What Drives Putin and Xi (Part Two)

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I sat down with the great Russia scholar Stephen Kotkin and the great China scholar Orville Schell for a conversation about Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin—what binds them together, what kind of world they want, and what their partnership means for U.S. foreign policy. We taped our interview on June 16th, and covered so much ground that we decided to bring it to you in two parts. In this, the second half of our conversation, we explore how these two leaders see the West, and how that worldview will reshape geopolitics.

Orville, I want to talk more about the Cultural Revolution and the great tragedies of Mao [Zedong]’s era. The question of why Xi Jinping treats that history the way he does still seems like a puzzle to me, given his own personal experience. In power, he’s tried to scrub that history and really gone out of his way to prevent criticism of Mao and that era. How does he see that history, and why does he feel the need to treat it the way he does? 

ORVILLE SCHELL

Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that despite the fact that he comes from a family that was really laid low by the Maoist revolution, and humiliated, that he still lionizes Mao. And I think this gets back to this idea of the yearning for a restoration of greatness. The first thing Xi Jinping did when he came to power in 2012 was he took the entire Politburo across Tiananmen Square to an exhibit in the National Museum that was called “China’s Rejuvenation,” as if to say, “This is what I’m going to do for you. This is what we need; this is what we want. We need to be a great power, and this is my agenda.” And actually, what he borrowed from Mao was the deep and abiding need for enemies. And that’s the way he fuels this idea of rejuvenation. What I think he learned was, you’ve got to keep on your toes, you have to learn how to be brutal, you have to learn how to compete and struggle—and win.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And if someone happened to remind him of the human costs of some of those, the results of those policies, is that the cost of progress or rejuvenation? How do you think he processes that? 

ORVILLE SCHELL

I think he views the Chinese Communist Party as China’s only saving grace. And as you lose the party, as Steve said, you turn yourself into a Gorbachev show-over. And so he staked his fortunes on the party, even though the party turned on his own family—and in a certain sense wreaked havoc on his family, and on China. 

STEPHEN KOTKIN

Remember, Dan, the alternative to one-party dictatorship in their minds is not a liberal democracy. The alternative to a one-party dictatorship at home is chaos, anarchy, implosion, warlordism—it’s collapse. And so for them, even though that instrument has been used in ways that maybe had negative effects from their point of view, it’s still the instrument not just for Xi Jinping’s own personal power, but also for preventing the alternative, in their minds. And that alternative is not what we would see potentially, or what some Chinese dissidents would see. It’s an alternative that they fear. And to a certain extent, the rest of the population, and both Russia and China share this view: that as bad as one-party rule or dictatorship—in Putin’s case, autocracy—can be at times, that the alternative may be even worse, rather than better. We probably need to understand that in their minds, that’s the alternative that they need to hold at bay.

ORVILLE SCHELL

It’s also a pathway to the restoration of greatness, which I think both Putin and Xi deeply yearn for.

STEPHEN KOTKIN

Yeah, the state is their one instrument. They don’t have the same type of dynamism in the open society and innovation society, and they don’t have the friendships, the alliances across the globe that are voluntary. They don’t have the instruments that we take for granted sometimes—and that we even sometimes try to undermine, crazily. Their instrument is the state. The state is a coercive apparatus: obedience or quasi-military style discipline in the political sphere, suppression of political alternatives, censorship—which means not just suppressing some views, but also promoting other views very widely so that people accept a certain set of information and ways of looking at the world. 

So they have this coercive state as their instrument; they lack some of the other instruments that we have. I should also add that geography does play a role here. If you look at China, it has become a trading nation. It has followed in the footprint of the American-style modern power. It followed that because it has Japan across the water. Deng Xiaoping is looking at the Japanese ashes as a result of World War II, literally, and then within a generation and a half: second-largest economy in the world. And how did that happen? Well, it happened because they had access to the American domestic market, and they manufactured things that the American middle class wanted to buy. 

So Deng is looking at this right across the water. And he goes to Japan, by the way, before he comes to the United States, as Orville knows. But the limitations on this are severe. First of all, they have no California. Now, some people here paying taxes in California might rejoice at a statement like that—no California—but for China, that means that they don’t have that gigantic western ocean opening up into a region that they can trade with across that body of water. Instead, for them, the West is desert, it’s ethnic minorities that are under severe repression. 

And so they’re trying to build an ersatz California through Pakistan and Burma; that’s their way to get to the sea. But Pakistan and Burma don’t own those places. Those places are volatile. And that’s ultimately no substitute for the actual California. And then even if you look at the one coast China does have, their eastern coast, it’s not exactly open to the ocean the same way that the U.S. eastern coast is with the Atlantic. It’s closed in by what we call the first island chain, which is guarded with American military bases, and which has a lot of choke points that the Chinese are concerned about, that could be closed down by the American navy, potentially, or coalition alliance navies. 

So for them, even their one coast is not fully open the same way that a maritime power, like Japan, or Britain, or of course the United States would have. And so for them, they’re trying to play this game partially, with autocratic rule rather than limited government, with a closed political system and closed society rather than a fully open one, with repression and censorship rather than with the chaos and the bizarre quality of an open society that we have here in America. So they’re doing the trade part. They’re finally building the navy, by the way, they built the navy out—they did all this without a navy, they used our navy to become a trading nation. But there are limitations on China’s ability, because of its system and its geography—which are interlocked—for them to play this game of modern power as successfully as we do.

If you look, the U.S. flipped Germany and Japan into the American voluntary sphere of influence. Flipping Germany and Japan were decisive—and then following Germany and Japan, Eastern Europe came in in ‘89, which has been transformative. The transatlantic piece has only grown. And the East Asian piece has also grown because of the successes of South Korea and Taiwan, not just economically, but also the transformation into rule-of-law, pluralistic, open society democracies. That’s been astonishing—all of that happened in a recent time period. And China was great for millennia before that, but now they face the fact that U.S. power exists. 

So when they talk about the eighteenth century, or the Tang Dynasty, or whichever one of their great historical periods they want to talk about, there was no U.S. power then. So it’s just a different game for them to play. Rolling back American power, that nine-dash line in the South China Sea, that’s no accident. They’re hemmed in. And they’re trying to push out, trying to loosen the American alliance system and the American military bases along the first island chain. This is an intentional, clear-as-day geopolitical strategy that they’re unfolding. And we were naive about this, but it’s rooted in the history and the geography, and they know that history and geography, and we have to know it better. And so let’s not allow them to flip Eastern Europe. Let’s not allow them to flip Germany with economic ties. Let’s not allow them to neutralize Japan. 

People speak about a multipolar world, and it just drives me insane. And they say, “How could you be against the multipolar world? It’s democratic, it’s fair, and we all have to share the planet together.” But then the poles are not the same. The U.S. pole is open, non-coercive, and voluntary for the most part. And people are asking to join, like Ukraine. The Chinese pole is coercive, vassalage, non-voluntary, and it’s about subordination to China—you can ask Putin about this himself. And so when we speak about a multipolar world in a positive sense, we are doing China propaganda here, because the polls are not equivalent. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Orville, if you put that narrative to Xi Jinping, or Wang Yi, or someone around him, what would their rejoinder be? What would their analysis be? 

ORVILLE SCHELL 

The question I would like to put to Wang Yi or Xi Jinping is this—I mean, Steve just sort of laid it out for us. Why are you doing this? Why, when it is so demonstrably not in the interest of China—I should say, also in Russia, to invade Ukraine—why does China, when it had a really good thing going and had everybody eating out of their hands, why does it go and alienate Korea over THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense]? Who alienates Sweden, or Norway, or India—one of the first non-aligned nations to recognize China—or even Australia? I mean, what’s going on? Here is the question I would like to ask Xi: why are you doing this? You had a really good thing going—you can have your little one-party state, nobody was beating up on you, just keep a little reform going, and we’ll all share and care and the global economy will go and you’ll get rich. When Mao Zedong met with Kissinger and Nixon, he said, “Oh, Taiwan, settle it in 100 years, no problem.” Steve, you mentioned Deng Xiaoping stopping in Japan on his way to restore diplomatic relations with Jimmy Carter—he said in Japan, “Oh, Taiwan, let’s leave it for smarter generations to come to solve.” Now why is that not a good point?

STEPHEN KOTKIN

You’re absolutely right. China had its cake and it was eating it, too.

ORVILLE SCHELL

Yeah. And so that’s the question I want an answer to.

STEPHEN KOTKIN

I think it’s fear. I think they understand at a fundamental level that our existence and our power and our open societies and our values and our alliances, even when we fail to live up to our promises fully, that it is an existential threat to their existence. It’s not American policy. The issue is just that our existence is existential for them. It’s a bizarre situation, where on one hand, they are the principal beneficiaries; and on the other hand, there couldn’t be a bigger threat than the international order that we created for them. And so maybe as Marxist-Leninists, they’re not being fools when they take those cricket bats across the border with India and smash the heads of India and push India into the American camp, as you alluded to. It looks crazy. It looks idiotic—it looks worse than idiotic. And yet maybe it’s rooted in a cynical but profound understanding of the way they fit into the world going forward.

ORVILLE SCHELL

Well, this is exactly the understanding that I think we need to understand better, and it has two elements. One is China’s deep historical sense of grievance. And the other is, what are the animating principles that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are guided by? In other words, what sets them off? Because in an autocracy, individual personalities of leaders get to write themselves very large. And I think there are some very mysterious questions that are very hard to answer. 

People always say to me, “Oh, don’t talk about ideology.” But I think you’re absolutely right that when you have two such antithetical political systems, they cannot help but feel competition, even threat, from each other. And I think that is sort of the radioactive core that helps make everything else so difficult to deal with, now that Xi is committed to what he calls the Chinese model. But there’s no doubt about it. He thinks that the People’s Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a better form of democracy than what we have. And that is a source of immense contention and controversy between us. 

STEPHEN KOTKIN

We can say it until we’re blue in the face; we’re not pro–regime change, we’re not trying to contain China. But he’s sure that the whole American establishment—that this is all we think about when we wake up in the morning.

ORVILLE SCHELL

Well, you remember that this all began with John Foster Dulles, when John Foster Dulles said, “We may not be able to win China over militarily, but we will get them by peaceful evolution, by soft power and one thing or another.” This word, peaceful evolution, which sounds pretty good to us, is a total antichrist in China, because it’s the color revolution. It’s the underhanded way that they feel they’re going to be undermined by the ideological differences in the preferences that people feel for one system over another. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Steve, that ideological dimension in Putin’s case seems a little bit harder to decipher. He invokes a kind of cultural conservatism, and he obviously obsesses over color revolutions in the same way that Orville referred to. But it’s a little less clear that he has some ideological commitment, or a commitment to a kind of system that he thinks has broader relevance, in the way that the Chinese Communist Party does. 

Yeah, you know, it’s different for Russia, Dan, because Russia is culturally European. China is not culturally European—and doesn’t care. It doesn’t care about ancient Rome or ancient Greece, doesn’t care about the Renaissance and the Reformation. It’s China. It’s got its own story, which in their minds is grander than the Western civilization story. Russia is different, because it’s clearly culturally European. It’s not Western, institutionally, because the West is not a geographic but an institutional matrix; Japan is not European culturally, but it’s institutionally Western. Russia is not Western, but it’s European. So for Russia, you have a kind of ceiling on the anti-Westernism. So you can do anti-Westernism in Russia: it’s mother’s milk, and it’s the way these regimes maintain their grip on society, their hold on power—and in Putin’s case, the personal regime. But being completely cut off from Europe forever is a difficult proposition to sell in the case of Russia. 

And so we see now some grumblings—rumblings—about potential vassalage to China here. And of course, Russia doesn’t decide to become a vassal of China. That’s China’s decision. If China makes Russia a vassal, it becomes partially responsible for Russia. So I’m not sure we’re there yet, on the China side. But on the Russia side, you see the disquiet about being in some type of partnership—however we want to call it—with China indefinitely, and losing the ties to Europe. 

Putin has the same ambivalence. I wouldn’t say it’s 50-50 ambivalence, but it has vacillated over time, where it’s been more pro-Western integration and less anti-Westernism earlier, and far more anti-Western and less pro-Western integration now. To a certain extent, the 1990 attempt to integrate Russia into the West, which was sold by illusions on both sides, blew up. The attempt to integrate China into the West also blew up, but in very different ways, because China was never going to become culturally part of the West; it was always going to be its own civilization in a deep and profound way. Russia was going to be its own civilization, but partially European-Western to a degree that they were willing to explore. 

So for Putin and the rest, reaching for an ideology, the anti-Westernism is what’s on the shelf. But is it anti-Westernism? Or is it anti-Americanism? And this is true for China to a certain extent as well. Because you can be anti-American, but you can have very good relations with Europe. You can divide the West—you can cleave off, put a wedge in between Europe and the United States. The Ukraine war blows all this up. The biggest geopolitical consequence so far of the Ukraine war was the destruction of China’s wedge in the Western alliance between the U.S. and Europe on China policy, and the U.S. and Japan on China policy. We could throw in Australia here. We could throw in the western Pacific. 

China has strategically inflicted so much damage by its support for Putin’s aggression in Ukraine—and it’s not clear [Xi] can recuperate this. It’s not clear that even if there is some type of solution in Ukraine—and it’s a solution where people stop dying, that’s what I mean by a solution—even if that happens, how will China be trusted again, given what it did with Putin over the Ukraine war? So that strategic blunder or self-inflicted damage is, to me, potentially enduring. So for Russia, it’s already been a strategic defeat across the board. Sadly, Russia’s strategic defeat is not a Ukrainian victory. But for China, it’s also been a strategic defeat. And so how does [Xi] recuperate that? How does he get the wedge back in between America and Europe? Between America and Japan? I’m not sure he does. 

So Putin is a hedge for him. If it wasn’t for Russian fissile material, the stuff you make nuclear bombs with—and China’s programmed to build out a massive nuclear arsenal, which we think could potentially rival the Russian one and the American one in the fullness of time—there’s a dependence on Russia for a lot of that, especially the fissile material and expertise. If it weren’t for that, the cost of the hedge would so far outweigh the benefits of the hedge. And you would see a lot more vulnerability to Xi Jinping, domestically, over his choices. You could see more grumbling going forward about this bromance, the strategic bromance, the strategic partnership. 

But if it keeps costing China as much as it does, and the Russian thing gets worse and worse—and China’s partially responsible for that Russian basket case—and has lost Europe and Japan permanently, I’m not sure. They already have so many domestic issues that we didn’t talk about. One-man rule is susceptible to mistakes in a much bigger way than competitive rule, even competitive authoritarianism. So it has been very interesting to watch Putin’s miscalculation—and Xi, as it were, doubling down with his own miscalculation on top of that, paying a different kind of price. The Ukrainians are paying the ultimate price here. Putin is paying a price, Russia is paying a price, and China’s paying a price.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Orville, as we’ve watched Xi Jinping’s relationship with Putin over the course of the last 18 months, his reaction to the war in Ukraine—he certainly seemed a little bit on his back feet. Right after the war started, just a couple of weeks before that, they stood together in Beijing and talked about a “partnership without limits” between Russia and China. He does seem to have been a little bit more proactive in trying to navigate some of the dynamics that Steve laid out. What is your sense of how he sees this picture at this point? Do you think he sees a chance for advantage? Or is that grim strategic outcome that Steve described more or less inevitable? 

ORVILLE SCHELL

I think he does feel a little bit betrayed and trapped, but he’s not going to make any demonstrations of anti-Russian sentiment. I think the thing that really astounds me about both Xi Jinping and Putin is the lack of sense of agency that they have. They seem to not understand that they are creating the very situation they most fear—and that the world is responding to them, not to nothing. They just think the world is this hostile place out here that likes to get together and have a Cold War 2.0. 

But in actuality, both of these countries have a lot more power than I think Xi or Putin recognize. And it wouldn’t be very difficult, particularly in Xi’s case, to use that power in a different way and recognize that if you do X, Y is going to happen. And if it’s against your interest, then do something else. And it’s very hard for them to give a little to get a little because they don’t really have a very highly evolved notion of the essentially reciprocal nature of foreign policy and great-power relations.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

But Orville, these are smart people sitting in Beijing—as they observe the Russian experience and what Vladimir Putin has done to his own country’s future prospects, they must see warnings in that, and they must see certain courses that they would want to avoid.

ORVILLE SCHELL

I think many do have a very highly evolved recognition of this—and I think Xi himself may even recognize it. But I think he’s bereft of the ability to make that kind of critical, sort of flexible authoritarianism. And in a certain sense that was true for a long time. It still remains to be true, whether Putin can evince that kind of flexibility. And if it gets too brittle, of course, then it gets dangerous. Now, [Xi] did turn around on COVID, but I don’t see a lot of flexibility in his playbook, because I think he is so ginned up on his own big leader culture, and his own fear of looking weak, or surrendering. And he’s so besotted with this notion of hostile foreign forces that it’s very hard to make nice.

STEPHEN KOTKIN

You know, Dan, everyone says we’ve got to share the world with China, we’ve got to share the world with Russia. They’re not going away; they were here before we were, they’re gonna be here in the future, we got to share the world. And I say you’re right. 

And you want to know something else? The ocean is wet. I know that firsthand. 

So the issue is not “we’ve got to share the world.” The issue is, what are the terms that we’re going to share the world with? Are the terms going to be the 14 demands they tried to impose on Australia, or what they did to Lotte World and South Korea over the missile defense system, or what they’re doing with the cricket bats on the other side of the line that’s in dispute with India, or we could go on—what they’re doing in Xinjiang, what they did in Hong Kong? Are those the terms that we’re going to share the world with them? Because if those are the terms, I want to push back. But at the same time, I recognize, like Orville does, that we’re in this together. It’s a planet, and it’s the only one we’ve got, and all the other clichés. 

But the Soviets shot down KAL—the Korean civilian airline—they shot it down, and we had evidence that they shot it down in real time. And we exposed that evidence publicly. And George Shultz went to Moscow. He didn’t cancel the trip. Forget about some stupid spy balloon—they shot down a civilian airliner, denied it, we proved they lied, and Schultz got on the plane anyway. And Schultz got off the plane and demanded an answer for what they did. So China sends a spy balloon over the United States, and Blinken cancels? He should have taken that balloon, what was left of it, put it on his plane, went to Beijing, and said “Here, you can have it back now. But this is what you did.”

You’ve got to define the terms of engagement. You’ve got to create leverage. You have to make them be ashamed of things they do, not we’re ashamed that we shot the balloon down, and we can’t release the report about what was in it. What would George Schultz have done with that balloon? He would have done just what I said. He would have put it on his plane, he would have never canceled the trip, and he would have demanded an answer. And then he would have continued with the diplomacy. He wouldn’t have broken off talks. 

The whole point of diplomacy is not that you talk. It’s that you create leverage and then you use that leverage in conversation to try to make deals, deals which support your interests. You have to make concessions. You don’t get everything you want. Even with Gorbachev, Reagan didn’t get every single thing he wanted. And yet, that’s diplomacy. That’s not getting on a plane and begging for a meeting or whatever else it might be, or canceling a trip when they do something that they should answer for, rather than we have to answer for.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

When you look at the diplomacy around the war in Ukraine, China has, responding to some of the dynamics that Steve laid out around this relationship with Europe especially, made a big show of sending peace envoys and supporting peace talks. Can you imagine Xi Jinping making a serious effort to end the war in Ukraine? Do you see any substance to this—anything he will do to constrain Putin at any point? 

ORVILLE SCHELL

I’m not sure I see evidence that Xi Jinping has this ability to date. And yet, as you are suggesting, it would be a stunning achievement for him. And if he really did want to reassure the world of China’s constructive role, he could do something. And in fact, there are many areas where he could do something. But I’m not sure, and this is why I think we’re having this discussion—what is preventing him from playing a more constructive role in the world and a less destructive role in the world? Why the belligerence, why the wolf warrior diplomacy? No one believes that he’s earnest in the question of bringing peace to Ukraine. But he could be.

STEPHEN KOTKIN

He’s got a problem: Vladimir Putin. We see this with North Korea. China can’t give up North Korea. If it gives up North Korea, it ends up with unification of the Korean Peninsula, with the South—the same thing that happened in the German case—as the winner of the Korean War, and then a U.S. military base even closer to China’s border than it is now. And so the North Koreans drive the Chinese up the wall, but they bite the bullet. We could end up with a giant North Korea, here with Vladimir Putin. 

Let’s remember—he goes to Beijing, the Olympics, big ceremonies, bromance, partnership with no limits. And then he unleashes this crazy war almost the day he sets down back in Moscow, which upends China’s strategic wedge with the Europeans. Then Xi Jinping makes a play and says, “You know what, they’re not going to use nuclear weapons.” Remember that? Remember how China intervened to prevent the first use of nukes over this war, and how that was supposedly a big diplomatic accomplishment for Xi? And how many days later does Putin announce that he’s moving tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus? You know, “So much for my friend and strategic partner, I’ve just semi-humiliated him in public by making this announcement over Belarus.” So, I don’t know what these guys are talking about one-on-one. But I’m getting a sense that the problem is less Xi Jinping here, exerting his leverage, than it is Putin. 

Let’s remember that the Chinese didn’t have much leverage when the war first broke out, largely because they haven’t been supplying weapons to the Russians, which has been really important. At the same time, they’ve got leverage now that they didn’t have before, because some very large percentage—perhaps as high as 70 percent—of Russian chips, semiconductor chips, are coming from China now. They’re not coming directly; they’re going through Dubai, and then through the Dubai port overland through Iran, and other ways across the Caspian [Sea], et cetera. Our friends in Virginia understand this a lot better than I do, although I was in the Emirates recently to discuss these questions. 

In any case, they have some leverage now. Those semiconductors, whatever level they’re supplying, it’s a very important level for Putin. And the Chinese, of course, could tilt the battlefield in the Russian’s favor, because they have munitions, drones—they could supply Russia at scale. And they not only have stocks, they have production facilities at scale in China. And so they could increase their leverage. But what does [Xi] get if he gives up Putin? Is the United States going to repeal the CHIPS Act? If Xi Jinping cashiers his closest friend, what does he get for that from the United States? The entire U.S. full-court press remains in place. There’s no reciprocation for any potential abandonment of Putin. 

And so what Orville is referring to is correct, that [Xi]’s got the opportunity to bring peace to Europe and recuperate that relationship, and reinsert the wedge between Europe and America—if he brings peace to Europe, the great peacemaker of Europe. But to do that, he’s got to put the screws on Vladimir Putin, and bring Putin to heel.

And I don’t know if he’s tried yet; when he went to Moscow, if they discussed this: “What would be acceptable to you, Vladimir, as an outcome, if we interceded here?” But this is what I do know: if Putin signs a piece of paper, it’s worth nothing. His promises are worth nothing—unless he signs the piece of paper in Beijing. And then all of a sudden that piece of paper becomes meaningful. 

So China being involved in the negotiations—like Orville just alluded to, it is a possibility for Xi Jinping to seize this—ironically, we’re self-interested in that, which is one of the reasons why President Zelensky of Ukraine has been a lot less dismissive of China’s involvement here than we have been—although I think we’ve turned the corner a little bit and become less dismissive of potential Chinese involvement, at least that’s my impression from some conversations on the inside and some public statements. How do you then go forward? What does the relationship then look like? What are the terms of sharing the planet? The engagement thing could never work, because both sides had illusions. And a policy based on illusions is destined to fail. We had the illusion that they were going to liberalize politically, and they had the illusion that we were going down, whether it was the Iraq War, the global financial crisis, or COVID, or whatever.

So we both sold illusions, and our illusions have, to a very great extent, been shaken. You can’t be disillusioned unless you had illusions. So that’s a much better basis for a relationship now; when you have a more realistic picture of who the other side is, and what their goals are and what their bottom line is, and what their strengths as well as their weaknesses might be. But I just want to say that the puncturing of the illusions is a positive for me. Engagement blowing up, and Xi Jinping rediscovering through this Ukraine war that the West is for real—those are really positive steps that need to be consolidated with effective diplomacy, and with creating leverage, and using that leverage, and all the other things that we’ve been talking about. So, ironically, I’m actually more positive about U.S.-Chinese relations now than I was during the heyday of engagement.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Orville, as you look at both the potential for the U.S.-China relationship, but also the interest that we in the United States have of preventing a full sino-Russian alliance, full sino-Russian convergence—what, as you look at forward-looking options, would you be pointing policymakers toward in the next several years? 

ORVILLE SCHELL

Well, I think both Putin and Xi recognize that if the world is decoupling—and I think it is; maybe not completely, but that’s the trend line—they really only have each other. I mean, Iran—a few other bits and pieces, maybe Pakistan or Hungary—doesn’t quite do it for an alliance. And China still does have some real cards to play, but they need some other big substantial power if we’re going to be in a new kind of a version of—whatever you want to call it—a Cold War. So I don’t think that they’re going to be able to push each other hard enough to actually lead. You’re optimistic, Steve, but your optimism, I think, is born out of a world of logic and reason. You can see that it would be in the interests of nations to do things. But I’m very interested in the psychology of these guys, because I think that’s running them as much as a realistic assessment of interests. And this is what really frightens me, because I think they have very thin skin. I think they’re very allergic to humiliation, very allergic to being shut out, disesteemed, all the things we’ve talked about. And I don’t know what the remedy is for that.

STEPHEN KOTKIN

The leadership variable. You’re right, Orville. You can lay out the structural landscape, and then you need the leadership to kick in. And that’s where the personalities—they impinge all up and down, the whole story. Yeah, [Xi]’s got some very clever people in his regime. Wang Yi is shrewd. 

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

[Wang Yi] is Xi Jinping’s top foreign policy hand at this point.

STEPHEN KOTKIN

He’s no fool.

ORVILLE SCHELL

But I don’t think he has permission to actually think really innovatively and creatively.

STEPHEN KOTKIN

The issue here is what you said, Orville: it’s reciprocity. We felt that the Chinese didn’t reciprocate to us; that’s one of the reasons we’re angry. We gave them WTO [World Trade Organization] admission, and they failed to reciprocate. They failed to do some of the reforms that they should have done in order to qualify to get into the WTO in the first place. So now, if Xi Jinping makes some concessions—if he says, “We’ve got to walk this back”—there’s no sense of reciprocation on the American side. We now have a bipartisan commitment to standing up to China. 

So if Xi Jinping gets the advice from Wang Yi or others that there needs to be some level of rapprochement—and for that, the Chinese have to take some steps here; whatever those steps might be, we could argue and discuss, but there needs to be some level of movement in the Western, especially U.S. direction—does the U.S. reciprocate? Or does it smack the hand that reaches out? 

We understand that the Biden administration is trying—we see Jake Sullivan, we see Janet Yellen, now we see Antony Blinken, we see all their main actors and the various pieces of fragmented U.S. power—we see them reaching out to try to reestablish. The most prominent one is the Pentagon, of course, because they want to deconflict with hotlines and regular communication and all the things we eventually had with the Soviets. But is that really reciprocation, that kind of dialogue? Because, yes, you want to talk, but what do you [the United States] want to talk about? You want to talk about things that we [China] don’t want to talk about with you. You want to contain us; you want to hold us back; you want to put these guardrails. Well, within those guardrails, you’re going to full-court press us. So why should we allow you to have guardrails? That’s just conceding the terms of your policy, of your posture, of your cold war, or whatever we want to call it. So there’s a fundamental problem of the absence of potential reciprocation on the U.S. side—even if the Chinese logically figure out what it is that we’re talking about here that could alleviate the pressure on them that Orville has rightly said they’ve brought about on themselves to a very great extent.

But I wonder if some catalyst—some series of events, some random actions, something that we’re not predicting—moves us to a point where we can then take advantage of the catalyst, of the unforeseen events, of the contingencies that pop up? Are we ready to do that on each side? Because right now, we’re stuck in this doom loop that Orville has elucidated, which has this deep psychological dimension.

ORVILLE SCHELL

One—it’s a strange thing to say, to call it hopeful, when it would also be a kind of a catastrophe—one thing that could actually help is if there is a real economic downturn, either in China or the globe, because those kinds of things remind people of interdependence and the need for interaction and some kind of keeping the fabric together. Short of something like that, I just don’t see how we’re going to get out of this rut to a place where we have a quid pro quo. 

If I was Biden and Xi, I would have a phone call and say, “Listen, each of us send three people who are out of government who are smart as hell. Let’s lock them in a room in Singapore for a week, see what they can come up with by the way of a quid pro quo”—a roadmap that you’re alluding to, Steve—“and then let’s you and I get together and see if there’s anything we can agree on here.” But short of that, I don’t think we’ve got much to work with. 

STEPHEN KOTKIN

Well, we’re not rolling back AUKUS. We’re not rolling back the alliances; it’s not as if we’re going to say, “Oh, okay, the hell with our alliance with South Korea or Japan.” We’re not going to give up those base rights, the access rights in the Philippines—there’s just a whole lot of stuff we’re not going to concede that’s built in, that’s baked in, to whatever dialogue that might be possible. And so the issue then becomes, what are the questions that could spark mutual interest? 

It used to be thought that we would have climate change, or fill in the blank—that there were a series of interests that they just had to be interested in because it was good for them, and we had to be interested in. But the Chinese decided that they would not divide issues to ones we can agree on or ones we can’t agree on and proceed with the ones we can agree on. They decided that it was all or nothing. It was a whole package. You wanted to talk about climate? Well, we want to talk about your bases and your tech export controls and everything. 

So for me, Orville—I don’t know if this is fantasy on my part, or an insight, or neither—but the issue is, how do we get a concession where they’re willing to divide some issues, so that some issues are worthy of dialogue from their point of view, even if other issues can’t be talked about, let alone resolved. 

ORVILLE SCHELL

And this is, ironically, what we had with the Soviet Union. We were able to talk about certain issues.

STEPHEN KOTKIN

But the Chinese know that history too, once again, and they’re afraid of that history. The reason the Chinese detest the idea of a cold war—there are many reasons. One reason is, they don’t want to be the Soviet Union. That’s not a good place for them to be. The idea that there’s going to be a cold war and the United States is going to play the United States again in the movie—well, who’s going to play the Soviets? The Chinese don’t want to play the Soviets in that. 

And this separation of issues—where some issues are worthy of conversation, while others are not going to be resolved. If we can get to that through a crisis—I hope not the kind of crisis you discussed, but some crisis whose consequences were less severe—and we could seize that as an opportunity and get to the point where we could have some issues where there’s recognized mutual interest, and where each side would have to make some concessions to make it work. Then we would have an actual dialogue that could expand and contract over time.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Before we put the two of you on a plane to Singapore to huddle with some Chinese counterparts along the lines Orville suggested, let me close by getting each of you to just briefly give some consideration to what happens after these two enormous figures are no longer dominating their own countries and political systems in the way they are. Do you see the changes they have made to their systems as irreversible? Is this something where we see the kind of system we’ve seen under these figures persist under a different leadership after them? What does this look like after they leave the scene? Steve, let me let me start with you on Putin. 

STEPHEN KOTKIN

Everybody dies. Cemeteries are full of indispensable men, as the cliché says. Stalin died, and Mao died. But then here we are; Stalin died, and Mao died, and we’re having a conversation that we could have had back in the day, about what happens after Stalin dies and what happens after Mao does. So that’s not encouraging. 

For Russia, it’s pretty clear: they become like France, or it’s trouble as far as the eye can see. France, which has a bureaucratic, absolutist tradition like Russia; France, which has a convoluted, complex, revolutionary tradition like Russia; France, which threatened all its neighbors for a long time, but which doesn’t threaten its neighbors anymore. It’s a proud state that sees itself as a civilizational state, but is integrated into global structures, is a positive actor, and is not threatening its neighbors. If Russia ends up looking like that, it would be fabulous—not just for the world, but for Russians. We thought we were on that trajectory in the 90s, and of course we weren’t. What could trigger that trajectory, how we could get there—we don’t have time to run through the scenarios. 

But you can see that where Russia is now, and what France looks like now, that there’s a bit of space between them, and that’s a lot of territory to cross to get to that. Otherwise, we could end up with a gigantic version of North Korea. That’s unfortunately the trajectory we’re on now. Or even worse than that, we could have a Chinese puppet regime in Moscow. We could have disintegration, chaos, warlordism—God forbid—in Moscow. We could have another authoritarian leader who is—well, at least recognizes the independent existence of Ukraine; might be xenophobic, might be aggressive, but may conclude that Ukraine aggression was a mistake. That would be the best possible outcome. And certainly in the short term, it wouldn’t solve the problem of Russia, but it would help solve the problem of Ukraine’s suffering. But you know, Dan, I’m not that good at predicting the future. Otherwise, I would probably be in your chair, rather than in my chair, where I study history.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Orville, how about China after Xi Jinping? 

ORVILLE SCHELL

Well, Xi Jinping, too, will pass. And I think it’s important to remember, as we contemplate that eventuality—both in Russia and China’s case, but particularly in China’s case—this country, and society, is one of the least resolved societies that I’m acquainted with. And what I mean by that is there are a lot of conflicting forces, historically speaking, which lie beneath the surface, and at different times, different mixes of these forces express themselves. 

So there is a kind of a more open, democratic, cosmopolitan, sophisticated, global side of China. And I think with Xi Jinping’s passage, it could give an opportunity for that side. I mean, my God, there’re so many smart Chinese scientists and writers. This is not a country filled with idiots. But it’s a question of leadership and who allows whom to write themselves a little larger in society. 

So I think China has a lot of potential. But I just think we’re stuck with a rather retrograde leader—that until he either wakes up or moves on, it’s hard to see a change coming. And I may be surprised. But changes are incipient within China; there’s potential for it to go in any number of directions. And we’ve never predicted one big change that’s happened in contemporary China.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Well, that is a relatively optimistic note to end on. Steve and Orville, huge thanks for this conversation, and for all the really fantastic work you’ve done in our pages over the past few years, and that we’ll continue to look to you to provide in the years ahead. So thanks so much for joining us. 

ORVILLE SCHELL

Well, thanks, Dan, it’s really fun to do it with you. And Steve, I always enjoy talking with you. 

STEPHEN KOTKIN

A great pleasure. I really appreciate it a lot. I learned a lot.