Sarah Paine: belief

Transcript context

…But just generally, is it wise to have this, will they, won't they attitude? Does it do a good job of deterring them? I think you want to be ambiguous in the United States because otherwise it would enable Taiwan to do crazy stuff. Like under Chiang Kai-shek, if we had been unambiguous, the man might have done crazy stuff and then all of a sudden we get pulled into a World War. But if you think about a Taiwan conflict, just because there's a conflict there does not mean the United States has to send its military toe to toe. I would think it would give China a long lasting time out from the international world order. It'll be sanctioned. This is what's so tragic about China. Think about how many people have been lifted out of poverty. So many since Deng Xiaoping. Hundreds of millions. It is a great achievement of our lifetime. This has happened since you were born. And why did that happen? It's China's reintegration into the rest of the world, of joining the maritime order, following the basic credit card rules of paying for transactions and then your transactions are also guaranteed. That is the win for China, the true win. And taking Taiwan, who needs it? The Taiwanese are perfectly fine doing their own thing. And they've made it clear they don't want to be taken over by force. Who would be? The problem in China is a Communist Party wants to maintain its monopoly on power. It used to claim the moral rectitude card. Well, they can't do that anymore. They're so corrupt. They used to claim the economic growth card. Well, that one's going away. They're left with one card. It's the nationalism card. And they're playing it hard because it's a unifying thing for Chinese, for the Han ethnic group in China, who constitute the overwhelming majority, that Taiwan should be theirs. It's a mistake. It will be a pivotal error if they make that mistake. But guess what? Other countries cannot control what the Chinese government decides to do. It's foolish to think you can control it. It's beyond your abilities. Although we can control whether we get into a head war with another global superpower. What are the odds you would give to a war between China and the U.S. going nuclear?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.