This is imagining the future.

This is CBSi in the world.

I'm John Bachelor.

Elbridge Colby, the author of The Strategy of Denial.

This is imagining the future.

And a contest between the coalition led by the United States

against the hegemony on China and China's aggression towards Taiwan and or the Philippines and or the rest of the coalition.

There is now a disaster scenario and the denial defense obliges everyone to react in dire fashion.

What is it that can keep the denial defense from failing or what is a predicate for the coalition after the failure or during the contest

in which either side could win or lose.

I believe that's what we can now talk about as the binding strategy. I'm very carefully reading

fun closet because of you bridge and I find thanks to your emphasis, fun closetclosovitz talked a lot about psychology

and about the resolve, the morale,

the ambition, the passion of the contestants. I believe that's part of the binding

strategy. How so? No, I think you put your finger on it, John, right? The issue

that Clausewood's, of course, was a master of is that, you know, the

strength itself is not the only sort of factor that's relevant here. The question is how much and how avidly are the combatants prepared

to dedicate that amount of strength, right? France under the Bourbons in 1785 or something the the fervor of the French nation was much

more modest right whereas six seven years later with the Leve-en-Moss and and the and

mass popular you mass popular support

for the revolutionary armies in the defense of the nation

and so forth, you know, suddenly France was putting out

...