Meanwhile, the Obama Administration says National Security official spoke with their counterparts to make sure of u. S. Commitment to the one china policy. Joining me now is ian bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group and Richard Haass president of the council on foreign relations. His forthcoming book is called guess what a world in disarray. Im pleased to have both of you here. How serious is this . How did it happen . How will it play itself out . Richard it is pretty serious in the sense that the call broke ground, unfortunate ground that hadnt been there since the late 70s. A fact this exchange took place was inconsistent with the choreography of this elaborate relationship. I think what made it worse, charlie, was the followup. You alluded to two tweets and an article in the Washington Post that said this was not improvisational. There was some planning, this and the Incoming Administration was full party to it. The initial chinese reaction was quite muted. The subsequent chinese reaction has gotten stronger because it was not accidental. How serious is this . Potentially very. I dont mean in the terms of a shortterm crisis but so much of what the United States is doing in the world is predicated on a nonconfrontational relationship with this country called china and one point 3 billion people. This choreography with taiwan has allowed it. It is basically a fiction that allows the u. S. To maintain a Good Relationship with china and a basic but informal relationship with taiwan and therefore allows us in principle to establish this in or miss economic relationship and deal with regional challenges like north korea, global challenges like climate change. By putting and play the one china policy which is a for fourn policy decades, it raises questions about whether this relationship will continue to have large element of cooperation. There is an entire school of thought among socalled realists that the relationship between the great powers today, the United States, and the rising power of the day, china, is destined to be confrontational. Athens and sparta. China havestates and defied this and we have defied it for decades. The question is might this production begin to gain traction . If so, the century becomes a different century. Charlie the chinese have said in recent days that taiwan is the single most important issue. Richard the word existential is taiwant wrong, they see as a threat and from this point of view, if taiwan ever becomes independent, it sets a precedent. That means other parts of china could start to spin off. This is something they cannot and will not permit, particularly against the backdrop of lower economic growth. This has the potential to capture nationalist fervor. Something they cannot show any softness on. Onre legitimacy depends maintaining a decent economy, but even more, it is maintaining the integrity of the country called china. Manyie we have this crisis now. How will it play itself out . What will have to happen now . What are the choices out there . I am with richard in that i think this is serious. I dont think its serious that we have to have a crisis just because he picked up the phone. They realize that act as itself as unusualt elect, and unconventional as it is in the context of the big relationship and an unusual president elect, they can live with that. But there are a lot of other messages being sent. Additional tweets right after saying the chinese are taxing our goods coming in and if we chinese areurs, the expanding their military and manipulating a currency. He did not say it was not a big deal, he doubled down on it. Charlie he said all of those things during the campaign. Said a lot of things during the campaign. The question is what will he do as president elect now that he has a team around. The chinese government, their view of trump when i met them all of a week ago was we dont know this guy, but hes a businessman. Hes not going to be criticizing us on human rights or our domestic, internal policies. If he is a hard negotiator, we are hard negotiators, too, but we can deal with that. If you saw she jinping when he gave his speech a couple of weeks ago, that was the one speech at that summit obama did not give a speech there. He said we are the one thats going to lead and drive globalization. The United States is not. This is very different than the china richard and i have been talking about for years, that they are small, they are not ready. This is a china that sees there is a lot of room for them to actually charlie do they believe, regardless of this incident, that there is a power vacuum in the knighted states or in the world . They cant fill all of it, but they do certainly understand that with the Trump Administration driving a spike into the transpacific partnership, they understand American Allies in the region are very disconcerted. They dont know they can count on the United States the way they had hereto for. Today, she jinping announces going to go to davos for stop for the first go to davos. Trump is going to be inaugurated while davos is going on. This is a very interesting time to show they are the ones writing the checks. Ones who invited the new secretary general to beijing, treating him like the head of state, saying the yuan is the most important Multilateral Organization in the world and we are going to do Everything Possible to support it. Could you imagine president elect trump saying that . From that perspective am a china sees room to run with this administration, and these are not coincidental things. Charlie your reaction to the terms of this vacuum or for the chinese to say we are prepared from the beginning question mark we have always talked about peace and prosperity, now we are talking about peace, prosperity and influence. Richard theres a lot to this. The transpacific ownership was central to the rebalance to asia. Means thed not happen third was the third leg to this dual got knocked out. There was a campaign about america first. Their view is the United States is less inclined, which they already thought after iraq and afghanistan, that the United States was less likely to play a role. Theyve seen the comment about distancing ourselves from allies. China has always been an odd mixture of a developing country and a major power. Is a slight to see shift in the emphasis, less of a developing country. To some extent, they have begun to arrive and are a major power. The real question is how they exercise their power and do they integrate into an International Order based on principles we can embrace or do they have a very different idea about how things in asia and the world ought to operate . To the extent the United States is not active, they are more likely to define it in ways we do not like. The ability ofis the United States to work with china on what be the most pressing National Security issue facing this administration, namely north korea, the chinese ability to work with us a nationalist reaction likely to come out over taiwan will limit the ability of , tor government, xi jinping work with us on a policy goal that matters. Charlie does trump follow any of this . Beingd at the risk of insulting, no. This is not somebody who spent his years in this business. Charlie but hes got people around him. He has to be briefed on these kinds of things during the president ial campaign. Richard thats the bigger question to one extent, how much of this is an ad hocracy. Are,er messy governments this one is fully consistent with that. One of the things you are careful about is not getting yourself into certain situations. Theres nothing wrong with , bush 41 uselomacy it to great effect to develop and invest in relationships. Sense that the people around the president elect had an agenda take this situation that had been finessed between the United States, china and taiwan and basically make it more explicit, to cease finessing it and make it something more obvious. Is if someonenow told donald trump, before you do this, understand the consequences. This is not the place we want to have a showdown, given everything from geography, the that taiwan exports a lot of its goods to the mainland, its very far away. If you want these guys to help us on north korea, you maybe dont want to push them on this. What i dont see is that someone took a step back and presented this phone call strategically. That is the obligation of staff. Charlie when we talk about people who might have influenced him, who might have influenced him to take the call and who might have said no but didnt . Ian thats a level of detail id dont know. I literally dont know what the processes. Asgns and transitions you said quite right, you have people whose main preoccupation is finding staff. At the end of the day, personnel are policy, so thats the emphasis. Thats one of the reasons you want to go slow on some of these phone calls. Theres time for that later. Question of every meeting i had in china is what is the new administration going to do . Everyone is trying to read our tea leaves and they are as confused as we are as to what to expect. A second thing they said is they want a Good Relationship with the United States. They want a stable region in the world so they can continue to grow economically. They are not looking for fights. They would like to work things out with this administration on terms they find acceptable. My hunch is they are genuinely surprised by this was not something ive been going to china for over 30 years. This is the first trip ive ever taken where taiwan did not come up in any of the official meetings. It used to be, every meetings, like station identification, 25 readery meeting, you were the initial talking points about taiwan. We talked about north korea, we talked about other issues. The fact it did not come up was a major implicit statement that we had succeeded in putting this issue and a kind of box and everyone was comfortable with the choreography. Now its out of the box and this is going to become a major distraction. Gift to tpp was a major the chinese, one of the major gives we could offer because . Because American Allies in asia had put significant clinical capital into actually getting this deal done with their own governments, their own parliaments, their own relations. The Prime Minister of japan hopped on a plane to win went to see trump and did not bring up tpp, but hes strong at home and popular. He doesnt have to worry about a new election anytime soon. Hes going to pearl harbor. He could call a snap election and do better. But those other allies have been hit hard. Philippines,e australia, all of these countries ive heard this chapter and verse from foreign minister and in some cases, heads of state of every one of these countries even before trump was elected. What are you doing . You got to make good on these commitments what weve got no choice but to go toward china. Charlie i would be interested in regardless, is xi jinping xi jinping is xi jinping consolidating his power question his power . Ian i think the answer is clearly yes. Charlie is he giving more power to the military . Ian the biggest stake xi jinping made in his early presidency was in the first year, some expansion of assertiveness very quickly on the military front in the South China Sea that led to a bunch of American Allies overreacting and being driven into americas arms. Has was before xi jinping started his Anticorruption Campaign in earnest which again with the Peoples Liberation army and move toward the provinces and state owned enterprises and now into central ministries. What we have seen consistency over five years is that hes not just someone who is consolidating power but has a longterm Strategic Land and is building out chinese influenced not just as the communist party over its people but in the entire region economically and more broadly than that. Has this fall, in october of 2017, the party congress. He wants to institutionalize his position, restock the euro and committee with loyalists. So to answer your question, hes becoming slightly more nationalist, but at the end of the day, his position is not going to rise and fall on chinese foreignpolicy, the going to rise and fall on the chinese economy and making this transition charlie they are finding it more difficult than they imagined . Inhard like most things life, its one thing to talk about and another to implement it. The Anticorruption Campaign has nothing to do with corruption. It is to maintain political control during a difficult political and economic transition and hes taking very few chances. That is why this terminology you saw used for the first time a few weeks ago about his being the core leader is meant to send the signal that he represents the essence of chinese history and hes now the Clinical Center of this country. Most china experts will tell you he has centralized more power than any chinese leader arguably since mao zedong. Continuing and more important, the Economic Transformation of the country and he feels since the lubrication that came from High Economic growth rates is no longer there, the only way china can continue to changes if clinical dissent is bottled up. Is bottledl dissent up. How do you get the openness you need at the same time you bottle up clinically . Thats the contradiction that could undermine his efforts and mean that china is unlikely to make this transition smoothly. Not a leader that needs to gin up nationalism. This is not a leader that needs a fight on taiwan. One of the reasons why their initial reaction was a little ok, maybe he really screwed this up and we are doing well. Longerterm, things are moving in our favor. Did he go over because there was an election here in the chinese wanted to get his thoughts there . Is 93 years old and has been involved in every administration. Hes very much in the mix and respected in china. He still on top of the issues more politically and strategically and has spoken with trump. The decision by trump to take the call from the taiwanese president had to make kissinger loses mine because in big concernt, his is this is the big global risk in this new world order. Charlie at the last China Development form i went to, that was all they talked about. The u. S. China relationship is a stunning piece of diplomacy. We have one rationale antisoviet system. The relativist their relative the relevant miss of that and did the cold war. The United States and china have antinued to involve evolve relationship despite these protections of gloom and doom. Its quite a diplomatic accomplishment. Its gone to democratic and republican administrations. On balance, it has gone well and the danger of what we see now is the possibility that some of this is in play for the first time in a generation or two. Henryfor people like kissinger and the architects of this, anyone who is serious about American Foreign policy and the way the International System evolves, this has added a question at a time when there were already enough questions to keep us busy. Charlie there is a rise of populism in europe. Powerople who gained some because they were very supportive of the no vote, they are very much antiglobalization, antieuro and every thing else. But in the broader sense, we had a different result weve got three or four big elections coming up. Its going to be the year of europe in terms of legal activity. Already into it beginning with brexit. Vote against the establishment, a real frustration over Italian Economic performance. We will have an election in the farhich wont go to right, to Marine Le Pen. Germany, most of the conventional wisdom is the chancellor will win but with a much reduced lyrical base. Reduced political base. Think about the aftermath of world war ii and the european community, this idea that france and germany and europe would be so knitted together that war would be unthinkable, for the first time, that has come into play. Whether the issue is china or europe, i feel we are living in that forn ways decades, i dont know about you, but i never sensed. Are living in we history. I fell like there were givens. There was a cold war, charlie you sense we are at an Inflection Point in the World Structure . Richard there are fewer givens, fewer assumptions that hold. There are more things up for grabs. Populations are more likely to say we are going to take a different course without understanding what they are tossing out. I feel it in the europe and in the United States. Ian in europe, trump is truly and deeply problematic. Trumps support in europe and the people trump will support are these populists, nigel farage who campaigned for him from the u. K. And who led the brexit movement. It is Geert Wilders in the netherlands, it is Marine Le Pen. Those are the deepest enemies of these establishment charlie are they the people donald trump relates to . Ways. T has gone both we have seen it in tweets, we have seen it in her campaign stops, and if there is not just an end to the confrontation between the u. S. And russia, that, if it becomes warmer and trump has given every reason he has an intention to at least try that out, that becomes a serious problem for nato, for poland, for the baltic st