Forget Iran: Eyck Freymann on Taiwan, China, and Why America Keeps Hitting the Snooze Button,

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's Sunday, 04/12/2026. It's early afternoon on the West Coast. The current headline is that Donald Trump has said that the US will blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Who knows what the situation will be when you listen to this?

The Financial Times had an interesting piece last week about shutting the Strait of Hormuz being a template for China in Taiwan. Of course, that piece was written before Donald Trump decided to blockade the strait. The piece was written by a Taiwan-China expert, Eyck Freymann, who is a fellow at the Hoover Institution. And Eyck also has a new book out this week. It's called Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, and he's joining us — a very timely book. He's joining us from Washington, DC. Eyck, congratulations on the new book. How should we interpret this decision by Donald Trump to blockade the Strait of Hormuz in terms of what you've been writing and thinking about — a similar kind of crisis in the Taiwan Strait?

00:01:53 Eyck Freymann: Well, first of all, Andrew, thank you for having me on the show. This is indeed a timely topic, and I'm happy to be discussing it with you. Look, I think this is yet another example of the Trump administration twisting and turning. They lack an integrated strategy for how their political, economic, and military goals line up. And as a result, I just see them digging themselves deeper and deeper into a Middle Eastern quagmire.

The fact is Iran doesn't have a navy. It doesn't have an air force. It supposedly doesn't have a ballistic missile arsenal anymore, and yet it has shown itself capable of taking 20% of global oil supply offline indefinitely. Now if the United States thinks it has a problem with Iran, it should gear up for China, because China has a far more sophisticated set of capabilities to squeeze global commerce in and around Taiwan.

If the United States doesn't respond to this alarm bell and start to get ready to confront authoritarian adversaries that recognize they can squeeze on economic choke points, then our problems extend far beyond the Strait of Hormuz. They have to do with the defense of our treaty allies globally and, ultimately, our homeland. Look, I think the United States should not have gotten into this Middle Eastern war in the first place. We can talk about why.

But now that we're in it, before we double down, I think this is a time to stand back and ask what we are trying to achieve politically, and then how our economic actions might line up to achieve those goals.

00:06:34 Andrew Keen: Last year, you had another timely book out called The Arsenal of Democracy — I think you were one of the authors, a co-authored book — The Arsenal of Democracy: Technology, Industry, and Deterrence in an Age of Hard Choices. You seem to be suggesting, maybe, that the choices in Iran haven't been perhaps hard enough, at least from the American point of view.

00:07:00 Eyck Freymann: Well, the first hard choice is the choice of setting priorities between theaters. As we know, the American people are not down with infinite adventures abroad. The American people are not even very supportive of any foreign policy actions that will raise the price of living at home. I think the Trump administration went to war with Iran thinking that it would be quick and easy, thinking that because we had overwhelming military superiority, that would translate to a political victory. And things just haven't turned out that way.

And the reason is Iran recognized that they could escalate in the economic domain and that the United States didn't have a plan for what would come next. So the question that I would ask for this administration is: what are we trying to achieve in Iran? Clearly, it's not removing the Islamic Republic. We have tried that through assassinations, through bombing, and it hasn't worked so far. Clearly, there are limits to what the American people are willing to accept, and there are limits to what targets in Iran the president is willing to hit that go after Iranian civilians.

And that's not because he's feeling like an ethical guy this morning. It's because he recognizes if he goes after Iran's electricity infrastructure, Iran will retaliate against water and electricity infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, and oil prices will go even higher. I think it's a step forward that the administration is clarifying that the nuclear issue comes first and that all of these negotiations essentially hinge on whether Iran is willing to make credible commitments to give up its nuclear program. But I also think that the administration has more diffuse goals. They want to eliminate the Iranian regime's ability to control the strait, and they also want to degrade its military-industrial capability.

And I don't think they've fully given up on the goal of regime change. Strategy is the art of connecting ends to means. And if you don't have a clear sense of what your ends are, you're going to continue to flail. Then we can talk about the lessons that China is learning from this — there are considerable lessons, and I think they're very concerning. But the first question the administration has to ask is: how do we recognize that we're in a hole and then stop digging before it becomes too deep to get out?

00:10:33 Andrew Keen: So as I said, you're a fellow at the Hoover Institution, where you focus on East Asia rather than the Middle East. Your new book is called Defending Taiwan. How are the Chinese — what's the view of all this, Eyck, from Beijing? Are they enjoying it? Are they getting their popcorn out and having a lot of fun watching the Americans flail around?

00:11:05 Eyck Freymann: Yeah. I think Beijing is sophisticated enough to draw multiple lessons at the same time. On a purely military-technical level, aspects of this war have gone exceptionally well. Clearly, US and Israeli intelligence was exceptionally good in some ways at the beginning of the war.

These assassinations that took out so many of the leading Iranian figures using extraordinary cyber exploits — that's very impressive. The special forces raid that rescued the downed pilot, I mean, that was an amazing achievement. In other countries, special forces can't do that. The air-to-air refueling and the logistics chain that allows the US Air Force to send in bombers from the continental United States and then continuously pound targets in Iran day after day, 500 targets at a time — that is very impressive. Other countries' air forces can't do that, not even close. But China, I'm sure, has also learned all kinds of lessons about the electronic signatures of our planes. They've learned about what we're doing with electronic warfare and cyber — stuff that doesn't get reported. There's a whole universe of military lessons. We are very good at many of these operations, especially in the Middle East.

We've been preparing for them for a long time. China has got to be impressed. But on a strategic level, I think China's lesson is broadly encouraging to them, because even though the US military is formidable, the US handling of the diplomatic and economic elements is completely incompetent. And as Carl von Clausewitz tells us, war is the continuation of politics by other means. War is a tool that you use to achieve your political objectives.

But what is your political objective? If the objective is unachievable, then it doesn't matter how amazing your military capabilities are. Also, China has learned that the US went into this war with absolutely no plan for the economic shock that came after, without preparing its population for the effects. So the war has no legitimacy among the US public. And then in a way that was going to put excess pain on US allies — allies like Japan, South Korea, the Europeans — that are oil importers suffering much more than the United States, which is energy independent.

So I think China, from that point of view, is sitting back and saying: well, we don't have to pick a military fight with the United States. Why would we? We should just lead them by the nose into a situation where they have to choose between letting Taiwan go without a fight or confronting us in a way that has no domestic legitimacy in the United States, that drives wedges between the US and its allies, and that creates an economic crisis that eventually makes the American people say we won't take this — we want to make a deal. So I think it just confirms China's intuition, which is what I discuss in the book: that you can get Taiwan without fighting.

This is just a gap in US strategy that you can exploit. And the argument I'm making now is this is what the book has been warning about. We keep getting wake-up calls and snoozing the alarm. Now is the time to actually get out of bed and confront this problem before it is too late.

00:15:11 Andrew Keen: Are the Chinese — in terms of their approach to geopolitics — is it always Taiwan defining how they behave? There have been lots of stories about Chinese support, or intelligence support, economic — maybe even military — support for the Iranians. But are they doing all this from the point of view of Taiwan? Is Taiwan number one, two, and three on their priority list when it comes to foreign policy?

00:15:17 Eyck Freymann: Not right away. But in the long term, that's China's goal. They want to be at the forefront of every technology, every major industry. They don't want to import anything, and they want the rest of the world to take whatever China wants to sell them.

China's overarching goal is what Xi Jinping calls national rejuvenation, and that is a whole-of-society project with a deadline of 2049 — the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. National rejuvenation has a foreign policy element, but it goes far beyond foreign policy. As I like to say, China wants to win every gold medal in the Olympics, and every silver medal, and every bronze. They want to be at the lead in every human endeavor — from space exploration to the deep sea and the polar regions, to leadership in international organizations.

00:15:40 Andrew Keen: But that makes them — certainly no different from the United States, doesn't it?

00:15:59 Eyck Freymann: Yes. Well, the United States achieved, at the height of its power — let's call it the early nineties or the early two thousands — a sort of hyperpower status where the US was just dominant across every possible dimension you could use to measure a country. And there haven't been many examples in world history where a single country has been that paramount. Maybe Tang China in the ninth and tenth centuries for a little while, but there haven't been very many examples in history where one country is just so dominant above the rest, and certainly not in the modern era since the world has globalized. That's what China wants, and they are systematically pursuing that goal in a way that tries to strike a balance between all these objectives.

So if you're Xi Jinping — and I think this is what you're already referring to — Taiwan has this incredibly significant emotional value for China because it's the unfinished business of China's civil war. The government in Taipei proves every day just by existing that Chinese people can live in freedom — with democracy and human rights and freedom of conscience — in a capitalist system that is more technologically advanced and vastly more prosperous than mainland China, that is respected by the world, admired by the world.

I mean, you go to Taiwan — Taiwan is an extraordinary place — and its very existence is a thorn in the side of the PRC. So, yes, the PRC wants to get rid of Taiwan as an autonomous entity. And it's not just about wanting Taiwan. It's about the way they want Taiwan.

Because Taiwan represents, ever since the founding of the People's Republic of China, a part of national "reunification" or rejuvenation that the United States is denying to them. So part of taking Taiwan is showing that they can do it over the objections of the Americans, and in a way that will essentially change the game board of the power balance in the Western Pacific. It's partly about Taiwan's chips. If China seizes control of Taiwan's chips, they suddenly take over the commanding heights of AI, basically overnight.

It's partly about the geography of the region. If China can use Taiwan as a forward base for their navy, essentially there goes Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia. China is going to dominate the rest of this region with its naval power and eventually cross the Pacific and be able to hold our hemisphere at risk. And partly it's about the economics of the region — countries not just in Taiwan, but Japan, South Korea, and others — that the United States depends on for essential technologies and manufacturing, partners that we would need if we ever wanted to reindustrialize ourselves.

If China can take over Taiwan, they can make these countries submit to them, and economically we will never reindustrialize. We will be hollowed out and turned into Argentina. So if Taiwan falls by force or coercion, that sets in motion a chain of events that makes all the rest of national rejuvenation much, much easier to achieve.

00:15:11 Andrew Keen: Hold on. You're saying that if China took over Taiwan, America would become like Argentina? Is that what you just said?

00:18:47 Andrew Keen: You're presenting this in economic terms — the need to defend Taiwan from a Western point of view and from an American economic point of view. What about the moral dimension, Eyck? Donald Trump doesn't seem to believe in morality when it comes to defending other countries. He certainly doesn't believe it in Ukraine, and elsewhere. Do you think — I take your point on the Chinese long-term strategy, which I think vividly contrasts with American short-termism. But do Americans have a moral responsibility to defend Taiwan? Donald Trump might say something like: why should I care about Taiwan? Like Ukraine or somewhere else, it's a long way away and it doesn't really pertain to my own interests.

00:19:41 Eyck Freymann: You know, I'm someone who has spent time in Taiwan. I have Taiwanese friends. I care about Taiwan. I think Taiwan's democracy is worth protecting. I think it is a shining example of how a Chinese society can become a free society. And I should hope for the day when the mainland will become a democracy just like Taiwan. And I don't want to see any democracy anywhere extinguished by force or coercion by an authoritarian superpower. I think that makes the whole world less safe. But the United States had an interest in preventing Taiwan from being brought to heel even before it became a democracy, back in the nineteen-nineties.

And I think even if Taiwan were not a democracy, we would have a responsibility. But the fact that Taiwan is a democracy under threat only intensifies it. In other words, it's not merely a vital national interest — you could call it an important, even an extremely important national interest. The vital national interest is that you cannot allow China to take control of this region by force or coercion.

You just can't allow it. And arguably we also have an interest in ensuring that China cannot take a dominant lead in AI, because that affects the prosperity and the individual freedom and the personal safety of the next generation. But of course there is a principled reason too. If we want to talk about bipartisanship — if one party doesn't think that this matters in particular — you can make this argument purely on the basis of national interests.

00:21:30 Andrew Keen: Thinking of AI — I take your point, but isn't it conceivable that China could establish a dominant position in AI without invading Taiwan? Or do you think that the only way China can truly dominate the AI economy or AI technology is by invading or controlling Taiwan?

00:21:52 Eyck Freymann: Oh, it's not just about that. It's that we need Taiwan for our AI.

00:21:59 Andrew Keen: Say more. We depend on Taiwan —

00:22:01 Eyck Freymann: — more than China does. We have cut off Taiwan's ability to export the most advanced chips to China, but Taiwan produces 90% of the world's advanced semiconductors. It produces 99% of the cutting-edge NVIDIA GPUs that are used to train the advanced frontier models. So these are complex supply chains. These chips are generally designed in the United States, and then there are Dutch machines and some South Korean components and some Japanese components — stuff from around the world — but the final fabrication of the chips takes place in Taiwan.

And we have been trying, over the past five years, starting with the CHIPS Act under the Biden administration, to make these in America. And we are two generations behind Taiwan in making these chips. So we are producing at the four-nanometer node, and then there's a three-nanometer, which is better than that, and a two-nanometer. They're making two-nanometer chips in Taiwan. And there have been many public reports that the Arizona facility is not commercially competitive — these chips are coming out much more expensive.

The quality is not as high, and they have difficulty scaling up production for a whole bunch of reasons, including that we don't have the workforce. Our workers are not as skilled at doing this. I mean, Taiwan is a whole ecosystem, whole universities — this industry is central to the society, and they are exceptionally good at it. And the frontier is moving forward with blazing speed.

Taiwan has been smart. They have worked with us, recognizing that they need a relationship with us, but they are too smart to give us the crown jewels. So we are going to depend on Taiwan for the foreseeable future. They are five years ahead of us now. They will be five years ahead of us in five years.

And China is making an all-out effort — doing literally everything they can, cost is no objection — to reproduce the entire supply chain within China. All of those Dutch machines, the Japanese and South Korean components — China is trying to figure out how to make all those pieces. And the hardest single part to do is the fabrication, the part that Taiwan does. So if you imagine a world where Taiwan's fabs — the fabs are the semiconductor plants — are taken offline, there is basically an instantaneous global financial crisis, because NVIDIA, Meta, Google, Microsoft — these seven companies that account for roughly 40% of the S&P 500 — their valuations are all essentially the AI trade.

So if you set back the AI timelines by five to ten years, or whatever it is, those valuations make no sense. So we have an instantaneous financial crisis, and we also have a recession, because the hyperscalers are spending $600 billion in data centers this year. This is the only thing that's keeping the US economy out of recession right now. And that's even setting aside the risk that the US and China go to economic war — all of that would be on top, and would make the crisis even worse. But if you imagine a world where the Taiwan fabs are taken offline, then it's a sprint over who can build up an alternative supply chain faster. And if China wins that race, well, then they do win on AI. But for now, we rely on Taiwan at least as much as China does, and that's a big, big problem.

00:25:39 Andrew Keen: There was an interesting piece last week in The New York Times about a new era of world war having arrived. One example is Ukraine, another Iran, Lebanon perhaps another, and Taiwan — although we hope not. Your book is about avoiding war. What I don't understand — you can maybe explain this, you're a military guy. In the worst-case scenario, if there was a war over Taiwan between the United States and China, what would it look like? I mean, these are nuclear powers. Would it look like Korea or Vietnam or Iran or Lebanon? What form would it take?

00:26:20 Eyck Freymann: I thank you for asking that question. People don't ask it enough. A war between the US and China would look fundamentally different from any war that we've fought or prepared for in the last eighty years. And the reason is all those wars you named were wars on land. A US-China war would be a war at sea.

Let's assume we're fighting over Taiwan. China would mass its forces in what's called the Eastern Theater Command. And they would have to do several things simultaneously. They would need to take control of the skies with fighter jets. They would need to repel Taiwan's air forces and make it dangerous for US and Japanese aircraft to operate — essentially protect the skies. Then they would need to take control of the undersea, so that we couldn't send our submarines in to go kill their ships.

And then they would need to take control of the water on the surface, ideally on all sides of the Taiwan Strait. And then they would send tens of thousands of men across the Taiwan Strait, which is about 80 miles at its narrowest point. They would travel in amphibious vessels — essentially ships that could roll up close to the beach — and then the men would storm the beaches, in the way you imagine Normandy. They might also try to deposit some men from the air by parachute or helicopter, although that's much more dangerous, and they probably couldn't move a significant number that way.

And Taiwan would try to sink those ships coming in. They would try to hold together their command-and-control communications so they could continue to fight and one unit could talk to another. Taiwan would basically try to repel the invasion itself, using drones, mines, cyber, and various other tools to make it harder for the invaders. Meanwhile, the US — possibly with help from allies, hopefully with help from allies — would come in and try to take on China's navy and air force, to put as many of them out of commission as possible, take back control of the surface and airspace, and make it easier for the Taiwan forces to keep fighting. And if we learn anything from history — and the Pacific war with Japan is probably the best example — some of these engagements would be decisive in the first few minutes to hours, because we have very, very long-range precision munitions now. They can reach, in some cases, a thousand miles and hit targets plus or minus a few meters. And we've used a lot of them in Iran, but we still have a fair number. And if you know where the targets are that you're shooting at and the adversary can't see you, you can sink a lot of the adversary's key platforms right away, and then their whole force sort of falls apart. So it would be very fast, very intense, focused on missiles first followed by drones.

And the reason China hasn't attempted this is that the defender has a geographic advantage. It's just really, really hard to synchronize everything to get across the strait. But we have to think about this scenario because China has built an exceptionally large and diversified force, and in some respects they have home-field advantage. So we need to be on the ball here. Also, as you know, the character of warfare is changing. As you see in Ukraine, as you see in Iran, drones matter more. If you can be spotted, you have to move very fast or you can be killed very quickly. So we have a very formidable American-allied force. We could probably win if we fought today, but we also have to make investments so that we're prepared for the fight of tomorrow.

00:30:28 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I don't quite know what winning would be. If we were having this conversation in the late nineteen-thirties, I probably wouldn't be doing it on the internet. And we were talking about Japan and maybe Japanese control of the Pacific — somebody like you might make the same argument. Well, the Japanese could do this and that, and they could bomb Pearl Harbor and so on and so forth. And most people would think: well, they'd have to be insane, because that would only ignite a world war and bring in the Americans, and eventually Japan would be defeated. I'm not sure that's so inevitable about China given their military and economic strength. But my question for you, given the apocalyptic scenario you just drew: are there military figures in Beijing who believe that this is conceivable? Is this the kind of thing that gets discussed politically — or militarily — in Beijing?

00:31:31 Eyck Freymann: This is a scenario that they're systematically building for. Xi Jinping is doing everything that he would be doing if he wanted to put the country on a war footing to fight the United States, and nothing that he would be doing if he didn't think that. So they're for real. And they are building the capability to try to take and hold Taiwan by force, because they believe that if they have it, they might get Taiwan for free — because we might say: you know what? Screw this. We're not fighting this.

Now, you raise the prospect of nuclear escalation. That can't be ruled out. I've participated in war games myself where things have gone nuclear. But war games are just simulations. I think in the real world, both sides would have very, very powerful incentives not to use nuclear weapons first, because if you work through these scenarios multiple times, you just see there are so many cases where nuclear use spins out of control. The presence of nuclear weapons on both sides shapes the conversation. So, for example, if you're the United States, even in a shooting war with China, do you shoot at targets inside mainland China, or do you only shoot at ships and aircraft outside of mainland China? That's a key line that it would be up to the president to decide on. So the existence of nuclear weapons is fundamental to the calculus, but I think the hope would be on both sides that you can maintain enough of a persuasive nuclear deterrent to confine the conflict to the conventional level. And then I think the theory of deterrence in the United States is: if you can operationally defeat their attempt to put enough boots on the ground to hold Taiwan, then it's very hard to see how they can win. I mean, they can protract it. They can say: we're going to rebuild our fleet, and maybe we'll put mines all around Taiwan's harbors, and we're going to do this the hard way.

We're not backing down. Maybe. But then, hypothetically, you can do economic warfare against them. You can mine their coasts. You can bomb targets in mainland China, and it's hard to see how they come out of that the winner. So the book argues you have to take very, very seriously the risks of protracted war — because maybe Xi Jinping thinks: fine, if I can't do it the easy way, I'll do it the hard way. But the fact that he's been deterred so far — he's been in power for thirteen years — suggests that there is some combination of threats that can make him say: you know what? This prize isn't worth it. And that's how you keep doing it: deterring him day by day, while helping him understand that there is still a chance he can get the prize for free. You don't want to entirely rule that out.

You need to make him think that the best move for him is to wait and continue to grow his strength. But at the same time, you have to make sure that you're prepared for the deterrence of tomorrow.

00:34:29 Andrew Keen: If we were having this conversation fifteen years ago about Russia, Putin, and Ukraine, we might also have been speaking in sort of apocalyptic terms, imagining: well, this could never happen. And of course it has happened. What has Beijing — what has Xi and the Chinese military — learned from what Russia has done in Ukraine?

00:34:55 Eyck Freymann: That's a great question, and there's a lot of debate among military and strategic analysts on this. My own view is he's learned: I don't want to do this the military way. I'm too smart for that. I will win without fighting. I will create scenarios where Taiwan falls into my control because the Americans come to the brink of a crisis and say: we don't want to accept this crisis.

I think China's military hasn't fought a major war since 1979 when they fought the Vietnamese, and it didn't go particularly well. And they saw Putin discover with horror, in 2022, that when his forces were sent to seize Hostomel Airport outside Kyiv, they were repelled because they were simply not competent and ready to fight. And the Ukrainians fought with conviction, but they also fought with effective tactics, and they bought themselves enough time to put the population psychologically in a place where they believed: we can win this, we can resist. And therefore Ukraine as a society went from this is a hopeless thing to this is a winnable thing. If I'm Beijing, I really, really don't want that, because — setting aside the question of putting troops on the ground in Taiwan — facing a prolonged counterinsurgency in Taiwan would be unimaginably costly and messy.

I would just want to do it in an easier way. Now there are other military lessons they've learned — for example, drones matter a lot. But I think the overarching strategic lesson is: you go against Taiwan not with these military tools. You build the military tools just in case, but then your plan A is you force a crisis — for example, by declaring that anyone who comes and goes to Taiwan now has to clear customs through the mainland.

This is a scenario I call the quarantine. And if the United States doesn't have an answer to that, then Beijing wins. Because if Beijing controls who and what comes and goes to Taiwan, Taiwan can't rebuild its military. Beijing can seize control of the chips if they want. The US can't sell more weapons or send more military advisers to Taiwan.

It's checkmate. So if Beijing creates a situation like that — well, it's not war — but the United States has to accept it and up the ante, or it has been defeated.

00:37:33 Eyck Freymann: ...we're likely to create a situation like that.

00:37:35 Andrew Keen: Very briefly, Eyck — have the Taiwanese been encouraged by what's happened? I mean, they're obviously not thrilled that Russia has invaded Ukraine, I would assume. But have they been encouraged by the success of the Ukrainians in defending themselves against a supposed superpower?

00:37:55 Eyck Freymann: Some have, but some say: I really don't want Taiwan to become Ukraine. And the smart ones say Xi Jinping has learned that the best way to move against Taiwan is not with an invasion. It's with this thing called a quarantine. It's by seizing control of who and what comes and goes — saying: oh, that flight that just took off from SFO to Taipei? Terribly sorry. Eyck is on that plane. We don't want Eyck going to Taipei. So would you terribly mind United Airlines making a pit stop in Shanghai so that Eyck can clear customs? Oh, terribly sorry — there's some problem with Eyck's paperwork. We need to impound the aircraft.

If China can do that and get away with it, Taiwan is looking at the United States and how it is treating its other allies, and they're saying: what are the odds that the United States actually comes to our aid if it's that kind of a fuzzy scenario? What are the odds that the United States responds to that with actions that could create a global financial shock? And if the answer is not high, then we really are in trouble. So that's the realization.

The realization is not that Ukrainians can't fight — everyone is impressed by Ukraine. But the fear is that China, and the bad actors in general, have figured out a way to squeeze and blackmail the West — which is just to threaten them with prolonged economic pain and then get what they want. And the United States will have to learn to deal with this, or we will be extorted not just for Taiwan, but for everything else that we have and care about.

00:39:35 Andrew Keen: This is all very depressing. But let's end on a positive note. Your book is entitled Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China. I don't think anyone really wants war with China — or even the hardcore China hawks. How do we do that? How do we defend Taiwan so that America wins, Taiwan wins, and maybe China doesn't lose? Is that the way you're thinking about this?

00:40:03 Eyck Freymann: Yeah. That's the goal. You have to figure out how to sustain some version of the current situation and just keep sustaining it day by day. And the way that you do that — first of all, I think it's entirely doable, because it's been done for the last fifty years.

The way that it works is: you need to make the different tools of your national policy — your diplomacy, your military capabilities including your nuclear deterrent, and your economics — fit together, and then you have to pursue it in an organized way with allies. On the diplomatic side, you say to Beijing: you're free to work this out with Taiwan yourselves. If the Taiwanese agree to accept some version of what you call reunification, then so be it. We don't take a stake and we don't take a position on Taiwan's status. Our position is that it can't happen through force or coercion.

It has to be acceptable democratically to the people of Taiwan. Apart from that, we won't force the Taiwanese to negotiate, but we're not going to tell them not to negotiate. That's a principled policy.

We should maintain that policy. You should tell China that if they push Taiwan in the gray zone — doing the kinds of things I'm describing, like seizing control with customs rules — you will respond in a proportionate way. Not a disproportionate way, but you will respond. And then you have to tell Taiwan: it's up to you. Your fate is in your hands. We're going to help you and support you, but it's up to you. Meanwhile, you have to work with allies and partners and say: what are we going to do to speak from the same page about this problem set? And if things go wrong, if things collapse with China, what's our plan? And then you maintain conventional military forces to show China that it can't win if it escalates to war. And then, finally, you build an economic plan so that the bad actors can't extort us anymore — so they don't have us over a barrel by threatening economic crisis — and that requires working with allies to build more economic resilience so that if we have a big shock, it's not the end of the world and we can hold our ground. You do these things together and you can maintain an honorable peace for another generation. We just need the resolve to do it.

00:42:37 Andrew Keen: Another generation — Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China. Although the way you present China, in the long term, China wants Taiwan — so it might be one or two generations. But in the end, there'll probably be a crisis, won't there? Right? Very briefly — to end on a dark note.

00:42:58 Eyck Freymann: You know, the fate of Taiwan is not up for the United States to decide. The status of Taiwan is a question for China and Taiwan to figure out, but the United States has a principled position that this should be done peacefully, without force or coercion. If they can work it out without force and coercion, then that should be okay. And that is a principled policy, and the United States has maintained it for fifty years. We should maintain it for as long as it takes.

And I think if Beijing learns that carrots work better than sticks — if they can work to win the trust of those in Taiwan, if we continue to wait — who knows what history holds? It might happen that China and Taiwan are unified under a democratic government. I think that would be the best possible outcome.

00:43:46 Andrew Keen: Well, that would be a very sunny end to this crisis. Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, by my guest, Eyck Freymann. Very interesting conversation. Eyck, congratulations on the book. It's out this week. We'll have to get you back on — I'd love to do a whole show on Hong Kong and what that all means in terms of Taiwan too. But thank you again. I know you better run. Appreciate it.

00:44:09 Eyck Freymann: Thank you, Andrew. Much appreciated.