Return of the Great Powers--
Russia, China, and the Next-- the Next World War.
What are we talking?
Is this going to be a cold war, a hot war?
It's an uplifting story. You know, something relaxed--
- Yeah, I was going to say-- - --on a Sunday afternoon.
It's a lovely read that I read to my kid
just to scare him to do better in school to be honest.
It's a warning. Right?
It's a warning.
And I've spent a lot of years in these places
tracking these things which I think
we have to be concerned about.
So it's meant to be a warning, and I think it's a serious one.
But I also think, going into it, we--
that is the people who want a world not run by autocrats,
and not--
Which is about half of us today.
More.
Maybe even more.
We have some advantages going into it, right?
So I direct, over time, to ways that we
could find a way forward.
Avoid the next World War but also
come out on top with the things that we hold valuable.
It provides, in some ways, a blueprint
to get past that but also looks back as to how we've
gotten where we are right now.
You're focusing a lot about where we're
on this moment with Ukraine. - Yes.
You talk about where we are with China.
You call this a post-post-Cold War moment.
How do you draw that line from the cold war
to the post-post-Cold War?
So, you know, for my generation-- and you're younger
than me, but still--
20s max.
We remember that moment--
[LAUGHTER]
We remember that fall of the wall,
1989-- fall of the Berlin Wall, collapse of the Soviet Union.
This was, we thought, bringing about a period of peace.
And it did for a time, right?
I mean, the Cold War was over and for a very brief moment
in time the US and Russia, if not friends,
found a way to go forward.
And with China, even as it was growing more powerful,
we thought that Russia and China--
that we could work with them all the time.
And there's still ways we could work with them,
but we thought that they wanted what we wanted.
We were mirroring to some extent.
And the truth is they don't really want what
we want to a large degree.
Because they see-- and to be fair, they're seeing this
from a different perspective--
our world order as being to our advantage and not theirs.
So they see it as in their interests
to make America weaker and to undermine that system.
Now, to be clear, when I talk to folks in Europe,
in Asia, here in the US, they don't
believe that China and Russia want to go to war with us.
You know, there are smart enough people
to know that that would be a horrible war to be a hot one.
That said, they're willing to push the limits pretty far.
And one that we saw just in the last few years
is the largest invasion, the largest land
war in Europe in 80 years. Right?
I mean, that's a pretty big deal,
and that shows how far they're willing to push the limits.
You wrote this book obviously before the terrorist attacks
in Russia just a week ago.
I'm wondering how you see an attack like that affecting
some of these pathways.
Well, listen, post-911 that was
a period when the US and Russia actually
worked together on terror.
They were sharing information and so on.
And it showed that there are times
that you have shared interests, and that's a good thing.
And there are other things too.
The US and China actually at times
work together on climate change.
That's not a bad thing.
And a whole host of things that we
don't work together on or at, like, loggerheads on.
That period with Russia has certainly
ended to the point where the reporting is
that the US actually warned Russia that an attack like this
was in the offing and Putin basically ignored that warning.
That's partly a lack of trust, which is important.
It's partly a lack of communication-- those channels
just aren't open anymore.
So that's a sign of one of the dangerous trends
here is that we don't talk in ways that we used to.
And I'm not necessarily talking about happy talk, right?
But we don't have hotlines open that we used to,
which are important to keep small things
from becoming bigger things.
And those hotlines developed because in the last Cold War
we got really damn close, right?
I mean, you think of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I mean,
that was--
and I talk about this in the book,
because it's about learning lessons from history as well.
But that came close to it to a global nuclear war.
And after that, folks like Kennedy and Khrushchev said,
we got to find ways that that doesn't happen.
We don't get that close here. Let's have hotlines.
Let's negotiate some nuclear treaties, et cetera.
And the thing is, we have to get back to that point.
Because right now, we're going this way.
We're not going this way. - I mean, it's interesting.
You do talk a lot about that.
You have to keep these lines of communication open.
And you also have a chapter or you look at this madman theory.
Donald Trump brags about the relationship
that he has with Vladimir Putin.
He brags about what he did with Kim Jong Un.
And I think, on one hand, you can see through what that means
and what he wants from that.
On the other hand, he's talking about legitimate connections.
You actually even talk about some of the successes
Trump had with his relationship with Kim Jong Un.
And this madman theory, in some sense of being so big,
so braggadocio, that tactically that
sometimes can be beneficial in ways that other tactics can't.
True.
Listen, opening channels is not a bad thing, right?
You know, sitting down with Kim Jong Un is not a bad thing,
or with Putin, or Xi.
We have to be talking.
That's better than not talking.
Because when you don't talk--
I mean, that's true of relationships as well, right?
When you don't talk-- - Jim, stay focused.
(LAUGHING) --small things.
Jim, we got to stay-- you're here to talk about the
book, Jim.
Married for a few years.
Talk about the Cold War and the next war.
All right? - You've got to talk.
Talking is not bad.
But you also have to have realistic expectations.
So Trump had three face-to-face meetings with Kim Jong Un.
Went nowhere, right?
There were no agreements.
But sheer force of personality is not going to change
their long-term interests.
The worrisome thing is that for Russia and China,
these are strategic decisions to undermine the US and
the system as it stands today.
Again, because they look at it as aligned against them,
kind of skewed against them.
So the strongest personality in the world
is not going to change long-term strategic
interests, right?
And if Trump imagines, as he does-- and by the way,
don't trust me, I talk to folks who advised him at the most
senior levels in his last administration--
if Trump believes by his personality alone he's going
to fundamentally change that dynamic,
it just doesn't line up with reality.
It doesn't mean talking is a bad idea,
but you have to know who you're dealing with here,
and you have to know what they're
what they're seeking to do.
And you have to be clear to say,
I'm not going to let that happen.
Yeah.
You talked to a lot of Trump insiders here.
I think something that stood out in reading this was we
had heard stories about Trump's desire to pull out of NATO.
And I think you kind of walk through how close that
was to becoming a reality.
And what I find compelling-- like,
that's a big issue right now.
And I will say, when I go out and I talk to people at MAGA
events, you know, there's an isolationist attitude
to say the least.
But I do think a lot of people don't--
when you bring up something like NATO,
the idea of pulling out of NATO is a no-brainer.
We want to be to our self.
It doesn't serve us any--
it doesn't do us any good.
And I will also say, as a younger generation,
as somebody who's 24, as you pointed out,
the conversation in my school about the Cold War was short.
Our understanding of NATO, we don't have--
we are so disconnected from the realities of what that was
created for that I think like the discussions we're having
right now about the importance of NATO
are falling on deaf ears on one party and one candidate
but also on deaf ears on, I think,
an electorate that isn't educated
in history in a way to understand
what NATO is supposed to do.
Is this also a crisis of education?
100%.
I mean, you know as well as me that the baseball bat doesn't
work when you're trying to convince people
of the importance of these things
or how it served our interests over time.
You have just remind people and make an argument
as to what we gain from it.
I think, when you look at a place like Ukraine,
Ukraine is a country of 40 million.
It's the largest country in Europe.
I've spent a lot of time there.
They're lovely people, right?
They don't want much more than what we have,
which is to be able to choose your own leaders,
travel where you want to go, and not get dumped off
of building balconies if you write
a critical piece about the person
in charge of the country.
I might be speaking about how Russia--
what life is like in Russia today.
That's the way it is. They don't want that.
They don't want to live under that.
So you have a sympathetic case as to why to help these people
or why to help the Taiwanese people
defend themselves from China.
But then you have a self-interested
case which is that NATO has stood by the US--
the only time NATO has invoked its mutual defense agreement
was post 9/11, and they went to war with us
in Afghanistan post 9/11.
So you have that.
But also, a peaceful Europe that
is free from Russian domination is in our interests.
It's a vibrant Europe.
It's an economically-healthy Europe.
We sell a lot of stuff there.
We could go do business there.
We could send our kids to semesters abroad
there-- that kind of thing.
Things we buy are cheaper here because it's peaceful there.
And you can say the same thing about Asia.
You know, half the stuff in our homes
comes through shipping lanes in Asia
which the US helps keep open.
So you have both a sympathetic case to make for this kind
of thing and a values case.
But you also have a self-interested case because we
benefited from that for years.
And not just since the last Cold War,
but even going back to like 80 years ago post-World War
II that NATO and other treaties helped
keep the peace pretty much.
It's not perfect, but they did prevent, so far, you know,
the next World War.
And that's important.
We benefit from that.
You talked about this not just being a downer,
but there is a blueprint for some optimism there.
Where do you see that?
So a couple of things-- one, we
don't want to look at them as 10-feet tall, Russia or China.
They make mistakes, right?
I mean, prior to the Ukraine invasion,
you probably heard this too, a lot of folks were like,
Putin's way too smart.
He's playing three-dimensional chess with the West,
all that kind of stuff. He would never do it.
Lo and behold, he invades.
I also think it's because nobody knows how chess works.
Exactly.
The way people use that metaphor, it's like,
we don't really have a good understanding of that.
To be clear, my eight-year-old
daughter beats me at chess. - There you go.
So I'm with you--
Stay focused, Jim.
Stay focused.
[LAUGHTER]
So they make mistakes too.
And he got himself in a horrible war
which he's effectively losing, right?
And China makes mistakes as well.
And its economy is, you know, definitely flattening out.
This idea that China is going to be growing forever--
they've got weaknesses as well.
So you want to start with we have advantages.
The US economy is growing.
You know, we have an open society.
People buy and want to buy American stuff.
They don't want to buy Russian cell phones, right?
You know, we--
[LAUGHTER]
There's a reason for that, right?
I haven't tried one. I'd try one out.
- They might blow up. - Sure.
They might blow up.
Yeah.
So we have advantages in that sense.
We have a lot of friends and allies.
One thing, when you look at Russia and China,
they don't have allies.
I mean, Russia's biggest allies right now are
China, North Korea, and Iran.
I mean, we have all of Europe, in effect, on our side
with shared values.
So we have advantages going in.
And then, in terms of how to find
a path so that we don't go to war,
I mean, people ask me this.
They're like, well, sounds like you're
making the case to go to war against Russia and China.
And I always say to them--
I said this before we came on--
I've got a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old boy.
They're like a minute away from draft age.
And I'm sure folks in the audience who have kids
think the same thing.
You don't want them on a US aircraft
carrier in the Taiwan Strait if the US
and China were to go to war.
I don't want that either.
But we can learn from history here, right?
One thing is communication lines matter.
There's a reason why Kennedy and Khrushchev were like,
we got really close.
I got to have a phone on my desk,
you've got to have a phone on your desk
so this doesn't happen again.
Those things have faded over time.
And with China, in a lot of respects, we haven't had them.
They've come and gone when relationships
have gone up and down.
So Communication matters.
Treaties matter.
You know, we negotiated those nuclear arms treaties, again,
to keep the US and Russia from going
to war and kind of just beating each other to death
in a nuclear arms race.
A lot of those treaties have gone away
in the last several years.
And there are Americans who are like, oh,
we don't need those treaties.
Well, actually, they kind of help, right?
And we have no treaties with China when
it comes to nuclear weapons.
There are no treaties regarding cyberweapons.
There are no treaties regarding weapons in space.
I mean, Russia just, you know-- you probably
saw our story a few weeks ago-- talked
about putting a nuke in space to knock out satellites.
Which, by the way, just so you know,
if you think about this war being a million miles away
from us, with cyberattacks or with attacks in space,
we lose all the technology we depend on every day.
GPS, and communications, and internet, and
the financial market stops.
So this stuff affects us at home.
We need treaties for that stuff.
We were heading to the good news, and you just mentioned--
Exactly. I know.
--you mentioned a nuclear weapon in space.
This is why my kids love talking to their dad so much.
This is what I bring home.
But the final thing is that you can-- with those treaties,
they can help.
They can help this going down a bad path.
And the final thing is that communicating what
you won't stand for matters.
I mean, if you look--
I speak a lot to the Estonian prime minister here.
Estonia is like right on the front lines of this,
right next to Russia.
And she constantly quoted Churchill about Hitler, which
is "An appeaser is the one who feeds the crocodile expecting
that he'll be its last meal."
The thing is the parallels between a Hitler
and a Putin is that if you give a little ground,
he tends to take more.
He took a piece of Georgia in 2008,
and he took a little Ukraine in 2014, then he invaded again.
That clear communication-- and we learned this from Hitler--
you know, if you are soft and don't tell them what's
too far for you, they might then take
advantage and move forward.
So the US, I think, and its allies,
can be confident and say, we're not
going to allow you to invade countries
because borders matter to us, and they're our friends.
And we're going to stand in the way,
and the costs are going to be high for you.
That doesn't necessarily mean we're going to go to take you
to war by any means but that we defend our friends,
and we're going to be strong.
And those messages matter over time.
And if you look back, sometimes clear messaging
can prevent miscalculation and can prevent
the guy on the other side thinking
he can take advantage of you.
Well, it's a great read.
The Return of Great Powers available now.
Be sure to check out CNN Newsroom on Max Jim Sciutto.