What China thinks of Trump's war with Iran

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Frankly, the Chinese, I think, see the war serving a lot of their diplomatic interests,

not the least of which is that China is just as happy to see the United States alienated

from as many of its traditional allies as possible.

With the US waging war against Iran, Chinese leaders might be taking advice from Napoleon,

never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake.

It's Wednesday, March 18th, and this is here and now any time from NPR and WBUR.

I'm Chris Bentley.

Today on the show, a retired army general says the US is on the edge of a strategic disaster,

as it tries to force Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Also, can the mail survive losing its biggest customer?

Amazon reportedly plans to cut packages sent by the US Postal Service by at least two-thirds

later this year. Before we get to that story, though, the decision by the US and Israel

to start bombing Iran more than two weeks ago has had ripple effects far beyond the Middle East.

Though it's hard to overstate just how much havoc it's wreaked in the region,

with Israel simultaneously invading and bombarding Lebanon, and Iran retaliating with

missile and drone strikes in at least nine countries. American presidents have been promising to

pivot to the Pacific, or otherwise avoid getting mired in the Middle East for decades,

and yet here they go again.

While war has not come to China directly, President Trump did ask to postpone

his summit in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping that had been scheduled for

later this month. So we wanted to talk with someone who would know about what this war means for

US-China relations, and that person is David Lampton, former director of China's studies

at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. David Lampton told Scott Tong that China

is watching this war closely.

Yes, I think it's got the Chinese thinking about the coherence of a American foreign policy

first and foremost. China has important interests with Iran, which it wants to safeguard.

Certainly the first thing is that Iran is China's number two source of imported oil,

Saudi Arabia, incidentally, number one, and then less thought of often is the fact that China is

a major builder of infrastructure. There's a lot of rebuilding of infrastructure going on in

Iran already, and there'll be a lot of infrastructure to be replaced, and China wants to be one of the

builders of that infrastructure. Also, frankly, the Chinese, I think, see the war serving a lot of

their diplomatic interests, not the least of which is that China is just as happy to see the

United States alienated from as many of its traditional allies as possible. Also, they see

fissures in the United States in its own domestic political system. So China has a lot of interests,

economic, but strategic and diplomatic as well.

Yeah. Well, on the table right now is President Trump's request, perhaps demand that China and

other countries step in to help the U.S. open the state of Hormuz, which Iran has closed to

most anchor ships. Beijing has not said yes, instead it's been urging de-escalation.

How big a standoff is this between these two superpowers?

Actually, I don't think it's that much of a standoff in the sense that I don't think there's

the slightest chance, basically, that China is going to transform itself from its hopeful role of

being a mediator, which may not be too realistic, but it certainly wants to avoid becoming a combatant

or caught in sort of the crossfire in the straight of Hormuz. So this may not be the right moment

for the two leaders to get together. Certainly, President Trump's putting a lot of emphasis on

cooperation, as he calls it, for various countries to help secure the Hormuz straight. And I think

were they to meet in the President's current frame of mind, emphasizing what he calls cooperation

with the Chinese not being, I would guess, willing to become any more involved. This may not be

the best time to get together. Maybe the better part of wisdom is not to force things. I'd also say

as even before the current call it flare up in the Persian Gulf, the Chinese were a little worried

that the United States seemed preoccupied and unable to kind of fix on an agenda for the meeting.

Frankly, the Chinese are probably gobsmacked that the US is asking them to play a role in the

straight, particularly just for one of the things that would occur to the Chinese. The US is

making their life difficult in terms of using the Panama Canal and pork facilities there.

And the United States is impeding their role in the Panama Canal at the same time we're asking

for their help. So I think that would create some dissonance in China.

Yeah. Well, as far as this scheduled trip by President Trump to Beijing, the US pushing to

delay it, it would be the first visit by an American President to China in almost a decade.

Whenever it does happen, how important is this meeting to China to the US?

Well, in fact, my statement that I think I had this moment with recommend them postponement is

precisely because I think it's so important that this be successful. You mentioned the first meeting

in many years. That's important. But the fact of the matter is the United States and China are

involved in an arms race, a technological race, and we've got to work whether we like it or not,

and that the Wii is both of us to develop some common rules of the road.

Proliferation in Asia is going to become an increasing problem. China is increasing. It's

nuclear warheads and it's delivery vehicles. And as China does that, Japan is going to respond.

And as Japan responds, then Korea will respond. And then, of course, there's India and China.

Then there's India, China, and Pakistan. So we have such a rich and important agenda

on arms control and trying to get a handle on arms limitation that we really need to focus on that

and not be distracted by a lot of other things. Also, the whole tariff mess needs to be straightened

out. And stepping back just for a moment, you've been observing these two countries for a long

time, writing about them, analyzing them. How do you think about where the US-China relationship

is right now? Well, I think a good example, if you look back about two plus decades,

we had 9-11. You may remember George W. Bush said, you are either with us or against us.

Practically, the first major power call President Bush, God, after 9-11 was from Johnson

the then president of China. And he basically said to Bush, our answer is we are with you.

We have gone from this, we are with you, to we are each other's biggest strategic competitor.

We had a policy of reassuring each other. China that it would be respectful of our security

interests and to some extent economic interests. And we tried to reassure China that we wouldn't

move too far away from one China policy and tried to reassure China we stood for the development

and prosperity of China. And now, we are in a policy of deterrence. That is to say, we see each

each other as the biggest threat. You could hardly define a more different situation that's involved

over the last two decades. David Lampton is Professor Emeritus

former head of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Professor, thanks so much. Good to be with you.

Coming up next, Scott gets another point of view on the war from a retired army general.

Stick around.

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Today, the Trump administration faces more questions on why it attacked Iran and the

intelligence behind it. Senators today are questioning Tulsi Gabbard, the director of

National Intelligence. Just one day after a top official undergabbard resigned, that official

Joe Kent said Iran posed, quote, no imminent threat to the United States.

Retired General Barry McCaffrey joins us now. General, welcome back.

Good to be with you. Let me ask about Joe Kent. He ran the National Counterterrorism Center

until he resigned. That's inside the intelligence community. The White House spokesperson

sites strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States. Yet Kent

in his resignation letter said Iran posed no imminent threat to the US. What does this tell you about

the intelligence justification for this war? It's non-existent. It's parcel. It's obvious

that the Iranians would have been mad to attack the United States from a position of tremendous

weakness following the 12-day war 10 months ago. They were involved in negotiations. They thought

they were possibly going to get through this without an attack. So it's made up after the fact.

By the way, there is an argument for using military power to degrade or eliminate

Iran's nuclear capability. But the only way you actually get at that is to return arms control

inspectors to the ground, not through air warfare. Well, this point in the war, Iran has responded

by blocking the street of Hormuz, critical waterway, of course, recruit oil and natural gas. Let

me play a clip from today's hearing. This is Democratic Senator Mark Warner questioning

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. The president continues to say as well

that he had no idea. It was shocked that the Iranians would move to take over the straight

of Hormuz. Did you provide any intelligence that would say that it would be that it was not likely

that the Iranians would try to move on the street? I'm not aware of those remarks and I think those

of us here at the table can point to the fact that historically the Iranians have always threatened

to leverage their control of the president saying he was amazed. I'm not aware of those remarks.

What about the, what are Barry McAfee? What are you hearing there?

The thing again, there is no national security process. We need to understand that. The

National Security Council, under all preceding presidents, essentially takes 30, 60, 90 days

debate argument policy options. What we're dealing with in Trump is policy by WIM,

actions by decree. The whole notion of attacking Iran without coalition allies in the Gulf

or in Europe never mind Japan and South Korea and Australia who are influenced by this action

and without taking into account the likely option that they would close the streets is simply astonishing.

And it's going to be a strategic advantage to Iranians who have suffered a tactical disaster

through these Israeli and US air strikes. Well, in general, we read all the time that the US

military, the career professionals, they do these war games, they do these tabletop exercises

to play out scenarios. Is it conceivable the Trump administration did not anticipate this?

I think they didn't anticipate anything. They had a series of apparently determined JCS who I

remind our listeners does have no command authority, no due to the uniform service chiefs. It's in

the hands of the Secretary of Defense, EGSF and the President of the United States, but they

proceed on these things with basically without any analysis on how they're going to do it.

You could, you know, try and control the streets are removed by putting a sure one, two,

three US Army divisions get a sanitary zone of 100 kilometers deep and stay there for the rest

of your life. None of which sounds like a very good military option. So he just ignored this

as a problem. But by the way, I think both sides now are in desperation of both Trump and the

Iranians. It's possible we'll see serious talks. Iranians are a basket case on the economy

despised by their own people. They may have murdered 30,000 plus during the uprisings

and Trump's in a strategic disaster.

Yeah. Well, this is finally, you know, you have said Iran has other tools that it's supposed

including terrorism and cyber warfare. What do you worry about?

Well, I think the cyber warfare can't bring down the industrial might of America,

but it's going to be a huge problem. It'll be continuing. They've used it in the past quite

successfully. They're very clever, capable people. I think the terrorism is less likely to be

sleeper cells being activated in a major US city than at some point. If they're in such

trouble now, they'll start lashing out at US presence in embassies, military bases, globally,

who's already seen some domestic self-radicalized attacks. But it's concerned. And it's concerned

even more so because federal law enforcement has been bullied in the submission. They fired some

of their most experienced people. And many of the rest of them have been chasing immigrants rather than

protecting the United States from terror attacks. All right, retired general.

Barry McCaffer, you thank you once again. Good ability.

One more story for you on today's show. Coming up, we give the war a rest for a few minutes

to find out why the postal service might run out of money later this year.

Indira Lakshmanan has that in just a minute.

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and bail out. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, in the short time we have left, as you say, the post office

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but they're not given the funding to do it. The Postmaster General said yesterday they'd been thrown

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they run out of money a month before the midterms when people have to put on. You know, it's a

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have you back to talk about what happens if the post office stops being able to deliver mail.

That's Robin Farzad, host of Full Disclosure. Thanks so much, Robin. My pleasure.

That's it for the show today. Here and now any time comes from NPR and WVR Boston. Today's

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