John Mearsheimer

On Taiwan, for example, the last thing you want is for the Taiwanese government to declare its independence.

Yes.

Because the Chinese have said, if Taiwan does that, we'll go to war.

And of course, we don't want that.

So my view is you want to smartly build up your military forces and you want to do everything you can to contain China and at the same time not be provocative.

It's an interesting question.

A lot of people think that to make deterrence work, right, you have to be able to beat the Chinese, and therefore you need a much bigger military.

And I don't think over time that's possible, right?

I think it's probably not even possible now to beat the Chinese in a war over Taiwan or in a war in the South China Sea.

I think what you want to do is make it clear to the Chinese either that there will be no winner.

In other words, you don't have to win, but you want to make sure they don't win.

Okay, it's a lose-lose proposition if they go to war over Taiwan or what have you.

And if you can't do that, right, you think that they're so powerful that they're ultimately going to win, you want to convince them that victory would be a pyrrhic victory.

In other words, they would pay a god-awful price to win the war.

You follow what I'm saying?

So, excuse me, the best strategy for deterrence is you win.

Mm-hmm.

China loses.

Second best strategy is a stalemate.

Nobody wins.