Zack Cooper on Background Briefing: How Far Will Xi Jinping Go in Supporting Vladimir Putin?

We begin with talks between The U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi in Rome after leaks from the Biden administration warning that Russia had asked China for military support in Ukraine and that China was considering sending drones. This prompted an angry and defensive response from the Chinese Foreign Ministry and we get an assessment of today’s negotiations from Zack Cooper, co-director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States. He previously served in the Pentagon and White House under the George W. Bush administration, first as special assistant to the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy and then as assistant to the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism on the National Security Council. We discuss Sullivan’s warning that if China supplies weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine, it will be an historic mistake and a turning point in global politics.