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Says the future is up to us, but won’t be much longer

In a speech to the Badger Institute Thursday night, Congressman Mike Gallagher, the Green Bay Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, issued a clarion call for America  to rearm and stockpile critical munitions, issued a stark warning about authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups across the globe and said the future is still up to us here in America “but won’t be much longer.”

“Look at what’s going on. Iran-backed death squads are stalking Israeli civilians, cutting off the heads of babies and raping women. Putin’s slaughterhouse in Ukraine. Xi Jinping’s ongoing genocide in Xinjiang. There is an authoritarian axis arrayed against us, and Beijing is leading it,” he said.

“According to President Biden’s speech at the Naval Academy, Xi Jinping told him directly that in the 21st century autocracies will run the world. Well, just look at Iran. Look at Gaza. Look at Ukraine. That wasn’t an idle boast.”

Gallagher was critical of the Biden administration and the pursuit of accommodation.

“Now the Biden administration refuses to wage the aggressive campaign, the ideological war that we need. Their reluctance to confront China based on human rights, on American values, is leading them to pursue diplomatic accommodation at any cost and looks more like an ideological surrender.”

Gallagher is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer whose doctoral dissertation was on Truman, Eisenhower and the Cold War. He warned that Americans tend to “graft our own Western sensibilities onto authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups, and so we consistently underestimate the lengths they’re willing to go to in order to achieve their objectives.”

He warned, for instance, against assuming China will not invade Taiwan just because they have so many domestic challenges.

And he laid out a path forward.

“We haven’t fully enforced sanctions (against Iran) since the start of the Biden administration. So the most important thing to do … is to return to a policy of maximum economic pressure on Iran and abandon this attempt to revive the Iran nuclear deal. Then we can start to put in place the pieces of a regional alliance structure that’s designed to deny Iran’s access to a nuclear weapon as well as roll back its terrorist proxy influence throughout the region. It all hinges upon us having a credible military deterrent.”

We “can’t lose track of the fact we are the good guys.”

The left describes “the United States is a neocolonial, racist hellscape with no moral authority to lead the free world,” he said. “We’re seeing that play out this week with regards to the debate over Hamas and Israel and the American partnership and alliance with Israel. As Chairman of the Select Committee on China I’ve read a lot about the Chinese Communist Party propaganda, and it’s telling that often it just poorly regurgitates woke talking points. And while self-criticism is a vital part of democracy, and we aren’t perfect, we can’t lose track of the fact that we are the good guys.”

“I think there’s a path forward for this country in a way where we can resolve our disputes and tap into the laboratories of democracy. It involves devolving power and authority from the federal level back down to the states. The only way that we can survive as a diverse country is to really reinvigorate competitive federalism and the laboratories of democracy and thereby out-innovate the Chinese Communist Party.”

Gallagher spoke at length remotely from Washington, D.C., to a group convened at the Badger Institute’s annual dinner in Brookfield after Republicans spent the day unsuccessfully working to elect a new speaker.

His warning was sobering.

“A war with China would make the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel look like child’s play in comparison. It would be so destructive that we should be waging deterrence with the same alacrity and creativity with which we wage war. We need to rearm and stockpile critical munitions and pre-position them before it’s too late.”

The decisions this country makes now, he said, will determine the course of the next century.

“For the time being, it’s still up to us to decide. But it won’t be up to us for much longer. Our policy towards the People’s Republic of China over the next 10 years will determine what the next 100 years will look like.”

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