Here’s How America Can Win the New Cold War: Matthew Kroenig and Dan Negrea

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] When Ronald Reagan was a presidential candidate, he was asked about his strategy for the Cold War. He had a simple answer: “We win, and they lose.”

Former President Reagan was crystal clear about the Soviet Union and its intentions, but today, few seem to understand the Chinese Communist Party’s true intentions towards America.

“We Win, They Lose” is the title of a new book by Matthew Kroenig and Dan Negrea, both working with the Atlantic Council. They outline what a Reaganesque foreign policy—updated for today—would look like.

Mr. Kroenig is vice president and senior director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and Mr. Negrea is senior director of the Freedom and Prosperity Center.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Dan Negrea, Matt Kroenig, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Matthew Kroenig:
It’s great to be here. Thanks for having us.

Dan Negrea:
Thank you so much.

Mr. Jekielek:
The title of your book, “We Win, They Lose,” is controversial. Of course, this is how Ronald Reagan framed his foreign policy towards the Soviet Union. Can you justify that approach today?

Mr. Kroenig:
As you point out, that was Reagan’s statement. He was asked what was his strategy for the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and he said. “It’s simple, we win, they lose.” He followed that clear strategic vision and won the first Cold War. Now, we’re in a new Cold War with communist China and people are trying to figure out what the strategy is.

The Biden administration says that the strategy is to responsibly manage the competition. Dan and I didn’t think that seemed quite right. What is the goal in being in competition with China? Then we looked back to Reagan’s model. The goal today should still be that we win and they lose.

How can we justify that? It’s pretty simple. Do the American people and the rest of the world benefit from having the United States and our democratic allies leading the international system, or would we be better off with a genocidal, communist dictatorship running the world? The answer to that is pretty clear, so that is how we justify it.

Mr. Negrea:
You’re right, Jan. The title is strong and maybe even provocative, but we are living in sobering times. Robert Gates was a very distinguished public servant in both Republican and Democrat administrations. He said that this is the most dangerous international environment perhaps ever, and other people have raised this point as well. This is not a time for half measures. We need clarity.

Mr. Jekielek:
The criticism here might be that this is a neocon approach, and you’re advocating for a fusion of Reagan and Trump foreign policy.

Mr. Negrea:
This is the opposite of a neocon approach. The neocon view of the world is that America should go out looking for dragons to slay and find dictatorship and cause change in those countries to promote freedom by force of arms. We should be forcing countries to go in a certain direction.

We make it very clear in our book that our policies are in response to the aggressive actions of a new axis of evil; China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. These are countries that are not only revisionist, but also expansionist. They’re not just proposing these theories and staying within their own borders, they are invading or threatening to invade foreign countries, as well as causing harm to the vital national interests of the United States.

In response to their actions, the United States, as leader of the free world, and working with other freedom-loving countries, needs to design a strategy to respond to their actions in this new Cold War, and win this new Cold War. But it is not us initiating the conflict. It’s a conflict that came to us that we just simply cannot ignore or avoid.

Mr. Kroenig:
A central argument of the book is this idea of a Trump-Reagan fusion in conservative foreign policy. You take the traditional principles of Reaganism and update them for the Trump era. We point out that Reagan and Trump actually had a lot in common, both as individuals and in terms of foreign policy. One of those things is peace through strength. It is the idea that the United States should be so strong that other adversaries will not mess with us. If they do mess with us, we’re willing to punch back hard. But they were both skeptical of drawn-out, nation-building, military campaigns that we associate with the George W. Bush administration. They were also skeptical of the timid and weak approach from Democrats.

I agree with Dan and say that it’s not a neocon approach. It’s the opposite. It is skipping over the George W. Bush administration and arguing that Trump has a lot more in common with the traditions in the conservative movement, including peace through strength. One example that we haven’t talked about yet is trade policy. Everyone criticized Trump for being protectionist, which was a radical break from Reagan, who was a free trader.

We point out in the book that Reagan also used protectionist policies and tariffs against the Japanese and others, but with the purpose of bringing about free trade. That’s exactly what Trump was doing. He wasn’t putting tariffs in place for their own sake. He was putting tariffs in place against China and other countries that were cheating on the global trading system and trying to bring about freer trade.

He was very clear about that and was trying to get a better deal for the American people. He pursued trade negotiations and even had two successful trade agreements updated, such as the trade agreement with South Korea, and then the new US-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement. The purpose was to get to free and fair trade, not protectionism for its own sake.

Mr. Jekielek:
Dan, you’re a defector from a communist regime which has clearly informed your thinking. Please tell us about your background, how you ended up in America, and how that informs your perspective.

Mr. Negrea:
I was born in communist Romania and lived there until I was 24-years-old. I got my graduate degree at age 22 and worked for two years in the Ministry of Finance on relations with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. I came to Washington for their annual meetings as part of the Romanian delegation and asked for political asylum. In one of those turns of fate that can only happen in America, 40 years later while working at the Department of State, I was again a delegate to the World Bank and IMF annual meetings, but this time as part of the U.S. delegation.

My experience under communism influences how I look at the world in a very important way. I can recognize the mindset of communism which is expansionist. It looks to create a world dominated by authoritarianism in every country. I can also realize that there is evil, not that all countries are fine. It is not that there are misunderstandings, and if we only sat down and had a nice conversation we could sort things out. There is evil and I experienced that. I know what a totalitarian mindset and an expansionist point of view can do.

Mr. Jekielek:
What prompted you to leave at that particular time?

Mr. Negrea:
There was a time I had hoped that Romanian communism would evolve in the direction of Yugoslavia, which was also a communist country and independent from the Soviet Union in its foreign policy. It was similar to Romania in that it allowed an element of free enterprise and some freedoms. But then the dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, went to China and saw the cult of personality under Mao. He said, “This is a great thing. I will imitate this in Romania,” which he did. That didn’t go well with the Romanian people and he was toppled and shot. But other than that it was a successful regime.

Mr. Jekielek:
In this book you focus on American exceptionalism. Some people ask, “Does that still exist today? Should America be the leader of the free world? You saw something in America back then. Do you still see it today?

Mr. Negrea:
I still see this American exceptionalism as very much alive. You may say I have the passion of a convert, and indeed, I am most certainly biased. There are millions of illegal immigrants coming into this country who cross deserts and jungles and rivers and risk death along the way. But they dream of coming to America, which is still the beacon of freedom, still the land of the free, and still the country of exceptionalism. This is very much alive and I don’t see that changing in the future. But I’m sure Matt can give a much more learned answer on American exceptionalism.

Mr. Kroenig:
I can give some statistics. If you look at the data, you can see that the United States is exceptional. It is still the most powerful country in the world by far, both economically and militarily. Then after World War II, the global system created by the United States has been remarkable in terms of results. There have been no great power wars in 70 years. The average standard of living in the United States and internationally is five times greater today than it was in 1945. In 1945, there were only 12 democracies on Earth. Now, there are almost 100 democratic countries on Earth.

This period of U.S. leadership has made the world richer, safer, and more free. It is essentially the best system ever invented for running global affairs. To the critics I would say, “Where is the better system? Would it have been better if Nazi Germany won World War II? Would it have been better if the Soviet Union had won the Cold War? Would it be better if Communist China dominated the world today?” Clearly, the answer to all of those questions is, “No.”

Then where does this skepticism of American exceptionalism come from? Especially on the Left, people have some kind of ideal standard in mind, that the United States is not living up to this utopia, and so they criticize it. But that’s unfair. You have to look at what were the historical alternatives, and what are the plausible alternatives today. Clearly, there is no better system than one where the United States plays an important leadership role.

Mr. Negrea:
America has become an empire by invitation. Countries want America to come and be involved. There was a comedy in the 1950s called, “The Mouse That Roared,” about this little country in Europe that was about to go bankrupt. Their solution was, “Let’s declare war on the United States. Because after we surrender, they will come and be so generous with this country that they have defeated. Look what they did with Germany and with Japan, so this will be a great thing.”

You can look at the behavior of these millions of people who are putting their lives at risk to come to America, but you can also look at European governments. The greatest terror in European chancellories these days is that America may withdraw from Europe. They created the European Union. They said the purpose of NATO is to keep the Russians out, the Germans down, and the Americans in.

Not just the populations, but the governments also want America to be present. Both in developed countries and developing countries they know that American enterprise is coming and will create development by using local labor forces, introducing higher standards, and bringing in economic growth.

Mr. Jekielek:
You created an interesting term. There’s America first, and then there’s blame America first.

Mr. Kroenig:
The United States does have real problems, for sure. American exceptionalism doesn’t mean that the United States is perfect. We have a lot of problems domestically with fentanyl overdoses, and a lot of problems internationally. One of the things that is different about the United States is our ability for self-correction.

For many decades we had this strategy of engaging China. It probably took us too long to recognize it, but by 2017, the Trump administration recognized that this wasn’t working and that we needed a new approach. Instead of engaging with China, it was time to compete with China. To quote Winston Churchill, “The United States always does the right thing after trying everything else.” We do make mistakes, but our ability to self-correct is superior to any other country on Earth.

Mr. Jekielek:
Robert Gates said that we live in a most dangerous international situation. Please explain to us why you agree with that.

Mr. Negrea:
We started working on this book in 2021 when I left the Trump administration and joined Matt at the Atlantic Council. In the title we said that we are in a new Cold War. Who are we facing in this new Cold War? We coined the term, the new axis of evil, which includes China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. At that time, we were a little bit avant-garde with this term.

We are now in an environment where someone respected, like General McMaster, a National Security Advisor in the Trump administration, said that we are on the cusp of the Third World War. There are people who are talking about how this environment reminds them of the 1930s, where disparate conflicts in different parts of the world by different powers ended up in a global conflagration.

Since we sent the book to the publisher in October after the massacre in Israel, it is becoming clear that Iran and North Korea are helping Russia, that Russia and China are supporting Iran, and that the Houthis are attacking ships from many countries, but not from Russia and China.
It is becoming clear that there is coordination between the countries of the new axis of evil and that together they are a threat to the peace of the world.

Mr. Kroenig:
I would also point out that China is the most capable adversary the United States has ever faced. You can look at their share of global GDP, and they’re more capable than the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany ever were. If this conflict was just between the U.S. and China, there would be a case to be made that this is the most dangerous period we have ever faced.

But as Dan points out, it’s not just China. It is also Russia, Iran, and North Korea. We have a major war in Europe right now, and a major war in the Middle East. We may be on the verge of a major war in the Indo-Pacific. China is building up their military in order to go to war with the United States.

Xi Jinping has been very clear that the military option is on the table to take Taiwan. Being able to deter and defeat multiple, nuclear-armed, autocratic adversaries at the same time is essentially the national security situation that we face right now. It is indeed very, very dangerous.

Mr. Jekielek:
A big difference between the Soviet Union back in Reagan’s time and China today is their deep connection to the global economy. This was a very intentional play by the Chinese Communist Party to create the situation where if you hurt them, everybody suffers dramatically. It is very difficult for the U.S. and other Western countries to extricate themselves from these economic relationships. Could you comment on this?

Mr. Kroenig:
Some people ask if Cold War is really the right term. It’s not exactly like the first Cold War, because we’re more interdependent with China. But we think it is the right term because it is a long-term confrontation between the United States and an autocratic rival for the future of global leadership. Even though World War I is not exactly like World War II, they were both world wars. Similarly, these are both Cold Wars, even though they’re not exactly the same. Yes, the economic interdependence is one difference, but that is starting to change. The United States has these decoupling policies that started under Trump and are being continued under Biden. There are areas where we haven’t made progress, But there are other areas where we have made progress, including a bill to ban TikTok signed by President Biden just a few weeks ago. There is other evidence of progress as well.

It’s also not one-sided. China is also decoupling from us. They have this dual circulation policy of essentially trying to make themselves invulnerable to the rest of the world, but making the rest of the world dependent on them. It’s playing out slowly, but I suspect that we will see trade and investment patterns start to follow geopolitical lines like they did during the Cold War. As American and Western companies move out of China and move into friendly countries, the interdependence will lessen and become less of a major challenge than it has been recently.

Mr. Negrea:
China puts out documents that are available for everybody to read. In the early 2000s, they said that they wanted to encourage indigenous innovation. Then they came out with a public document, Made in China 2025, where they said that their policy is to build domestic champions who are going to replace foreign companies in China and abroad, and then eventually dominate the world economy. That is their policy.

Now, we didn’t take it seriously enough. The war in Ukraine was such a shock to the whole international system. It is becoming clear that China is supporting Russia in this, so war between the United States and China is no longer inconceivable. I came from Wall Street to serve in the State Department and worked in policy planning. In 2018, I was reading a document from the Congressional Research Service, and it made me spill my coffee all of a sudden.

It said that in case of war, we need to make sure that materials essential for national security are not from countries that may be adversaries. It’s a simple concept. The behavior that we now see from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is sobering. This economic interdependence still exists.

There is too much dependence on China, even for things like military equipment. But this is a reversible trend and the interdependence is going to become less and less. As Matt said, the Chinese are doing the same thing, because they also recognize their dependence on other countries.

Mr. Jekielek:
They are decoupling on their own terms. Many people don’t know about the concept of comprehensive national power that China employs, where they rate every country against themselves. As long as they’re going up, or others are going down, things are good. But they don’t believe in win-win.

Mr. Kroenig:
Actually they do believe in it. What they mean is that China wins twice.

Mr. Jekielek:
Right. As you said, this is such a simple concept. Why would you manufacture things in China that have national security implications? I’ve had Tommy Waller on the show talking about these giant electrical transformers that are only manufactured in China which are important components of the U.S. electrical grid. You can imagine what would happen if the grid goes down.

Mr. Negrea:
There is a whole conversation about the cranes used in shipping ports. Apparently, 70 percent of the cranes that we use come from China. Their electronic components get computer updates, and they’re coming from Beijing. They are connected to Beijing. What if they are instructed not to work anymore? If we have electric cars, what if they are all instructed to stop at some point?

There is a company called Nuctech that manufactures airport security equipment. When you go through the airport, they check to see if you have weapons. What if for a few days in a certain country, they allow people to pass with weapons, because they want to let some terrorists in. These are just intolerable things, if we actually want to be prudent.

Mr. Kroenig:
Dan and I don’t just look at the problem. We lay out a strategy for tackling this, and we propose a selective decoupling strategy. There are essentially three categories. First, if there are sensitive national security concerns, we need a hard decoupling, and to stop trade and investment with China in this area altogether.

Second, there’s a category where it’s not sensitive national security, but China is cheating and we need to level the playing field with tariffs and other measures. Third, there are other areas where free exchange can continue to take place. If China wants to buy American soybeans, and if Americans want to buy cheap, made in China T-shirts, that’s fine. It’s really the sensitive national security matters that we need to focus on.

Mr. Jekielek:
There is a reason why Huawei is in a crisis. It has a national security priority of becoming the world telecom provider, providing ample opportunity for both espionage and control.

Mr. Kroenig:
Yes, that’s right. This is part of China’s strategy. They realize the United States gained enormous intelligence benefits from controlling the communications infrastructure of the 20th century, so they want to control the communications infrastructure of the 21th century. Fortunately, for the most part, the United States and its allies have done a good job of banning
Huawei, especially when it comes to banning 5G and other systems.

But China is making a lot of inroads in the global south, in large part because it’s so affordable, but this does pose a potential problem. What if China controls the communications infrastructure of the 21st century in Latin America and Africa? What does that mean for their geopolitical alignment? What does that mean for the future of democracy in those countries? We do talk in the book about ways that the United States can provide alternatives.

You go to these countries and point out the national security and the intelligence concerns. They often say, “Okay, we get it, but what’s the alternative? It’s cheap, and we are a developing country.” We talk about some strategies for the United States and its allies to incentivize the private sector to provide alternatives to Huawei and these other unfair, cheap, subsidized technologies that China has been using to flood the global market.

Mr. Jekielek:
We win, they lose, is actually the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy as well, isn’t it?

Mr. Negrea:
Yes. We are in a serious conflict. We don’t like the term competition. By the way, as a general disclaimer, Matt and I both work at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan organization, but we did write a partisan book.

Mr. Jekielek:
The Atlantic Council has been around forever. The Heritage Foundation has a one voice approach, but the Atlantic Council isn’t like that. You have to provide a disclaimer. You may have Atlantic Council fellows that have diametrically-opposed positions to yours. Is that right?

Mr. Negrea:
I wouldn’t expect that to be true. I would expect all of them to be for freedom. It is an American institution and I don’t expect any diametrical points of view. But some of our colleagues may be coming out in favor of policies that are supported by the Democratic Party. A quick formulation of the Biden administration’s approach to relations with China is a mixture of cooperation, competition, and confrontation. Matt and I say they got it one-third right with the confrontation part. But there is really not much cooperation.

The argument that we hear from the Biden administration is we have to cooperate with them on transnational things that are essential for humanity, like climate change and health. But on climate change they are the greatest polluters. They are still building coal plants when we are not. Our CO2 emissions are going down, and theirs are going up. On health, there was no cooperation with finding the origin of Covid. When the Australians opposed them they started a trade war and retaliated against Australian exports for years, and it cost them billions.

Therefore, we don’t find much cooperation. In terms of competition, it’s not a fair competition. It’s not like we are in a tennis game with a referee that says, “There is lying, stealing, and cheating going on.” This is a serious contest with diametrically different views of what the world will look like and how countries will relate to each other.

Mr. Kroenig:
I’ll add a point on the Atlantic Council, which is a non-partisan institution. The mission statement is about shaping the global future together. That is something that every employee agrees on. Otherwise, individual scholars, and program directors have their own viewpoints. There are a lot of different opinions on different policy issues at the Council. I suspect there are some colleagues at the Atlantic Council who would disagree with some of the arguments in our book. But, that’s okay. We’re a big organization. A lot of big organizations have people who disagree with each other on certain issues.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s come back to this idea of American exceptionalism. Today, many Americans are demoralized, both on the Left and on the Right. They do not believe America is a force for good in the world anymore. There is too much adventurism and nation-building, and we should step away from those foreign wars. Look at what happened in Afghanistan with all the blood and treasure lost, and now the Taliban is in power. These are very real concerns. Today, it is a very different global order.

Mr. Negrea:
Our book is about foreign affairs. We make the argument that the Republican Party is not significantly divided between the Reagan and the Trump wings, as many believe. There is clear, firm consensus on three things; peace through strength, recognizing that we need fair trade and not free trade, and American exceptionalism. An interesting question would be, “What is the place of American exceptionalism in a foreign policy book?

It has a crucially important place, which is that peace through strength addresses the critically important element of military strength to preserve, and safeguard the national security of the United States. The fair trade part deals with economic strength. Economic security is also national security. This is not just about exceptionalism.

We are not as strong as we could be in facing our external adversaries. How can we ask our young men and women in uniform to put their life at risk to defend America, if America is described as racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic? These are all the Blame America first themes.

In the book we talk about the difference between the progressive and conservative views of the world in general. The progressives tend to dwell on the faults of America to the detriment of having a balanced view. They do not recognize that the qualities of America and the American principles that bring freedom and prosperity to the American people far exceed the faults. This is why American exceptionalism is one of the three key principles that we build everything else on. We need to start recognizing it at home and promoting it at home.

Mr. Kroenig:
In the data that we cite, 69 percent of Republicans agree with the statement that the United States is the greatest country in the world. Only 30 percent of Democrats agree with that. Empirically, we can see that conservatives are stronger supporters of American exceptionalism than progressives. You mentioned Afghanistan and people were asking, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just came home?”

The answer is no. People focus on Iraq and Afghanistan or other mistakes in U.S. foreign policy. But they miss the bigger picture that the United States has shaped a world that is safer, richer, and more free. How could we achieve that if we came home?

We tried that. That was Obama’s policy. He thought the United States was overextended because of Iraq and Afghanistan, and we should play a smaller role in the world. He thought this would encourage other countries to step up. Instead, evil adversaries filled the vacuum. Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time because Putin knew he could get away with it.

China started taking territory from our allies in the South China Sea with their island-building campaign, because they could get away with it.
Obama pulled troops out of the Middle East, then Isis rose up and started beheading Americans. We see that when the United States withdraws, goodness doesn’t fill the vacuum, evil does. That’s why we need the United States to be engaged in the world in order to secure the interests of the American people.

Mr. Jekielek:
That is different from the nation-building approach.

Mr. Kroenig:
Yes, that’s right. Trump really illustrated this with his peace through strength approach. Iran killed an American and Trump hit back hard and killed Soleimani, a top Iranian general. But he didn’t invade the country, send in 100,000 troops, stay for 20 years, and try to turn it into a democracy. That’s the difference. You need to be strong, hit back when your adversaries challenge you, but do not get caught into these nation-building campaigns and use military force for things that military force isn’t really a good tool to address.

Mr. Jekielek:
I would recommend your book to everyone, because you synthesize many complex ideas, making them easier to understand. Any final thoughts, Dan?

Mr. Negrea:
You mentioned that I came from Romania. I have a view as an American, but also a view from that perspective. I have absolutely no doubt that the United States leading the free world will prevail in this new Cold War, just like we prevailed against tyranny in the First World War, in the Second World War, and in the First Cold War.

All autocracies are inefficient. The ones we are facing today are just as inefficient, and in some ways even more inefficient and brittle than the past ones. In terms of, we win, they lose, I’m very optimistic that we will win. It will require effort, a strong force, and courage, but we will prevail.

Mr. Kroenig:
There were other times in U.S. history where we were pessimistic. There were periods during the Cold War, the 1970s, and the Jimmy Carter malaise, where many people thought the Soviet Union was going to overtake the United States. They thought that the best we could do was to have detente with the Soviet Union and lock it in with a series of arms control agreements. There were periods in the 1980s where people thought, “No, it’s Japan. Japan is going to overtake the United States.”

Reagan didn’t buy either of those ideas. He took on Japan with trade negotiations, and also took on the Soviet Union and prevailed. Just like in that period, this is maybe a time for some pessimism. I can understand why people feel like that. We are in a very dangerous environment. China is the greatest adversary we have ever faced.

Reagan looked at his situation and said, “Yes, we can do this.” This is a time to look at the current situation and say, “Yes, it’s challenging, but we can do this.” In our book, we lay out a blueprint for how we can do this. I would encourage your audience to get the book, which is available on Amazon. Let’s move forward together and win the new Cold War.

Mr. Jekielek:
Matt Kroenig, Dan Negrea, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Mr. Negrea:
Thank you so much for having us.

Mr. Kroenig:
Our pleasure. Thank you very much.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Matt Kroenig, Dan Negrea, and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.