[inaudible conversations] please welcome dr. kevin roberts president of the heritage foundation. [applause] >> thank you. it's great to see this theater full for those of you on line and c-span thanks for joining us. senators hawley is their speaker today and as you know is sitting as the senior senator from missouri who was attorney general and one of the leading constitutional attorneys in the united states having argued cases in front of the supreme

court. to be here or in heritage's 50th anniversary so for all of you in this in person audience in those of you on line those of you who have been heritage interns alumni around of applause to you for being a part of this great institution. [applause] senator hawley has become a leading voice on every issue facing. those of us who're conservatives are grateful for the common sense and the depth of analysis that he brings to us. today's focus is on china and ukraine entitled a time for truth. please join me in welcoming senator josh hawley to the heritage foundation. [applause] >> thank you so much kevin and thank you for that kind introduction and thanks to all of you for being here. it's especially gratifying to be

here on the 50th birthday of the heritage foundation. for five decades now heritage. this has contributed critical ideas and critical times in our countries history and another critical juncture in our countries history. i look forward to the contributions you are not only making now but for 50 years to come and i particularly want to say i'm excited as a former heritage intern and maybe i shouldn't say the year, i was an intern back in the summer of 2000 so time to slide that my time here was tremendous and congratulations to heritage on this 50th birthday. another experience that i had in recent years, three years ago in october 2019 i had the opportunity to visit hong kong. it was not a standard ceremonial sort of visit. in fact the state department was not a big fan of me visiting at all and they tried to talk me out of it. i obviously said i'm going to go

no matter what so there we were in the midst of major protests and ua may remember the city during the fall of 2019. beijing had originally promised the city of hong kong a measure of independence that once the city passed it to chinese control it would be old to keep its unique freedoms. a promise was one country, two systems as you might recall. those were the days. by the fall of 2019 the promise like so many that the beijing government made was a complete and total total i. as soon as they could attorneys come his party crackdown on hong kong with draconian national security laws to crush any dissent. the message was xi jinping's way will be the only way in the fall of 2019 i want to see what was happening for myself so i took a trip. i arrived there. i have the opportunity to go out onto the streets myself. i remember my first night here in the city.

the consulate kindly suggested i might want to remain in my hotel. i said it was time to hit the streets of what it went to where the protests were in particular. we saw cars blazing in the streets and we saw protesters to spring free hong kong in the windows. it was a scene of chaos. we saw the pro chinese riot police facing off with young women and men dare to defend and stand for the freedoms of their city. i made friends there and some of them have since gone to prison. joshua long, jimmy lee and some of them are now in exile. i will not forget that trip because it was there that i was able to see first-hand the nightmare of the chinese communist party. make and make no mistake about it in the hong kong -- we see

the true face of chinese tyranny. we may yet see it again and other places around the world including with them beginning with taiwan. my worry is if we do not change course soon we may not be able to do anything about it. it's not very popular to say that openly and i'm not very popular with my colleagues when i do. dozens of lawmakers and so-called experts and talking heads have claimed an invasion of taiwan simply will not happen or if it does we will course prevail. they say that china is afraid to challenge us. these people preferred to tell a familiar and comforting story that's become a bit of the bedtime story in the foreign-policy community which goes like this. winning the cold war allows us to police the world for all time, no problem. they want us to believe our military might is infinite and american power faces no real

constraints and we have ought to use it to try to reshape the world. now they want us to believe we can fight the endless proxy war in ukraine and somehow, some way none of us will it deter our ability to stop taiwan, china rather than from invading taiwan or to stop china elsewhere. curiously enough the story of american empire and that's really what it is, it's called by neoconservatives on the right and liberal cool list on the left. together they make up what you might call the unit party the d.c. establishment that transcends all changing administrations. they have gotten pretty good at telling their favorite stories which is why anybody who questions them these days are labeled as anti-american for putin's puppet. today i thought we would try

something different that i thought we try something unique for washington. i thought maybe say we try telling the truth. the truth is americans have been sold a bill of goods. our current foreign-policy is not working and it has not worked for decades. it's not working for our security. it's not working for our economy and above all it's not working for the american people. it has cost many of them their jobs, their towns and their communities. i've seen it myself and my own state. all of that thanks to the bad trade deals we were promised would make all of us richer and that hasn't happened. instead our industrial base has been hollowed out and good-paying jobs is a poor people and working committees and the one that i grew up in producing those jobs go overseas. our current foreign-policy isn't working even according to its own standards but it's falling apart at the seams.

with the unit party doing its level best to patch it together by writing blank checks to other countries. the truth is we are overcommitted. our leads are deluded of the dream of the liberal empire. the unit party tells us that we are on the right side of history and tough trade-offs don't exist. that's not true. we do have a lot of military power on our side but it isn't deployed where it should be. it isn't marshaled in the way we needed to be in america and the world will face the consequences. let's tell the truth china is on the march. and we are not prepared to stop them. let me say that again. china is on the march and we are not at this moment prepared to stop them. we didn't stop them from cheating on trade and 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.

let me say that again. if china were to invade taiwan today they would prevail. which is why we are at an inflection point, a moment where we have to make some tough decisions. i would submit to you a moment for real change. it's time to adopt a different foreign-policy and a nationalist foreign-policy. we hear a lot these days about something called a rules-based international order and i'm sure you've heard this phrase. politicians and other experts whenever they want to send a few billion dollars more to some other country. let's be clear on what we are talking about with a rules-based international orders in some form of heaven. founded on the assumption that if we abolish borders and allow capital to move freely and empower the giant multinational corporations that somehow the american people will be better off. somehow we will make america more like the world in the world

more like america. free minds and free markets or something like that. that's what we have been promising for years now. there was never a time and that was good and it's apparent now. all the way back in december of 2001 we admitted china to the world trade organization. that i will submit to you will go down as one of the greatest strategic errors committed by any power in the last two or three centuries. simply put it's been a disaster for this nation. that's not what we were told at the time. at the time the unit party told us this would make everybody rich or that we could offshore all the jobs we didn't want an imported bunch of without undermining or prosperity and they also argued this would democratize china or driver that argument? that this somehow would lead to an opening up of the chinese

regime and if they brought china into the global economic order dannemann square and other horrors with the things of the past. having been in hong kong in 2019 i can tell you that was a catastrophic misjudgment and their claims were catastrophic. one country two systems was not china's first promise. after joining the wto the chinese communist communist party took took full of vantage of its access to global markets to enrich itself. simultaneously it shielded its own economy from competition who pay the price? america did more specifically to blue-collar workers in america. good blue-collar jobs that divided americans with a living wage versailles fend off overseas. and while the chinese communist party got rich and the chinese economy boomed. they build their military on the backs of our middle-class and

now that military not only massive. increasingly modernized is poised for a invasion of taiwan. >> we spend over $1 trillion every year however tons of people are in poverty. [inaudible] climate crisis it is our common threat. some interesting this administration wants to use the climate crisis as in the justification. let me just ask what did our

leader should do while all of this was happening? while china was growing in power and they were cheating on trade and taking away our jobs. exactly the wrong things. while china was prospering and american towns were withering away the unit party -- the uni-party set its sights on the lease. we heard a lot about how american blood and treasure could turn these nations into images of the west. that project failed to. it failed spectacularly. we invented billions of dollars in lost hundreds of thousands of american lives while china rose unimpeded. 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 are hearing the same siren song again this time in ukraine. we only send a few more weapons a few more billion were

$100 billion we will really have a stable rules-based order. maybe we should do more nation-building and maybe we can enforce regime change in russia. all ideas that the uni-party is excited apart -- about and all ideas that are the wrong ideas at the wrong time. we should have seen the threat from china coming years ago but the uni-party didn't and they still aren't taking it seriously. right now we have leaders from both parties former nato brass telling us defending ukraine is basically the same thing as deterring china. i'm sure you've heard it it's all over town and all over the media. no one's territory is safe anywhere else and i noticed people don't seem to be particularly concerned about our southern border. let's set that aside for one moment and let's consider this idea that somehow by fighting

ukraine we are deterring and asia. the truth is china's past the global superpower runs through asia in order to establish itself. its global power china must establish and asia which means we must stop them there are. if you want to take vienna take vienna and if you want to deter china and asia deterred them in asia or the idea that spending money in ukraine will proffer china's imperial on patients elsewhere is -- and yet congress has poured billions, over 100 billion counting into ukraine defense at a time when the american people are still dealing with sky-high inflation and there's no end in sight. we will soon see i have no doubt request for billions more of blank checks to ukraine from this administration to be signed

off on by this congress but that's not really the core problem. the core problem is our actions in ukraine are directly affecting her ability to deter our most pressing adversary and that is china. let's consider where we are. for starters. more u.s. regionals we devote to europe the fewer things we have available to strengthen the deterrence in the pacific. for some things like heavy armor that may not matter a lot but it matters a lot for the capabilities we need to deter china from invading taiwan. both of ukraine in one requirement of the same weapons including the javelin and the stinger. it's already stratfor capacity because we need to draw on many of suppliers for the defense of ukraine in taiwan and we are doing our best to increase production but that will take

years and all of this means that four military power in ukraine that comes at a cost. the truth is we cannot defend ukraine and stop china and taiwan and do our own military requirements of the same time. we simply can't do it all. frankly we shouldn't have to. some of the world's wealthiest nations are our allies in europe. right now we are the ones, not the europeans, who are doing the heavy lifting in europe. in fact we have sent more rep weapons to ukraine than all to ukraine to know if your pet is combined. all of europe combined and those choices are weakening us in the key plays, the pacific where we require strength. the uni-party's lawyer is not sustainable and it's a path to failure. this is why china is now positioned to strike with

overwhelming force to seize taiwan. invading taiwan has been xi's goal goal for years once controlled the pacific and two. receive global donisi to turn to cement his place in chinese history. before the chinese communist party congress in beijing xi said the historical wills of reification and national rejuvenation are rolling forward at a complete reunification must be achieved. he is saying plainly what it is he wants to do. we haven't taken it seriously enough. after so many failures if we do not stop china nothing else we do against china anywhere else will matter. so what happens if tomorrow we wake up and an invasion of

taiwan has begun what can america do about it? it sets our strategic position again at the pacific. we have plenty of aircraft and they are concentrated with a small number of airbases. china has invested its weapons and sensors undercutting our airpower. what else do we have? we have carrier strike groups but it's not clear how they will help us to stop the chinese invasion pre-china has built up defenses designed to neutralize and keep them so far were that they won't be useful. we have an undersea advantage that is true but we only have so many submarines and we only have so many weapons to fire and only so many places to reload or refit them. we are all start risk ourselves is forces in guam. one is not well defended against china to say nothing of china's special operations forces. i haven't even mentioned china's

nuclear arsenal which is always looming in the background. meanwhile our own military architecture in space as dangerously vulnerable and the resistance forces are already overstretched. given all of that let's assume for a moment that the worst happens, china and agencies as taiwan and we try to stop it and we are successful. what would that mean for us? nothing good. if china conquers taiwan xi in the chinese communist party will view it as a world historical victory and they will see it as the dawn of a new chinese century. americans themselves we will confront a terrifying reality. every american will feel that price hikes supply-chain disruptions with experience in the last few years will pale in comparison. product shortages will become commonplace. we are talking about everything from basic medicine to consumer

electronics and by some estimates a war with taiwan would send us into deep recession with no way out. huge swaths of our economy runs on. we will lose more jobs in our industry will suffer and the economic consequences are just the start. if china takes taiwan they will be old the station its own military forces there and they can use its position as a springboard for further conflict and intimidation against japan the pan and against the philippines and other pacific islands like guam. under asia's new reigning power china could restrict u.s. trade and maybe block it altogether. maybe they would allow us and that only on terms favorable to china. china has exported the global trade system before. now imagine if they could do it again as a truly global scale.

we recently witnessed a chinese spy balloon go across united states, right across my home state of missouri over our military installations. that was the fault of the semester of the demonstration. imagine a world where chinese warships could control hawaii's waters and california. imagine a world where the people's liberation army has military defenses in central and south america. imagine a world where chinese forces operate freely and the gulf of mexico and the atlantic ocean. that's a future we'll be facing if we are able to finally stop china. it's a future. it's an increasingly plausible future but it's not yet yet an inevitable future. there is still time to chart a different course that we have to act and we have to act now. that different course is a truly nationalist foreign policy. a foreign-policy in the spirit

of alexander hamilton. what would that look like? and nationalist foreign policy would put america's interests first in deterring china from seizing taiwan should be america's top foreign-policy party. that means her defense spending should be concentrated on deterrence in the pacific. we should stockpile weapons disperse our forces in the indo pacific and accelerate late stage development of cyber another critical -- none of that is news but we are years behind schedule. strengthening deterrence in the end of pacific means scaling back our military commitment elsewhere and that brings me back to europe. what we need is a burden sharing arrangement. it's time to tell our nato allies the hard truth which is they must take first obligation, first responsibility to the defense of ukraine to counter

russia. we should stop trying to send signals and stop saying on the one hand and on the other hand. they must take responsibility for the defense of europe themselves. relying on us for our nuclear deterrence and to keep uk capabilities would free up american resources for deterring china and this should be the basis of our partnership with our european allies. i i'm for partnership tonight for the for the alliance. the bases of the 21st century has to look like this. that will be more than enough for both of us i assure you. the current policy of the united states pretending it can do everything for the europeans in europe and do everything for the rest of the world and asia cannot be sustained. we will have to tell our nato allies the truth that unless they deter russia and confront russia themselves if there is a

conflict in the pacific will have to move our forces from europe to the pacific. we need to bend -- be honest with them. europe is important to us but it's not the key. it's time with tell our nato allies that bluntly. what steps can we take towards the burden sharing arrangement? number one we can stop writing blank checks to ukraine and demand our european allies step up. we have to make a choice. ukraine and china we cannot do both at the same time. we should be honest about that. first of the american people and then to our allies in the world. we should say to our european allies you take responsibility for the defense of ukraine and the confrontation with russia and we'll take the lead in asia and we should clarify this. they should know that we will not be able to fully defend them

if they conflict with china breaks out. would also be do? we should reduce our force will siniora. my colleagues hate it when i say this but it's the truth. we should not be increasing our forces. we should be reducing our force levels in europe and keep cutting until we are supporting nato's defenses that only those capabilities and with her nuclear arsenal. we should ask our european allies to make up the difference. this is what a burden sharing arrangement would look like. this is how we safeguard our interests in europe while critically deterring china and asia and the diced arm taiwan. i want to be clear on this i'm not in favor of a blank check to anybody so not here to tell you i'd favor blank checks to ukraine. my view is we have got to help taiwan defend them selves. we should be arming and supporting taiwan but on the

condition that they spend in their own defense that they embrace an asymmetric defense strategy that they go all in on on the defense of their island and prepared to defend it from a potential chinese invasion. the uni-party is not going to like it and in fact they hate it. they will probably call her russian propaganda or something like that but i will tell you when i first came to the senate i promised the people of my state i would tell them the truth and this is the truth. these are the choices that we face an even when the truth is difficult and the choices are tough we have to stand in front of the american people and explain what the stakes are and why she -- why we should make the choices that we do. it is clear-eyed realism and service to the american people are changing course won't be easy. it will take sacrifices and will require difficult choices but

that is what we are here to do and that's what this our demands. we have got to start looking reality in the eye. we have got to start making difficult choices that will allow us to meet the challenges of our day with the truth over the fairytale and truth over comfort. if we do there still time. this country is the strongest country on the face of the earth. we are the best country in the history of the world. we can prevail. i have every confidence that for the future of the world we will prevail and above all for our own way of life we will prevail. we must make the choice now to make sure that possibility becomes reality. thank you so much for having me. [applause]

>> senator hawley there are a lot of things i want to ask you about. we probably have time for just a few questions. in particular grateful and speaking on behalf of all of us at heritage the everyday americans who support her work financially every year and even some who support it with strictly defined military aid for ukraine. what they tell me in that trip if they feel hoodwinked. the heritage foundation will stand with you and any member of the senate who wants to fight the uni-party. thank you. >> absolutely. [applause] and the reason for that is as you identify the first question we need to ask on foreign policy is what's in the best interest of american typically we have made mistakes of the people in

that affects people around the world. what is the root cause of this thinking in d.c. given all of that data be pointed out and the other data out there and that is to say it so apparent that the greater threat to china. there are smart people in d.c. and even a few who may disagree, how do we fix that? how do we break that stranglehold that misguided thinking policy? and part of it is with the fall of the cold war in the fall of the berlin wall we had a moment in american foreign policy that is extended into wilsonian decades. woodrow wilson was a dedicated internationalist a dedicated globalist. he thought we should make the world safe for democracy. that was his line that he famously used and in the cold

where you have a whole generation of policymakers who said the wilsonian moment has now arrived. borders don't matter and unite america's uniqueness doesn't matter. we will make the world more like america and we will make america like the world. it will be this great global integration. the first president bush promoted something like this talking about open trade and borders. i think it turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea. policymakers have been not been able to free themselves of the grip of this wilsonianism and hasn't understand it undermines undermines american accepts and undermines american strength. i do think there's a class element to this. there's something we have to be frank about. the current economic policy order favors a certain class of people and favors people who have four-year college degrees or dance degrees and favors people who have the credentials

to prosper in a hyperglobalist economy. that's what favors. who does not favor? the people who fight our wars blue-collar workers, people who don't have much of a voice in washington. what are the reasons the uni-party is so fixated on this and can't disentangle themselves if they don't feel the pain that most americans are bearing because they belong to a narrow class of folks and they are divorced from the rest of america. that's a huge problem in american politics. i want to ask you a directly related follow-up question about how that dynamic affects what seemed to be rethinking on the political right about foreign policy. you are one of the leaders in that thinking and that is if you go to 2024 were 2030 and i don't want amid this about politics.

is it the project of american conservatism to embrace the hard reality of what you just described and articulate in a positive way one where a america is more restrained? is that the object that some conservatives are talking about when they are calling for a working-class conservative? what i mean there's a history for this in our party. for those of us who are conservative republicans there's a history of this. it does not mean isolationism. i'm not an isolationist. i come from a state that are number one industry is agriculture. we want to trade but on fair terms that are good for us. we want to see manufacturing jobs come back to this country and the jobs of the future take root in this country. in our party there are a number of historical parallels to this

going all the way back to theodore roosevelt and william mckinley at the turn of last century. where nationalist party who was national on foreign policy. we were not isolationist. >> we were a nationalist foreign-policy party. there's a tradition of that in our movement and their party. what that means is we look at the world and we ask what is going to make america safe and what is going to make america prosperous and what will protect all of the american people, not just the people who do well in a globalist economy. all of the american family. when we protect the american dream and allow the american project to first as part of our gift to the world. does america have a role to play in the world? you bet it does.

back in my short time here i've learned as many criticisms as some may have of an imperial city the one i would offer is the city of false dichotomies. for those of us who are reaganites who believe in -- support narrow strict military aid to ukraine and never imagined it would go above 100 billion. we were built in heritage was built, it many of your colleagues were billed as if to say merely wanting accountability for the americans recognizing there are graver threats that somehow we are isolationist. i'm curious, hugh had new members in the senate a new great house members as well. question about optimism and made them desperate for it. give us a view into your crystal ball in d.c. politics. do you see having more in your ranks when it comes to

commonsense foreign-policy? >> i do partly because it was lincoln who said he if the american people want it long enough they will get it. with the american people have been trying to say probably for decades is that they reject the uni-party but there's a reason why donald trump became the nominee of the republican party and there's a reason why bernie sanders almost became the nominee of the other party and probably would have without the superdelegates. just kidding. there's something funny about superdelegates. my point is voters in both parties from different political persuasions are trying to send party establishment and message. they don't like political incentives foreign policy of the last two decades. has not worked for them.

if you don't believe that come to my state and you can find in missouri small towns like the one i grew up in that they used to have local industries and is to have good paying manufacturing jobs that are gone now and you can tell them all you want that it's a net positive. all trade is good. it doesn't matter if the terms are unfair old. give them permanent trade. we will benefit from it. the question is who will benefit from the? they say way but who particularly in what we found is for most of the american people it isn't them. some but not most and we have to be honest about that and as conservatives we are in favor of conserving family neighborhoods churches these little platoons that make our society what it is going and went to see her economic policy at our foreign-policy and our domestic

cultural policy are intertwined. i see now why you were such a treasured heritage intern. the last question. you have to tend to important votes and we usually get to audience questions. we are grateful for your time and we always try at heritage not just to diagnose a problem and come up with a solution to give our audience members were there in person or on line arguing c-span are watching this a few weeks from now -- what can the american people due to further it? >> in the most immediate sense you can tell your member of congress that it's time to change course a this is why didn't directly answer your question about having additional cohorts.

i answer by own question. i think because voters want change you are seeing more members of congress get elected. the thing to do is to make it abundantly clear we have got to change course and we can start with ukraine aid. i voted for ukraine eight. i was in favor of targeting -- i have no idea we would fight the endless proxy work because that's not what we said we are going to do. lo and behold here we are. we should make abundantly clear that current policy is to stop and we can't keep going on and we need to get back to the basics. we need to be nationalist and there's nothing wrong with that. >> senator josh hawley thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. [applause] [inaudible conversations]