China Across CSIS: What Are U.S. and NATO Views on China?
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In this special episode, we are excited to feature CSIS's The Impossible State podcast by the CSIS Korea chair. Podcast host Victor Cha discusses the Trump administration's policy towards China, U.S.-China trade relations, and the future of U.S. and NATO engagement with China with Henrietta Levin and Luis Simón. Thank you for listening. The United States, NATO, and China, and we will work some Korea into this as well, next on The Impossible State.

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Welcome everybody to another episode of the CSIS Impossible State Podcast. I'm your host, Victor Cha, President of Geopolitics and Foreign Policy and Korea Chair at CSIS, Professor at Georgetown. Today, the topic we're going to talk about is what are US and NATO views on China? We're going to talk about the Trump administration's policies on China or how we think their policies are evolving. We will work North Korea into this because we'll talk about particularly European views

of the DPRK-Russia relationship and also the future of US and NATO engagement with China. And to discuss all this, we have two terrific guests with us. Both of them, this is their first time on the Impossible State podcast. We're very happy to have them both on. Henrietta Levin served as Deputy China Coordinator for Global Affairs at the US Department of State.

and previously served on the National Security Council doing both China and Southeast Asia. So Henrietta, it's great to have you on The Impossible State. Thanks for having me. And joining us from...

long trip from Europe and actually spent the day with us here at CSIS both Luis and Henrietta have in our CSDS CSIS dialogue. Luis Simón is director of the Center for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy CSDS at the VUB in Brussels. He is also concurrently director of the Brussels office of the Elcano Royal Institute and

in Madrid, and you're currently leading a project of the European Research Council on US-China rivalry and its implications for Europe. So Luis, also thank you for joining us on The Impossible State.

So as I said, today's discussion is about China. We'll find a way to work a little bit of Korea into it as well. And I want to start by asking both of you at the outset from your perspectives. Both of you have studied China policy, whether it's from a European or from a U.S. perspective.

And I guess the first question, particularly for you, Henrietta, are how do you feel or see similarities or differences in how U.S.-China policy has evolved since January 2025? Sure. Well, thanks again for having me on. Really excited for the conversation. I

I would start by acknowledging that there are significant strains of continuity that the second Trump administration has maintained that I would see as probably building from the first Trump administration through the Biden tenure and continuing to some degree now. We continue to see, I think, a fundamental expectation that China policy is linked to domestic policy.

and a focus on economic security, a focus on how the China relationship affects the day-to-day lives of Americans, I think much more so than you would see in other aspects of American foreign policy. And I think you also see some degree of continuity when it comes to national security. When you look at, for example, Secretary Hegseth's trip to Asia, I mean, that could have been almost any secretary of defense over the past, let's say, 15 years.

But there have been significant differences as well. And so to think about some of these, you know, I would return to the three pillars of the Biden approach to China. And they were invest, align, compete.

And the sequence there was very much intentional. We recognized that Beijing perceived America as in inexorable decline, and we recognized that we had to fix that assumption in order to have a constructive relationship and in order to compete effectively. And so we needed to invest in the traditional foundations of American strength in our democracy, in our economy, in our people.

We needed to invest in our relationships overseas and our alliances and our partnerships. That's that align pillar. And then third and intentionally third is compete.

And there we look to compete vigorously with the PRC to uphold our values, our interests and support our allies and partners. And I recognize the Trump administration would probably not choose these terms to characterize their approach, but I sometimes see them approaching this in reverse, where they need to compete with China to invest in America.

They feel like China's ripping off the American people. And in order to rebuild strength at home, China has to stop ripping us off. And that approach makes me nervous because to have a constructive conversation with Beijing, one needs to approach with confidence, with strength and with leadership.

And I fear that the current approach might actually complicate the Trump administration's efforts to achieve even objectives that I think it could be argued are shared between the Biden and Trump teams when it comes to ensuring the economic security of American families. So I'll stop there.

Thank you. Thank you. Very, very insightful. Luis, what about from a European perspective? Do you see continuity? Do you see major discontinuities in how you view the U.S. approach on China between the Biden and the Trump administrations? Yeah. No, thanks, Victor. It's a pleasure to be here. I think China as a topic, if we look at it, for instance, from a NATO perspective,

has attracted more and more interest in a NATO context in recent years. And it was sort of in keeping with Henrietta's continuity theme, it was actually the first Trump administration that started to push NATO to take China more seriously back at the 2019 NATO leaders meeting in London.

And even though many allies, many European allies insist or insisted at the time that NATO should focus primarily or even exclusively, some of them like France and Germany, on the Euro-Atlantic region, NATO has actually spent more and more time on talking about China in recent years and reflecting on the strategic implications of China's rise. And I would say that

Paradoxically, the war in Ukraine and growing concerns about Russia in Eastern Europe have actually led to greater and not lesser attention to China in a NATO context. And I think this is due to the fact, and we've been talking about this earlier today, this is due to the fact that China has played a decisive role in enabling Russia's war of aggression.

in Ukraine. And I think that fact has sort of persuaded many Europeans about China's relevance in a European security context.

and has also provided an incentive for NATO to step up its cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners, like Japan, like ROK, like Australia, like New Zealand, many of which have actually stood side by side with NATO and with Europeans and with the United States in supporting Ukraine. But we now have a new administration in the United States,

as you were saying, and we're currently in the process of sort of renegotiating the transatlantic relationship. And I would maybe sort of highlight two trends that will affect NATO debates and transatlantic debates on China more broadly. First, we see a push from the Trump administration to make sure that European allies sort of concentrate the bulk of their strategic resources and attention on

to the security of their own region, of the Euro-Atlantic region. And I think actually Europeans understand that and broadly share that.

And second, and this is perhaps more of a U.S. specific trend, there is this greater emphasis on the need to establish clear priorities and to recognize the existence of trade-offs and identifying China and more specifically, perhaps in contrast to the Biden administration that sort of framed the China challenge as a global challenge. From the Trump administration, what we're hearing is like,

Yes, the China challenge might be a global challenge, but we need to distinguish between those things that matter and those things that matter most. And what matters most is the China challenge in the Indo-Pacific. So that coming first and everything else sort of being subsidiary. So I think NATO and transatlantic debates in China more broadly needs to adjust to this new strategic reality. And I think we should...

Think about how NATO and the transatlantic relationship can add value in a China context in the context of US competition with China if you want to take sort of the frame of the US of the Trump administration without compromising what should be NATO's overriding priority which is secure in the in the Euro-Atlantic and shoring up deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic region. Okay, so so Cup just a quick thought so

When you say renegotiating the transatlantic relationships and whether this has to do with NATO and conventional deterrence or whether it has to do with China, you're saying this has been a clear message or signal that has been sent by the Trump administration, whether it was at the NATO summit or wherever, but you see this as a clear message.

that Europeans are getting from the U.S. with regard to both of these issues. Yeah. This is a very clear message. And so this point you made about how, you know, the Biden administration looked at the China challenge as global and the Trump administration is saying, yeah, it's global, but I don't know what the right term is. We're going to nip it in the bud. I don't know what the right term is for the region. I guess going to Henrietta, like how...

So what I understand was the message that we heard coming from the Biden administration over the last four years, which was that the challenge is global and that the United States certainly had a role in this, but so did Indo-Pacific partners, so did NATO partners. How do you respond to this notion that Luis is talking about, that somehow the challenge is global, but it's really confined to the Indo-Pacific and the United States is going to deal with it?

Yeah, I do agree with your characterization of the Biden administration's approach as seeing the challenge as fundamentally global. I mean, for example, my job at the State Department as deputy China coordinator for global affairs was invented in the prior administration because we recognized there was a need for a dedicated attention to how China is affecting the world.

and how we talk to China about those global issues, but probably more importantly, to how we talk to our allies and our partners and even the countries where we don't agree on very much about China and about China's global impact.

And it's interesting in thinking about how the Trump administration has adjusted that aperture in that in some ways they do seem to demonstrate a global focus when it comes to China's impact and the national security and economic threats that China can pose.

And we see that in the Western hemisphere, of course, with the focus, for example, on the Panama Canal and the implications of a Hong Kong owned company operating ports in that part of the world. But then on the other hand, of course, you hear this rhetoric that's been raised that does seem to de-emphasize the role of Europe in that global competition to some degree.

You know, from the Biden perspective, from the Biden administration's perspective, you know, we were very strongly supportive of NATO giving more attention to the growing threats from China. And I think a critique that we received at the time was that NATO does need to focus on the Euro-Atlantic area. It's its primary job.

And I don't think we ever disagreed, but the challenge was that China and the threat from China were coming to the Euro-Atlantic area when it comes to cyber challenges, resilience, certain economic security matters, critical infrastructure, for example. And so we viewed it as necessary for the security of Europe, but also for the success of anything that would look like a global competition region.

with China to be addressing those challenges as a united community of allies. And so I haven't seen that same focus

from the Trump administration. But, you know, it's not that they haven't brought their own type of global lens to the challenge. I think the question is what they see as the role of allies and alliances in addressing the challenge. And from our perspective with the Biden folks and

I think our view was that competition with China really fundamentally cannot succeed unless we're doing this in collaboration with like-minded allies.

And so it's not that the Trump folks haven't been prioritizing China issues in their relationships in Europe and in other parts of the world. But I think the tenor is such that it, you know, without placing that respect on the alliances themselves, it may be more challenging to seek progress on some of these important issues. So I think one of the ways that

In terms of these other issues that Henrietta mentioned, I guess they call them cross-theater issues. Some of the ones that you mentioned, whether it's cyber, the other one is disinformation, economic coercion. So is the message, Luis, for Europeans that...

The focus is really on the military challenge by China in the Indo-Pacific and that is something that Europe should not concern itself with but on all these other cross theater cross domain issues It's the it's sort of the same message as the previous administration or does that not even does that really come up in the conversation? I mean, are they looking to the Europeans to you know to help combat disinformation combat economic coercion combat

you know, cyber cyber concerns? Or is it really just been this focus on the military aspect of it when they say, you know, two theaters? Yeah.

No, I mean, I would say it's a matter of what you prioritize. I don't, I mean, I see a significant degree of continuity between both administrations, because it's not like the Biden administration was telling Europeans, guys, you should come over to the Indo-Pacific militarily and operationally. No, the Biden administration was also putting the emphasis on Europeans doing more to shore up deterrence in Europe, but it also recognized that

that there were many, many issues that required a more cross-theater or global approach, right? But even if you go back to the first Trump administration, I mean, I remember...

Secretary of State, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, like doing the rounds in Central and Eastern Europe, trying to convince Central and Eastern European countries to ban Huawei from their 5G networks, right? So, I mean, I think also the Trump administration, and it probably goes also for the Trump administration, understood that Europeans can play a

a useful role from a U.S. perspective in addressing the China challenge beyond security, right? So that they conceive of the challenge posed by China as a global one, both in geographical and in functional terms, right? So it's just a matter of how the messaging and how you prioritize, right? It seems to me that the emphasis from the Trump administration, at least as I understand it right now,

when it comes to Europe is like, well, we need to wrap up the war in Ukraine in as favorable terms as possible.

or in any case, wrap it up, because it's sort of constraining our ability to focus our resources and military resources and attention ensuring up deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, which should be the priority. And we need Europeans to take up primary responsibility for conventional defense, right? That was the wording.

used by Secretary Hexeth in his first visit to NATO. So it seems like there's, I mean, I don't see that many differences actually overall. I think also, and this is a very difficult debate and which in many ways sort of

sort of, it reminds me of all debates about how to grapple with the challenge posed by the Soviet Union in the Cold War. You recognize that the competition is global, both in a geographical and a functional sense, and that

Everything matters or a lot of things matter in the context of competition, but some things matter more than others. And what matters most and under which circumstances? Yeah, it's a very difficult debate. It seems to me that the Biden and Trump administration are sort of putting the emphasis on different things. But overall, I don't see that many differences, frankly. So, I mean, one of the interesting things, just listening to you, one of the interesting things is that

There seems to have been on this question of China and Europe and Indo-Pacific allies,

some continuity between Trump won and Biden, right? I mean, if you think about all the things that the Biden administration did on coalition building with regard to China, and you think about sort of things that were happening, particularly at the end of the Trump Trump won administration, like you mentioned 5G Huawei, it was the Blue Dot Network, right? There were a number of things that they were trying to do to build coalitions across the Indo-Pacific and Europe.

there's a degree of continuity there. And maybe it's just in the rhetoric right now or in the messaging or at least in some of the press reporting. Maybe there's similarities going into Trump too, but the language sounds very different because it's like in many ways, the Europeans are sort of saying, look, here's what we're going to do on Asia as well. In addition, and it's the United States in the second Trump administration saying, no, no, don't talk about Asia. Just focus on Europe.

So I don't know how much of that is substance or just rhetoric, but both of you seem to say there is some continuity certainly between Trump won and what Biden was doing. Clearly, Biden expanded that a great deal on the coalition bill. Can I move to the second topic I wanted to cover for today, which is on the impact of these tariffs, the reciprocal tariffs, and how that is affecting the way

Europeans and Pacific allies are looking at the United States, looking at China. I mean, Luis, from the European perspective, how is this affecting European countries the way NATO countries are looking at the United States and China? Because clearly these tariffs are sort of what everybody's talking about now.

Yeah, indeed. And as you know very well, Victor, I mean, the whole Tarek conversation is one that affects more directly the European Union and its member states rather than NATO as such. Having said that, trade and economic tensions in the transatlantic relationship can, of course, have an impact on the overall health of the relationship, right? You cannot silo the relationship.

And as I mentioned at the beginning, we are now at a time of transatlantic renegotiation, which sort of links back to what you were saying about the difficulties of distinguishing rhetoric from from from and tactics from from strategy. So there are multiple balls up in the air. If you look at the transatlantic relationship, right. Most importantly, perhaps defense spending, right.

the future of Ukraine, tariffs and cooperation with China, right? Those are sort of the main files as I see it. And I think we should look at those as part of the same package. And we should ideally start to be seeing some progress overall, particularly as we move towards the NATO summit in The Hague at the end of next month. Now on tariffs and China and how the two files

may or may not be related. So Europeans, I think, have been hardening their own approach towards China in recent years, particularly in the trade and economic domains.

And this had to do partly with the Biden administration and transatlantic cooperation, but also with the fact that Europeans actually became increasingly concerned about Beijing's unfair trade practices and also non-market overcapacity, right? And China pushing products down Europe's throat.

And so in recent years, Europeans have adopted a number of trade defense and investment instruments, often in line with the United States and in coordination with the United States. And I think this is one of the

One of the main deliverables, if you look at the Biden administration, is that there's been an impressive amount of coordination on the geoeconomic front between the EU and the US. And an important debate here was the decision by Europeans last year to apply tariffs to Chinese electric vehicles.

which was actually quite controversial and divided Europeans and split Europeans pretty much down the middle. The problem that we see now, if we're looking at the tariffs coming from the Trump administration, is that Europeans cannot afford to fight a two-front trade and economic war with the United States and with China simultaneously.

So as the transatlantic economic relationship deteriorates, you have now many people in Europe who are advocating for improving economic relations and diplomatic relations with China. And of course, China is all too happy to try to exploit that situation to deepen the transatlantic political and economic divide.

But the problem is that the way I see it is that the issues that Europeans have with China relating to overcapacity, standards, lack of a level playing field, et cetera, run actually deep, are quite structural. And they're actually very similar to the ones that the United States have with China, regardless. And I think that goes for both the Biden and the Trump administrations.

And I'm just not sure China has the incentives to move in Europe's direction beyond some token gestures and trying to exploit also in terms of visual the transatlantic divides. So I think if there is a tariff...

or some sort of arrangement between the U.S. and the EU that hopefully sets the transatlantic economic relationship on a more positive footing, and I'm personally optimistic on that front, then I would actually expect transatlantic cooperation on China to continue, especially in the economic and tech domains. Yeah, very good. Henrietta, what about...

Your thoughts on this, particularly, well, first, where we're going on U.S.-China tariffs. And, well, why don't we start with that? Yeah. I mean, it was interesting to see how quickly the recent meetings resulted in something of a withdrawal from

of the very high tariff rates on both sides, which seems to indicate that as much as, you know, I think Beijing was betting that they could hold out longer than America can, that their population can withstand more pain than Americans can, that there was still a good deal of interest

in finding a more sustainable economic footing. And of course, China's economy continues to face some significant structural challenges of its own, making this a difficult moment to be navigating the pressures from this approach from the Trump administration, even as, of course, Beijing has spent years now hardening its economy against exactly this kind of economic challenge from the U.S.,

I would just go back briefly to kind of our prior exchange on the differences and the similarities in the overall China approach, because I think your question on the implication of tariffs for our ability to successfully cooperate across the Atlantic on China kind of speaks to this in an interesting way. And so in the Biden administration's national security strategy, one of our central observations or conclusions

was that the PRC was the only state with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly the economic, the diplomatic, the military, and the technological power to do it. You've probably heard this a lot. Mm-hmm.

And I think that in this context, it's worth focusing on how the international order plays into that observation and the strategy that sprung from it. And so, you know, you can be competing with China over, let's say, you know, economic access.

But are you competing over values? Are you competing over what the world should look like? Are you competing to build a world that is safe for our system of government and that of many of our allies? And I think maybe that's where the key difference kind of comes in to effect.

And the source of some of the differing rhetoric between the Biden and the Trump teams that actually does have really significant kind of a substantive underpinning, because, you know, you see Trump taking this extremely transactional approach to his competition with China.

to saying, you know, they're ripping us off. They need to stop ripping us off. That's not a commentary on what China is seeking for the world. It's not a comment on what America is seeking for the world. It's what America wants for America today.

And by turning away from that focus on the world that we are trying to build or that China is trying to build and what that means for all of us, then I think the policy aperture opens in quite an unconstructive way where everything is transactional. And of course, that's not surprising for those of us who have seen Donald Trump operate in the world for some time now. But I think it will be a

landmark moment in the Indo-Pacific for some time when, you know, Vietnam or Cambodia or other Southeast Asian partners, for example, reflect on, you know, so-called Liberation Day. And the president pulled out that poster board with all the tariff numbers and the number for Vietnam, for example, such an important partner, you know, if you think about, you

the technology ecosystem, if you think about maritime security, if you think about countering China as well. The number for Vietnam is higher than China. And I think that it's just going to be very difficult to come back from that and rebuild the broader trust that gets interrupted when you see partners disrespected in that way and being pulled in so many different directions.

And so I guess what I would say in part to your question, but you know, the significance of tariffs for our ability then to cooperate with our transatlantic partners and allies on China issues is that this isn't just about the economic questions. This isn't just about economic security. It's about breaking a fundamental trust between us and our allies that has been hard won over many, many decades.

And I think the bedrock of successful policy with our allies is so often demonstrating that America is a trusted partner, that we are reliable, that we are in this for the long term, that we are truly standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies. And as much as the tariff policy doesn't necessarily apply in any way at all to other domains, to security issues, for example, I do think that you'll see kind of impoverished

reverberations across the full spectrum of these issues so that even when it comes to

cyber or critical infrastructure or these really urgent and nominally unrelated issues, I think the back and forth thing on these very high tariff rates and immediately resorting to threats against our allies is just going to make that cooperation just a little more difficult when we don't have any time to lose. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't disagree with that characterization at all. I think whether we were talking about what Luis was saying about how

the European Union was organizing around the threat of Chinese economic coercion and unfair trade practices. That was looked at not simply as an economic problem, right? It was looked at something that was threatening intimidation of smaller countries, their policies on human rights and Taiwan and all sorts of other things. It was motivated by a number of different things. And I don't know, I mean, I could be wrong, but I think at the end of Trump 1,

when they tried to organize around Huawei or around combating BRI. I mean, I could be wrong, but my sense was that that wasn't just transactional. That was because they saw these things as threats that went beyond the immediate issue themselves. And of course, we saw this in Technicolor and the Biden administration really took this in a direction that made plenty of sense. It made a lot of sense and it was resonating.

with both Indo-Pacific and transatlantic allies. But now in the current iteration of the Trump administration, we don't hear that, right? It's entirely about these very discrete transactions where I agree that does not encourage allies to think about cooperation in a much broader sense, particularly with regard to China. Right, and your example of Vietnam is a very good one, right?

And that's such an important point, though. I mean, if you're thinking about continuity and difference, I mean, there's probably much more continuity in the China policy between the first Trump administration and Biden than the first Trump administration and the second Trump administration. Tariffs, of course, are a common feature throughout. How they were used really is strikingly different. Yeah, no, I agree.

Okay, so we're coming up against our time limit, and since this is a podcast about Korea, we have to mention Korea for our viewers and our listeners. So Luis, let me start with you and just ask you to say a little bit about this growing relationship between...

North Korea and Russia, largely born out of the war in Ukraine and Putin's need for ammunition. So that's one part. Anything you'd like to say about how that's affected the way NATO countries have looked at, or Europe has looked at North Korea, because there used to be a relationship there.

And then the second is on, you know, South Korea has participated in the last, I think, three NATO summits as part of the Indo-Pacific Four. And what is the outlook for that for IP4 going forward or South Korea-NATO cooperation? Yeah. No, thanks, Victor. And we've been talking all these years quite a bit about how the war in Ukraine has affected

underscored the interdependence between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific. And I think North Korea is a very good example. I mean, as you were saying, I mean, North Korea has provided Russia with more munitions than any other country. And of course, there is no such thing as free munitions, right? And in the sense that Russia's down payment

to North Korea comes by way of supporting Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programs and therefore fueling instability in the Korean Peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific. And then on the flip side of the Korean-Ukraine story, Seoul has stood firmly in support behind Ukraine, much like other Indo-Pacific countries like Japan or Australia,

But perhaps I would say more importantly, South Korean arms exports to Europe, perhaps particularly Poland and Romania, are also directly strengthening NATO's deterrence in the eastern flank and indirectly bolstering Ukraine insofar as they sort of backfill Poland's arms transfers to Kyiv.

And in fact, I would say that the deepening armaments relationship between the ROK and Poland and also all of these countries

initiatives in terms of co-production is actually one of the most concrete and strategically meaningful examples of cross-regional cooperation between the NATO and Indo-Pacific alliance ecosystems. And it actually shows the way forward. And in a recent report, you know about this, that we published at CSDS a couple of

weeks ago, which is called Primed for Deterrence, and that sort of looks at, tries to outline a vision for the future of NATO's Indo-Pacific agenda. We argue that even if NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners focus operationally on their respective regions, which is what the Trump administration wants,

is telling us to do, we can still think together about how to develop a sort of cross-theater ecosystem of common concepts and standards and technologies and defense industrial initiatives

that give us the scale required to outmatch and outproduce our competitors, right? There's also a lot of emphasis in the Trump administration about closing the manufacturing gap. So I think by reducing the number of systems and moving towards common standards in a sort of cross-theater perspective, we can do that. And I think in that sense, South Korea actually

shows the way forward because the cooperation with Poland has been very practical and it has had strategic effects. Right, right. And then and there's a lot of interoperability there. Exactly. What the Koreans make it in part for the alliance. So it's interoperability with

with the alliance as well and for those NATO countries that are interoperable with the United States. Can we close by just asking you your thoughts about this whole question of so-called opportunistic aggression

in a Korea or a Taiwan contingency. So for viewers or listeners who aren't familiar with the term, basically it means that if there is a contingency that take place in Taiwan, that there might be an opportunity for aggression by another party, whether that's on the Korean peninsula or it could even be in Europe, or it could be the Russians again,

So, I mean, your thoughts on this question of opportunistic aggression in the Korea-Taiwan contingency, and whether you feel like the chances of that have gone up or down in Trump administration?

I think the risk has certainly increased. I think in looking at North Korea's willingness to take on that kind of risk, I think Russia is largely to blame in that their growing military relationship with Russia has really, I think, emboldened the leadership in a way that could be quite dangerous.

In thinking about Beijing, they do love taking the opportunity of distraction when they feel that the United States or let's say the international community isn't paying attention. We often do see them trying to push ahead or move the goalposts.

In, for example, their unlawful claims in the South China Sea or other concerning actions in the East China Sea. I think, you know, of course, what we have seen in recent years is limited to gray zone coercion.

But I think that is quite telling in terms of the strategic risks of even the appearance of distraction. Or even going back years, you know, Beijing used to always hold the human rights trials for dissidents around Christmas events.

And, you know, that speaks quite loudly in a way that they want to avoid attention. They want to avoid negative attention. And, for example, you

You know, one of the first real South China Sea challenges that we had in the Biden administration was back in March 2021. China moved a very large number of maritime militia ships into an area close to the Philippines. And I mean, in retrospect, I think they believed that the administration wasn't fully up and running yet. We wouldn't be ready to respond. They'd be able to move the goalposts before anyone could do anything about it.

And we did mobilize to respond and engaged extensively at a high level publicly with the Philippines, took other steps as well. And ultimately, China pulled back.

But I would very much expect to see those kind of efforts to erode the norms and standards and rules of the road increase to the degree that they feel the US especially is not going to show up and push back in a resolute way. And so as much as, you know, the gray zone space,

always leaves open certain questions. I mean, what we've seen in terms of even the gray zone coercion that Beijing has brought to bear against Taiwan over the past year, I mean, is really quite dangerous. I'm not sure they understand the level of risk that even what they are already doing brings to bear when it comes to potentially an unintended conflict.

And so those are some of the things that worry me when I think about that risk of opportunistic aggression. You know, of course, there's what that would mean in the case of a full scale conflict. But even in scenarios far short of that, the risks are very real. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that that makes a lot of sense. Really. So we're at time. So wonderful discussion. Thank you, Henrietta and Luis, for joining us.

Thank you to our viewers and listeners for watching another episode of The Impossible State. We will be back to you for a special edition on the eve of the South Korean elections. Sid Seiler from CSIS and my co-author and Luis's colleague, Ramon Pacheco-Pardo, will be joining you for that special episode. So stay tuned for that. I think it's going to happen on June 3rd or June 4th. So thanks very much. And we'll see you soon.

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