Thank you, Mr. Dmitri, for this interview. I think we caught you in a very interesting time. When the book was published, no one thought about the possibility of war breaking out between the US and Iran. Also, there was a military operation in South America earlier this year. Those situations not only involved the US military but also involved the air defense system from mainland China. What do you think about it? Is the Chinese military system weaker than we thought, or were there other problems in Iran or Venezuela? I'm not sure if there is a problem with the Chinese or even the Russian air defense systems.
I do think that when they're facing the US military, the most powerful military force that's ever been on this planet, they are not up to the task because the US has numerous kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities like electronic warfare to neutralize air defenses. This is a mission that the United States has focused on for many, many decades and is absolutely the best in the world at it. And what you saw both in Venezuela and frankly Iran, where we are in the process of achieving complete air supremacy over that nation, being able to fly unimpeded day and night over the skies of Iran, is a testament to that. So it's not that Russian or Chinese military equipment doesn't work, it's that at least in certain cases when confronted with the power of the United States and the capabilities of the United States, they come up wanting.
After this military operation, I think the world and the media have reassessed the military balance between the United States and China, especially when we talk about Asia.
Well, the location of individual systems doesn't matter, but the scale and volume of those systems absolutely does. China, of course, mainland China has numerous systems, much more than Iran and or Venezuela on air defense. So that presents a harder target. In general, when you sort of do a military balance, if you do a spreadsheet comparison of the United States military to the Chinese military, it's not even a question who is way, way more superior, particularly on the key things that matter to military operations such as logistics, such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. It's not weapon systems that win wars, it's actually logistics. And China has nowhere close to the military logistics of the United States. It would not be able to perform an operation like Venezuela. It would not be able to perform an operation like Iran. But the problem is that wars aren't fought with spreadsheets. And the one conflict that the Chinese have been focused on, of course, now for many, many decades thinking about, preparing for, building equipment specifically for that conflict is the invasion of Taiwan. And there they would do much, much better than they would in military operations around the world. The United States has lost its focus at the turn of the century on that conflict and has allowed its capabilities in the region to atrophy while we were focused on prosecuting counterterrorism missions and the Iraq war in the Middle East. And only in the last five or six years have we sort of started focusing again on the Indo-Pacific, on China, and building up capabilities, but we are coming in from not a very good place, particularly when it comes to our munitions stockpiles and our regional power projection. It is changing and it's changing quickly, but we have more work to do. Now, I do believe that if the conflict were to take place today, which it won't, we're likely years away from any conflict over Taiwan and hopefully it never takes place. But if it were to take place today, we would defeat China. I'm very confident of that today. The question is not though would we defeat them today, but would we defeat them in four years time, for example, as they're continuing their build-up and presence in the region. And we have to ensure that we keep up with their arms race and produce more and more asymmetric weapons that can defeat the Chinese navy and sink the fleet to the bottom of the Taiwan Strait should they decide to make a crossing.
But when we talk about the balance of power between the United States and China in the East Asia sea, that will be another problem. When we talk about Taiwan, it is not a fair game because the United States has military all over the world. If there's a logistic and focus, I think there's the Middle East scenario, there's also the scenario in Russia and the Ukraine war, but it seems China, taking the offensive side, will only have one target and can deploy every logistic and military and also production power on that. Do you think that nowadays the US has those military productions that can keep up with...
Yeah, of course. Should there be a conflict, and hopefully there won't be, but should there be a conflict, that will be the only priority for the US military. This is why right now the US administration is going to Europe, for example, and saying you need to build up your own deterrent vis-a-vis Russia because we may not be there for you. And it's not just a political decision of would we defend NATO or not defend NATO, but practically speaking, and we've been saying that to you for years to Europeans, if we're in a conflict with China, everything we have in Europe that is relevant to the Chinese conflict will go to the Indo-Pacific. And should Vladimir Putin decide to take an adventurous path and test NATO, Europe will be on its own. It's just the reality of the fact that we only have capacity to fight a one-front war. Even if you look at Iran, over 50% of our air power today is deployed over this conflict with Iran. So not only could we not take China and someone else at the time, we really can't even take Iran on anyone else at the same time. That would be a significant military fight. So it's not so much that our forces are dispersed, we can mobilize them quickly as we have just done with Iran in a little over a month. We've brought all those logistics halfway around the world and are executing this campaign. So that's not so much the issue. The production capacity is a problem. We cannot outproduce China in large part because we have allowed our military industrial base to atrophy. There's a huge effort and an enormous focus from this administration to rebuild our defense industrial base, particularly using advanced manufacturing, using robotics, using automation. So we're not sort of trying to match one-to-one the Chinese labor force, which we obviously can't, we're a much smaller country, but leveraging automation, leveraging technology, can we produce both high-end, highly exquisite, and expensive, and highly capable munitions and weapon systems, but also the low end. And the Syrian war is actually a demonstration for the first time of those low-end capabilities where we actually had taken the Iranian Shahed drones that Iran had sold to Russia and Russia deployed against Ukraine. We had captured some of those drones, reverse engineered them, and basically produced a very similar capability called Lucas that we're deploying now against Iran. Very, very cheap drones that can hit en masse against Iranian air defenses and other targets. So, that is an example, an early example of some of those capabilities where we can produce lots of cheap munitions that we would need in a conflict. And look, the reality is that China is the one as an invading force that is attempting to do the hardest military operation that you can possibly imagine, an amphibious invasion. Is it a disadvantage? The defending forces of Taiwan, of the United States, of Japan, and Australia that might join in in this fight have an advantage because they're defending territory, they can use stand-off munitions to target Chinese ships. And this is really the point of weakness, right? So, for China to win this fight over Taiwan, it has to invade with enormous force, probably at least a million, maybe even more people that it has to carry over the Taiwan Strait to land on Taiwan and occupy and pacify that nation. And if the United States with allies manages to sink that fleet, it's over. Right? There will be no lift capacity to carry those troops, and it doesn't matter how many rockets and missiles you have, you will not be able to occupy Taiwan. So, as long as we focus our efforts on the Chinese navy, also of course on air defense against their missiles and aircraft, we are capable of inflicting enormous casualties on the PLA that would prevent them from succeeding. And the goal here is not just to defeat them, you know, as I write in my book, there are three scenarios here. China invades and wins, a disastrous scenario certainly for Taiwan and the world. China invades and loses, still a disastrous scenario because of the enormous loss of life, huge economic damage that would ensue. And the Goldilocks scenario that we are trying to achieve, which is China never invades because they've been deterred. Unfortunately, to have successful deterrence, you have to convince the opponent's side that you're ready to fight and you have the capability to win that fight. So, as much as we don't want war, as much as we would like to avoid it, we have to project confidence that we would fight and that we would win this conflict in order to make sure it never happens.
When we talk about deterrence, this is an important part about the propaganda and also intelligence and also the narrative that we talk about in China. But the problem is China is not a transparent world. They are not tapping into the international news and also seeing CNN. They have their own media system, especially also sometimes in Taiwan that people are looking into the Chinese media that they are scared that they may lose the war. That's why they surrender without fighting. So, this is one of the problems that happens in Taiwan. Now, what do you think about the deterrence effectiveness in the PLA nowadays, especially when there is a lot of high-ranking officials that were sacked because there's corruption involved and also there's losing the power structure. The deterrence, will that work in your scenario?
So, we're not trying to deter the PLA. We're trying to deter one man because what has happened in China since 2012 is quite remarkable because Xi Jinping has achieved more power than any Chinese leader really since the emperor time. Even Mao, except for a very brief period of time, did not have as much power as Xi Jinping has now consolidated in his hands. So, should there be a decision to go to war over Taiwan, it'll be a decision of one man and one man only, Xi Jinping. So, that is who we need to deter. It doesn't matter what Chinese generals think, what the Chinese population thinks, it matters only what one person thinks. And I think we can deter him because he knows that the costs of this war, should he lose it, would be enormous for him personally and for even the survival of the Chinese Communist Party in mainland China. Because if you think about what it means to lose a war, it means probably the destruction of the Chinese navy. It probably means hundreds of thousands of casualties in China, something that would be very, very difficult for him to survive both in power and potentially even with his life, and would put in danger the entire regime. So, the stakes are very, very high for him. Before he goes, he needs to have a high degree of confidence that he can win this. And the more that we can impact that confidence, the more that we can make him wake up every single day, as I write in my book, and say, 'Today is not the day.' And prolong this as long as possible, hopefully beyond his tenure. Maybe there's a chance that whoever comes after Xi Jinping would not be as adventurous as other Chinese leaders had not been, right? Every Chinese leader since Mao has talked about the unification with Taiwan, but they were willing to push it off into an undetermined future. No one was rushing to do it. It's Xi Jinping that came in 2012 and said, 'We can't let this conflict fester for generations. The rejuvenation, as he says, of the Chinese nation depends on unification with Taiwan.' He is the one that accelerated the military build-up. He is the one who's impatient. He is the one who we know has given the order to the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan in 2027. Doesn't mean that he's invading 2027. In fact, I think it's very unlikely that there will be an invasion in 2027, but he's clearly preparing his military and the political system with a purge that he's orchestrated to remove anyone that he thinks might not be executing his orders appropriately, is engaged in widespread corruption, or may not be as loyal as he needs to be. He is the one that's sort of preparing this battlefield for this war. And if we manage to extend the timeline beyond his tenure, beyond maybe his life, we might get a different leader who is not as obsessed with Taiwan as Xi Jinping is.
So, let's talk about our fail case, but not in Asia, but in Europe. I think that's similar that when we talk about Ukraine and the Russian war, the deterrence is only against one person, is Putin. But the United States or maybe the West failed this case. Why does that happen?
