Weekend Reading & Selected Links

Happy weekend! Here are some links to things I've been reading that you might also enjoy:

1. My new podcast conversation, with Sam Roggeveen. At the bottom of this email, I've included three excerpts from the conversation.
2. Late last year I hosted the keynote panel for EAGx Australasia. Video recently published here.
3. 'The Secrets and Misdirection Behind Sam Altman’s Firing From OpenAI'.
4. 'The Average College Student Is Illiterate'.
5. Tariffs formula.
6. The rise and rise of microsites for policy papers.
7. 'A walk down Victoria Street', a new Works in Progress article by the inimitable Sam Hughes.

Have a great weekend,‌
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Joe

Excerpts from my podcast with Sam Roggeveen

1. America isn't intellectually or culturally primed for a contest with China

SAM ROGGEVEEN: ... [S]ince China's rise as a great power really began in the early post-Cold-War years, no American president has stood before the American people and said that “this is now our national mission, this is now the thing we devote the entire country to.”

And that's what it would take, right? In your introduction you pointed to the fact that no other power or constellation of powers has ever approached 60% of American GDP. China's well past that figure. So this is a much bigger challenge than the Cold War in most respects and economically already a bigger challenge than Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. So it would take a whole-of-nation effort—not just whole-of-government, whole-of-nation, bigger than the Cold War. And you can't do that on the quiet. You can't just sort of slip that in. It can't be just a Beltway project. It has to be a whole-of-nation effort.

And that starts with the American president saying to the public: “Listen, we've got to put our shoulders to the wheel and do this now.” And none of them have done that so far.

[There is] one other sort of straw in the wind that I would point to, that's not in the book, but so it's worth actually adding. I wish I'd thought of it at the time, but it came to me much later. The intellectual environment in the US, to me, does not indicate that the United States is primed for a contest like this. It's not there in the popular culture ... 

Just as one indicator, I don't see popular commentators like Joe Rogan obsessed with China. And the intellectual heft is not there either. My bookshelf's grown under the weight of American scholars, think-tankers, political advisers, military analysts, writing books about China. And Foreign Affairs, which is the sort of in-house journal of the American foreign policy establishment, is chock full of articles about “the China challenge” and “the China threat”. But I don't see it coming from beyond that Beltway crowd. I don't see [New York Times columnists] David Brooks and Ross Douthat, just to name two, writing books about the China challenge. It doesn't resemble the Cold War in that respect, where Cold War liberalism was an entire school of thought, an entire genre that developed in the Cold War. Samuel Moyn wrote a book about it recently. It doesn't even compare to the war on terrorism, where you had figures like Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, Paul Berman, Michael Ignatieff, the New York Times editorial page, all obsessed with this question of: “How do you maintain a liberal democracy in the face of the radical Islamist threat?” I don't see anything like that in the United States at the moment. So the intellectual ferment is just not there to support the scale of the challenge that the governing class in America claims to be embarking upon.

Watch this excerpt in video form:

2. The strategic community in Jakarta

ROGGEVEEN: [T]he strategic community in Jakarta is very small. I wrote a paper for Australian Foreign Affairs last year where I laid out the case for the alliance, this quasi-alliance, in much more detail. And it didn't get much response from Jakarta. I didn't hear a great deal from there. I was hoping for more criticism actually, but in the end heard nothing very much. So really, there is just not much to go on about how Indonesia would perform as ASEAN's leader.

...

WALKER: So say you're able to convince both sides of politics that this alliance should be the top priority of Australian statecraft. But it turns out in 10 to 15 years that those efforts have just foundered. What do you think the most likely reason for that would be? So in other words, the problem isn't Australian politics; it's something else.

ROGGEVEEN: Yeah, there are some in what used to be called the Indonesia lobby in Australia who argue that, you know, our South-East Asia literacy is very poor and Australia is simply not mentally ready to place itself in that South-East Asian firmament. You know, we still behave like a white post-colonial power that talks to Indonesia and talks to South-East Asia either as an aid donor or as a country that needs to address bilateral problems in the relationship. But we don't talk to South-East Asia as an equal. We are far away, mentally, from thinking about Indonesia as being a great power to which Australia would be subordinate. We mentally haven't worked our way into that territory yet. We're still a long way from it.

But even with all of that said, I think the problems would mainly be on the Indonesian side. I think at the elite level there is a real readiness in Australia for much closer ties with Indonesia. But one problem is, as I said before, the Indonesian strategic community is very small and there's maybe a lack of imagination to think about something like that. The other reason, I think probably a much more basic one, is that when Indonesia thinks about its security, it looks north; it doesn't look south. Australia's just not a problem that it needs to deal with. So there may simply not be the bandwidth to think about Australia in those grand terms.

3. Under what conditions would Australia be justified in acquiring its own nuclear weapons?

WALKER: What basic preconditions would you want to see met before you thought Australia was justified in considering acquiring nuclear weapons of its own?

ROGGEVEEN: I can't see why Australia would do this if there wasn't proliferation first. So for all the reasons we've already discussed—Japan's security dilemma with China, South Korea's security dilemma with China, Taiwan's, needless to say, Taiwan's security dilemma with China—is much more acute than Australia's is. We are just further away. It's harder to project military power against faraway targets than against nearby targets. So we have less to worry about than those countries. And so I find it impossible to imagine a world in which Australia goes nuclear before they do.

So the first condition that needs to be met is that Japan and probably Korea go nuclear before us. Taiwan won't because … it's impossible for any country, even a closed society like Iran, to keep a nuclear weapons program secret. And Taiwan is not a closed society. It's a very open society. And actually it's quite deeply penetrated by Chinese intelligence services. So it would be absolutely impossible for them to hide a nuclear weapons program. And as soon as the Chinese got wind of it, the invasion would be on.

WALKER: Right.

ROGGEVEEN: So that's why Taiwan will never go nuclear.

South Korea and Japan are in a different boat. So if American withdrawal was imminent, or they simply lost faith in the alliance, in the extended nuclear deterrent that they enjoy, then I think they might take that option of going nuclear. So they would need to go first.

The other threshold that needs to be met is that Indonesia would need to be okay with it. And this is, I think, a very important one, because in the absence of Indonesian acquiescence, or preferably Indonesian cooperation, then any problem that we will be trying to solve by going nuclear would actually be totally undercut by the problems we would create with Indonesia by going nuclear. In fact, the problems we create with Indonesia would be much worse than any problem we'd be trying to solve with China by going nuclear because it would immediately trigger a reaction from Indonesia. And Indonesia would then become the enemy that we, you know, we so desperately want to avoid it being. So we would need to get Indonesian cooperation, and as I say, even better still would be that we do it cooperatively with Indonesia. That seems unlikely to me. It would be a huge step for Indonesia as well as Australia.

WALKER: For sure. So remind me: you think that America's extended nuclear deterrence—the nuclear umbrella that protects countries like Australia, allies of America like Australia—you think that extended nuclear deterrence is not going to remain credible into the future, right?

ROGGEVEEN: Yeah. Well, let's put Australia to one side.

WALKER: Okay.

ROGGEVEEN: The Korean case is actually a good way to illustrate this problem.

WALKER: Yeah.

ROGGEVEEN: The United States has an agreement, has an alliance with South Korea, as it does with all its Asian allies and its European allies, the ones that don't have nuclear weapons of their own. It has this basic agreement which in its essentials says to that ally: “If you are ever threatened with nuclear weapons, we will use our nuclear weapons in your defence.” That's called extended nuclear deterrence, right? So that's the bargain that the US has struck with its allies. And because we, America, are choosing to let you effectively borrow our nuclear weapons, you will never need to develop nuclear weapons of your own.

In the Korean case, that bargain started to change a few years ago, because about five or six years ago, I think, we started to see evidence emerging from North Korea that it was building what's called an ICBM, an intercontinental ballistic missile. Which means that North Korea now, we have to assume, has the ability to put a nuclear warhead, probably several, on an American city. East coast, west coast, New York, Los Angeles, you name it, all of them.

So now suddenly the bargain with South Korea changes. Because what it now implies is that we, America, will use nuclear weapons on your behalf if you're attacked, even if that means one or more of our cities gets destroyed with nuclear weapons.

WALKER: We'll trade Seattle or Los Angeles for Seoul.

ROGGEVEEN: Exactly.

WALKER: Not credible.

ROGGEVEEN: Not credible. That is an impossible thing to ask of the Americans.

And you know, I think sometimes when I talk about America and its waning resolve, it might carry an implication that I'm making a judgement about American moral character, about its courage. But not at all. I'm making a cold-blooded assessment about its vital interests.

And actually, if there's a moral judgement to be made, it is against us as America's allies. It is about the South Koreans, in this case. Because what we, as America's allies are asking the Americans to do on our behalf is ridiculous. It's impossible. What could possibly justify the United States losing Seattle or Los Angeles or Washington on behalf of South Korea? That is not a credible or reasonable thing to ask the Americans to do on our behalf.

ROGGEVEEN: And so inevitably, I think the South Koreans have drawn the conclusion that actually we shouldn't be asking the Americans to do this on our behalf. It's not credible. We have to do it ourselves. And there is good evidence now that the South Koreans are doing that. They are developing more independent capabilities to counter the North Korean threat.

Australia and Japan up to this point have taken the opposite view. They have decided that the way to address this problem is to tie the Americans down even further. That's what AUKUS is partly about. Japan is doubling its defence spending, but also tying itself much more closely to the United States. I think the South Korean approach is more credible than the Australian and Japanese approach.

WALKER: So if you think that, does that mean you think that Australian governments will decide that they can no longer rely on extended nuclear deterrence over the next few decades?

ROGGEVEEN: I mean, that's going to require a huge cultural shift in Australia, which the two major parties may not be capable of.

The everyday workings of the US-Australia alliance is embedded in bureaucracies. We started our conversation by talking about the intelligence world. The Five Eyes arrangement is at the very core of the security relationship with the United States. And then beyond that, you've got the broader security and defence relationship between our defence departments. You've got Australians embedded in IndoPacom in Hawaii, for instance. I mean, this goes very deep. This is in the marrow of both systems.

But I would argue over and above that, that the alliance is held together by the political culture in our two major parties. The best illustration of that is that both of our major parties claim the alliance as their progeny. Labor says that, okay, we turned to the alliance during the Second World War. The Liberals say, well, yeah, but it was Menzies who started ANZUS. They're both kind of right. But what it illustrates is that it's there. It's deep in the bones.

And actually, one further point about Australian history and the way the alliance operates: it's not coincidental to me that over the course of the Cold War, the Labor Party only had an extended period of government when it fully reconciled itself to the relationship with the United States, to the alliance with the United States, and its relationship, its opposition to communism. Even in the Whitlam period, there were some doubts, within the party, about its relationship to communism and its partnership to the United States. Hawke put all of that to bed. And that was the only time that the Labor Party had an extended period in power.

So the relationship with the United States, I would argue, is so deeply embedded that I doubt that they are capable of those kind of, you know, fundamental reassessments of the alliance relationship.

WALKER: Okay. Putting aside what political leaders might decide, do you, Sam Roggeveen, think that we can continue to rely on extended nuclear deterrence?

ROGGEVEEN: I think we can rely on the vestiges of it for a long time, because extended nuclear deterrence actually doesn't do a great deal for Australia. One point where I think you and I might disagree is that I find it very difficult to imagine a security crisis where Australia could plausibly be threatened with the use of nuclear weapons. I think Australia would have a very good case if there was ever a security dispute with China, and China were to do what Russia is doing right now to NATO and to Ukraine … I think Australia would have a plausible case for saying: “We don't believe you. You may say you're ready to use nuclear weapons against us, but we're calling your bluff. We don't think you will do that.”

WALKER: Oh, that's a big bluff to call.

ROGGEVEEN: Well, it's a big bluff to call, but the culture against nuclear use is incredibly high. And that's a difficult taboo to break. And Australia, little Australia, in relative terms, would not be the country that I'd pick to break that taboo against.

WALKER: Yeah. So we'll go to audience questions in a moment, but I just want to push you on this final point a tiny bit more. This is the move you make in the book. I think the way your argument works is that even if we can't continue to rely on extended nuclear deterrence, we're kind of rescued by this taboo argument. It would just be so unthinkable that any kind of threat isn't going to be credible. Now, obviously, as you know, the most likely way nuclear weapons would be used against Australia isn't a mushroom cloud forming over Canberra; it's nuclear blackmail—so a country like China threatening to use nuclear weapons, and then us acquiescing and not engaging China in sort of conventional warfare, or letting them get their way.

So my worry is that so much of nuclear strategy is just drawn from, like, one big case study, which is the Cold War. And we just don't really have a clear sense of how these things might play out.

So you mentioned the Ukraine example. That's a very clear example of a country post-Cold-War using nuclear weapons in this sense. Putin almost every day threatens nuclear blackmail to keep the US and its NATO allies out of directly intervening in Ukraine.

There's another really interesting historical example here, which is [that] China itself has experience with nuclear blackmail, on the receiving end. So in the 1950s, the US kept China from invading Taiwan by threatening to use nuclear weapons. And that threat worked.

So I guess I don't feel confident that we could rely on China not to use nuclear blackmail against us if conflict broke out. And, yeah, my worry would be that this taboo just won't restrain a country like China.

ROGGEVEEN: So you're. You're drawing a distinction between nuclear blackmail and nuclear use—use in the sense of actually detonating a nuclear device.

WALKER: So then … if you bought that argument, the logic of Australia acquiring nuclear weapons would, as you know, would be that it would neutralise that threat. And now we're just back to fighting China on conventional terms.

ROGGEVEEN: But my counterargument would be that the distinction between nuclear blackmail and nuclear use is a distinction without a difference.

WALKER: I agree with that.

ROGGEVEEN: Nuclear blackmail only works if the person being blackmailed believes the threat.

WALKER: Right, I agree.

ROGGEVEEN: So I don't see how you get out of that. The reason I'm saying that Australia can call the bluff is because I don't think China would ever use nuclear weapons. So the threats that it makes would simply not be credible.

WALKER: Isn't the problem that the consequences are so large that even if there's just a small probability, it's still going to affect your decision-making?

ROGGEVEEN: Yeah, that's a risk we're running. Yeah, absolutely.

WALKER: Okay.

ROGGEVEEN: It's only that the other way of approaching this problem also imposes huge costs on Australia. So Australia becoming a nuclear weapons power … that also has huge costs. So it's simply a matter of weighing the costs of my approach against the other one, of proliferating.