Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the “Cats Roundtable” radio program on Friday that the lessons of the war in Iran should change how China and the U.S. understand the balance of power militarily, going into a long-awaited Trump-Xi summit in Beijing this month. “Suddenly, Xi is having to reassess his dream that he could somehow take us on and occupy Taiwan,” Newt said. “Every time you turn around, Chinese weapon systems are failing. They couldn’t protect Venezuela, they can’t protect Iran, they don’t do much good in Russia.” At the same time, he warned reports of dwindling munitions stockpiles show U.S. power isn’t unlimited. “Frankly, we’ll be able to scrape together enough stuff for Iran, but in the process, we’re moving things out of everywhere else in the world,” he said. “We used to have a policy to be able to fight two major wars at the same time. We gave that up as too expensive. So now you have the consequence.” “We’re able to fight one pretty significant war at a time, and we’re going to have to rebuild our industrial base to be able to do more than that,” he explained. “So if the Chinese are willing to take a gigantic risk, they could decide this was the moment to test that,” he explained. “China is a country in transition, and President Trump will be visiting it at a moment when it could lead to a truly remarkable breakthrough — and that’s what we should hope for.” “This could be a very big deal or not. If it’s not, then Trump will just keep marching on,” he said.

JOHN CATSIMATIDIS, CATS ROUNDTABLE: Speaker Newt Gingrich, give us your evaluation on Friday night before a long weekend. NEWT GINGRICH: The biggest thing in the near future is President Trump’s visit to Beijing. This is a real crossroads, and Xi Jinping is going to have to think about whether he wants to continue to try to compete with us or whether he wants to cooperate with us. I just noticed that yesterday, for example, they announced that two former defense ministers, who were both given death sentences, which have been suspended for two years. But as a signal – now remember, these are guys who are in the military – it’s a signal of the degree to which Xi Jinping is unhappy with the performance of the military. And of course, every time you turn around, Chinese weapon systems are failing. So they couldn’t protect Venezuela. They can’t protect Iran. They don’t do much good in Russia. And so I think suddenly his dream that he could somehow take us on and occupy Taiwan, I think he’s having to reassess everything. At the same time, their population is starting to drop because of their one-child policy. And they’re going to go down from about 1.4 billion to maybe as low as 600 or 700 million by the end of the century. That means they don’t have many young people. So China is a country in transition, and President Trump will be visiting it at a moment when it could lead to a truly remarkable breakthrough — and that’s what we should hope for. This could be a very big deal or not. If it’s not, then Trump will just keep marching on. But if it is a really big deal, it’ll be historic and will reshape a great deal of what’s happening around the world. CATSIMATIDIS: Tell us, what do you think is the next step? GINGRICH: Well, the president can’t move on until Iran is resolved one way or another. And I think his hope is that the sheer pressure – in some ways, the Department of the Treasury is more important than the Department of War, because they are cutting off money at such a level that the Iranian government may literally not be able to function in a matter of a couple of weeks. And so the guys who are hardliners, who are very tough, who understand warfare, and they understand taking casualties – but if they end up having literally no money, and they can’t pay their troops and they can’t sustain what they’re doing, they may conclude that they have to agree to a deal that they don’t like because the alternative is breaking the entire regime. And I think that’s what Trump is counting on. And I think his hope is that over the long run, the Iranian people will take power back because this government will have been so dramatically weakened by us. But it’s a big moment in the history of the world, and it’s a big moment in the presidency of Donald Trump. CATSIMATIDIS: Understood. One more thing. I just need your opinion on. The New York Times did an article on Friday morning saying that we’re running low on armaments. Any opinion on that? GINGRICH: Yes. There are two things wrong. One, we build exquisitely, amazingly advanced weapons, and they’re very expensive. And so normally, we have relatively limited stocks of how many, and we’ve been using them up, both giving them to the Europeans to give the Ukrainians and then using a lot of them up against Iran. There are two problems. One is to expand production, which we’re doing. But the other is use common sense and use less expensive weapons. The Ukrainians are now building a million drones a year, and they’re very sophisticated drones. They’re hitting places in Russia 1,200 or 1,300 miles away. They’re tearing up the Russian oil industry. They also have defensive drones. They build drones for like $ 2,000. We build Patriot missiles for $ 7 million or $ 8 million or $ 9 million. Well, if you’re using a $ 9 million missile to kill a $ 200 drone – I mean, look, John, you are a great businessman. You’ve been amazingly successful. If somebody walked into you and said, “I got this great idea. I’m going to spend $ 9 million to kill a $ 200 missile,” you’d immediately know that’s so stupid. You wouldn’t know why you’re having the conversation. So they’ve got to go through a real transition. They’re beginning to buy a lot more drones, for one thing. But there’s no question in the short run we’re going to have a shortage. And if the Chinese were willing to take gigantic risk, they could decide this was the moment to test this, because, frankly, we’ll be able to scrape together enough stuff for Iran, but in the process we’re moving things out of everywhere else in the world. But that was a decision we made a long time ago. We used to have a policy to be able to fight two major wars at the same time. We gave that up as too expensive. So now you have the consequence. We’re able to fight one pretty significant war at a time, and we’re going to have to rebuild our industrial base to be able to do more than that.

RealClearPolitics Videos