Sen. Josh Hawley wants GOP warmongers and leftist globalists to know that funneling American taxpayer dollars to Ukraine instead of addressing the rising threat that is communist China is a huge mistake.
Contrary to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s on-the-record declaration that “Defeating the Russians in Ukraine is the single most important event going on in the world right now,” Hawley is urging U.S. leaders to advance a nationalist foreign policy that “would put America’s interests first” and prioritize addressing the threat China poses to the U.S. and the world.
“Deterring China from seizing Taiwan should be America’s top foreign policy priority,” the Republican from Missouri said during a speech at The Heritage Foundation on Thursday.
The Uniparty
For too long, Hawley said U.S. foreign policy was dictated by an out-of-touch “uniparty” that sees “writing blank checks to other countries” as a solution.
“The truth is, we are over-committed,” Hawley said. “Our elites aren’t deluded by the dream of a liberal empire. The uniparty tells us that we’re on the right side of history and tough trade-offs don’t exist. That’s just not true.”
This uniparty, Hawley said, wants Americans to believe that “we can fight an endless proxy war in Ukraine” and that will keep China at bay.
“We have leaders on both parties, former NATO brass telling us that defending Ukraine is basically the same thing as deterring China,” Hawley said.
The truth, the senator continued, is that the uniparty’s impossible dreams of democratizing China and enriching the U.S. economy by allowing the communist nation into the World Trade Organization in 2001 already exposed the weakness of the foreign policy that dominates the D.C. hivemind.
“The uniparty’s way is not sustainable. It is a path to failure,” Hawley said.
Those same motivations, Hawley said, prolonged American involvement in the Middle East and had disastrous results.
“We invested billions of dollars there and lost hundreds of thousands of American lives all while China rose unimpeded. And the people who are responsible for those misjudgments are still members of the D.C. establishment in good standing and nobody has ever been held accountable. Now we’re hearing the same siren song again. This time, it’s about Ukraine,” Hawley said.
It’s clear, he added, that “our current foreign policy is not working.”
“It has not worked for decades,” he said. “It’s not working for our security. It’s not working for our economy. And above all, it is not working for the American people. It has cost many of them their jobs, their towns, and their communities.”
The Need for a Nationalist Foreign Policy
Hawley said he believes the U.S. does have a role to play on the global scale but that it needs to happen through the lens of a nationalist foreign policy.
“That begins with being strong here at home and protecting our folks,” Hawley said.
It also means addressing the nation’s top enemy. “The core problem is our actions in Ukraine are directly affecting our ability to deter our most pressing adversary, that is, China in the Pacific,” Hawley said.
The senator acknowledged that at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, he voted to send money to the afflicted country because “I had no idea that we were going to fight an endless proxy war and do nation-building there because that’s not what we said we’re going to do in the beginning.”
“The truth is we cannot defend Ukraine and stop China in Taiwan, and see to our own military requirements at the same time; we simply cannot do it all. And frankly, we shouldn’t have to,” Hawley said.
Sending billions more to Ukraine to promote a “stable rules-based international order” that appeases the “D.C. establishment that transcends all changing administrations” and is designed to force regime change in Russia, Hawley said, is “nonsense.” Especially because “China is on the march.”
“We are not at this moment prepared to stop them. We didn’t stop them cheating on trade. We didn’t stop them from stealing our industry. We didn’t stop them in Hong Kong. And now, if China invades Taiwan, they would prevail,” Hawley said.
He noted that stopping China from expanding its global influence starts with ending blank checks to Ukraine, reducing the number of U.S. troops in Europe, and arming Taiwan.
“I’m not in favor of blank checks to anybody,” Hawley said. “So I’m not here to tell you that I don’t favor blank checks to Ukraine, but I do favor them to Taiwan. No, quite the contrary. My view is we have got to help the Taiwanese defend themselves. We should be arming and supporting the Taiwanese but on the condition that they spend on their own defense, that they embrace an asymmetric defense strategy, and that they go all in on the defense of their island and prepare to defend it from any potential Chinese invasion.”
Hawley knows his proposal will not be popular among his neo-con colleagues in Congress.
“It’s hard to challenge the uniparty,” Hawley admitted. “They’ve gotten pretty good at telling their favorite story which is why anybody who questions them these days gets labeled as anti-American or Putin’s puppet.”
Hawley may get pushback on Capitol Hill but that won’t stop him from embracing a new foreign policy that he believes better reflects and protects American interests.
“This country is the strongest country on the face of the Earth. We’re the best country in the history of the world. We can prevail. I have every confidence that in this conflict with China, for the future of the world, we will prevail. And above all, for our own way of life, we will prevail. But we must make the choices now to make sure that that possibility becomes reality,” Hawley said.
