Assessing Top Global Security Threats with Expert Frederick Kagan

March 1, 2023·41 min·3 clips

Western negotiation talk with Russia is naive because Putin hasn't gotten the memo that he's already lost — if he ends this phase with battle lines near where they are now, that's a victory for Russia.

Fred Kagan comes in as someone built for warning. Michael Morrell frames him through the Critical Threats Project, West Point, and the national security pressure facing the United States. The first big worry is negotiations. Kagan says Western talk about negotiations can be wildly naive, especially when it assumes Putin has already lost. For him, deterrence is the hinge: an adversary makes serious concessions only when he believes force will not get him what he wants. Then the China discussion tightens around Taiwan. Kagan notes the economic threat from piratical policies, but he calls Taiwan the more immediate security problem. He pushes back on invasion certainty. The line that China will invade Taiwan in two years, he says, is not useful and is not his assessment. His aim is deterrence. He thinks stopping that action is still possible if the United States understands the whole strategy. The danger is tunnel vision. Kagan warns that defense planning can get stuck on beating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and miss the rest of the playbook. He lays out three roads: persuasion, coercion, and compelance by force. Persuasion runs through information operations. Coercion adds overflights, military pressure, economic pressure, and other moves short of war. Force is only one route. His point is blunt: stopping an invasion does not mean China has failed if persuasion or coercion still works.

As heard by us

A clear, policy-minded conversation on Russia, China, Taiwan, and the risks of assuming adversaries are already deterred.

Michael Morrell's conversation with Fred Kagan is a sober tour of current national security risk, anchored less in headlines than in how adversaries judge power and leverage.

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Why you'd press play

You want a sharp take on national security, where deterrence fails, and why forcing concessions takes more than talk.

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