with different lieutenants where the power is diluted. Mm-hmm. Which you alluded to with the quote by Katrina Docs from, from C S I S, whether you have Okay.
Part of the operations within, like East Africa are handed here, west Africa and the Middle East [00:08:30] are, are handed to a different lieutenant that still fits under kind of the. The Russian state, but not really. I mean, they still have to have that sort of vague, cloudy operation where it uses Russian military equipment to a certain extent and Russian intelligence, but isn't officially part of the Russian military and state, state apparatus.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. So it's very murky about what will happen. It's very murky about what is happening now. There are some signs [00:09:00] that they're trying to take control of the military operations, but there's some signs that they have not done so. So it's really opaque right now from the west observing and yeah, so it's interesting.
I mean, I guess we'll just stay tuned. It's obviously, as we talked about, an organization that had a lot of power in Africa particularly, and in keeping Russia, African ties, and how Russia will deal with that is I. Interesting. I know you [00:09:30] have a comment here too. I'm just looking about the implications for semiconductor renewable manufacturing.
Ryan Kellogg: Yes. I mean, I thought that was one of the interesting points I wanted to get your take on it too, whether this was was accurate or not. But in that op-ed piece today from Sean McRay at the National Defense University, he talks about. The implications of having these greater number of mercenary groups operating in these weak nation states within [00:10:00] Africa, and in particular around mining operations and the increasing importance of rare earth minerals, and the fact that in both the Conga region of Africa or even Afghanistan, these represent some of the largest deposits of, of lithium and other strategic minerals and, and kind of implies that, oh, this could be for a Wagner or Russia operating that it eventually could become a real choke point [00:10:30] within the global supply chain.
But I think, and what I really kind of wonder about that one, the coordination and then two, I mean for it to be the commodity itself, real poor margins, and it's more the, the processing of those rare earth, which would or would not likely be done within these countries was that
Anita Kellogg: processing is done in
Ryan Kellogg: China.
Right. So these would be then sold to a Chinese company that would be imported into China, then processed
Anita Kellogg: if China [00:11:00] wanted to operate in these circumstances. And they might not be interested because as much as these may be the largest deposits, there's a lot of places that have large lithium deposits.
One of them is Chile, I believe. And so there's some contests between China and the US who will develop those lithium resources. And of course there's quite a few states, including my home state, Arkansas, that have significant lithium deposits as well.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. So it really doesn't imply, and I, I would think in most of these places that [00:11:30] infrastructure isn't ideal for kind of the transport of these large low margin ORs.
Mm-hmm. Out anyway. So it's not, I think it's the mistake of, and maybe it's the name of rare Earth Minerals, implying that they're rare. Mm-hmm. And, and in reality they're not. So it doesn't seem like, Yeah, I just didn't buy into that, that sort of threat. You know, that point
Anita Kellogg: of argument, I think because of the importance of lithium, you're seeing articles all over the place about the US and allies trying to secure supplies that are not [00:12:00] dependent on China.
And the biggest thing will be is, is if the US can create processing plants to process these rare earths, because that's the part that's the real, like China supplies like 60% of the raw minerals, but that's down from like 90%, right? Just a decade or so ago. But they still process about 90% of all. So if you, the minerals that we dig up here in the US then go to China to be processed,
Ryan Kellogg: right?
Because of the costs and then the environmental [00:12:30] impact, I mean, they don't have the same environmental standards in China. Wasn't that more with
Anita Kellogg: the extraction? No,
Ryan Kellogg: it's the processing. Oh, it is the processing, yeah. Yeah. I mean, 'cause I mean, Australia's been able to extract. They've been a big chunk of that 20, 30%.
Yeah. In the supply. And they have environmental standards just as strict as as the us.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. So figuring that out. I mean, I think the problem is it's just gonna cost more and can businesses fit that bill? I mean, there's a lot of like what we see as the [00:13:00] solution to Chinese bottlenecks and it's like, well, we can solve that problem, but it's gonna cost more.
And who's accepting that higher cost? Right, right. So I know you also wanted to talk about the counteroffensive, where that stands.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. So there's definitely been. Over the last month, there's been a lot of, of backbiting, I think, with us Ukraine and, and European allies around what's perceived as a [00:13:30] disappointing progress within the Counteroffensive.
That's especially prior to events of the last week, which have been a little bit more optimistic than what we've seen since the counter offensive began on June 20th of the summer. And I think really what, what drove some of that backbiting was a US intelligence assessment reported by the Washington Post on August 17th that predicted that Ukraine will fail to meet its offensive key [00:14:00] goal of reaching the sea, a ovv, and in particular the strategic city of Mado Pole, and really put in the blame.
On the Ukraine's unwillingness to follow Western strategy or what they've been recommending to really focus their forces and take heavy casualties on a, a single push in order to push through the many Russian defensive lines. So there's a lot of criticism of that [00:14:30] leak and assessment within as undermining.
The approach towards Ukraine and obviously we've, we've seen a weakening of support from the US public in terms of Poland, in terms of additional funds going in. And, and we saw it reflected in the Republican primary debate where there was a clear split amongst candidates on, on further support for Ukraine.
So that being said, within the last week, there's definitely been renewed optimism and it's really seen by a breakthrough on long along one of [00:15:00] those fronts. And there's been two main fronts. One is targeting what the US intelligence agencies kind of criticized was the, the advanced toward Metropol and then the other one toward Mari, which is a little bit to the east.
So I would say very
Anita Kellogg: modest
Ryan Kellogg: optimism. Yeah. But I think it is because it didn't make it very far. It doesn't look impressive on the map itself, but the fact that they made it through one line, that they took this village [00:15:30] of a robit time within a relatively short period of time, nine days of fighting and have been able to hold it, it means that they have the biggest kind of push that they've had.
And if you look at the map, which the Institute of War has provided, the defensive lines are really concentrated towards the fronts as they existed at the beginning of the summer. So once they're, they're able to kind of establish this beachhead, [00:16:00] they have a much better chance of breaking through. It's really the first 20 miles.
So they have 60 miles in total, 70 miles or so in total to make it to the sea of Azov. And it's really that first 20 miles that can they establish kind of that beachhead and, and break through? How
Anita Kellogg: far have they made it so far?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, the way they made it through the first defensive line, which is a big, a big push, 20, and they've the second, well, the whole point is it's concentrating in 20 miles, so they've made it like, I don't know, five to [00:16:30] 10 miles and.
And it's really, yeah, making it past this, this second line of defense. And then the next critical city will be this talk mock, which we talked about last time, which is also encircled by rounded fences. And they're making slow but but steady progress. I mean, there's been a lot of comparisons on same criticisms of Western allies after the D-day landing and how slow the [00:17:00] progress was and pushing back German forces.
So I think there's, there's a lot to that of, you know, giving them time. The interesting piece, excellent reporting from the New York Times, which had frontline reporters with some of the marine units on the other front. And they just talked a lot about just how high morale was among Ukrainian troops. And polling shows that there is zero.
Zero desire to negotiate and still a hundred percent committed [00:17:30] to the full defeat of Russia. And when you have a country and a military still that committed to the operation, despite the casualties that they're, they're incurring, it's hard to deny them the time in order to, to execute it. Yeah, we'll
Anita Kellogg: get more into that.
I think though, a hundred percent is that you can't really dissent right now. Like you're considered very unpatriotic if you feel any, any amount of [00:18:00] negotiation or anything like that. So of course it's a hundred percent.
Ryan Kellogg: I mean that's the polling side. I guess he could, or, I mean, it's done by western firms anonymously and it definitely has fluctuated.
Over the period, and we'll talk about it a little with the New Yorker piece. It's really the, the atrocities that were committed by the Russian military that were revealed, particularly in the early stages of the war. I mean, that's really galvanized the, the people. And I thought the most interesting [00:18:30] quotes coming from Ukrainian leadership around kind of this annoyance around the US saying, oh, certain elements of of the US saying, oh, give up certain amounts of your territory for peace.
And given the analogy of, yeah, why don't you give up part of Alaska to Russia where we're giving up parts of the West Coast to California. I mean, it's something that's unimaginable. No one's
Anita Kellogg: occupying
Ryan Kellogg: it either. No. But do you think Americans would, if it was occupied for [00:19:00] the last year, well, Americans,
Anita Kellogg: Are used to being the predominant military.
So I mean, they're not relying, and
Ryan Kellogg: national sovereignty isn't important to the Ukrainians. I mean, it's Yeah, it's Of course it is. Yeah. And then the legitimate war crimes and atrocities being, I mean, mass graves constantly discovered. So that to me is the most compelling. The fact that morale so high on the front line, despite the casualties, they're fighting under conditions that no Western military would [00:19:30] fight under because of the lack of, of air support.
But they're still making progress. They're making breakthroughs, but it's just not, it's not what we saw last fall. With the, with the territorial gains, right? Yeah. But the economists made a good point of it could, they are making steady progress. But once they reach that breakthrough point, then you're gonna see the massive gains.
'cause the, the Russian defenses will collapse after a certain certain point.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. Let [00:20:00] me give the counterpoint to this. 'cause there, I think there just needs to be some representative of the other side. The other side said, this is taking a very long time and you can't have a counter offensive that goes on forever.
And can you get to that point? Why you still have a counter offensive? It's
Ryan Kellogg: been like two months. That's, that's like zero time and No, not really in a
Anita Kellogg: war's particularly. It's with the resources that they have. They're using up all their manpower. They put all the, the reserves in it. They don't
Ryan Kellogg: have any reserves.
Well, one, they haven't, they've only begun to [00:20:30] commit some of the reserves. They still have significant reserves to draw upon.
Anita Kellogg: Well, when the article said there was significant amount of reserves already being committed, I think, or there's at least one side that thinks that this will end up in a, as a STEM meet, including the joint use of staff, mark Millie.
Ryan Kellogg: And that's the criticism of course, US intelligence has also been wrong on a number of occasions. They're wrong about the defensive Kiev. I think we're, we're underestimating the [00:21:00] resiliency of Ukrainian people and their willingness to continue to fight. Yeah. But they're to take heavy casualties.
Anita Kellogg: But this is like based on just objective military.
Yeah.
Ryan Kellogg: So was the other one. So was the other assessment about the collapse of Kiev in three days. I mean, they've clearly been wrong in the past of the capabilities and assessment, so giving them more time. I think it's likely that the counteroffensive won't end seasonally either. I think Ukraine will [00:21:30] continue to push on even as the weather
Anita Kellogg: turns colder.
But do they have the resources do that? They do not currently have the resources to continue the Counteroffensive into late fall,
Ryan Kellogg: winter. I think maybe the pace of operations, but if they do end up achieving, even if they get within like a few miles towards the end of the fall of Marial or or Metropa, that would be a huge success.
I see them probably continuing the operations 'cause then especially as more long range equipment and we have continued to [00:22:00] push, I mean F sixteens have been approved, the begin training on that and then the longer range artillery missiles have also been approved. So I think it's just, yeah, it's just, it's being patient, giving them more time.
I think what happened this week is important. Important showing that they can break through these defenses given, given the time and, and the resources. And it's just continuing to supply them. And, and I would go back to the [00:22:30] R O I on, this is extraordinary compared to the billions and billions that we wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of a monetary resource and keeping them supplied.
The R O I on this is, is unbelievable. So the US I think would be a little crazy not to continue to commit towards, towards this and
Anita Kellogg: well, okay. So I just wanna say, first of all, I don't actually disagree with anything that you've said. I do think you take the very most optimistic side, the very extreme [00:23:00] opposite side without considering any of the criticism.
But two, I don't think this is about whether the US should continue to support Ukraine.
Ryan Kellogg: Right. Well, ultimately it is, it does go to that argument because that's the very argument. If a Republican is elected in 2024, we know what wing of the party it'll be from and support for Ukraine will end.
Anita Kellogg: I mean, I'm just saying the people who are less optimistic than you are aren't saying, oh, we should stop supporting Ukraine.
I think right now there's no [00:23:30] room for negotiations because Ukraine continues to make some slow progress, whether how substantial it'll be. As you point out, we can't tell yet question and we can't tell yet. Even though your optimism, I think we don't know. I think it's an unknowable at this point, I think, and as long as that goes on, of course we continues to support them full on within our ability to support resources.
I think though one has to think about what [00:24:00] if this does end up in a donate? What do we do then? And I think as I see it is at some point I. But this will be far in the future because I think to be able to sufficiently put pressure on Ukraine to join negotiations, I think it has to be much farther in the future.
I think there has to be a stalemate this last months before they will even consider negotiations, no matter how much pressure we put on them. You have negotiations why you're still fighting. I think nothing precludes that. I don't
Ryan Kellogg: think you stop. Well, we're just showing no [00:24:30] willingness, negotiate at this point either.
Anita Kellogg: Right? So there's that eventuality, but I think we're talking about a far eventuality. I think there's no signs right now that there's any room for negotiations, which is what people are kind of arguing about.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. No, I agree. And I, and I think when we've talked about this months before, I mean, I think the, the actual end game.
It is something more akin to pushing back to the pre-war borders, right, as the, the negotiated [00:25:00] solution. But it's the people willing to give up an additional 15% of Ukrainian territory, of not allowing the counteroffensive to continue so that it can legitimately threaten Crimea and for Russia to be staring at a complete loss.
That there's no ability to negotiate and certainly no willingness from Ukraine and no incentive for Russia until that moment arrives. So there can be no stalemate, or we shouldn't accept a stalemate. And I don't think Ukraine [00:25:30] would accept negotiations until it's at that point, right, where it's legitimately back to the pre-war 2022 borders.
Anita Kellogg: Well, but we don't know for sure if you can get there and you may have to try to negotiate there because there's no guarantee that the Ukraine has the ability. It just, there's no guarantee that they have the ability to push Russia
Ryan Kellogg: that far out. And I think that's the, giving them enough time and the supplies in order to do that.
It's
Anita Kellogg: not just about giving them enough time. It is [00:26:00] on, you can only push extra manpower and counter. That's, that's
Ryan Kellogg: for them to judge though. That's not for us to judge. Right. But as long as they're willing to fight, we should supply them to fight. Right. But
Anita Kellogg: at a certain point, they can only fight so much.
Like they can only have new reserves and new troops being sent somewhere for so long. Yeah, but they're not at that point yet. No, they're not yet. But when you say give them time, yeah,
Ryan Kellogg: that means another year or two. That's how long it may, but, but I'm saying it [00:26:30] may, I don't think it'll take that long.
Anita Kellogg: But, uh, I'm saying if in six months they just, they're entrenched in their spots and, and they're not moving any.
Then that's when you kind of at least think
Ryan Kellogg: about these things. Yeah. No, I don't agree. I don't disagree with, yeah, you definitely revisit it within six months, but it's people acting like, well, you know, shoot October's here, counter offensive, way short. Let's pack it in. Give them, I don't think there's that many people saying that there's enough people saying that.
Anita Kellogg: I don't think [00:27:00] I read the articles too. I don't know people saying that other than like Republican candidates, which we'll get into, which is something totally different. But in general, the experts are not saying, oh, we should back it up now.
Ryan Kellogg: I think it's also labeling it a failure already. I think it's way too premature.
There are plenty of people labeling a failure. That's true.
Anita Kellogg: I just think it's an unknown where you take it as a given that they're gonna make all
Ryan Kellogg: these gains. I think given time, this was a major breakthrough this week, and I think it's [00:27:30] a, it's a positive sign. Okay.
Anita Kellogg: I think we mostly agree on that, but.
Disagree over the
Ryan Kellogg: minor points.
Anita Kellogg: So moving on, what's getting a lot of buzz is China's economic struggles. Have we hit peak China? China is facing some serious headwinds right now. They have a huge debt crisis and a real estate market that is on the verge of collapse. Some people would say [00:28:00] exports have been down for the last three months.
Import imports have been down for the last five months. Growth slow to just 0.8% in the second quarter of this year. There's the problem of prices deflating and how that affects consumer spending, where you don't like if prices keep going down, you don't want to spend in the present moment 'cause you keep thinking you can get a cheaper price later.
You don't know when that cheapest price is gonna hit. Youth unemployment is over 20% and the hardest hit of those with [00:28:30] college degrees. Within these, I just wanted to kind of iterate a little bit that Chinese debt to G D P is about 300%, which is like three times. The us, US is about a hundred percent.
Economists still aren't really sure how that affects your economy, but it could possibly limit the amount of money the government can pour into the economy. But particularly problematic are these possible bankruptcies of the real estate companies. [00:29:00] And real estate is one of the places where you've had traditionally a lot of the investment by the Chinese people themselves.
And now these are no longer good deals. They're losing part of their wealth, and they're no longer willing to invest in the economy. In this way, deflation is concerning. We saw the effects in Japan over a couple decades. That is something every economist is the worst thing your economy can have. A lot of people think though, that this will reverse itself.
Within a year or so, but [00:29:30] it is a particular problem. One of the areas that I've been getting a lot of attention is this youth unemployment number, and one of the things that I was listening to a Planet Money episode this week, and one thing that I think that's interesting is it isn't a matter of there not being enough jobs.
There's lots of jobs that can't fill teaching in the countryside, but in particularly manufacturing labor, which is making it hard to produce enough exports, but these are not the jobs that were promised. You have these college educated [00:30:00] people who are promised white collared sort of jobs. I mean, one of the problem is the insistence of being a manufacturing economy means that you're not transitioning to more service-based economy, which provides a lot of those white collar jobs.
The other interesting thing that I hadn't thought about was how you have all these only children who can afford not to participate in the economy. They can say, I'm not going to take a job that is not this sort of promised job that I have, because their only children, their [00:30:30] parents are, I. Happy to support them.
They have support from both sides of their family largely so they have a lot of freedom in whether to participate in the economy or not. And that's something that I hadn't really thought about. And the problem with them deciding not to participate in the economy is how it affects economic growth and consumer spending.
They're not getting married, they're not buying houses and cars, they're not having children. You have the aging population and you have all these young people opting not to be in the economy at all. [00:31:00] So those are all kind of some significant headwinds that the Chinese economy is raising. Yeah, I
Ryan Kellogg: think that's really interesting.
The, yeah, hadn't considered either the issue with only children being able to support that whole line, flat phenomenon that's going on and and become kind of a meme on Chinese social media. But yeah, being able to opt out, it seems like the precursor of a dangerous situation politically, just because in the past, in terms of.
[00:31:30] Disruptive social forces when you have a large, educated underemployed population that is dissatisfied with society's promised one thing and it hasn't delivered, and they have the education, maybe not in the, the social sciences and things that typically would lead to revolutionary leadership since China's been pretty successful in, in purging that as some of the, the, the foreign affairs articles that I think we'll, we'll discuss talking about.[00:32:00]
But that just seems to me when you see those two youth unemployment and educated, that seems like a dangerous combo in the future for, or something that the Chinese government would be particularly concerned about.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, I think it's a concern. One reason why I think though it may not result in the type of previous, I mean, just when you have large educated, unemployed people, you do see more political tensions.
But I think in this case, I think the fact that [00:32:30] they're well taken care of, they're not struggling economically may reduce some of this impetus to a bill.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. I mean, I think material wellbeing is definitely part of, but in terms of the leadership of any revolutionary, it's always the middle class and upper middle class that's educated that leads it.
But my, my, my concern is that because China's been so successful mm-hmm. In terms of cutting out outside foreign influences, that you can't even [00:33:00] create another tianmen generation they don't know about outside i e. Where they're so, and they're so caught up in the nationalist project control. What's that?
Anita Kellogg: There's so much social control
Ryan Kellogg: in China. Well, there's so much social control. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe that's, that's been success successfully squelched and then Yeah, like you said, the material wellbeing is enough that Yeah. It's easier to just like play video games and chat and WeChat all day. I don't
Anita Kellogg: know.
Yeah. The Planet Money talked about this girl who was too afraid to like tell her [00:33:30] parents in the beginning. So she would get dressed for work, go to the bus stop, and then she would just walk straight to a cafe where she would just draw all day. Yeah. And then come home. She eventually told her parents and then her parents were like totally okay with it.
Yeah. But because they had struggled so much, she didn't wanna tell them for a long time. So it was, it was a really interesting episode and had a lot of things I didn't consider it, but definitely even if you take out the political side of it, the danger of rebellion, it's still really harmful to the
Ryan Kellogg: economy.
Oh yeah, [00:34:00] for sure. No, this is, this is the opposite of what, what they want going
Anita Kellogg: forward. And they want, and they need so much domestic spending and all of these forces have decreased spending. It's only like, Maybe 38% of the economy, which is a really low
Ryan Kellogg: number. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I, I found it shocking to see how high the savings rates, which again, in a lot of Northeast Asian country, saving rates are much higher than the us but China's now up to [00:34:30] 50% savings rate because there's so much uncertainty around the economy and around government intervention within the economy as well.
I thought that was, I think one of the articles that, that you'll discuss made that particularly poignant, that Covid created this situation where the level of government intervention and social control at a low level was so severe that now it's created these long covid effects around the economy. [00:35:00]
Anita Kellogg: So let's get into that.
So how did China get to where it is today? I mean, one obvious thing that's been talked a lot about is over investment and infrastructure. At a certain point when you have airports with no planes, you have a lot of projects just being abandoned because they know that there's all these apartments and they can't sell these Yeah.
Empty cities. Yeah. So a lot of projects get abandoned halfway. Mm-hmm. So that's been a huge problem and increasing the debt and leading to these companies that some of the very [00:35:30] biggest real estate companies on the verge of going bankrupt. And there's uncertainty of how much the government will, how much money they make, continue to pump into the economy or into these companies to prevent them from going bankrupt.
Nobody
Ryan Kellogg: knows. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's been tragic at the personal level too. 'cause you had people that have prepaid for in full these condos and apartment complexes that just don't get finished and they're not getting their money back and that's 80% of their, their life savings. [00:36:00]
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. And that's gonna lead to a trend that we're talking about, why now there's not investment in the economy and and preference for cash savings.
But before we get there, I wanted to follow up on your zero covid policies. One thing, and I, I don't know how much this affects the economy, I haven't seen any numbers, but there is the fact that foreign companies, because of supply chain issues, started to move some of their factories to India, Vietnam, and Mexico.
This also has to do with the rising cost of labor in China as well. But the biggest [00:36:30] thing is, I don't remember what article this was in, but the idea, I think it was in several, the idea that there's been an eroded trust of the government promise to stay out of their lives. So if they were not engaging in any sort of political activities, there was the idea that they would have freedom, their economic freedom government would stay out.
And because of the draconian sort of measures that were put in place, did intervene in. [00:37:00] They almost intimately in households and it kind of eroded a lot of trust that the government would not do that.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. 'cause these lockdowns are much more severe as was, you saw videos of like Shanghai and there were the complaints on not being able, 'cause they were dependent on the government delivering literally to their apartments, food and pharmaceutical drugs.
Yeah. It was just it. It was extremely draconian and beyond
Anita Kellogg: that too, it was sort of, you didn't get [00:37:30] warning, it was just like, yeah. It was just sudden. Yeah. Right. You would, within a couple hours, all of a sudden everything would be locked down and you had no warning that that was gonna happen. And then it
Ryan Kellogg: was rolled back with a similar sense of kind of arbitrariness.
Just like how sudden the shift from extreme lockdown to opening everything up. Which I think the, the article that you're referring to was, I think the one with by Adam Poin and the, and Foreign Affairs and the suddenness was such that [00:38:00] you probably had at least a million deaths. Which obviously when we reported recovered up.
So you're dealing with kind of that trauma as well of the government and it being clear that it's a very, it's this arbitrary nature of the, of the party, either of she or just the standing committee that makes these, these very intimate decisions. I think
Anita Kellogg: you've seen beyond covid and more recent policies, you've seen a long-term consolidation of chi going after more private enterprises.
[00:38:30] So, you know, going pretty hard in the tech industry, but also, you know, rules about schools for like learning English or after high school schools, all kinds of different aspects of the economy. Mm-hmm. She has gone out after and that increases uncertainty and businesses built, businesses being built and invested.
The increased social control that I talked about, all this has dampened. The idea of [00:39:00] households and businesses actually investing right now. Right. And preferring just having cash savings instead of buying that new house or buying a car. So one of the things I thought was interesting, I forget who said this, this was like I was three on Twitter, but a lot of the problems with the economy date before Covid, but we're just covered up because you had such high manufacturing growth.
So I think some of that is true that some of these, these economic [00:39:30] printers that are coming to bear have always been there. But now because x related by covid and manufacturing exports being down, now we're just seeing these sort of cracks in the economy that have always been there. Yeah,
Ryan Kellogg: I mean the, the idea of a, this peak China.
Theory of course, been out there for a long time and a number of people including like Brett Stevens, who is doing a slam dunk in his, in hi in the op-ed piece, which he, he has consistently put out, you know, every couple of [00:40:00] years about how China is peaking and all of this. So I think there, there seems to be a real floodgates, you know, with the policy analyst community within China, experts, there's been so much on drawing the illusion between Japan and China and that China's now going through the same experience, but also to your point that this began, In 20 15, 20 16 in the early years of xi and that this isn't just a [00:40:30] reflection of Covid post covid thing, but, but rather there's a long time coming.
Mm-hmm. And now it's kind of reached its crisis point. Mm-hmm.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think this growing sense of peak China, though, I'm not sure where it really leads because I don't think it leads to different policies. I think the same competitive policies are, are certainly there. So I'm not really sure what the consequences of the argument are because if you truly believe peak China, then you may not [00:41:00] worry about the competition
Ryan Kellogg: as much.
Yeah. Maybe, maybe there's a little bit less concern, but then the, the potential for danger, right, in terms of military conflicts probably increases. Right. Right. So
Anita Kellogg: what I was gonna, what does it mean? One of the things, you know, people point out the US should not be so excited about this because we do still sell quite a bit to China and it means China's not gonna be buying those things and that it's gonna have a negative effect on overall global growth.
China buys like a [00:41:30] huge commodity market. It actually worsens trade deficits. So the imports have been down for five months longer than its exports have been down. So basically it means China's not buying stuff, it's not helping to fuel global economic growth. And when the global economy suffers again, that's another way the US suffers.
So a couple people have been making this point like, you shouldn't be too excited about this economic downturn in China because it's gonna have consequences in the us and like said, it doesn't help [00:42:00] our trade deficits, it probably makes it worse.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. That being said, I mean, the US is largely driven by domestic demand at 20, and so we're shielded to a certain extent by that.
And then, uh, the total value of our exports to China compared to like a Canada or Mexico, also relatively small, or the eu, those are far more important markets than China for the us. Okay. So
Anita Kellogg: let's say that it will affect the US directly, but let's say that it's as small as you assume it is, it affects Europe.
Well, Europe buys [00:42:30] stuff from the United States too. So if Europe's economy slows down because of it then, or Canada or Australia, then that hurts where American exports would be going to. People forget. We do actually sell quite a few things.
Ryan Kellogg: We do, but it's still also, you know, we're driven by domestic demand, but that's, and as long as that's robust, then it's a marginal impact compared to.
Something else. Because I definitely see articles that, yeah, I've seen now we shouldn't celebrate, [00:43:00] but that the actual drag on the US economy relatively modest.
Anita Kellogg: I think the effect of the global drag will excavate anything on the US could be. Yeah. But as you were saying, there's a, one of the arguments about peak China from the beginning is that it actually makes China more dangerous.
So this could happen in two ways. One, if there's a lot of economic discontent towards the party, you could have rallied the flag, sort of nationalists maybe be more [00:43:30] provocative or more willing to engage in conflict that way. The other peak China argument is that China may want to lock in the gains it has.
Now, if it sees, like this is the hype of its power, right? Then it wants to lock those gains in, right? And so that would make, taking Taiwan now, there wasn't a good chance of taking Taiwan in 10 years or something, right? It makes China more dangerous, but those arguments aren't very convincing to me. I do think if the economy gets worse than it is now, I do worry about [00:44:00] nationalism, rally the flag, but I still don't think that Taiwan is, it would be the target.
I don't think that they are prepared right now to take Taiwan and I think, yeah, right.
Ryan Kellogg: Not right now, but by 2027. Well,
Anita Kellogg: but if the economy is even worse, I mean, how do you keep those preparations?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, there's no reason they can't continue. I mean, if they have to increase the debt sum, they're gonna prioritize.
She has been [00:44:30] conditioning a since, at least covid for the Chinese people to take this period of suffering and sacrifice. There's just, there's a clear long-term strategy of conditioning people to accept material suffering for the good of the nation. So I think all this is being, he said that are people willing
Anita Kellogg: to do that isn't
Ryan Kellogg: a whole other story.
I, I think within a certain extent, I mean, they're willing to, the youth. If they're, they have a base level of material wellbeing, they're gonna be fine with that. But I think it [00:45:00] is a narrow window. So I, I feel like this gives more credence to the people concerned about like the next 10 years or so. Yeah,
Anita Kellogg: there was a White House officials speaking to us and I was just so amazed.
'cause he was saying, oh, I really don't believe in this 2027. He's like, I don't believe that China will take Taiwan by force, that they gain from threatening to do so. But ultimately it's not in their interest. I was like, oh my gosh, those are exactly the feelings that I [00:45:30] have. And there someone validated that.
Aren't you trying to make that case? So I think there's an outside chance. I think these numbers are high, but if there's a 5% chance of conflict, then if the economy worsens, deflation becomes serial like it was in Japan, then that might move it to like 10%.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, and I'd, I'd put that 10% higher at least.
Yeah. Everyone else, all of does.
Anita Kellogg: Everyone else seems to do it, so why not [00:46:00] you? And finally, you mentioned Adam Poin. He wrote a good Foreign Affairs article on this. He's an economist, so he has a lot of interesting insights. But he also, the stuff that he was talking about the US should be doing are things, of course, that we've said the same on previous episodes.
So basically he talks about how when real estate and other investments are not paying off right now in China, then there is incentives then to put [00:46:30] any of your money into foreign investments. And that we should be encouraging those investments in our own economy. And one of the. Things that has prevented that from happening is all our laws against foreign investment coming from China.
Now, those laws though, are supposed to be in areas of national security, and he also talks about there's still reason to restrict certain sectors of critical [00:47:00] technologies. The biggest question is what is the critical technology and how you can make that very broad or you can make that very narrow, and I think he's arguing for more narrow definition.
But something we've talked about particularly is there's a lot of incentives of being able to attract that labor and innovation, particularly through the students attracting instead of this trend of like being suspicious of all Chinese students who wanna come to the United States to encourage that, for them to come to the US [00:47:30] and then benefit from their labor and their contributions to innovation.
And that basically he says like she's doing our work for us. Like he's driving out, creating the conditions that is driving out foreign investment money and students and labor and innovation, and our policies are preventing us from taking advantage of that when that's exactly what we should be doing.
Ryan Kellogg: No, I, I read that and a hundred percent agreement with that. I mean, I think it's [00:48:00] a unique opportunity right now for the US really to make a strategic play given Yeah. The 20% youth unemployment, given the increasing intrusiveness and restrictions at top Chinese universities, which really have been.
Mm-hmm. We argue in our, our war the rocks piece has really been an engine of innovation and growth. These that adopted a more western liberal model within the boundaries of the university, but that, that's been disappearing [00:48:30] over the last 10 years. So you really have this great opportunity to take advantage of this and, and to bring those in.
It's just a shame that the Biden administration hasn't done enough to reverse some of the, the damaging Trump policies that are implemented around, around students and student visas. Very frustrating.
Anita Kellogg: I like Republicans. Never gonna do that. And if we can't get. Democratic administration to use to see those things instead just buy into more and more of this, [00:49:00] like every way China is dangerous.
I mean, he points out that most of the IP thefts, um, and espionage, we, in our article, we point out well there's measures to check that and prevent that. And it's very, very rare. And it's mostly from people who were educated in graduate degrees in China. Mm-hmm. Yep. Not in the United States. Yep. But he points out too that a lot of the intellectual property theft is through cyber crimes and industrial espionage, but used to be forced technology [00:49:30] transfer, but much more less than those type of business practices anymore.
So mostly it's crime and you have ways to deal with crime and preventing crime. So I thought it was really important, and I guess we can just keep trying to plug it, but it's disappointing that the US does not seem to be following those recommendations.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, especially when it can be framed in this way of, this is just another element of weakening the Chinese Communist Party.[00:50:00]
It's taking advantage of, of she's very flawed policies and our allies have benefited from it. I mean, Canada, the UK have seen huge influxes of Chinese students at their universities. Canada certainly has a much more flexible policy towards a pipeline from student visa to the workforce. And yeah, we really need something, something similar here.
Mm-hmm.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, definitely. Well, next we have, there was a [00:50:30] debate among a Republican presidential, she call it, that yeahs, that we actually watched. And one thing that's really come out of this is Vivek Ramaswamy. Did I say that right?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. Ram, I don't know if I've could right say either.
Anita Kellogg: I think journalists have had, uh, a lot of practice with this, trying to say it, but he kind of has emerged out of it and he has some really kind, is it to say interesting foreign policy views?
I would say [00:51:00] my react is more, well, I want to react with alarm, but I'm struggling because mostly I just read it and it's like, this makes no sense to me and this is a bunch of nonsense. But you've been trying to explain to me why I need to take this seriously. Yeah,
Ryan Kellogg: because this really, if you look at the, the top three contenders within the Republican primary right now, so obviously Trump with the dominant lead followed by DeSantis and then Ramaswarmy Swarmy.
These are all essentially America [00:51:30] Firstus. This is still the foreign policy of the Trump administration being further refined, being further pushed to the right. And I think that's what we saw kind of on the debate stage. And then on his article that he published last week, and the American Conservative is a continuation of America first, but going even more extreme 'cause they're trying to out extreme each other in order to to stand out a [00:52:00] little bit and from Trump, while still honoring Trump and his emperor greatness.
But they're trying to outtrump each other between DeSantis and Ramis Swami in terms of all sorts of policies, but particularly on the foreign policy side. The thing
Anita Kellogg: about his foreign policy is that this, he says these are the things that he's gonna do, but say he was president, he can't do those things because the world doesn't work the way that he wants it to.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. That doesn't, that doesn't matter. I think it's,
Anita Kellogg: he literally can't be president and be like, okay, this is my foreign [00:52:30] policy strategy, because those things wouldn't happen. They just are not right. They're just like the stuff, he's like, the allies have to be sending their Navy to protect certain, and we're gonna tell 'em to invest in these Polynesian islands and things like that.
Right? It's like, right. They're not gonna do it just because you asked them to, like what incentives are you giving them?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. For somebody who, and, and we'll probably, let's take a step back, right? And go a little bit into just give a overview of his background. So I would encourage everybody, we'll provide a [00:53:00] link for the New York Times recent upshot podcast, but it provided a good, just the daily.
Daily, sorry, the Daley. It provided a very good background on him, but just in short, so Roma Swami is the son of Indian immigrants. They settled in Cincinnati after he attended Harvard Major in biology and then going to Yale Law School. He made his money really by setting up a company. And the bioscience sphere [00:53:30] that purchased patents from major pharma companies that essentially had let these, these patents expire.
And actually his company had pretty good success. I mean, they brought five actual new drugs to the market via the strategy, and they were able to produce a much lower, so that's why that economics worked. But actually, most of his wealth came from his salesmanship, and I think it's his charisma and salesmanship that's most impressed, the media and pundits as well as certain subset of
Anita Kellogg: Republican voters, right?
So a lot of people [00:54:00] lost money, but he made money. He made
Ryan Kellogg: money the way the contract was structured on this Alzheimer's drug that he hyped to the market, stock price went way up. And just some way that his contract, even though it failed some way, the way that his own contract was structured, he ended up making 200 million off of it.
So, so when
Anita Kellogg: people makes a lot of money off of other people, the thing about that drug is, I think it was Glaxo, I don't remember, but had it already said that drug was ineffective. And so he took that [00:54:30] drug and he just boosted it up through pure charisma and then found out like through all the stages it was ineffective.
And so all these people who bought into that lost tons of money.
Ryan Kellogg: So it was a far more effective 'cause a populous time vague against a Trump, a Trump pyramid scheme almost. Yes, that's right. On a much, much more successful scale than anything Trump's done, maybe except The Apprentice and some of the, the branding stuff.
But Er Swarm did this in a very short [00:55:00] time, so very successful young man was kind of pushed out of his company because of controversial views that he picked up in 2020 following the Black Lives Matters protest. He published his own book called Woke Incorporated, and then became a media figure, particularly on Fox derailing woke corporations.
Right. So that's kind of how he first became the pro. It pushed
Anita Kellogg: out because his employees wanted him to make these statements Right, in support
Ryan Kellogg: of support of B l m like a lot of corporations [00:55:30] were.
Anita Kellogg: And because he was anti that, that's why they pushed him out of his own company. I don't know how that works though, but that's what the Daily said.
Ryan Kellogg: Oh, how he gets pushed out. Yeah. Just the board of directors. Yeah. Yeah, they would.
Anita Kellogg: So yeah. So his main platform is this woke companies issue?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. Yeah. That's how he rose to prominence. And then has basic, I mean he is run a great ground campaign. Very, very online. The New York Times. He might [00:56:00] even show
Anita Kellogg: up to our podcast if we invited him.
Him, I'm sure if
Ryan Kellogg: we asked him. Yeah, maybe he would. It said that it let us know if you wanna see that there's three or four. Four. I wanna see Anita going up against regarding foreign policy that I think that would be fun.
But he's, so he, after the debate appearance, basically surged to challenge Ron DeSantis as the potential number two within the, the primary. And like you said, he staked out some pretty interesting [00:56:30] foreign policy position. So I don't know if you wanted to, to outline. Your thoughts on the American Conservative article?
Anita Kellogg: I'll also say something, but I also just wanna say real quick for his national platform, US policy platform mm-hmm. He just wants to get rid of the Department of Education, the I R S and the
Ryan Kellogg: F B I. He wants to sec like 75%. Yeah. I think your job's in trouble, honestly. Probably. I think you're,
Anita Kellogg: that's not what's disturbing to me.[00:57:00]
I mean, why pay if there's not an I R S? Why pay taxes?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, that's, yeah, that's exactly what they want. They want just the states to be, it's just a very loose, and then Articles of Confederation, essentially arrangement and then
Anita Kellogg: national crime. I mean like think of all the kid, just like they want a lawless society without the
Ryan Kellogg: F B I.
No, the states can manage it. Individual states it really can't.
Anita Kellogg: And what about say, malicious cross border? Cross border crimes mean that's what the F B I does. If it's a purely state thing, they allow state, well, all [00:57:30]
Ryan Kellogg: the resources that are being. Absorbed by the Leviathan federal government and now open to the states.
So Texas is gonna have a lot more money available to itself, even though I'm pretty, no one's taxes. So, well, they'll invest and they won't be constrained by the states, don't have US laws on implementing the border control. So Texas will be able to take its own laws and do the policy as it de, but there,
Anita Kellogg: there's actually constitutional law that would prevent them from doing some of
Ryan Kellogg: that.[00:58:00]
No, I think that's up to the Supreme Court and I think they're confident that everything under the 10th Amendment can be pushed back to the states. So if Texas needs to shoot everybody at the border, which, you know, honestly they were kind of alluding to Yeah. In the debate. That's the way he handled it.
Anita Kellogg: It's not, yeah, it doesn't see a problem with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of his, one of his platforms is if necessary, involving the US military to go after Mexican drug enterprises.
Ryan Kellogg: Well, yeah. And [00:58:30] DeSantis has been more, I mean, he's saying day one, he's sending special forces into Mexico.
Right. To, to take out these cartels, which is technically an act
Anita Kellogg: of war, but Right. Exactly. It's technically an act of war. Like it's a little bit problematic. Go about it. Well, all of a sudden it'll like break all kinds of agreements with the United States. That will definitely break you. That is our actual,
Ryan Kellogg: biggest trading partners.
So I think that's, and, uh, talk about
Anita Kellogg: China. But yeah, there's [00:59:00] all kinds of problems with that and just in some ways it's so unthinkable. But I mean, one thing that you're good at is talking more about his ideas about what the Madison Doctrine, Monroe Doctrine, Nixonian Realism really is. But basically one of the most attention getting of his policies is the trying to pivot to make Russia a wedge between mm-hmm.
You know, the US and, and China. And so, He believes [00:59:30] that if we allow Russia to keep their gains in Ukraine and promise not to, for Ukraine to be a part of nato. Yep. That and then we to ation. Yep. Right. And that we reduce all the sanctions and we bring them in as a full commercial partner. Yep. Then they'll be, and all they have to do is stop their military alliance with
Ryan Kellogg: China, which they don't actually have a formal military alliance, but
Anita Kellogg: Yeah.
Yeah. I didn't, I told you it [01:00:00] doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, there's a lot of like problems with that logic, like why doesn't Putin then take all over all of Ukraine? How do you keep Putin from doing that? I mean,
Ryan Kellogg: right. There's all, all, all sorts of flaws with this and nativity, but I think in particular around that issue, what I wanted to highlight was, and this isn't something that Swarm just kind of dreamed up, but it dates back to [01:00:30] larger policies around America first around what was being circulated in the early Trump administration from two, well, you know what?
Steve Bannon, I guess, is a foreign policy expert and Yeah, sure. Held very high levels within the White House, so we're gonna put them both on the same level. Steve Bannon and Henry Kissinger. So starting with Steve Bannon, the more important of the
Anita Kellogg: figures. You should tell Kissinger that I shouldn't, what's that?
You tell Kissinger that he's on the same
Ryan Kellogg: level? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.[01:01:00]
Anita Kellogg: I learned this week that he's a hundred years old and he's still doing, you know, can we talk and stuff? Doing
Ryan Kellogg: appearances? Yeah, he did. Did the talk at National Defense University, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay, well I'm, I'm sure you'd be proud to share this stage with Steve Bannon. So Bannon, who we all recall.
Was the primary author of Trump's America First Policy and a former White House advisor and National Security Council member. So those were all fun times. Fun years Has [01:01:30] had this back. Didn't that He was a national security.
Anita Kellogg: What's that? I didn't know. He was a
Ryan Kellogg: national, he was part of National security member.
Yeah, absolutely. I did not know that. I not absolutely. Yeah. Very high level security clearance.
So all of this really goes back to the idea and the framing, which isn't necessarily unique to Bannon, but he was the biggest champion of it on the far right. But it's this idea [01:02:00] that China represents a civilizational threat. And this is reflected in a 2018 Vanity Fair article that will detail, give some background, and as a civilizational threat.
It's natural that Russia, as you know, especially to an American conservative as a traditional society, one that's defending religion and traditional hierarchies and very important, is also a white. Ethnostate represents a natural [01:02:30] ally to help contain China. He further outlined this too in a pre White House, 2014, talk at the Vatican, and he ban and tied Putin to the defense as a champion of traditional institutions and nationalism, and something naturally opposed to the EU style kind of globalist, cosmopolitanism.
So naturally it should, especially to more. Conservative, the earlier Pope [01:03:00] at the Vatican, something appealing to them Also, funny enough, he went on about the respect that Russia has for national sovereignty, which particularly seems like a joke, was a joke back in 2014, but now really seems like, seems like a joke.
And then naturally also it speaks to on the religious side, particularly to the evangelical right within the us, Russia has had a very strong anti-gay, anti-feminist policy as well. So for all these reasons, there's a [01:03:30] natural affinity for Russia as a potential ally to, and this was being actively pushed within the Trump administration at the time.
Anita Kellogg: Clinton thought that's being missed in this discussion. Is that, why would Russia want to be an ally of the United States? Like what's in it for Russia?
Ryan Kellogg: I think, yeah, I think it has to come with giving Russia a free hand up to. The nato allowing them to reconstitute, [01:04:00] including in Central Asia or reconstitute the Soviet Empire.
I think it's, if they were given a free hand in that, which obviously includes the Ukraine as well, wouldn't it include the Baltic Republics? It would include Georgia. It's not a NATO member. Yeah. That, that would be a willing sacrifice and enough to incentivize Russian cooperation and, and anti-China defense.
Anita Kellogg: But doesn't, doesn't Russia want to reconstitute the Soviet Union to become powerful enough to challenge us hegemony? [01:04:30]
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. That's to it. You know, they, they downplay kind of the threat just because they don't view it as a threat because it's divorced from communism. Now, what Russia represents within the right now is a strong nationalist that represents traditional values.
In that sense, who cares what Russia,
Anita Kellogg: but they wanna challenge the world order of course. And they wanna challenge, they want to be a power to challenge the us. Why are we gonna like make them a power so they can challenge
Ryan Kellogg: these? 'cause [01:05:00] China's the greater threat for reasons that I imagine you can read between the lines what they are.
Anita Kellogg: He does know he's Indian, right?
Ryan Kellogg: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That doesn't matter so much. Yeah. In terms of why Ram Swami is kind of embracing it, but then going back to the ties, 'cause within the American conservator article, his biggest, you know, he mentions Washington again, the idea of isolationism, which [01:05:30] he completely divorces from the historical context.
The fact that it was a very young country, weak, economically unimportant. Not getting involved in complex European affairs makes a lot of sense. But his biggest love affair with Nixon, and obviously around the wedge policy, and when we talk Nixon, it has to be the architect of Nixon's policy, Henry Kissinger.
So according to a 2018 Daily Beast article, so Kissinger advised both Trump and then later Kushner [01:06:00] in 2017 to form closer relations with Moscow, basically in a reverse China policy that Kissinger led in the 1970s. And I think the idea was more along the the, the geopolitical. Context. So yeah,
Anita Kellogg: I mean that was not an uncommon position.
I mean, maybe still by then it was, it was still an outside position. It was. But remember, remember we tried D embrace Russia, you know, Bush was a Yeah. First.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. He
Anita Kellogg: was like, I, I've [01:06:30] looked into his soul. Yep.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. Russia, Obama was, was important ally during the war on terrorism. Yeah. I mean, we were aligned in a lot of ways and battling Islamic extremism and yeah, I think there was that push and hope.
Yeah. Putin was gonna be a reasonable guy to work with. Obviously Europe, Germany interpreted him as the historic impetus that Russia has always felt that it feels like it's part of Europe. Mm-hmm. Uh, it's always felt inferior to Europe, but it also sees [01:07:00] itself as an integral part of Europe. So integrating them within the European economy was seen as, as natural.
By then, of course, you had all the election issues. You had a much more. Aggressive Russia that had already invaded Georgia, had already taken the Donbas. Right. And Crimea in 2014. By the time Kissinger seems, by the time Kissinger's advising this, and now this is kind of outside of the mainstream, I think, foreign policy, yes, definitely thought and strategy by then.
But [01:07:30] nevertheless, Kissinger was pushing it. So the fact that you have, you know, Steve Bannon from kind of the far right,
Anita Kellogg: did I mention Kissinger's a hundred
Ryan Kellogg: years old? Yeah. He's saying he's become a crank and he's not giving, giving. The best advice is that
Anita Kellogg: maybe I'm saying he's not giving the best advice
Ryan Kellogg: so that, I think that the greater point is that he's picking up on this.
This is definitely a strand of the far right, but it's not something outrageous. He's [01:08:00] just kind of put. A new spin on it and the most extreme version of it. 'cause I don't think, I mean, DeSantis isn't coming out and immediate capitulation of Putin Trump. Well, I mean Trump more or less is as well. Again, he's not really articulated it as clearly as what Ramis Swami is proposing.
Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: So that's just one aspect. Another aspect, would you say he is trying to take back, but certainly was in this American conservative piece, is [01:08:30] that we would basically protect Taiwan for like four years while we developed our own semiconductor industry. And as soon as we were no longer dependent on Taiwan for semiconductors, because this is only gonna take four years, I mean, despite how many years it takes to build a fab, but then we would no longer feel this need to protect Taiwan.
Ryan Kellogg: Right, which was completely contradictory of, oh yeah, we're gonna be on tough on China. They're the big threat and oh [01:09:00] yeah, we're gonna give them, just let them take this very strategic, important and would be a devastating loss to American power within the Pacific. Just let them take Taiwan. 'cause I don't need 'em for semiconductors anymore.
Yeah, exactly. Really extraordinary. He apparently has had to back away from that comment. 'cause the thing is even the, right, so Fox News is like nailing him about this because it's just naturally contradicted everybody on the right and the mainstream [01:09:30] foreign policy establishment. Everybody within Congress is like, oh yeah, China's the enemy and we have to defend Taiwan.
There's nobody out there saying, let's throw Taiwan under the bus. There's nobody that isolation, there's nobody isolationist around China. It's a Asia first policy, if anything, but he's. Kind of the purest towards drawing in securing our borders, punishing Mexico, [01:10:00] evading them as necessary, but a very 1930s isolationist America.
Like the purest form of
Anita Kellogg: it. Yeah. And he kind of wants like other countries to do more. I think deterring China too. Like he wants to give nuclear submarines to India. To India, yeah.
Ryan Kellogg: Part of, including part of the Aus.
Anita Kellogg: He wants to transfer our military technology to India. I did see
Ryan Kellogg: that. You know, I'm not, I'm not in this agreement with, I mean, I think there's opportunity for the DEF American [01:10:30] defense providers to get the Indian military off of Russian equipment.
I think that's positive. But I don, but that's not technology transfer. Technology transfer.
Anita Kellogg: That's just building a new rival. I mean, India is huge. Eventually it could surpass China and it could be a new. If you, if you just give them technology transfers, I mean now it's, it's hard to imagine, but when we first engaged with China, it was very hard to imagine
Ryan Kellogg: too.
Are you, are you trying to allude that he's a sleeper agent or something? That's not fair. No, we wouldn't do that. That's, [01:11:00] I'm not saying that's definitely What if is a Democrat I'm, that is definitely what Republicans
Anita Kellogg: would've, I'm just saying like when we first engaged China, they, when Nixons had talked about like China was, was
Ryan Kellogg: devastated.
And still in the middle of the culture revolution. The culture revolution, it end until 76.
Anita Kellogg: So when we engaged with China too, this is what with Russia, China was nothing economically essentially. Oh yeah, yeah.
Ryan Kellogg: They weren't engaged
Anita Kellogg: with the world at all. So I'm just saying that you just now you plant the seeds of [01:11:30] a rivalry with India in 30 years.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, that, well, I think that's interesting. I'm sure no one is thinking that. That's my head went. No, I think it's an interesting thing. It definitely came to my mind like how we would approach, 'cause when we look at like the, we talk about the demo. Demographics of China and compare that to India.
Completely different camps now economically. India's way behind. Mm-hmm. China. But you're right, in 30 years, given this shift in investment, India could very well be, be a major [01:12:00] power in the world. And how would we treat that? Maybe we saw how we would treat that with Japan. That it's not necessarily just, well, yeah, there's systems more aligned, although they have certainly lost some of the democratic elements under, under Modi.
But yeah. Would we be as threatened, would it be just as we'd see something similar that we saw in the 1980s with Japan? Yeah, absolutely. Even though they were both democracies? I don't know. I
Anita Kellogg: think so. Anyway. I just thought the technology transfer. [01:12:30] Yeah, that was actually, we can't build the submarines to get to Australia, let alone for ourselves.
That's true. So we don't have any capacity right now to build submarines for India. Yeah. So there was, there's just a lot of problems
Ryan Kellogg: with that. There was that, and I think the most controversial for Republicans was also his Israeli policy. Oh, yes.
Anita Kellogg: To stop funding
Ryan Kellogg: Israel, to stop funding Israel. I don't know if that was a precondition to kind of normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab states, and [01:13:00] then at that point we're out.
Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: I think that was it. Yeah. I think that's what he said. Yeah. And we're out. And that included funding Israel. Yeah. Which Israel depends on that amount of money. We give them a large amount of money. Military aid, that's how they manage their relationships with the Palestinians. It's really kind of unthinkable that we would ever end that aid.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. So we're creating like enormous power vacuums throughout kind of all the critical regions and thinking that that won't blow [01:13:30] back on US interests, the US economy. And then,
Anita Kellogg: like I said, he just, he just says like, oh, and all the Australia, Japan. I think India too. We're just gonna tell them to like spend a lot more money on their defense.
So I wanted to point out Japan actually, ma already made the move to spend a lot more money on their defense. But you can't just tell countries to spend more money on their defense.
Ryan Kellogg: Also acting like we, we haven't done that constantly too. I think every single administration since the Cold [01:14:00] War has basically told Europe, told our allies to spend more money on defense.
I think what he's, or what Trump implies is that yeah, you, you create the economic punishment if they don't Yeah. Which then just, you know, creates,
Anita Kellogg: I think he doesn't articulate
Ryan Kellogg: that. Yeah. Which is why Nikki Haley tore him apart and told him that he clearly understands nothing about foreign policy or that kind of balance that has to [01:14:30] exist between kind of each party's national interest and, and incentives.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. He doesn't understand foreign policy. No, not that Trump did either, but, but this is, he's trying to make a serious platform. You gotta
Ryan Kellogg: take it seriously. 'cause it's the dominant platform of the Republican nominee.
Anita Kellogg: I guess here's my thing though, like how seriously am I supposed to take it? If there's like pretty seriously, but there's just, I'm more concerned about getting rid of the education department and the F B I and the I R S.
I have to admit that's [01:15:00] concerning
Ryan Kellogg: too. That's happening either way. If not, I don't,
Anita Kellogg: I mean, he can say this is what his foreign policy is gonna be, but it can't be
Ryan Kellogg: this. He has, I mean, again, the president has wide range in the ability to try to implement these policies and just, even if he's unsuccessful, the damage that would cause around the world around our national interest would be extreme, even if none of them are success.
I mean, most of the Trump's policies weren't successful. They caused enormous damages to our alliances. [01:15:30] Yeah. And I mean, it is too early to take. Polls seriously. But it looks like things are gonna be tight between a Trump and and Biden election. Real tight, disturbingly tight for somebody facing 91 felony charges against them, hope pelicans don't cares an issue.
So we could very well be staring at the barrel of all of these policies being on the plate and them [01:16:00] heavily targeting the federal bureaucracy in January, 2025.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, but I don't know what we'd do about it. All this is just like, look at how horrifying the world could be, and we know from 2016 that the world can really be this horrifying.
But yeah, so this is a foreign policy proposal. I like, I think when difference from, I don't think Trump laid out a serious foreign policy agenda like this. [01:16:30] Oh wait, you know what Trump did, right? This week, I think it was this week, Trump wrote something. Yeah. Like it was in the Wall Street Journal or something.
Really? And it was about how we need more tariffs on China. Oh yeah. Nice. Okay. And the argument is sort of like there's still this huge trade deficit of course got worse after the initial. So these fix they down the deficit. Yeah. So people were like, wait, so you were tacitly admitting that the first tariffs didn't work.
Right. So we put on more tariffs. Yeah. How's that [01:17:00] supposed to work? Yeah, it's gonna work eventually. Yeah. Yeah. So
Ryan Kellogg: that's nice. Yeah. Okay. That's the whole article. It's just
Anita Kellogg: put more tariffs on. I think it was just like an opinion piece or something like that in the Wall Street Journal. I forgot to look it up.
Ryan Kellogg: All right. Well I'll have to
Anita Kellogg: check that out. So that's where Trump's
Ryan Kellogg: foreign policy is. Yeah. Well he's getting, he's getting lots of fresh ideas. That's all I'm saying. It's true. He's definitely gonna incorporate a lot of these and Trump 2.0 to
Anita Kellogg: the extent that he can, that this makes any sense at all.
Ryan Kellogg: Didn't stop him before.[01:17:30]
Anita Kellogg: Well after that, always ending on a positive note. You have the world. That could be. I think this brings us to the end of this episode of Kellogg's Global Politics. You can visit our website at www kellogg's global politics.com and follow us on Twitter at Global Kellogg or me ar
Ryan Kellogg: Kellogg. You can reach us by email, so Nita at kellogg's global politics.com and myself, [01:18:00] Ryan at kellogg's global politics.com.
And as always, please see the show notes for all the articles we discussed in this episode. And if you like the show, please take time, tell your friends, share it on your social media sites as simple, quick, and free to support the show. Thanks
Anita Kellogg: everyone. Thanks. Bye bye.[01:18:30]