Mike Gallagher on Connecting the China Dots for Congress, The Wire China, Jan. 29, 2023.
The congressman talks about preventing Taiwan's future from becoming Ukraine's present; developing a framework for selective decoupling; and reminding people that the U.S. is the good guy.
Congressman Michael Gallagher is a Republican who represents Wisconsin's 8th congressional district. In December, Representative Gallagher was appointed as chairman of the Select Committee on China, a new body aiming to analyze various military, national security, and economic policy issues related to China. Before joining Congress in 2017, he served on active duty in the United States Marine Corps and worked as a staffer on Middle East and Counterterrorism on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has a PhD in International Relations from Georgetown University. Mike Gallagher.Illustration by Kate Copeland Q: What is the goal of the new Select Committee on China? A: There are at least three goals initially. One is to connect the dots in terms of exposing the pattern of aggression that we're seeing from the Chinese Communist Party. This isn't just an isolated incident in the South China Sea or on a university campus. This is, in my opinion, a whole of society, new Cold War, being waged against us. And it’s up to our committee to connect the dots for our colleagues and make the case to the American people for why this matters, why we need to invest money and resources and energy into preparing America over the short and long term to win this competition before it’s too late. The second goal I have, and it reflects the intent of Speaker McCarthy, is to make this a bipartisan effort. We don’t want this to be a Republican only effort. The China Task Force [a previous China-related House body] was Republican-only because the Democrats refused to participate. We want them to participate. And if you look at the members we have on our side, they’re all serious sober members, there are no bomb throwers. I believe our foreign policy is stronger when it rests on a bipartisan foundation. That’s not to say we won’t have meaningful disagreements. I think more than anything, the CCP fears us actually mustering a bipartisan, whole of government response to their aggression. Third, the near-term goal is deterrence. We tend to think about that in a purely military sense, or something that only the executive branch or the Pentagon does. But Congress has an important role to play in deterrence. The goal of deterring CCP aggression should remind us that ours is a defensive strategy. We’re not trying to take territory. We’re not trying to remake foreign societies in our image. We’re trying to defend the frontiers of the free world from totalitarian aggression. And, indeed, for perhaps more isolationist members of Congress on the far left or on the far right, it’s important to remind them that we are indeed trying to prevent, not provoke World War III.”
(To be continued…)