Ep 411 ｜ Understanding Biden's Foreign Policy ｜ Guest： Rebeccah Heinrichs
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Summary
Rebecca Heinrichs is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. She specializes in international relations and national security, and she is a mom of five awesome kids. In this episode, she talks about how she balances her family life with her work, how she got into politics, and why she thinks the Biden administration is a better choice than the Trump administration.
Transcript
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Today I am talking to Rebecca Heinrichs about foreign policy and in particular foreign policy
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as it relates to China, what we need to be thinking about, what we need to know, what
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And we're going to kind of look at the strategy of the Trump administration versus the projected
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strategy of the Biden administration, kind of compare and contrast those two things, why
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we have reason for optimism, why we also have some reasons for concern.
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And then she also gives some practical advice of what we can be doing as people and as families
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to protect ourselves and to ensure that American values, which we believe are good, are perpetuated
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So really excited for you to listen to this very informative conversation with Rebecca.
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Can you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do?
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I'm a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, which is a think tank in Washington, D.C.
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And I specialize in international relations, national security.
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And so I do all kinds of research and writing on those subjects.
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And I'm a mom and a wife and I have five children.
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You're literally one of my favorite people to follow on Instagram because your family is
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Each of your each of your children is just beautiful.
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And I just love following along in your life and all of the adventures that you guys are
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Can you tell us how you got into what you do now and how you how you balance that your
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Well, you know, I I studied history and political science at the Ashbrook Center.
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It's a political science program at Ashland University in Ohio from a small town in Ohio.
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And I I'd always been interested in politics generally and started to gravitate towards
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But then I was a freshman in college when 9-11 happened.
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And like a lot of people my age at that time, it was formative.
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And and but I think it was, you know, at Ashbrook, whenever I was really learning about
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the meaning of America and what the American founding meant, what it what it what our country
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really is and why it is so worthy of our love and affection.
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And then at the same time, September 11th happened.
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It was those two things that were especially formative for me.
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And I decided to pursue a career in rather I don't even like the word career, but decided
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to pursue just continue to work in the field of national security.
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I didn't really plan on being exactly here then.
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I just took one opportunity as as they came before me.
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He works in national security policy, too, and then had our first child in 2009.
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And then it was at that time that I decided, you know, I was working for a congressman on
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Capitol Hill and decided it was taking too much of my time and away from my new baby who
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And so I decided to file an LLC and then see if I can continue writing and researching
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from my home and from different think tanks and continue my scholarly work while having
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And so I had my first little baby, little girl, and then five babies later, we've got three
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Well, I really appreciate the work that you do.
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Even just following you on Twitter, you always add clarity to the conversation of what can be
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a very confusing and overwhelming conversation for a lot of people.
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I think we all wish that we knew more about foreign policy and national security for obvious
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reasons, very big subjects and important subjects.
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And so I'm wondering if you can break down for us, if you can compare and contrast in just,
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you know, simple terms, the foreign policy goals and actual accomplishments from the Trump
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administration versus what you think that we can probably expect from the foreign policy
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and national security goals of the Biden administration.
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So first of all, I think that one of the reasons people have a hard time staying, you know,
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up to speed on everything going on in foreign policy, international relations is because
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we're consumed with all the things that directly impact us on a day to day.
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And so, you know, that's why moms and dads are busy.
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It's kind of, you know, they try to keep track of what the biggest threats are, and then
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they have to go along with, you know, the things that are impacting their kids and what's
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So it's understandable, but we should know that, you know, the Trump administration, I
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would say one of their best accomplishments, biggest accomplishments, was shepherding the
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United States through this major change, seismic change in our relationship with China, which is
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And establishing that they are an adversary of the United States.
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They're not just this economic partner, even, where we just conduct trade with, that they
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actually pose the greatest threat to Americans and the American way of life over all the different
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And this is why, this is how you rack and stack.
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What are the biggest and most important threats facing the United States is their ability to do
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So you can have a country that's really doggedly willing to do harm, but they might not have the
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Really bad stuff, but can they do the, can they propose a existential, you know, threat to the
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And the country that stands out above all the other countries, even Russia, which Russia is
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another very serious threat to the United States and can do great harm, but even above the Russian
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It's because of their enormous economy and then how they've used that economy to pour into their
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military and then all the other bad, nefarious stuff that they're doing across multiple fronts
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I mean, we know that they're, um, a very large economic power and we know that America
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has really kind of aided and abetted their economic growth for at least a, I mean, a few
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Um, but can you talk about, you know, tangibly what some of those threats are just for people
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And this has been really the, the, the, the, the fault of, or who deserves the blame for
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how we got to this mess, um, from the American side.
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It's really a, a bipartisan problem of government and private sector that have sleepily kind of
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allowed China's rise over the last multiple decades, ever since Bill Clinton kind of ushered
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in China's ability to join the WTO to normalize economic relations.
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And, and this idea was the idea at the time was, and both Republicans and Democrats thought
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this and obviously big business thought this too, that that as China became richer, that
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China would liberalize politically their human rights, their business practices, and they
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And, and they, and for a while they kind of hid, hid, hid what they were doing, kind
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of, they, they hid their hand, they bid their time is what they say.
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And, and as they became stronger, I think they, I think it was like every, every eight years
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or so, like doubled their economy since 1979 or something just enormous.
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And so now what they're doing across multiple fronts, they just have all kinds of spies, um,
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I think, uh, FBI director Ray said that, I think it was trying to get the fact exactly right.
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Um, every 10 hours, the, uh, there's a new China related counterintelligence case that's
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So right now, I mean, it's just constantly by, um, that that's our biggest, um, espionage
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So they're, so they, they do it in a variety of ways.
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One of the things that they do is they get buried into these academic institutions or labs.
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Um, and they just, they, they pretend as though, and because of our generosity and
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openness, you know, we don't, we don't look sideways at people who are of Chinese ethnicity
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and think that there's some sort of dual loyalty at all.
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Um, but the, but the, but the hard truth of the matter is many of these Chinese nationalists
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So they're taking scientific research, medical research, and, and, and then they just, um,
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uh, business, they just take it right back over to the Chinese communist party.
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Um, and it's not even just that kind of stuff too.
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They come in and they do these work with, um, uh, you know, those who still have ties
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And then those, those spies go back to, to China and then they patent the, the manufacturing
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And then they just steal all of this intellectual property that are, that belongs to the hard
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work, blood, sweat, and tears, you know, poured into by, by American companies.
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And they've done this for years and it's really just the Trump administration that's just kind
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of ripped the top off of this to expose all the different ways they're spying and stealing
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through our technology and, and, um, and direct espionage like that.
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Does that have anything to do with the so-called trade war or the tariffs?
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Um, I mean, that was a huge point of discussion, even just between conservatives, whether or
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not it was the right thing to do to engage in that kind of, um, adversarial behavior, some
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So I think that the best way to answer this too, cause I got pressed on this all the time
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whenever I would say, look, look what Donald Trump is doing at these, these great things.
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And it's stuff that Democrats, Republicans didn't want to do because of all the money
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lost and all of the access to, um, the Chinese economy that, that American businesses still
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But what it was about Donald Trump that made all of his national security people across,
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I mean, Secretary Pompeo, his different secretaries of defense, national security advisors, FBI
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directors, they were all able to make serious changes on all these fronts because of President
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Trump's kind of populist nationalist team USA Jersey that he wore.
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And so there, it just, it didn't, it was the trade war.
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That's what started saying, you know, you know, started pushing this and saying, I don't
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believe that the United States should continue to take it on the chin for some sort of greater
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ideal for, for globalism or, or, you know, we're all just, yeah, it's going to harm
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American businesses, but in the end, it's going to help the Chinese people.
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And it's going to help all these other companies and tech companies that benefit from cheap
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labor in China and all the other disadvantages that the United States has versus China.
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So it was that brash personality of Donald Trump pushing back and really saying, this
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And that kind of broke all these other barriers on all these other issues.
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And then once the coronavirus pandemic happened, I mean, and, and, and Trump realized how much
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China was to blame for this, they tabled the trade stuff and then it was game on.
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I mean, it was sanctions and constant rebukes on all these different fronts and arresting
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And so the rapid fire changes really happened in the last year, building up to the last year.
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And then it was just a crash of all of this good stuff.
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I think that makes it very difficult for the Biden administration to completely undo.
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Secretary Pompeo was always very clear about the threat of China and the Chinese Communist
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I think just the other day, we're recording this in January, but just the other day called
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him like a fear mongering clown or something exaggerating about, or he, they said that he was
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exaggerating about the Uyghur Muslim treatment that's happening in China.
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That's something that Secretary Pompeo has talked a lot about that.
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Unfortunately, it seems like some people in Washington and just large swaths of Americans
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kind of look away from, of course, I think every decent person would say, yeah, we're
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But even so, some people are very slow to criticize the CCP and their practices, either
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because of money reasons, like you said, we want access to the Chinese economy, or even
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just, I think, some political correctness is at play there with people thinking that if
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you criticize the Chinese Communist Party and any practices of the regime, then you're
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And all of that, both of those mentalities inhibit us from taking proper action to kind
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of to remove our dependence on such a hostile regime and their economy, correct?
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I think that the more the more Republicans and there's some Democrats that are willing
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to do it to talk about the underlying ideology that motivates the Chinese Communist Party,
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This is something that Secretary Pompeo, as you said, was very eloquent about trying to
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explain because all countries, there is no there is no amoral void that exists.
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You know, we all have ideas about what is right and good and in our interests, and it is what
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Countries are the same way, and regimes, and so the ideology that motivates, animates
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And that's why these internment camps are, it's so important for us to understand and
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know what's going on, not just because these poor people, we want to make sure that we're
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using our, any ability that we have to, to not exasperate the problem and to help, but
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also because it tells us about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party.
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And it should not surprise us then when a country that has such disregard for human dignity and
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the way they treat their own people, of course, they're going to have terribly unfair trade
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Of course, they're going to steal intellectual property.
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Of course, they're going to do all of these things.
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They don't have some kind of limiting principle.
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There's no limiting principle, and it's exactly right.
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And then the world that they want to shape, they want to take the leadership reins from
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the United States, and then they want to shape the world according to what they believe is
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And all of that is to empower Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
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It's not for all of the reasons that the United States and the other allies and partners
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that we have in the free world believe that are right and good.
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And so the Democrats, many of them do not like to talk about the ideology.
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And then as soon as you start talking about those Uyghur camps, those internment camps,
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then the next question is, well, then why are these American companies investing in the
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And if there's no separation between the private sector, if there is no private sector, and
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there's no separation between civilian work and military work, their civ-mil fusion doctrine,
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you know, what we really need to have a gut check about how much we are actually responsible
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and culpable, these American companies, for these massive internment camps.
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And it's really stunning how quickly some of these corporations and sports organizations
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are willing to sell out their own fellow Americans in order to work with China.
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Even through some of the political messaging of these organizations, they are more than willing
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to take a knee, literally and figuratively, to social justice causes here and say that
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people who voted for Donald Trump are terrible and, you know, they believe they're on the
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right side of history for being on the side of Black Lives Matter and things like that here.
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At the same time, actively profiting off of a regime whose economy is built on slave labor
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And they can say, you know, I don't have a right to criticize that country.
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I'm, you know, have to criticize my own country because I live in America.
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But if you're purposely and actively partnering with that regime, well, that becomes part of
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We see it as something that is far off, not really a threat to us.
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And I think that's I think that's a mistake, don't you?
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And I think it's it's even more than a mistake in terms of the moral problems that you just
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I mean, you do not have the moral authority to talk about, you know, certain issues of social
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injustice when you are blatantly, flagrantly willing to choose not to, for instance, condemn
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You know, there has been any time there is like somebody who works for one of these big
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professional sports teams, makes a comment about that, and they're immediately asked to
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apologize or to no longer discuss that you think of LeBron James or whoever the high profile
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I mean, they're doing that because the Chinese Communist Party has directed that, and then
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the company then puts pressure on those Americans.
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And so or even like a censorship in higher education, where they take all of this money
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from the Chinese Communist Party with only, you know, they're on the condition that they're
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They're not allowed talking about the Tibetans.
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They're not allowed to talk about all these other horrible crimes.
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They're not allowed to talk about Hong Kong and how the Chinese Communist Party is just
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overrunning these freedom-loving people in Hong Kong.
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And so it really kind of strikes to the heart of what China is up to.
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And then they're not satisfied with merely oppressing their own people.
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They really are trying to shape the world in ways that are conducive to helping them gain
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And so if Americans are willing to be censored, I mean, that's why I get worried even just
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You know, somebody on Facebook or Twitter or some other social media thing, you know,
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We should all be very pro-free speech and freedom of expression because I call it our
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The more tolerant we are of censorship at home, the more susceptible we are to the kinds of
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censorship that the Chinese Communist Party wants to enforce on the United States to harm
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And especially when it's done in the name of public safety.
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I mean, we believe that Twitter and Facebook should have enforceable rules, but we want them
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And we also want there to be a narrow definition of what incitement of violence looks like and
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the things that they are actually able to enforce.
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Because when we see so much bias in the censorship process on social media, that's when things get
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But you see people, in particular on the left, defending it by saying, well, this is for public
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This is, you know, that was fascist propaganda that that conservative was spreading.
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It just reminds me, and the cancel culture that's also involved in all of that, it reminds
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me very much of the cultural revolution in China several decades ago of these shaming,
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Shaming or struggle sessions is what it was called, where publicly they would bring someone
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into the public arena, into the street, publicly shame them, torture them, murder them, or
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There's pictures of, you know, their fellow countrymen pointing in their face and yelling
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And this was all under the guise of public safety.
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This was all under the guise of making sure that they got rid of this person committing
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And you see the same kind of thing happening here.
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And for those people who say, well, you know, the First Amendment is still intact.
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But all of these communist regimes rose to power, not on political revolutions first, but
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So to your point, if people are able to just in our private lives call for the cancellation
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and the life ruining of people and the censorship of people that we just disagree with, you are
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creating an environment here that is ripe for the same kind of totalitarian takeover that
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we've seen, not just in China, but around the world.
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This is something that conservatives have been talking about now for the last several
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Who has the ability to control information, the flow of information, and then with that
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information, control what people are seeing, what they're not seeing, and then shaming
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people or stigmatizing people who have, as you said, wrong think.
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How quickly we went from, you know, some of these, the rioters on January 6th who went from
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protesters to rioters to insurrectionists to terrorists, and now it's people who voted
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for Donald Trump might also have terrorist sympathies or extremist sympathies.
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And so you can see that this is a very, very slippery slope.
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Well, if this is how you stigmatize people and then the people who are able to harm those
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And if big tech is actually working with and sympathetic towards or wants that access
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to the Chinese market, you know, how much is the Chinese Communist Party the one that
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is influencing the flow of information in the United States?
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And the second point I think is really critical, especially for your young listeners too, is,
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you know, China also, you think about all these apps that we use, you know, TikTok became
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something that was really talked about a lot during the Trump administration because they
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were really looking at ending TikTok in the United States.
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And it's because China will also, if we don't care about our own, you know, information
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being stolen, our day-to-day life, you know, Americans used to care about that stuff.
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It would just kind of, just even the don't tread on me and me, or, you know, would just
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I don't want my information about where I go and all my facial recognition taken by our
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government, but certainly not by an enemy government, by the Chinese Communist Party.
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The Chinese Communist Party will take all of that data.
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It goes directly into, you know, their algorithms, and they use it for artificial intelligence,
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You might be 19 years old and think that what you're doing isn't going to affect you or
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embarrass you in 10, 15, 20 years when you're looking for a job.
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But just think about that the Chinese Communist Party can have all that and is keeping a dossier
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on you, just like what they do for their own people, and how that can impact other things
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So it is very troubling, and we need to have not just Republicans, but Democrats, too,
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over many, many years talking about this because it's going to require changes on the part of
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the American people, not just the government, to do what we need to do to protect the United
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States and our way of life against China in particular.
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I think one thing that's going to make that difficult is that when you kind of hear some
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of the things coming from academia and then repeated by, in particular, I would say, some
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leftists in America, it sounds so similar to the propaganda that we've heard really from
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the past 100 years in Soviet Russia about America and American imperialists and the selfishness
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of capitalism and the evils of the United States.
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I read a book about North Korea about a year ago now, where you read the propaganda that these
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young children were learning in school about America and about Japan, too.
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The evil imperialists, the selfishness of capitalism, really saying that all oppression and all poverty,
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not just in North Korea, but in the world, is because of the selfishness of Americans.
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And these eventual dissidents realized after they left North Korea that America
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had been sending foreign aid to North Korea for a very long time and it never got to the
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This is propaganda that I don't know if it's directly through the Chinese Communist Party,
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but has absolutely infiltrated our public school system, has infiltrated academia, has
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infiltrated diversity and inclusion trainings, corporate trainings, has infiltrated just our
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And if China and these foreign regimes can make us hate ourselves, as so many unfortunately
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seem to in America, then that means we're ripe for the taking, right?
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Well, it doesn't even have to come from China in terms of influencing this.
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It can just be these liberal intellectuals who have gotten to the point where they're teaching,
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you know, you've talked a lot about on your show, the 1619 Project, that really the American
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founding wasn't 76, the, you know, where the meaning and the ideology, the underpinnings
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of the American regime is the belief that we're all created equal before God and that we all
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And it's in that, you know, we give government, our rights come from God and we give government
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the ability to protect us and they're supposed to defend those rights.
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And that's how Americans think, and that's how we used to teach it in schools.
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And now it's this new thinking pushed by this, you know, the intellectuals from the
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left, from higher education, that actually our founding was inherently flawed, it was
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And so really, the United States doesn't really have any moral standing.
00:26:32.960
We need to completely remake ourselves because the founding was flawed and it was terrible
00:26:37.580
And if you have enough Americans who believe that and who don't understand all of these
00:26:43.960
things that make America unique and exceptional, then whenever I go to them or people go to
00:26:48.560
them and they say, listen, you know, the Chinese Communist Party wants to replace all these great
00:26:52.960
things about America with this, these things that, that, that, that communism values.
00:26:57.480
But then you have all of these college students who are like, but I like those things that
00:27:04.960
We don't have any national antibodies to push this stuff back.
00:27:08.420
And so, um, that's why, you know, I spend a lot of time talking about the external threat
00:27:12.500
coming from China, but then the internal threat where we, we need to make sure that we have
00:27:16.780
a revival of truly good American patriotism that is, um, is, is a bulwark against racism.
00:27:26.100
And it's a bulwark against the kinds of things that the left accuses, um, many conservatives
00:27:31.540
of, and you, you need to have that in order to, to withstand kind of the onslaught that
00:27:38.100
And that doesn't mean looking, you know, looking back over history and pretending like everything's
00:27:42.280
been perfect or that at our founding America was perfect.
00:27:45.440
But I think that, you know, the mistake, the 1619 project makes, um, and a lot of the
00:27:51.140
critical race theory makes is this idea that America has always been endemically, um, racist.
00:27:57.100
And it just, it is just as much today as it was in 1619.
00:28:04.180
And therefore something like, um, the founding and this idea of liberty and justice for all
00:28:09.300
and everyone being equal in the eyes of God, because, uh, we still had racism then, and
00:28:14.120
there were some founders that owned slaves while it's all just moot, but really it's not
00:28:18.920
either the constitution was moot or our country was perfect at our founding.
00:28:23.440
That seed of liberty and justice for all, it was a seed and it's grown.
00:28:27.960
I mean, Frederick Douglass thought that the constitution was a glorious liberty document
00:28:32.200
because that idea of liberty and justice for all of everyone being equal in the eyes of
00:28:39.640
It wasn't at, it wasn't flourishing in 1776, but it's gotten better and better.
00:28:45.760
We've righted our wrongs and we've extended that promise that the founders, I think, were
00:28:53.740
And so I think we can have a very accurate view of the injustices in America and still
00:28:59.340
be patriotic and say, wow, the ideas and ideals upon which we were founded are really good.
00:29:04.380
And when we let those flourish, America is really good.
00:29:08.220
But unfortunately, like you said, we've got a lot of people who just want to throw out
00:29:13.660
And I think that just allows fertile soil for someone like the CCP to come in and say, yeah,
00:29:20.980
And actually, a lot of those on the left will look back, though, and they'll actually look
00:29:25.340
at the history of the United States and they'll disagree with your conclusion.
00:29:29.000
And my conclusion is that on the whole, though, the United States on net has done so much good,
00:29:34.560
has so much has done so much good because of those founding principles in our own country,
00:29:38.420
but has done so much good since the end of World War Two.
00:29:41.960
And then after George H.W. Bush, George H.W. Bush was the last president to kind of sit
00:29:47.540
at the top of the American apex of military power and economic power where the American
00:29:52.580
led world really that's what we're thinking about when there really wasn't any other power
00:29:57.020
that could come near touching us at the close of the Cold War.
00:30:02.240
And then that's whenever you saw you saw China, China's rise.
00:30:05.840
And then American preeminence getting chipped away, chipped away, chipped away to the point
00:30:09.460
where now we're much closer to peers than we were preeminent power or where the United
00:30:15.100
But that because of the United States having so much military strength, economic strength
00:30:20.060
and a greater sense of cultural confidence in what America was and the good that we were
00:30:24.940
doing, yes, always bad because we're made up of human beings and human beings because
00:30:29.420
And our we are we are we do do bad things, but we also do great good.
00:30:34.920
But these these American principles allowed us to do great good.
00:30:38.260
And as the United States was and has been the leader of the free world, more good has
00:30:45.200
But many liberals look back and they say, actually, no, if you look at everything that we do,
00:30:49.420
everything the United States touches, it goes bad.
00:30:52.860
And the United States actually does more bad than good.
00:30:56.020
I would just point out the New York Times wrote this ridiculous article recently about
00:31:02.040
how, you know, just how confused so many liberals are trying to urge readers to to look at how
00:31:08.400
China during the coronavirus pandemic actually was showing us their new version of freedom,
00:31:13.940
that even though they don't have civil liberties in China, I mean, even though they don't even
00:31:21.300
though they had to literally weld their citizens or, you know, into their homes.
00:31:29.660
Or I mean, there is all kinds of horrible things that I have not corroborated, so I won't
00:31:34.080
But terrible, terrible, inhumane things that to me highlight how the Chinese Communist Party
00:31:38.380
does not does not value the intrinsic dignity of their people.
00:31:43.280
But now because of the way they crack down, people can walk around and go to go to school and
00:31:49.080
And so they have their new version of freedom, which is trading all of these liberties that
00:31:53.020
Americans value for the sake of, you know, whatever there exists, you know, their ability
00:31:56.980
to move around today, even though they're in this massive surveillance state.
00:32:00.080
And so it's a confusion about what freedom is and about the purpose of government and what
00:32:06.200
is actually good for human beings and what actually gives us the most ability to have maximum
00:32:25.060
What do you anticipate from the Biden administration?
00:32:27.140
You talked about how the Trump administration was really strong against China and how it will
00:32:31.880
be hard for the Biden administration to undo some of those things.
00:32:35.080
But I mean, we saw at the Biden inauguration, state-affiliated media in China was celebrating
00:32:49.380
And I just it seems like Democrats aren't quite as strong in taking a stance against China.
00:32:54.620
Do you think those concerns are valid or do you have some hope for this administration
00:32:59.180
and continuing to take a strong stance against the CCP?
00:33:01.940
So I always try to have a realistic picture, not a rosy picture of what I think is going
00:33:07.820
to happen with just a little bit of constant Midwestern American hope thrown in there.
00:33:13.840
So so I think that there are there are some individuals who've been nominated by the Biden
00:33:21.300
administration who do see the China threat more clearly.
00:33:25.160
I've debated him on PBS before on China's handling of the coronavirus, and he I definitely was
00:33:31.360
taking a much stronger stance at blaming and putting the onus for the pandemic on the Chinese
00:33:37.160
They're lying about it, which they constantly do today about the origins of the virus and
00:33:42.820
And he really didn't though he thought that the Chinese government messed up.
00:33:46.240
He still put a much more of the blame, I think, on the handling of the United States
00:33:51.320
And so you see some kind of soft peddling rhetoric over the course of the of the many
00:33:58.340
months whenever they were attacking Donald Trump, the Trump administration.
00:34:02.240
But during the nomination hearing, some of the rhetoric changed and it was a little bit
00:34:07.240
He did agree with the designation of the the the what was the official designation of the
00:34:15.600
human rights violations of China against the Uyghurs, et cetera.
00:34:20.480
So we're seeing some good signaling from some of the senior officials coming out.
00:34:27.260
Joe Biden has been in government for decades, decades.
00:34:31.200
And so he has a trail of evidence of what he will do.
00:34:34.700
And he has never stuck his neck out in any serious way to lead or to push back on China.
00:34:40.180
And in fact, whenever he was asked about China all through leading up to the to the election,
00:34:45.580
He downplayed the threat and he said it wasn't a threat.
00:34:47.960
So they're not folks, folks, they're not bad folks and all kinds of business dealings with
00:34:54.200
individuals in the administration who continue to work with who worked with China.
00:34:58.780
And so I don't know if we you know, I'm not confident that they fully understand the ideological
00:35:04.500
motivation of the Chinese Communist Party and why it's a threat.
00:35:08.680
And so, you know, my hope is they get in there and get all these intel briefings and see how
00:35:13.020
how bad it is and see what the Trump administration did.
00:35:16.300
But a lot of these policies that the Trump administration put in place, we can thank Pompeo for that.
00:35:20.700
We can thank the National Security Council for that.
00:35:25.400
It's going to be almost impossible to overturn some of it.
00:35:29.020
And some of that, I think, does the Biden administration a lot of good.
00:35:33.400
You know, Joe Biden can go in there and be the congenial Joe Biden and not this, you know,
00:35:39.180
And he can still build on the progress that the Trump administration already established.
00:35:45.160
But I do think that they they will undo quite a bit of it.
00:35:48.260
They're always looking for a conciliatory relationship with with countries like that.
00:35:55.900
But I think our biggest threat is going to be going to do good stuff on the military.
00:35:58.960
I think that they're still going to try to work with our partners and allies in in the
00:36:04.280
That's all going to be good with Australia and Japan.
00:36:07.800
There's good statements about defending Taiwan.
00:36:11.500
Where the weakest part is going to be the Biden administration is all the stuff you and I just
00:36:16.520
If they continue pushing this critical race theory stuff, they continue this identity politics
00:36:24.960
And we need to have a much harder middle as a people and as diverse as we are as a people,
00:36:32.340
This great, you know, just, you know, different different ethnicities and different religions
00:36:39.640
and all these things that make Americans great.
00:36:41.340
We have to have some kind of unifying cord that keeps us all together that acts again
00:36:46.600
as that, you know, that bulwark against what the Chinese Communist Party is going to continue
00:36:52.120
to try to do over the next many decades on multiple fronts.
00:36:55.980
And critical race theory, identity politics, which we talked a lot about on this podcast,
00:37:00.040
it works directly against that because it purposely categorizes people.
00:37:05.120
It splits people apart by their race, by their sexuality, by their religion, and not just
00:37:11.980
splits people apart, but pits people against each other based on an allocation of oppression
00:37:17.260
So when Biden and his inauguration talked about unity, there were a lot of beautiful words
00:37:23.060
But you can't peddle identity politics and talk about unity because the purpose of all of
00:37:30.380
The purpose of all of that is splitting Americans apart.
00:37:35.260
And at one point, I think, you know, we at least had, okay, yes, we're different in a variety
00:37:41.300
of ways, but we all believe in liberty and justice for all.
00:37:44.860
But even greater than that, we all believe in some kind of great moral lawgiver that gives us
00:37:50.900
The less we believe that, that we're all human beings made in the image of God and therefore
00:37:55.700
have inherent value, which is what is supposed to set America apart from someone like China.
00:38:01.220
Then it gets tougher and tougher, I think, to make the case for personal liberty, personal
00:38:07.600
privacy, personal autonomy, because human beings are just viewed as these material objects.
00:38:13.760
Why can't they be controlled by a tyrannical state?
00:38:21.500
These values, that's really the enemy, I think, of the CCP is an ideological enemy,
00:38:27.620
a philosophical, a religious enemy, not as much of, you know, a military power, although
00:38:37.500
I think that Americans can wrap their mind around, okay, what is the Chinese Communist Party
00:38:43.640
You know, can they close us off from the Indo-Pacific region?
00:38:49.200
They're going to try to do to Taiwan or they would like to do to Taiwan what they did to
00:38:53.000
And then if they did that, then they could close out the United States from being able
00:38:57.460
to, you know, maintain free and open seas, you know, to make good on our security commitments,
00:39:04.020
those great democratic countries that we not only we help, but they help us in Japan and
00:39:09.160
Australia and South Korea and these other countries.
00:39:12.960
That is definitely a threat because if China is able to close us out of that region, then
00:39:17.700
that is effectively the end of the American-led order.
00:39:20.800
That means that it's now a Sino-led, it's Chinese-led.
00:39:25.360
But on the point that you just made, I think it's just absolutely fundamental and critical.
00:39:30.960
So whenever people, you know, just everyday Americans say, well, what can I do?
00:39:34.500
One of the best things you can do is bone up on what it means to be an American and make
00:39:39.600
sure that you're instilling those things in your children.
00:39:42.440
Make sure that they understand why it shouldn't be acceptable to censor speech and why that's
00:39:47.020
so critical, why religious liberty is so important at home and why we're not going to accept some
00:39:51.440
of these overbearing restrictions that are irrational because of the coronavirus from
00:40:01.180
And we have to have this sense of, again, what it means to be an American, regardless
00:40:07.100
of, you know, ethnicity or race, something that the Democrats are always trying to blame
00:40:15.120
But, you know, conservatives do care about those things.
00:40:17.720
And you have to have enough Americans that have great, deep patriotism and appreciation for
00:40:24.140
our rights and also, you know, strong desires to freely worship and care for our families
00:40:31.700
and not having the government, the state come in and tell you how to raise your children,
00:40:37.920
All of that is going to be critical if we are going to remain, you know, the greatest,
00:40:42.700
most exceptional nation on earth and be the leader of the free world, which I think is
00:40:51.960
And don't let anyone tell you that patriotism is wrong or bigoted or that America seeking
00:40:58.020
to be the world power is somehow wrong, because there's always going to, I think people forget,
00:41:05.340
China is not OK with just being equal, like on equal playing field and everyone just getting
00:41:12.440
And if the country who believes in liberty and justice for all and has upheld that in so
00:41:18.080
many ways for so long is not the preeminent power, the country who believes in putting
00:41:23.420
people in internment camps for believing something different will be the preeminent power.
00:41:30.280
So like you said, is it an it is a noble and worthy endeavor to make sure that the United
00:41:35.700
States stays in the place that we should be as the leader of the free world.
00:41:40.640
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
00:41:43.960
Can you tell everyone where they can find you, where they can follow your work?
00:41:55.140
Or you can go to Hudson Institute and all of my work is posted there, my articles and essays.
00:42:00.280
And one of the things that I've been tracking, too, which, Ali, you just mentioned a few minutes
00:42:05.180
ago, too, about how we can be sort of deceived and whether or not things are true, whether
00:42:09.940
or not it's Chinese communist propaganda, one of the things that I've been tracking and
00:42:13.800
I've been written several articles about, too, is how American media, if it doesn't,
00:42:18.920
if these journalists don't have sort of a pro-America bent, but they don't and they
00:42:22.840
don't know how to tell the difference between Chinese communist propaganda and what isn't,
00:42:26.560
they've been just repeating what comes out of the CCP.
00:42:30.320
And we've seen I have been tracking a lot of that, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.
00:42:34.480
And so we need to make sure that we understand, you know, what is just Chinese communist propaganda
00:42:39.460
being perpetuated by even American media company, you know, reporters, et cetera, and what is
00:42:45.840
We need to be very discerning, very, very careful.
00:42:48.620
And also just, you know, the other thing I would just encourage your viewers, too, this
00:42:51.480
is not anything to be panicked about or being, you know, something that we should have great
00:42:56.280
Um, we can have, uh, confidence in knowing, um, that, um, as, as you mentioned, too, that
00:43:03.580
we have this great creator who is just and good and, um, and we can move forward though
00:43:10.180
and just pray for our leaders and for the, for greater discernment and not just have great
00:43:14.880
anxiety over it, but we need to do our part in all the small little ways that we can in
00:43:18.980
our various vocations to uphold these principles that we know are right and good.