[BILL]  So Graham Allison is a Professor of Government at Harvard University, the Kennedy School. He was the Dean when I attended Harvard at the Kennedy School. All right. I've known him. Oh, boy, looking at going on 30 years now, and he still talks to me, which is, you know, that's impressive. And in my opinion, as I said, Dr. Allison knows more about the Chinese situation than anyone else in this country. Joins us now from Cambridge, Massachusetts. All right. In my analysis of Russia - and we'll get to China very specifically in a moment. Am I making any mistakes?

[ALLISON] "So let me just, I may discredit you, but I would say the rest of us are very proud. So if that makes people suspicious and that's it."

[BILL]  Well, we had, we had some fun up there. I don't know if they've ever seen anything like me at the Kennedy School, but it was not like it is now, that's for sure. And the free flow of debate and ideas. I learned so much when I was there because they had so many foreign students there. They had military students there. It was - and everybody got along - it was really, really a great experience. But in my analysis of Putin and the current USA/Ukraine thing, am I going wrong anywhere? Have I missed anything?

[ALLISON] "I think you're, believe the big picture roughly right. So Putin has made himself this basically unmasked himself is the face of evil in the world today, and he is. Putin's invasion of Ukraine was a grave strategic error. Napoleon had a good line about this for one of his, one of the other leaders of our country made a fatal mistake, he said, worse than the crime, a blunder. So when the big strategic chess player who can just throw any cost way, way, way more than in any active gain of territory that he may accomplish, even if the war ended today. And I would say good, good for coconspirator, and good for the West, especially the Ukrainians, in resisting his effort to basically a race to put them from the map against, and good for the West. And Biden and getting the West to stand up to help support Ukraine and this effort."

[BILL]  Right.

[ALLISON]  "You're absolutely right about patience, because this is a long, complicated venture in which who can, always has Trump cards to play that we can't avoid. I wanted Biden to look for Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan would say at every game start the proposition. A nuclear war cannot be won, it must, therefore never be fought. That's a fundamental foundation of Putin. And Putin's an institute which is where if he were forced alone to choose between a decisive defeat and escalating the level of destruction. I think there's every reason to think he'll choose the latter."

[BILL] Okay. The only wildcard there is that if Putin is certifiably insane, the rationale of mutual destruction won't even matter. But I don't think he's certifiably insane - and that's one of the reasons I'm going down to have a discussion with Donald Trump, who knows the guy pretty well. Now, let's go over to Xi, who's playing games in Beijing with this Russian thing. Obviously it's what the Chinese do. They're trying to gain power from this conflict in Ukraine. Do you have any insights into what the Chinese really think about this situation?

[ALLISON] "And that's interesting. I certainly have studied Xi as well and watched closely. Textually I published, I first produced for the government. And then after they had a chance to cover that [unintelligible] piece back just before the invasion, in which I offered the chart for Xi, but I imagined the [unintelligible] advantages for China if Russia invades and dissipates. And then the advantages, the biggest, as I said, was that this would completely distract the US from China. What Xi wants first from China is the correct, just breathing space to do his thing. As China continues to get bigger and stronger. So here a situation that has consumed this much of our focus, and attention, and effort, he will do for some considerable period of time, and will leave us with a foreseeable future with a serious danger of a Russian Putin who can attack somebody else. Therefore, having to confront a two front situation, which is exactly what you don't want to do, if you think about the geopolitics of it. To be sure we can deal with one, one major contingency. The idea that one at same time, with both military and diplomacy due to its rivals, divides our attention, divides our energy, and from his point of view, that's positive." 

[BILL]  Yeah, that's what he is, he wants to exacerbate the situation, strengthen China, and weaken the West. Is there any chance, though, that he would throw in with Putin by helping Putin in the Ukrainian war? It doesn't seem to be beneficial to Beijing because there would be reprisals to that. But I'm not sure that, you know, maybe he sees this grand alliance of Russia, China, totalitarianism. Maybe that he would do that and just stir the whole world up. What do you think?

[ALLISON] "I think he's trying to play a much more careful game, just as you suggested, in which he can both, he can have it both ways. So on the one hand, if you ask what has Xi and China done since the invasion, they've become the buyer of last resort for all the oil and gas and every other resource, which they're happy to do, since they need an infinite amount of resources. So oil and gas that they get at a discount, they're surplussed with it. If you look at trade in general with China, we can't possibly do. Same thing for India, to take it, for example. So from each person thinking about its own advantages is looking at this. On the other hand, they've made very carefully short of the things that the US said that they should not do, and that if they did, they would be seized, in particular, the provision of arms. So that's why the current discussion about obviously the US brass discovered some intelligence, about the prospective supply of arms, that's been discussed in the paper, and whether what Xi plans I think is unclear to me on that. I think they seem to have worked very hard to stay short of a sanctionable law."

[BILL]  Okay. I'm glad to hear that because we don't, we don't need that. That's for sure. What is this balloon thing all about? I mean, I don't, I still don't understand why the Chinese would even bother doing this. But they must have a reason. 

[ALLISON]  "I mean, I think the puzzle, everybody's puzzle, [unintelligible], spies spy. Anybody who is shocked by the fact that China is spying on US, they've either been brain dead or disingenuous. But whatever they might have collected by this balloon would have constituted less than 1% of what they were collecting every day on us." 

[BILL] Yeah, I mean, the Chinese.

[ALLISON] "How many weather, here's a question, how many weather balloons do we release every day that goes into space?"

[BILL] Right. But it wasn't, it wasn't a weather balloon. It was a spy balloon. Right. And it made them look bad. It made China look bad. They think that, I don't know what they think, but it made them look bad. I mean, we had to shoot it down, and it's the Chinese again causing trouble and all of that.

[ALLISON] "I don't even think Xi knew about it. I think it's, if you look at, in the case of the Cuban missile crisis, remember from class, when the U.S. flew over Cuba in the most dangerous state of the missile crisis, on what Khrushchev thought might have been a last look at targets. It was just off [unintelligible] stuff around the border. Kennedy had no idea that was done. So, generally, intelligence agencies are doing thousands of things every day that the leaders not necessarily apprised of."

[BILL] Yeah. It was, I think the story was overplayed, but the fact the Biden administration didn't annihilate the thing over the Aleutians in Alaska, that made the story bigger. And then they waited and waited. The State Department last week issued an order for all Americans to get out of Russia. Very unusual. And they said, get out fast. I'm sure that caught your attention. Is there something behind that we don't know? 

[ALLISON] 

"Again, I don't have any special information about it. I certainly noticed it. And I think it's unusual and I would take it seriously. I think they're recognizing that, I have a piece in The Post today, that basically if you're asking about what the likely future for as far as anybody can see in the relations with Russia, we're into a new Cold War. Very much like the one you and I remember from the Reagan administration, which will become ever more intense with Russia. As long as it's Putin's Russia, he is going to be the evil man that begins posing a serious military threat to our European allies and finding other ways to be unhelpful to us wherever they can."

[BILL] So, no detente with him. The line has been crossed. The Rubicon, as a cliche goes. But anyway, look, after I talk to Trump, I'm going to call you. I'm going to give you some, what he tells me, not public, it'll just be private. I mean, you're doing me a big favor because I know how busy you are by being on the broadcast. But Trump may have something, and I'm going to ask him what I can say publicly and what private. You know, that's how these things go. I mean, if it's off the record, it's off the record. Anyway, dean, we really appreciate your expertise. If you see anything that you think is, you know, the people should know, the folks should know, who are watching, we're a worldwide broadcast now and we reach almost everywhere. So, just let me know. Give me a heads up, and it's very kind of you to help us out today.

[ALLISON] "Happy to do. I'll send you a suggestion, a question for Trump. Thank you." 

[BILL] Okay, good. I will take those questions. Thank you.