Transcription
[music] Hi, I'm Bhagya Gareka and this is Asian Insider. We're recording this episode on Friday the 21st of November 2025 and I'm speaking today with Professor Graham Allison. He's a professor of government at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was the founding dean. And you probably know him as the author of a best-selling book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape the Thucydides Trap. And of course, he goes back a long way with Singapore. He interviewed Singapore's founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew for his book, The Grandmaster's Insights on China, the US, and the World. So happy you're here with us, Dr. Allison. Welcome to the show.
>> Thank you very much. I have a warmest spirit in my heart for Singapore. I've learned a lot from Singaporeans. So happy to be with you.
>> Uh, when were you last in Singapore?
>> Well, I was thinking about this. Uh, I don't think I've been there in 25, though I had the good fortune to welcome uh, uh, your senior minister Lee here in Cambridge last spring. And I saw another Kennedy School graduate uh, uh, and former student, Lawrence Wong, in uh, at the Davos in Tianjin in China in the summer. We spent a couple hours together catching up. So uh uh and then fortunately we have a number of excellent students from Singapore here at the Kennedy School, including some in my class. So I feel like I'm there even if I haven't had the chance to be there. Yeah.
>> Well, that's great to hear and I have to say that you know, your duo visit, do come by and please do visit the Straits Times newsroom if you do.
>> I'm looking forward.
>> You know, our newspaper is celebrating its 180th uh birthday this year. Yeah.
>> 180. Yep.
>> Congratulations.
>> Thank you. Thank you. Well, we're now 10 months into President Donald Trump's second term, and you've been so spot on with his China policy. Uh, I've noted that in my articles as well. You know, he imposed heavy tariffs on China, but you predicted that he would soften. You also predicted back in July. I remember that President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China would meet this year and they did in South Korea just weeks ago and then they declared a one-year truce. Now, my question to you, how deep is their bonhomie really and what do you make of, you know, their chemistry, the chemistry between President Xi and President Trump?
>> A good question. Uh, so I have been trying to take Trump seriously for uh the past two years and I think Peter Thiel's advice about don't take him literally because his literal is uh his own version of hyperbole that combines fact, fiction, and fantasy in a way that kind of only he can do. But if you listen to the patterns and listen for repetition and watch the body language, you can often take him seriously and get the message. And I think the message from him is that he respects President Xi. He regards him as another great man like himself. He's impressed with the great achievements uh of Xi and Xi's China. Uh, he even admires uh their autocratic features of uh of China in a way that most American Democrats wouldn't. Uh, and that he thinks he can have a very positive and constructive relationship with President Xi. For President Xi's side of this, again, I've been studying him for a long time, but my main tutor in this was Lee Kuan Yew, whom I think was the most astute uh observer of Xi Jinping and Xi's China. And there I think uh uh Xi sees in Trump uh another uh uh powerful leader uh whom he, I think, appreciates has a more potentially constructive attitude towards China than most of the American foreign policy establishment. But I think so that's about half of it. The other half that I hear from some of his colleagues who are people that work for him or currently work for him that the the kind of the other side of the coin is that President Trump is so unpredictable and sometimes erratic that that makes a Chinese accustomed to uh c to everything being scripted uncomfortable. So I'd say there's a there's a little bit more complexity to the Chinese side of the relationship.
>> Right. So uh, they seem to have got off to a good start after that meeting. But how about uh 2026? Are you expecting to see us and China build on that good start? And uh, you know, we are expecting at least maybe up to four meetings next year between them. It's again complicated as you say, the making bets about the future is dangerous but uh, you can tell the upside and the downside of this uh, I start with the Thucydides and structural analysis. So normal natural business as usual is an increasingly hostile relationship between the US and China because as you've written uh, if we see a seesaw of power shifting in which a rapidly rising power is seriously threatening to displace a major ruling power, that sets in motion a dynamic that is negative and the normal relationship would continue to get worse. So telling how that story worked out in which things got worse is fairly easy to do. So I'll leave that aside for the moment. The the I would say that's only probably 75% of of the of the determination. There's still a big chunk of human agency and you've got two powerful leaders who are determined to be effective agents and I think the two of them believe they can have a different relationship than the relationship that would be normal in a Thucydides and rivalry because both appreciate that given that just let it let it let nature and history take its course and business as usual should predict history as usual and history as usual would be catastrophic war and both President Trump and President Xi understand that would be catastrophic for their own country and for all of their ambitions. So I think they're determined to try to do better. And my sense is that if I look at each of their agendas, what does Xi want and what does Trump want? And if I look at the logic of the situation for each of them, 26 looks to me to be a positive year. Uh, because President uh Trump uh uh is determined to do his best in the midterm election, which is a year from this month in November. And if he fails to hold the House of Representatives, even one of the two branches of Congress or or both, he will then find the rest of his term mired in the struggles with the Democrats who will be investigating him and charging him and maybe even trying to impeach him. So, he's determined uh that the Republicans will do his best possible in the midterm. And he understands that fundamental to that success is a powerful roaring American economy and stock market and he understands that essential for that is a positive and constructive relationship with China. So that gets me to at least a truce with respect to the tariffs and supply chain war from the American side to the extent that Trump can manage it. I think on President Xi's side uh China's [snorts] economy is doing well enough from his perspective but has many problems as you've written and and the Straits Times have been very clear about that he understands very well. So he's happy to live with a situation before Trump declared tariff wars. He's happy he he was prepared to play that hand out before then. So if he gets back to a truce in which that's essentially the terms of the competition, he thinks he has a long-term strategy with a strong hand that's going in the direction that he cares that he wants. So I'd say he has enough reasons again to uh make his deals with or or manage his relationship with Trump and the US to be constructive. So my sense is we're going to be on the positive side, but I can easily tell the negative side.
>> And what is the negative side then?
>> Well, it's just history as usual because in Thucydides and rivalry as the rising power keeps rising and the ruling power keeps feeling its feet being lifted off the ground. This usually triggers a dynamic of misperceptions and misunderstandings and miscalculations that would allow something as strange as a accident in straits or a erratic act by uh Taiwan's president Tsai to get across a red line that could produce a reaction and then a vicious cycle that could lead the parties to where they don't want to go, which is a war. Yeah.
>> Right. Uh, you mentioned 2026 being very critical for President Trump. Um, so well, one more prediction, but not the result. Uh, I just wanted to know if you think that Mr. Trump will be um, more hawkish in an election year.
>> I would say no. Okay. Uh, my bet is that again, since he wants to have a constructive relationship with uh uh President Xi and China and he wants to have that reflected in the American economy, even though the easy route would be to go more hawkish since the population uh suspicion of China will continue to rise as as uh I would say look at Trump's lines in the campaign of 2024 when again the the natural position to take would have been to be more more hawkish and he kept repeatedly saying, you know, essentially, I'm not a China hawk and I think in his bones he's not reflexively anti-Chinese. If you look at his uh uh 60 Minutes interview right after the the summit, he says in terms that I I felt very uh heartened by, you know, we believe that we can do well and China can do well and we can do well together. So we're not trying to uh have a a a a fight to the to the end in which one party is completely defeated. We realize China is going to be China and the US is going to be the US. We're going to be fierce rivals. So the analogy that I think is instructive here is the Olympics. So in the Olympics, you know, we, what is the motto? It says, I run against you, you run against me. But the the tagline is faster, stronger, higher, together. Now, maybe we could imagine something like that in US-Chinese relationship. I'm I understand I'm stretching for silver linings, but if the alternative is a war, silver linings uh even if they're not the most likely uh have some merit.
>> I like your metaphors, but but but the question is how successful has he been or will he be in, you know, carrying his MAGA base with him because there are, I guess, hawkish Chinese elements there.
>> Oh, I I mean, 90% of the American foreign policy establishment is hawkish. So that's a bipartisan consensus. The MAGA people are not more hawkish than the Democrats. I would say as a general as a general matter, the outlier in this picture is Trump and a few other people and then people get beyond that in some other way. So I think the uh but your question about his relationship with his with his base of MAGA, I think he has a unique hold in the MAGA world, but he's now discovering that of course, it's not a monopoly or it's not a, you know, it's not an empir it's not a monopoly of of power. So over over items that he can't control, when he adjusts or when he recognizes that he adapts and adjusts, for example, over these Epstein papers is a good is a good kind of an example. And I think he's discovered again, painfully, that tariffs turn out to be a less magic wand than he imagined. So, as people worry about the prices of things at the supermarket, that was reflected in the recent elections, which was a quite a large blue wave that terrified the Trump team because if that forecasts what's going to happen in November next year, that's going to put them into an entirely different world. It's one thing if the president controls the Congress, both the House and the Senate. If either of those is controlled by the other party, that means the internal struggle is a big part of life for the president, which it hasn't been so far.
>> Right. Uh, have you met President Trump lately?
>> Not uh, if I had, it would be a private meeting, but I would say no, not one-on-one, but I have seen him. Yes, I study him every day because you can't.
>> uh, the one thing you can surely not say against him is that he's not transparent.
>> Oh.
>> He talks all the time. He tweets all the time. Uh, when something comes into his head, he says it. You again, it's his his own version of hyperbole. But if you take him seriously and look at the patterns, I think you can see trend lines.
>> I'd agree with you. But I was going to ask uh, well, because you mentioned how he's very transparent and very generous with his opinions, let's say, uh, but coming to Taiwan, Mr. Trump has been very muted right in the current tensions that are going on between Japan and China. I'm referring to what happened after the new prime minister, Kishida, suggested that Japan might consider military involvement if China attacked Taiwan. So, um, Trump, who's usually quick with his opinions, has been not very quick and has actually not said much. So why do you think that is the case?
>> Uh, so it's a good question and it's a would take a long answer, but let me just give a short version. So if you if you study what President Trump has said about Taiwan, both in the first term and in the election and subsequently, uh, he doesn't care that much about Taiwan. Now, as uh, the story goes, on several occasions when people are in the Oval Office and they raise the question of Taiwan, he sits at that desk that you've seen pictures of, the so-called Resolute Desk. It's a huge desk that the president sits at and he'll take a Sharpie and go make a point on the desk and he'll say, that point, that's Taiwan. Then he draws a line, a line around the whole desk. He says, that's China. Or even if you look at the question he was asked after the meeting with Xi, well, did you all talk about Taiwan? And he said, "Not really." But then he went on to say, you know, Taiwan is only 90 miles off the shores of China and 7,000 miles away from here. I mean, why would you why would you say that if uh, so I would say uh, it's likely that he and Xi have understood each other about Taiwan, namely that they're neither going to do anything to upset the status quo and that they both recognize that there's uh danger in the reckless government of Taiwan uh and in particular President Tsai and the things that he's done. And I suspect that they've had a conversation. I don't know this. This is just my inferring about how two great powers are not going to let some small third party be the provocateur that drags them into a war that they don't want.
>> Okay. Then uh, a a follow-up. Okay. Given this is the case, what is your assessment for where things are headed? Uh, you know, because there is this US assessment that China is preparing its military for an invasion in 2027 and that of course falls within Mr. Trump's term. So how would things play out? How do you expect things to go?
>> I I I think that 2027 is an American talking point hype. I can understand why uh, if I were trying to get the US to become more prepared, I might try to uh interpret some statements that have been made to raise concerns about Taiwan in 2027. But I don't take that at all seriously. I don't think that the I think the likelihood that unprovoked by some dramatic action in Taiwan, leave that aside, that China would in uh uh attempt to uh invade or use military action against Taiwan in 2027. Very, very small uh in my view. Uh, now, over the long run, is President Xi determined that Taiwan will be reintegrated into uh China as an inseparable part of China? Well, he's been absolutely clear about that, as have been all the other Chinese leaders.
>> And uh uh, but uh, he's never offered a timetable. Uh, President Xi hasn't, nor has his foreign minister, Wang Yi. Uh, so I think absent a a uh, a reckless provocation from Taiwan or some incident or accident, which is I think also a danger uh that uh this drags into a military action against Taiwan is small in the short run. Uh, on the other hand, uh, I think that Chinese determination to uh re have Taiwan uh, which they regard as a a a renegade province, reintegrated into the to the country is absolutely is an absolute for them and they're working on all the various ways in which they can do that, including the number of ways they can strangle Taiwan. And actually, I have a piece that I'm going to finish at some point here on 12 ways to strangle Taiwan, which I think they've already figured out. And I think as they as it becomes clear and clearer in the Taiwanese context that without the use of military force, they can make life intolerable in Taiwan, this will lead to some more accommodation. Now, what that'll look like is more complicated.
>> Uh, you you've given us um, you know, uh, you've shared your understanding of uh, President Trump, but uh, can I ask um, what makes him so dramatically different from any other US president we've seen?
>> Well, it's a good question and uh uh so I, President Trump is a phenomenon and needs to be studied like a phenomenon.
>> [gasps and sighs]
>> So he managed the greatest political comeback in American political history. So somebody who was certifiably politically dead sort of has returned. And had he not succeeded, he would probably now be in jail because he was being uh target of an attack by the Democratic administration that went before him and many at many many levels. Whether he was innocent or guilty, another story aside. So first, he believes he's done an unbelievable thing he did. Okay. He secondly believes he's a great man. He has that part of his respect for President Xi is for other great men. He's got a kind of great man theory of history. Uh, and thirdly, uh, he's determined to do something great. He wants to be a great dealmaker, peacemaker.
>> So part of the reason why anytime he finds an opportunity, he brings his energy to it and tries to focus on it. For example, currently in what's happening in Ukraine, but similarly before that, Gaza, is that he thinks he can do something great that'll make him great in the history books. Well, that again, you can see echoes of that in previous presidents, Teddy Roosevelt or Franklin Roosevelt or Andrew Jackson, where you can find it in other leaders, maybe Xi Jinping, whose line about the great rejuvenation of the great Chinese people is a, you know, is a somewhat similar vision, or Napoleon to [clears throat] take another kind of a different kind of example. So I would say this is an extremely unusual character. His uh style and uh uh uh and antics in effect are not my style. Okay. So I'm a small 'c' conservative person. I don't like such a degree of uncertainty and unpredictability and chaos. He thrives on chaos, making other people uncomfortable in ways that again seem to me to be impolite and not proper in terms of my own history and background. But I would say he's uh uh he's the president of the US. He's one of the most powerful people in the world. And many of the things that he really wants, >> even though he may not quite know how to get them, are things that would be good for the US and good for the world. So I'm I'm trying to work on the silver linings as compared to the, you know, most of Cambridge is some version of Trump deranged. [laughter]
>> Well, well, thank you, and I, and that makes sense to me. A lot of what you said absolutely uh makes sense. Uh, now you travel to China and you have conversations with their leadership. You're a highly respected figure there. What is your sense of how today's China looks at today's America? And in particular, during your visits and in your conversations, are there some changes that you're seeing uh that you know that that are not so that you've remarked on but are not so publicly uh visible to us in the media?
>> That's a good question. And uh, so I think I think for the most part, China is China and Xi Jinping is Xi Jinping and the strategy and grand plan that they have is on course. So while many people say, oh, Xi Jinping is in trouble or he's weak or when he's purging the military, this is a sign of uh opposition and otherwise, my impression of him, which is probably overly influenced by Lee Kuan Yew, but I still believe that if you want to have a good feel for him, nobody spent more time with him, nobody felt him better, nobody studied him more carefully than Lee Kuan Yew, and I wrote in the book in 2017 essentially uh channeling Lee Kuan Yew uh that on on Xi Jinping uh that uh Xi was the most ambitious, most competent, and likely to be most consequential actor on the international stage. I believe that's true today again. And uh I think uh uh he, he and the people that work for him believe they have a a great helmsman. They have a great crew. They have a great plan. They have a grand strategy. They're on course and they're managing successfully. They genuinely believe that uh China is inexorably rising and almost all the indicators suggest that's true, and they believe the US is irreversibly declining, and unfortunately, many of the features of the US today seem confirming of that view. So uh uh I remember one of the at one of the meetings that I went to with President Xi Jinping, one of the American CEOs who's dealt with, you know, many, many, many leaders. Somebody afterwards was saying, well, you know, maybe Xi Jinping seems a little nervous or whatever. And this chief executive said the same thing I believe. He said, "If this person is at all nervous or uncomfortable, he deserves an Academy Award. He, he [laughter] he projects command, uh, confidence, uh, calm, determined, focused." As he said at the meeting, he said, "You know, my whole life has been about big problems, even problems people called insurmountable. That's what we do every day." Yeah.
>> US has had its unipolar moment and um, you think it's China's turn. You said they were inexorably rising. Is is it, are they going to be the world's um superpower? Is that, is that what you're expecting to see?
>> So uh, in my view, no. Okay. I don't think they will be the world's sole superpower. My view, again, I try to go back to Lee Kuan Yew again, but I think when you find pearls of wisdom, you know, I try to dust them off. So he said, expect China to be the biggest player in the history of the world. So I think that's quite likely, quite likely. But I think that the US and China will be two great superpowers. Uh uh, Lee Kuan Yew said also, he didn't see why intelligent leadership couldn't find a way for the US and China to share the Pacific in the 21st century. That's what I can imagine. So my my current hope is that President Trump and President Xi will find their way to to conceptualize and articulate a new relationship between the US and China that will be sort of like the Olympics, as I said, where each will be fierce rivals. I really want the American team to win all the gold. But I can understand if I was a Chinese, I would want the Chinese team to win all the gold. But the races are going to happen and some are going to win some and some are going to win the others. And then we'll see. And if over the next 25 years, the Chinese system and society work so successfully, given the challenges that they win most of the gold. Well, they'll win most of the gold. But if a free society like the US, chaotic as it is, but still much more creative and much more resilient, manages as well as I believe and hope that it will, then it'll win more the vault. And as the Olympic thing slogan says, faster, so we run faster, higher, we'll jump higher, stronger, we'll be stronger, and together, that's okay with me. So that'd be my hope going forward. So I'm so happy to be with you and to see you and I'll look forward to more.
>> Indeed. Uh, thank you so much for your time and I'll very quickly on that note uh wrap up. Uh, I would say that this has been an excellent conversation and thank you very much for sharing all your insights uh with us. This is Asian Insider. I'm Bhagya Gareka. We've been with Dr. Allison. This episode was produced by Fiza Sani. We hope you enjoyed this session. Please do share it with your friends and family and you can sign up for our Asian Insider newsletter as well. Thank you.
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