Col. Jacques Baud: US vs China: The Iran Trap & Taiwan’s Shadow

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Donald Trump's visit to China because he wanted he went there, he wanted something from China basically with the war in the Middle East.

[00:00:10]You know, he thought that China could help >> [clears throat] >> you know, the United States.

[00:00:15]And what is your understanding of the relationship, the kind of the relationship China has with the United States considering somehow Donald Trump felt that they could use Chinese leverage on Iranian government to help them with the case of the Strait of Hormuz. Because looking at what's going on right now, we had Iranian proposal to the United States then then the response from the United States two totally different proposals. It opposite, totally opposite, you know.

[00:00:51]And Iran just before coming up, we've learned that Iran responded with again 14-point plan.

[00:01:00]I don't see anything changing on the part of Iranians.

[00:01:03]And Donald Trump, the situation is getting somehow desperate for Donald Trump. That's why he last night he tweeted that the clock is ticking and it seems that they're they're preparing for new sort of attacks on Iran.

[00:01:17]And how do you see the situation totally because on one side he didn't get that much of, you know, help from China with the case of the Strait of Hormuz and he has to do something about it.

[00:01:31]We know the price of energy, the price of food, everything is going up.

[00:01:37]Your take on that.

[00:01:39]Well, coming back to the the visit of Donald Trump to China, we have to understand that this visit was initially planned for being on late March this year.

[00:01:52]And probably at this stage what Donald Trump wanted was not to talk about Iran.

[00:02:00]He wanted to He thought that Iran could have been past history at this point uh because he expected to submit or or to yes Iran within within days.

[00:02:17]And the Strait of Hormuz is history or uh event has come as a surprise to him because he didn't expect that.

[00:02:28]Meaning that the the whole approach to the the the travel to China was first to talk trade issues between China uh between US and China. And by the way, if you look at the composition of the the the the delegation, you had not mostly, but uh large part of businessmen and people of financial world in the in the US.

[00:02:55]And and high-tech also. So, the idea was definitely to talk about trade issue.

[00:03:03]Uh since he didn't achieve victory or decisive victory or however you may call it, in March, he had to postpone this um this this uh visit because obviously was not ready to do to do that.

[00:03:22]The consequence of this was that um as it appeared to me, this visit was very poorly prepared on the American side.

[00:03:34]And to some extent on the Chinese side as well. I mean, they the Chinese tried to squeeze the visit of Donald Trump between other uh head of state's visit.

[00:03:46]And that it didn't give the Trump's visit the importance it should have had normally.

[00:03:56]Uh just last week. So, uh that's that I think a very important point. And the issue of the Strait of Hormuz and leveraging China to Saudi Arabia, this is something that came obviously after the end of March. I mean, that was because that was not the the initial and the primary goal of this visit.

[00:04:20]Uh and that also shows the lack of something we have said many time about Trump, the lack of strategic thinking.

[00:04:29]He's not a strategist. He's a tactician.

[00:04:32]And he tries to put tactical uh issues together in order to have the appearance of a strategic issue, but it remains tactical in essence. And that's exactly what what we have.

[00:04:46]That's the the the first thing.

[00:04:48]>> [snorts] >> Um the second thing is that when uh to assess the visit, we have to look at the readouts of the visit or the communicate that was said.

[00:05:02]The communicate the both communicates.

[00:05:05]Um and if you look at the Chinese one, it it has basically three main issues.

[00:05:15]Obviously, this idea of um this uh strategic stability, uh this this a very important point in the in the communicate, the issue of Taiwan, and the issue of balanced relationships between the um two countries.

[00:05:41]The stability cooperation um is is is a very central aspect in that because it also comprises the issue of Taiwan. It issues also the Thucydides I don't know in in English what Thucydides uh trap. You know, this is uh this is a trap that was um uh uh first uh identified or derived from the the wars with ancient Greece when you had a power uh namely Sparta who was so keen to keep its position as uh the primary power in the in the Mediterranean that it had to wage war to everybody who tried to challenge its primacy.

[00:06:35]And uh and this is a little bit the thing we have uh with the with the US.

[00:06:41]You may remember uh and that's not just Donald Trump by the way. Uh You may remember what um Joe Biden said when he was inaugurated I think or it was the first state of the union. In any case, that was in 2021 when he said uh the rest of the world is closing is getting closer to us and we cannot allow that.

[00:07:08]You know, that's exactly the Thucydides trap that you are so keen to keep your hegemony uh uh hegemonic position that you will make everything to destroy everybody who want to challenge this position. And obviously uh uh in um in in 2021 it was probably it was directed at China but also at Russia, both.

[00:07:35]And Russia on the military side and um China on the economic and trade side and probably also high technology uh side.

[00:07:45]>> [snorts] >> So, uh you have this idea in in the US that the US must be dominant regarding technology, regarding military power, regarding influence, and and and And and that's This is part of this uh idea stability this strategic stability cooperation. I think that's a real word.

[00:08:12]Not the exact word. The strategic stability cooperation between the US and China. And that's that's in essence was what was in the Chinese communique.

[00:08:26]And when you read the US communique, you have nothing of that. Absolutely not No word about this. There's no word about Taiwan. There's no word about Hormuz.

[00:08:38]Uh no no they they they mention Hormuz, but they didn't mention these fundamental issues that were raised by China.

[00:08:47]And China doesn't mention or only on on very uh um very quickly It It didn't mention Hormuz at start if I remember well, but it just mentioned that the US and China talked about the Middle East issues. Period.

[00:09:04]So, obviously on the the the Chinese side, the Iranian issue was not the centerpiece of this meeting.

[00:09:13]While for the US, it was the centerpiece because that's the current concern of the US foreign policy.

[00:09:24]Very interesting also to see if you read the the communique of the White House that all the everything that is mentioned in that communique regards what the US could win in this, uh, during this visit.

[00:09:45]Uh, like better trade agreement on this and that. So, it was only oriented on the wins for the US trade basically. While the Chinese focused on the, uh, strategic balance and strategic and fundamental issues. So, you see that here a totally different approach, which is not surprising because China is obviously a more strategic country than the US, at least at this stage. That was probably a different 50 or 60 years ago, but today US has become, uh, a tactical This is only a tactical uh, uh, thinking in that in in foreign policy and even national security issues. And that's reflected very much in those two communiques.

[00:10:43]Um, >> [clears throat] >> interesting also is that when you have such an important event that may the relationship between the two largest economies in the world with obviously regional implications both in Asia and in the Western Hemisphere and possibly in in the West at large, you usually you have a joint communique.

[00:11:13]And such an That's where the prepare the preparation of this meeting comes into the game.

[00:11:20]Uh, I myself been, uh, involved in in in some international conference. And in most conferences, international conference, you prepare the final communique even before the the conference started in reality because you know what you want to achieve, you know that there will be some slight modification, but you have a when you you start the conference the real conference, there's already a draft existing that you can adjust at the last minute with some probably declaration things like this, but in essence you have the document and you have teams of experts from both sides working together months in advance in order to prepare the joint communique.

[00:12:08]When you read the two communiques that were published after, you can see that in fact these were two communiques worked out by their in the the two different teams. They didn't they they didn't talk to each other. You have a US team preparing its own communique and the Chinese team preparing its own. And that's exactly why you see very little overlap between the two communiques.

[00:12:35]And that reflects also the the focus of both parties and that also in my view reflects let's say not the failure of the summit, but as I said the absence of success of summit. I couldn't I I I'm not sure it's a successful summit because again I mean both parties can see that as a I mean the Chinese probably have a more successful summit because they could they could make their point and they could emphasize their own red lines and their own priorities.

[00:13:14]While the Americans have come up with priorities such as trade about about agriculture product and things like which is not very strategic. So I think reading at the communique, you can see that nothing has been achieved in common, but the Chinese have an edge in the sense that they were able to say what are priorities now. We have We have a difficult situation, and our priority remains Taiwan stability and a balanced trade. It's not a balance for the US or in favor of the US. It must be mutually beneficial, and I think that's also that comes very often in the in the comments on the Chinese side.

[00:14:09]And on that point, I think the Chinese have made their point. And in that sense, I think this summit is probably more in favor of China than in favor of Donald Trump. Now, but sorry for interrupting you. We are dealing with two different situations on the part of the United States and China. The part of China which the main issue and the most important issue is the case of Taiwan. I don't see any sort of urgency on the part of China when it comes to the Taiwan. They want to talk about it. They want to put an end to that sort of misunderstanding that exists between China and the United States, but they don't have that much of, you know, rush in Yes and no. Remember that the Congress approved 11 billion um um oh, credit. I don't know how to call that.

[00:15:09]Um for one 11 billion for 11 billion for the >> about weapons to be sent to >> Yes.

[00:15:16]Exactly. Yes.

[00:15:17]And that I think is a source of concern for for Iran. Now, the the amount has been approved by the Congress, but the sale themselves have not occurred yet. And that's probably why it has a sense there is a sense of emergency for Taiwan for China.

[00:15:39]So, it's Yes, I agree with you that it's not the same level of of urgency between what has happened in Iran and and what's happening in Taiwan, but for Remember that I'm not sure that Iran is such an important matter for China.

[00:16:01]To be honest, China understands that the the the US Israeli US aggression was illegal.

[00:16:13]They understand the consequence of that.

[00:16:15]They understand that the consequence of this aggression has implications for the global world world and they have said so much. By the way, it's true that the Chinese have declared that the circulation of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz should be free.

[00:16:38]And there must not be any any blockade on that.

[00:16:43]Whereby I think they target more the US than Iran in this matter because Iran has in fact not closed the the Strait of Hormuz. The US did. So, that's also important to remember. The US have blocked the traffic, not Iran. Iran has imposed some restrictions and has kind of managed with quotation mark managed traffic in the in the Strait of Hormuz.

[00:17:20]But it doesn't stop this this traffic.

[00:17:23]So, China understand and by the way, China has got also some privileges for having its tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. So, for China, it's not it's a problem at large, but not a major source of concern for itself.

[00:17:40]Remember also that China doesn't doesn't depend on the Strait of Hormuz or only for a fraction of its energy because most of the 85% roughly 85% of the the the energy that Chinese uses is produced in China itself.

[00:18:02]So, there's only 50 50% of their energy needs that need to be covered through imports and large source of import for energy of energy comes from Russia, which is a very close ally. So, yes, it's a it's a concern at large.

[00:18:23]It's a strategic concern, but it's not a matter of urgency for China. I think it's very important and and that appears in the in the discussion, by the way, because what what what China said, in fact, China has said to the US to stop the blockade.

[00:18:47]That's what China said because they consider that the US is the problem in the region, not Iran.

[00:18:55]And that appears very clearly in the different declaration that have been made.

[00:19:01]The problem is that Trump doesn't want to understand that, but in reality, the um the China doesn't see Iran as a problem and remember that before and we have said said that many times, but before the 28th of February, traffic on the Strait of Hormuz was free. So, definitely the US and Israel were all the problem. They are part of the problem and not of the solution.