Adm. Stavridis: China sending lethal military aid to Russia could trigger more U.S. aid to Taiwan

Joining me now is former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and former NATO at Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James DeVries. So Ben, Vice President Harris told me, you know, this is not a red line. Another Cabinet official said it is a red line over the weekend. What would the U.S. do if China starts rearming or arming Russia to back up its shortfall on weapons? Well, it would certainly be a dramatic escalation by China involving themselves in a European conflict where their only interest would essentially be undermining the Ukrainians and damaging the West, essentially. So it would signal a big rubicon being crossed by the Chinese and would make a big difference to the Russians who can't get that level of resupply from countries like Iran that are providing them with drones.

I think in response, what it would do is would trigger actions by the United States. And those could come across, I think, several different areas. One, you know, the U.S. has moved towards the use of sanctions more aggressively against certain Chinese entities. They may target any aspects of the Chinese system that are supplying the Russians. You may see more robust sanctions enforcement from the U.

S. But also the U.S., you know, shows some restraint in the kind of military hardware we provide to certain allies. In the Obama years, for instance, the Chinese did not like the idea of deploying a missile defense system to South Korea. You recently saw the United States announce the deployment increase to the Philippines. And so the U.

S. might be saying to the Chinese, look, if you start to get involved in Europe, you might start to see more of a security posture from the United States and our allies in Asia that is willing to challenge the Chinese as well. So I think across the board economically, militarily, and diplomatically, it would just ratchet up the escalation that is already ongoing between the United States and China. And it might be so high, Ben and Admiral Tom Friedman on Meet the Press said that this would make it a world war, you know, not a shooting war, but a world war in that we are all engaged. James DeVries. I think Tom is right to sound the alarm. I don't think it's going to get to that point.

The relationship between the U.S. and China is continuing to have ups and downs. And you can see some other potential pressure points coming here. A couple of other things the United States could do in response to arming Ukraine, which I think really is crossing the Rubicon quite literally, would be to up our aid to Taiwan. That would be extremely unpopular in Beijing. We also have significant options in cyber, in intelligence, in working with nations around the periphery of China like India and Vietnam that have disagreements with China.

All of that, I suspect, is going through the minds of President Xi and Wang Li, the foreign minister who just met with Tony Blinken. I think we're going to see tension in this relationship. Another spark, Andrea, that we're all kind of watching for is whether newly anointed speaker McCarthy decides to follow through on a trip to Taiwan. That would create a real spike in the relationship. Let's hope both sides can kind of step back from this. It's in neither side's interest for China to take this on, supporting this rotten regime in Moscow. I asked an administration official last week whether they had even reached out and tried to ask Kevin McCarthy not to go to Taiwan.

And the answer was if we couldn't stop Nancy Pelosi from going, we could even bother him rather to ask Kevin McCarthy not to go at this very delicate time. But Ben, the situation with China right now is so fraught. And we're in this terrible situation with Russia. The president in the middle of this going without any kind of military support into a war zone is pretty amazing. So I did want to ask you about that also. And what that means, my own sense is he really wanted to go face to face, eye to eye with Zelensky, and talk to him about his needs, praise him, send the important signal to the world of support. But I think that they are very concerned about Crimea and about how far Zelensky would go if he had fighter jets, if he had better weapons, whether that would trigger a Putin reaction.

Are you picking up anything like that? Yeah, I think the symbolism is really important, but so is the substance, right? And on the symbolism side, it's a message to the Ukrainian people, a manifestation of our commitment. It's a message to the American people in our politics that we're in this fight, and we're going to have to be coming back for more assistance to the Ukrainians and to allies who may be getting a little wobbly with a degree of assistance to Ukraine. I had to plan some of these to Iraq and Afghanistan, help plan President Obama's trips. And it's really hard to pull this off, mainly because you can't really read in the other government that broadly, because you have such operational security concerns. But it's worth doing because of the symbolism, but also, Andrew, as you say, because of substance, there's only so much you can do on the phone. When you get to, when you're just talking about the calibration of assistance, OK, those kinds of things, your teams can tee up and you can talk about on the phone, on some of these fundamental issues, like how far is the U.S.

willing to go in providing the kind of weapons systems that Zelensky wants, and how much is the U.S. concerned about the Ukrainians pushing this into Crimea in a way that could escalate? These are really sensitive issues that need to be discussed. I think, right now, Zelensky's posture is, give us everything we could possibly get to win this war. And I think the U.S. is still in the position of trying to calibrate this in terms of, we want to give you enough to go on the offensive, to take back some territory.

But we're kind of not all the way with you in the idea that this should be kind of the spigots totally open and your guys are going after Crimea. So I think they do need to kind of level set on what their expectations are and what our expectations are, because we're kind of codependent in the sense that the Ukrainians are the ones who are in the fight doing all the sacrificing, but they really do need that support from the U.S. to shape their own ambitions on the battlefield. And so I think, hopefully, this is an important opportunity for them to sit down face to face, maybe one-on-one to talk about the more sensitive issues. And, General Staviti, just very briefly, General Milley said last week in Brussels that we're having our own supply chain issues with ammo, with a lot of our military resources with all of this drain. We've got the money also from that supplemental that we got through the end of the year to September, but there's going to come a time next year when there's going to have to be a big ask by the Pentagon for more money, not just for Ukraine, but for the U.

S. for resupply. Indeed. And however, if you really look at the economics of this situation, 55 percent, maybe 60 percent of the world's gross domestic product is lined up behind Ukraine. That would be the United States, European Union, Japan, probably 65 percent. Over here is Russia with 2 percent, less than 2 percent of the world's GDP. If China were to come in full force behind them, that's only another 15 percent.

So the scales, Andrea, are still highly weighted in our direction. Are we going to have some challenges? Are there going to be some precision-guided points? Yes. Don't bet against us. We can win this foot race.

Andrea Mitchell Reports