Producers' Pick | Josh Rogin: Shoot down China's balloons, not things that aren't a threat

A man who's never confused joins us now, always intrigued. Josh Rogin, author of Chaos Under Heaven. Josh, welcome back.

Great to be with you, Bryan. You're going to Munich, right? Yeah, taking off tomorrow. Vice President Harris, Secretary Blinken, lots of Prime Ministers will be assembled to decide whether or not we're going to stick with this whole Ukraine thing and beat Russia once or for all, or if we're going to pull the plug and suffer a loss for freedom and democracy.

I hope it's the former, but I'll let you know when I get there. Are you sure? Because I'm pretty sure they're dug in on it. They just have been reluctant to give them the weapons they need to be successful.

Well, that's right. We're arming Ukraine just enough to tie, which if you think about it is the craziest strategy of all because we're giving them, we won't give them weapons they need to go on the offensive, but we'll give them weapons to defend themselves. So it creates a stalemate, which means the war will last forever, which is in Russia's favor because they have more prisoners in bodies to throw at the problem.

So the time is on their side. So, yeah, no, I'm sure that the assembled European intelligence and chattering class won't pull all the aid. But the question is, will they give them the things they need to actually win? And that includes tanks and fighter jets and the rest. And I don't think the Germans are there because they look at the Biden administration and they say we're not going to be holier than the pope on this thing. And if Biden won't do it, we won't do it. So it really is a situation where America has to lead and Europe only then would follow. You know, people should remember that the president of the United States said, ah, let them have Nord Stream 2. It's almost done anyway. And even though it's so detrimental to now we know European security, Trump was right on that.

Yeah, it's so crazy. For the whole year, the Biden administration has this pattern where they're like, oh, they don't need the longer range missiles. And then, OK, I guess we'll give them the longer range missiles. Oh, they don't need the the Patriots.

OK, we'll give them the Patriots. Oh, they don't need the tanks. OK, we'll give them the tanks. So they're constantly changing their minds when they realize that they do need all of this stuff. And they have this idea, oh, well, nobody wants World War Three. But the question is whether or not prolonging the war makes it more dangerous or less dangerous. I say getting the war over quicker by beating Russia quicker actually is the safest way to get out of this without escalating into World War Three. And if we're just going to keep making up rules of deterrence and rules of we can give them this thing, but we can't give them that thing, that plays into Putin's hands.

And I think that actually benefits the aggressor, which makes this situation more dangerous if you if you're if you're being honest. Josh, the other thing is, even when we green light something, it takes forever to get there and then they got to train on them from the Patriot missiles on down to the high Mars that are now there to attack them that we won't give them because we don't trust them not to to bomb Moscow, I guess. So which is crazy, because we don't trust the Ukrainians now.

We should just cut bait and let them be run over. But, you know, the move by Russia is not a theory of Josh Rogan or Brian Kilmeade. They're already moving on Moldova. They're already trying to infiltrate that country. How soon till they go after the Baltics and finish off Georgia? This is part of their master plan they tell people about.

Well, that's right, because, you know, Putin, like every single other totalitarian, aggressive, militaristic dictator, whoever lived, will advance until he's stopped. And this is sort of the problem with I get it, a lot of people in Washington and around the country are like, hey, this is a lot of money. And, you know, it is a lot of money. And oh, well, you know, how long is this going to go? Well, it could go a long time. But you have to weigh that against the alternative, which is that if Ukraine falls, Putin won't stop there.

And then we will be in a war with NATO and then it will be World War Three. So this is the chance. This is an insurance policy. This is a down payment. This is a lot cheaper than not doing it. So, you know, I get that a lot of people want more oversight of the money. I'm for that. Absolutely.

Let's get some more oversight. But at this point, we should be able to say clearly that we trust the Ukrainians enough to give them the weapons they need to actually win the war. And by the way, that's a you know, that's not a bad deal for us. We give them the weapons.

They do the fighting. That's actually they're doing the hard part. We're doing the easy part.

OK, it's the least we can do and we should do it. But why do you have to explain it? Why aren't there people in the administration regularly explaining the big objective? Because the average person says, you know, with 32 trillion dollars in debt, we have an open southern border. Why are we not putting resources there?

And the answer should be complete and comprehensive. And everyone should choose whether they want to go with that theory or not. But let's get the other side.

Ever since he said, you know, we're going to back and we're going to support the Ukrainians, it's allowed other people to fill in the gaps of why we're wasting our time because maybe they're not the perfect democracy. But they are great fighters. But they need to need to explain the objective. Right.

Well, I think you're right, Brian. I think the administration has done a terrible job communicating to the American people about why this is so important. And I think for the first year, that was because they had a Democratic Congress. So there was no oversight. So they didn't feel any pressure.

They knew where they were going to get the money one way or the other. And now that we have a Republican led House of Representatives, all of a sudden, a lot of people in the administration like, oh, man, I guess we got to answer some tough questions about this thing. And, you know, or maybe we'll just call the Republicans weak and try to ignore them.

And I don't think they should do that. I think we need to engage those people with whom we disagree with on both the right and the left and engage the American people because we are asking the American people for a sacrifice. But again, it's a it's a short term hit for a long term gain because, you know, history should have taught us and this is what the administration should emphasize, that appeasing aggressors doesn't work.

It ends up costing you more in the end in both blood and treasure. And by the way, this is what the weapons are for, is to defend freedom against tyranny and aggression. And, you know, the front line of that battle is in Ukraine, but it won't stay there unless we actually increase our support for them and quick. How soon do you think the Russian offensive starts? It started.

It's begun. I mean, we see the missile volleys. There's Wagner, thousands of Wagner troops recruited from God knows which prison, you know, being thrown at the lines like cat and fodder. This is how the Russians wage war. They advance inch by inch and destroy everything in their path.

OK, that's the other thing. That's the other part of this that people have to keep in their minds is that, you know, it's not as if this stalemate is just, you know, a benign. Every moment that Russia controls 20 percent of Ukraine, the people in that 20 percent of Ukraine are living in hell. And if they survive at all, they're getting raped or beaten or sent to some part of Siberia, separated from their kids, tortured.

Kids are being tortured. I mean, we should have some sort of common humanity that allows us to understand that these atrocities are something that we have to stand against. Otherwise, again, we will see them multiply.

OK. And, you know, that's not just because we're so altruistic. It's because this system of norms where we don't permit dictators like Putin to commit mass atrocities and get away with it is really important. And again, we learned that lesson once in the 20th century.

Now we've got to learn it again in the 21st century, hopefully for the last time. So let's talk about China. Once again, we have a mystery. What is behind the balloon program, the near space program?

How extensive is it and why would the Chinese invest in it? Right. So we talked about this on the show earlier today, but the part we didn't get to is that is the why. Why are they doing all of this? Well, I talked to some friends in Taiwan this week and they were like, oh, yeah, balloons. We get those balloons.

We have those a lot. And it sort of dawned on me that, oh, yeah, this is why. This is because they're preparing for something. They're preparing for the capability to launch an aggressive war similar to what we see in Russia. But they don't want to make the same mistake as the Russians. So what they're doing is they're developing new ways to sustain that fighting force. So if the Chinese are going to invade Taiwan, yeah, they have satellites. They can get intelligence and do communications. Yeah, they've got hacking.

They've got lots of different things. But this is one more thing that they have against us. And if they just showed us, we don't really have anything good to to combat it. We don't really have. What are we going to do? Send F-22 with sidewinders at every you know, they could send 100 balloons in the sky and overmatch us.

So it's you know, a lot of people again in Washington. Oh, well, why are we so excited about balloons? This is World War One technology. That's not the point. The point is that the Chinese are weaponizing a new part of space, near space, and they're doing it for a reason to make their army and their military more agile, more resilient. Just in case Xi Jinping decides to attack.

And that's a real possibility. So we just can't ignore it. So they came back and they said this, this Wang Wenbin, who's a spokesperson for the military. It says since last year or more specifically since May, the U.S. has released multiple high altitude balloons from its territory, which have continuously circled the globe and flown into the airspace of China and several dozen other countries over 10 times illegally, at least without the approval of relevant Chinese authorities. That is not true.

And here is John Kirby cut to. I assume the United States does spy on China. Do we send balloons? We do not deploy surveillance balloons over China. And do we spy over China?

We do not deploy surveillance balloons over China, George. So that is the pushback. They claim we didn't push back hard enough.

Right. I am rubber, you're glue. Anything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you. That's what the Chinese are throwing. Propaganda machines are throwing out today, which is OK. Well, listen, we your balloon was on TV.

If we've got the balloons, show us the evidence. I'm not here to say that, you know, American government can't do anything wrong. I'm sure we're spying on China. I hope we're spying on China. That's why we have 80 billion dollar intelligence agency.

Somebody should be spying on China. But, you know, if you're going to accuse us something, let's see the evidence, because let's face it, the Chinese Communist Party has a uniquely, tragically horrible track record when it comes to telling the truth. And besides, it doesn't really matter, because in this instance, this is they were caught red handed and they first they denied it.

They said it was a weather balloon. Then they said, oh, well, everybody does it. Now they're saying, oh, well, how dare you get angry about it, you know, to create news cycles so that now all the American journalists have to report that China said we didn't do it. But their side of the story is suspect, to say the very least. And our response has to take into account the fact that there's just a ton of evidence that they're expanding these programs.

And by the way, it's not just us. There's a lot of other countries, too. And if we were smart, if we were organized, which we're not, we would get together with all these other countries and say, hey, listen, this is something that cannot stand. And I'm sure there are a lot of other countries in Europe and South America and Africa who don't like being spied on by Chinese balloons either. And, you know, we should probably get in touch with them because it's really not a U.S. versus China cold war.

It's China's rise that's affecting lots of other countries in all sorts of horrible ways. And the nuclear program, we have no agreement to break like the Russians keep violating. We have no nuclear agreement. So there is no threshold or ceiling on China's nuclear program. And evidently they have more ICBMs than us fixed and mobile. So that's pretty significant, don't you think? Well, yeah, I was in Tokyo, as you know, Brian, last month, and I interviewed the prime minister of Japan and he said that they're going to double the Japanese defense budget over the next five years. This was before the balloons.

He didn't know anything about. So it's not as if the balloons are the thing that we have to be worried about solely. It's just the latest thing added to the pile of things, including the fact that they're building hundreds of ICBM silos and missiles. Why are they doing that?

Again, it's a really good question. And I think a pretty clear answer is so that if and when they decide to attack Taiwan, that they can rattle a nuclear saber just like Putin is to keep us at bay so that we end up at some conference saying, well, I don't know if we should give the Taiwanese this gun or that gun. We should escalate with this sanction or that sanction. They're building the resilience in the machine to be able to take Taiwan without us being able to stop them. And that's scary.

OK. And that's complicated. And that's not doesn't mean we should overreact and throw the kitchen sink at the balloons. It means that we have to take our valuable resources and keep in mind that it's not just about the war in Ukraine. Now, it's about the possible war in Asia tomorrow. That's what the prime minister of Japan told me. He said Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow. That's what he's talking about.

He's talking about China attacking Taiwan. That's what the region is worried about. That's what we ought to be worried about. Balloons are a piece of that. Nuclear weapons are a piece of that. Information warfare is a piece of that. The South China Sea Islands are a piece of that. The economic warfare is a piece of that.

It's all one problem. And right now we're playing whack-a-mole with these little things by shooting down this balloon. Or now we're shooting down things we don't even know what they are. They got lost in the mountains. We might have shot down something for nothing. We'll never know.

Sorry, we can't find it. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's insane that we have a policy where we can't even explain why we shoot down things that we shoot down and when we shoot them down. Can't someone over there get on message and explain to the world and to the American people, here, let me do it.

I'll do it for you right now. Shoot down the Chinese spy balloons. Don't shoot down the things that aren't a threat. It should be a simple policy. That's just my suggestion. If anyone in the Biden administration is listening, Chinese spy balloons, yes, shoot those down. The things that are benign, don't shoot those down.

But we seem to have the opposite of that, which is crazy. Hey, Josh, have a great trip to Munich. Stay safe. And I look forward to talking to you when you get back. Thank you, my friend.