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Oct. 7, 2024 - Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy
01:19:42
Exclusive Debate | The TRUTH About US Foreign Policy @SteamboatInstitute
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One of the most important debates happening nationally and globally is America's role in the world.
With conflicts around the globe, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the attack on Israel by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, and China's aggression toward Taiwan, there is much debate and difference of opinion among our nation's leaders and our citizenry on the extent to which the U.S. should be involved in resolving these conflicts.
We invite all of our audience members both here with us at VMI and those who are watching on the live stream to respond with your view on this resolution.
Agree?
Disagree or undecided before the debate begins in just a moment using the QR code provided.
You should have received a text link and you can also use the QR code on your the card on your seat.
After the debate we're then going to ask your opinion again to see if your opinions have changed.
It's not about picking winners and losers of tonight's debate but it's more about gauging how opinions shifted.
To introduce our speakers and moderator for this evening.
So I would like to ask them to go ahead and come out and take their seats and then I will introduce all three of them and then we will begin with opening statements.
So let's welcome to our speakers and moderator.
Okay, I'm going to introduce all three and they will remain seated and then Tom Rogan will take over as moderator and we will begin with opening statements.
Arguing the affirmative on tonight's resolution is John Bolton, a lawyer and diplomat who has served in four presidential administrations.
Welcome Ambassador Bolton.
Arguing the negative on tonight's resolution is Vivek Ramaswamy, American business leader, New York Times best-selling author, and former top 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
Let's give a warm welcome to Vivek Ramaswamy.
And now I'm going to turn it over to our moderator, Tom Rogan.
This is an important discussion, obviously, and it Probably couldn't come at a better time.
The motion, the resolution, the U.S. should use its diplomatic and military power around the globe to ensure America's national security.
As you can see on the screen, we've had some answers so far, but we'll see what happens at the end of the debate.
I would encourage you to cast your vote when it comes to the end.
But on that note, I will invite Ambassador Bolton to give his opening remarks.
Well, thank you very much.
It's a great pleasure to be here to debate this important topic.
I can say I'm a very strong proponent of this resolution.
Until recent years, it would have been simply considered common sense and a reflection of American history.
But for a number of reasons, I think we've lost at the top political leadership level of both parties in this country a real understanding of American national security.
I think the Tragically, the immediate underlying cause for that was the victory in the Cold War won by the American-led alliance.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, many people in the United States, in Europe, around the world, thought we had reached the end of history.
There would be no more global geopolitical confrontation.
Economics would take care of everything.
After all, as Bill Clinton said, it's the economy, stupid.
We had a peace dividend because there would be no more international conflict.
We could cut defense budgets.
We could spend it on domestic welfare programs, and the United States did that, the Europeans did that, and we have lived to regret it.
And I think it's this real lack of understanding, this ability to talk to the American people, to explain the threats and challenges we face around the world, and what you need to do to protect American interests.
That has led to the real manifestation of a problem that's affected us for the past five to ten years and I think is growing worse.
And that is the re-emergence in our body politic of isolationism for the first time in a significant way since the 1930s.
Now, I don't like these bumper sticker terms myself particularly.
It's not a set term.
Ideology, they don't have ten points, it varies, some people are more or less isolationist, but it is a retreat, I think, from the real American history, and it rests in many respects on a mythology about American history.
That there was a time when we were happily separate from the rest of the world, free from any involvement in their conflicts, Happy to do our own thing until somehow in World War I we got thrust into it.
We were able to back away after that and then came World War II and we got thrust back into it and then followed the Cold War.
But now we can think again about those broad oceans that protect us as if those broad oceans aren't Barriers, but highways for adversaries.
And this notion believes that it has historical roots in George Washington's farewell address, where he talked about avoiding entangling alliances.
And if we just did that, we would be peaceful, and our economy would be exactly the same as it is now, and we wouldn't have to worry about all these foreign disturbances.
I would make the argument, and I would make it at greater length if I had more time, that the United States has never been isolationist.
We have always been part of the wider world.
We have had interest around the world from our beginning.
And George Washington himself knew that better than anybody else.
It is a fact that the United States would never have been independent Were it not for French material aid, military force, financial aid, and the rest of it.
And then later from Spain and the Netherlands.
Here's a fun fact for you.
90% of the gunpowder used by the Continental Army came from France.
Now, if we had said, oh, we don't want any of that foreign gunpowder, we would still speak with the same accent that Tom has.
Washington's farewell address, which you should read in its entirety, was a very carefully thought out legacy that Washington wanted to leave to tell this new and perilously weak nation to avoid getting involved in European conflicts where we didn't have a real interest.
Because he had a longer-range vision, which we have now achieved.
So everybody remembers the line about avoiding entangling alliances.
Let me read one brief passage further on in the farewell address from Washington.
He said, if we remain one people, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance.
When belligerent nations will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation.
When we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
In other words, Washington understood that the nation had to grow, had to become stronger, before it could really exercise freedom.
Its influence internationally.
And you know, that's what the United States started to do from the beginning.
Let me just give you two examples.
In 1783, the year our independence was guaranteed by the Treaty of Versailles, Robert Morris, the financier of the American Revolution, commissioned a ship to engage in trading, a large vessel.
That ship was called The Empress of China.
And its first voyage was to China, all the way around the world.
This was not the vision of a group of people who wanted to sit by their firesides along the Atlantic coast knitting.
This was not an isolationist approach.
In the early 1800s, Thomas Jefferson fought multiple wars with the Barbary pirates.
Not wanting to follow the European pattern of paying them tribute.
You want to know where the marine hem got the shores of Tripoli?
In the 1800s, From Thomas Jefferson when we developed a slogan that we would do well to remember today, millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.
I could go on.
This is the history of a country that built what Thomas Jefferson called an empire of liberty all the way across.
Our empire still survives in faraway places like Florida, Texas, California, Alaska, Hawaii.
America has never been Inward looking.
It has never been isolationist, and it should never be today.
Thank you very much.
So first of all, I'd like to thank the Steamboat Institute for hosting this debate and VMI for welcoming us.
It's been a great few hours here meeting the cadets.
And I also want to take a moment to thank Ambassador Bolton for participating in this debate.
He has experience likely greater than probably anybody in this large room, and I hope we're all able to learn from that, including through the open dialogue that we have through this debate.
I do think that the path to truth runs through free speech and open debate, and I'm hoping that's exactly what we open up tonight.
As the resolution is drafted, it's very hard to disagree on the face of it that the U.S. should use diplomatic power and military might to advance America's interests.
That's hard to disagree with, and I wouldn't do that.
But I think the essence of what's at stake is whether or not the United States, and the way I read it, actually at its core meaning, is whether or not the United States has a role to play as a global policeman.
And the answer to that question for me is an absolute no.
I have little doubt that Ambassador Bolton and I actually share the same goal for the United States of America and the question of our foreign policy, which is to make the United States of America a stronger nation.
But where I think we have some disagreements, and at times deep disagreements, is in the question of how we exactly do it.
I appreciated the reference to American history, and I frankly learned a few things from your opening remarks from history dating back to 250 years ago.
What I'd like to do in my opening is to refer to the history of the last 25 years and the results of that interventionist foreign policy.
Let's start with just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There's the financial cost.
$8 trillion on those two wars alone.
That doesn't include other engagements in other parts of the world, including the recent Ukraine costs or other parts of the Middle East.
That's at a moment where our national debt is $34 trillion, well on our way to the interest payments on our national debt, being the largest line item on our federal budget.
That won't fall on Ambassador Bolton's or my generation's shoulders so much as it will on the generation of the cadets who are in the audience today.
But it's not just the financial cost of those wars, of course.
It's the human cost, including the cost to Americans themselves.
8,000, nearly 7,000 to 8,000 American lives lost.
Men and women who died in those wars.
53,000 Americans who were wounded or injured.
30,000 more deaths if you count the suicides just afterwards.
And if the financial costs and the human costs weren't persuasive enough about the folly of those wars, I would further add that the crisis in Europe, for those who care about the strength of our allies, the mass migration crisis in Europe today is actually in part a direct function of our failed intervention in the Middle East.
A lot of the mass migration from Muslim countries is the direct consequence of destabilization that the United States played a role in ceding.
Now, I have no doubt that the people in the audience here Already, to make the ultimate sacrifice for the country, should our country require it.
That's why I respect all of you who are here for what you do.
That being said, we cannot in good conscience send America's sons and daughters to go die in a war if we haven't identified what the objective of that war really is.
And the reason I'm against the resolution as I see it, which is whether or not the United States should be the world's global policeman, is the evidence suggests that we have failed miserably.
For that $8 trillion, for those 7,000 lives, for the 53,000 injuries, for the 30,000 more suicides, for the aggregate chaos in Europe as a consequence of that collateral damage.
What exactly happened?
Well, let's take a review of recent history.
Twenty years later, the Taliban, for God's sake, is still in charge in Afghanistan.
All the stronger, even more so than when we arrived with 80-plus billion dollars of U.S. military equipment that we left behind.
Iraq, I would argue, is a more destabilized country, more vulnerable to Iranian incursion than before we showed up.
So should we be willing to make a sacrifice, including the ultimate sacrifice for our country when required?
Yes.
But it better darn well to actually be to advance American interests rather than to undermine those same interests.
And over the course of our conversation, a respectful challenge I would offer to Ambassador Bolton is to identify any one of the examples in which we have adopted an interventionist foreign policy in the last 20 years.
You could argue now Ukraine.
What is a single example that we could point to where we've actually been successful in seeing that through?
And I think the absence of a good answer to that question is a damning indictment of the foreign policy interventionism of the last 20 years.
But to those who wouldn't find any of those arguments persuasive alone, let me leave you with one more.
Which is that this has distracted us from focusing on the ultimate national security threat that we actually do face, which we fail to confront, which is the rise of the Communist Party of China.
There will be those who make the argument that this is apples and oranges, that we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Well again, I prefer to measure by the results.
Right now, we're the first time in modern American history in two and a half decades where we don't have a carrier strike group in the Asia-Pacific region.
And the reason why is we very recently sent the USS Lincoln to the Middle East.
The last time we did it was in conjunction with our invasion of Afghanistan.
We're $20 billion plus behind on military supplies supposed to be sent to Taiwan, at least a third of which were routed to Ukraine instead.
We're talking about M1 Abrams tanks.
We're talking about HIMARS. We're talking about Stingers.
We're talking about coastal defense systems, Harpoon coastal defense systems.
At least $6.7 billion of that $20 billion that would have gone to Taiwan has gone to Ukraine instead.
We've actually strengthened inadvertently the Russia-China alliance since the Ukraine war began, which puts China in a stronger position relative to the United States, while the United States itself is in a weaker position vis-a-vis China.
And when we think about that model of international diplomacy, since that too is part of the resolutions, I do think that the multilateral institutional model of diplomacy has failed us, especially in the 21st century, through the UN, through the WTO, and other multilateral international institutions, by increasing our dependence on China.
One of the things I did learn, and I appreciated learning from your opening remarks, Ambassador, was I didn't know the fact that 90% of the gunpowder in the American Revolution came from France.
But it wouldn't have made sense for 90% of that gunpowder to come from actually our adversary, which is the United Kingdom.
Yet today, 40% of the semiconductors that power the Department of Defense actually come from China.
95% of certain of our pharmaceuticals come from China.
Most of our military industrial base depends on our chief adversary, China, and that was directly achieved by the model of international diplomacy that was mediated through these so-called multilateral international institutions.
That created a false equivalence between the United States and China.
A false economic equivalence through the climate change agenda that was disproportionately applied to the United States without being applied to China.
A false moral equivalence as trading relationships with China created an increased dependence on China for our modern way of life But also companies like BlackRock or Nike or Airbnb or JP Morgan, who relentlessly criticize the United States without saying a peep about the actual human rights atrocities in places like China.
And that undermines our greatest geopolitical asset of all, which is not our nuclear arsenal, actually.
It is our moral standing on the global stage.
And that is in part a direct function of diluting our resources that have been misspent on wars in other parts of the world, especially in the 21st century, over the period of which China achieved near parity, if not military parity now, with the United States.
So those are the three points I'd like to leave you with over the course of the evening.
First, the evidence suggests that the interventionist foreign policy of the 21st century has been nothing short of an abysmal failure.
My point in saying so is not to blame those in the past, but to learn from the mistakes of the past so that we may harness them to correct them in the future.
The second point is that Even if none of the arguments relating to the financial cost, the human cost, or the impact on Europe's mass migration crisis would convince you, at least be convinced by the fact that it has stopped us and diluted our ability to deter the number one threat that we actually do face, which is the rise of the Communist Party of China.
And that the model of diplomacy over the last 20 years, over the last several decades, dependent on multilateral institutions governing our diplomatic relationships with other countries, has failed the best interests of the United States by actually increasing our dependence on the very adversary we should seek to deter has failed the best interests of the United States by actually increasing our dependence on
And it's for those reasons that I hope you're persuaded over the course of the evening that the model of the United States serving as that global policeman does not actually advance the best interests of the United States.
And that even though I respect Ambassador Bolton's commitment to the goal of making the United States stronger and share it, my method of getting there is far different.
Thank you very much for the warm welcome and I look forward to the conversation.
Thank you very much.
Well, gentlemen, thank you very much for those impressive opening remarks.
I think a good area, perhaps, to start would be, if I was the President, and I was asking both of you to do what Ambassador Bolton previously did, be the National Security Advisor, what would you advise the President to do in this moment, bearing in mind the rising challenge that China is posing to the Philippines and Taiwan, And to Mr. Ramaswamy's point, the relocation of a lot of US Navy assets to the Middle East.
And then as a final point there, I'm the President, I'm saying I'm concerned about With our situation in the Red Sea, certainly guarding against the Houthi threat and the Iranian threat, are we going through our missile defense systems, SM6, whatever you want to call them, with a Middle Eastern threat and opening the door for Xi Jinping potentially three years from now to be more able to invade Taiwan?
Ambassador?
Well, the dominant Presence in the world today is a growing China-Russia axis with its outriders like North Korea, Iran, Syria, Belarus, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela.
This axis has nothing to do with the United States.
This axis has been forming for 15 years despite multiple efforts by the United States to bring Russia to the West unsuccessfully.
The fact is that the unwillingness to confront the threats that we've seen effectively that led to repeated Russian aggression in Ukraine and the threat that China now poses along its Indo-Pacific periphery is a clear product of this moment after the collapse of the Soviet Union when the United States took its eye off the ball.
So the first thing I would say to the President is we need to take American defense expenditures, which are roughly 3% of GDP right now, and return them to Reagan-era level defense expenditures of between 5% and 6%.
There's no doubt that all of our services are under-budgeted at this point.
The Navy is particularly weak.
There's a bipartisan commission that some years ago said we needed 335 Warships at sea were now down about 285 and sinking rapidly.
You can't change that overnight, but you could make a start.
Just remember, Ronald Reagan's goal was a 600-ship Navy.
So if I had to say one thing, I would say get the defense budget back to adequate levels so that we can project force where we need to And guaranteed deterrence where we need to.
But should we, and then I'll come to you Mr. Ramaswamy, should we be using force alongside the Israelis against Iran in the coming days?
And if so, what targets?
Personally, I think Joe Biden has made yet another mistake.
He's made a series of mistakes in handling the Iranian threat, which is what this war in the Middle East is about.
I think I would recommend to the president that he recommend to the Israelis that they destroy the Iranian nuclear weapons program once and for all and I would help them do it.
So I'll start with one area where we agree.
You heard in my opening remarks, you heard Ambassador Bolton refer to the same thing.
I think the single greatest threat to the United States is the strength and growing strength of the Russia-China alliance.
I think where we differ in our views here is exactly how we got there.
I do think that the actions of the United States and the West, but the United States in particular, have had the inadvertent effect of strengthening the Russia-China alliance.
I don't attribute bad intentions to the people who did it.
I don't think anybody in the United States who cares about the country wants that access or that alliance to grow stronger.
But that is what we've done.
In part, especially over the time horizon you described, the last 15 to 20 years is when we've seen the strengthening of it.
We agree on the facts.
But the interpretation of those facts is that it's exactly over the period that NATO expanded far more than we ever envisioned that you saw Russia running into China's hands for its own protection.
It's precisely over the period that we applied sanctions and cut off Russia economically.
That they became more economically dependent on China.
And China didn't welcome them economically for free, but had military concessions in return.
Let's take a look at how harmful this is to the United States.
Russia has hypersonic missile capabilities and arguably nuclear capabilities ahead of that of the United States.
China's naval capacity is now arguably at least at parity with the United States and has an economy that we depend on for our modern way of life.
Those two nations should not be in an alliance with one another if we were to advance the best interests of the U.S. And we made a commitment, and I appreciate the discussion we've already had about history, so we'll take that one step further.
It was in 1990 that James Baker made a commitment to Gorbachev.
He did not.
His words, if I may, but it seems that you may anticipate what I'm about to refer to.
It says, not one inch.
Not one inch.
You can deny whether he said those words or not.
Maybe the historians who have written about it have all been lying for the last 30 years, but I don't believe they have.
He said that NATO would expand not one inch past East Germany.
The point of NATO was to deter Soviet expansion, yet NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR. Than it ever did during the existence of the USSR, far further than East Germany.
So I believe that has further sent Russia into China's hands out of their own self-interest.
You look at the Ukraine war, let's look at the timing of these events.
They now upgraded their otherwise 2001 strategic partnership to now what they call the No Limits Partnership in conjunction in the same year that we actually have the Ukraine war escalation and eventually the start of the Ukraine war breaking out.
So I believe that our own best-intentioned actions have actually achieved a worst-case scenario of a Russia-China military alliance where we now have joint military exercises occurring off the coast of the Aleutian Islands, not far from Alaska, which is part of the United States of America.
So if I were speaking to the President, I tried to be the President, but we'll put that to one side.
I do believe it's important to have civilian control of the military precisely because we're able to make decisions that are responsive to the electorate.
But if I were asked to advise We're good to go.
But that's the top objective we should achieve.
Get the Russian military presence out of the West.
Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, where there is direct or indirect Russian military presence.
We don't want them in our hemisphere.
And I think that those should be meaningful concessions that we should extract from Russia in return for At least opening the possibility of reopened economic relations with Russia and allowing Russia to no longer be Vladimir Putin to be Xi Jinping's little brother, which is a position that I don't particularly believe he enjoys being in.
If you look, there are kinks in that armor where he sends weapons to India or other bordering nations to China right after their meeting.
Won't let China complete a railroad to reach the actual ocean in northeastern China with Russian land standing in the way.
I believe now is our moment to achieve something similar to what Richard Nixon actually did in pulling the Mao-led China out of the Brezhnev-led USSR at a moment where that was deemed to be impossible.
That's the kind of diplomacy that I think we should use to end the Ukraine war on reasonable terms, end it quickly, de-escalate the possibility of nuclear conflict.
But don't do it for free.
Require Russia to exit that military alliance with China, exit their military presence in the West, and we will have strengthened U.S. national security interests in the process.
And very quickly, if you could do 30 seconds, that question on Iran.
Should we be joining strikes with the Israelis, and if so, against what?
So my view is, Israel is a sovereign nation that deserves the support of the United States to make whatever decisions it deems best for Israel.
And I believe that we have actually been unhelpful.
Should we be joining those strikes?
So I think that decision belongs to Israel.
That's my answer.
Okay.
Do you want to respond to...
Yeah, let's get the history clear here.
What you've just said is Russia's position.
NATO did not expand eastward with an intention of confronting Russia.
And what Jim Baker said when he was negotiating the reunification of Germany, and I do think I have some ground to say I know what happened, because I worked for him at the time.
I don't rely on historians.
I was there.
Was trying to find a way to persuade the Russians to move their troops out of East Germany quickly.
There is no mistake in the mind of the Russian leadership what we said about NATO and Mikhail Gorbachev himself acknowledged when asked by reporters trying to get the answer that you just gave that there was never any American or NATO commitment not to expand.
Now why did we take in new members?
To pressure Russia?
No, because the nations of Eastern Europe and the newly independent republics from the Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, wanted to be free.
They had been crushed by the Nazis in World War II and they had been crushed by the Soviets in the occupation afterward.
They didn't want war with anybody.
They wanted protection and security and it benefited us To bring them into the alliance.
The critical mistake NATO made was in not coming to grips with how far the expansion would go.
And by not doing that, we left a gray zone consisting in Europe of Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, neither in NATO nor not allied with Russia.
And a gray zone is room for trouble.
George W. Bush proposed in April of 2008 To bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO on a fast track.
The Europeans rejected it.
Four months later, the Russians invaded Georgia.
And in 2014, they invaded Ukraine.
I would make the argument if we had brought Georgia and Ukraine into NATO in 2008, there never would have been a Russian invasion.
And the recent accession to NATO of Finland and Sweden giving up 75 years of neutrality Because they know that the only real defense in Europe is to be behind a NATO border proves the point.
So a couple of points in response to that.
One is I think if we had admitted Ukraine to NATO at that time, you'd actually see Russia and China in a treaty with one another, even upgraded from the partnership that they're in today, which would have been nothing short of a disaster.
But I want to also point out the history where surely you would also remember that George Kennan, the architect of post-Cold War policy before his death in the late 1990s, pointed to NATO expansionism as the single greatest mistake that the United States made in the aftermath of the Cold War.
He's not some isolationist.
He was the guy who actually was the chief architect of Cold War deterrence.
Now, we can talk about the history all we want.
I think where we stand today, if we were in the room advising the President, my question would be, how do we advance American interests today?
And I believe that involves peace in Ukraine as quickly as we can get there on reasonable terms while weakening the Russia-China alliance and getting the Russian military presence out of the West.
And my question for Ambassador Bolton with due respect is, I think it's an important and relevant conversation.
How do you define success in this Ukraine war?
What is the war objective and how do you define success?
Be specific.
Getting Putin to move is not specific.
Specifically.
I can state it very simply.
It's the declared position of every member of NATO right now, the full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Now let me ask you a question.
Let me just respond.
Come on now.
This is not a campaign debate.
Not a campaign debate.
Does that mean actually the pre-war lines?
I answered your question.
I answered your question.
Now you can answer mine.
One and one.
One and one, gentlemen.
My question is, Senator J.D. Vance has laid out what he thinks a peace deal for Ukraine should look like.
A ceasefire in place.
Russia keeps the territory it holds.
Demilitarized zone between the two, he omits the fact there's a different border between Russia and Ukraine, but demilitarized zone, and Ukraine agrees not to join NATO. Do you agree with that?
Well, I'm going to first require an understanding of what your answer was to my question to be able to respond to it.
And I think the question is, we can actually disagree about what the objective is.
Or whether we should pursue that objective.
But we should understand what the objective actually is.
So as I understand your response, but I want to make sure I properly understand it before engaging, your view is that it has to be the pre-war boundaries that have to be restored to Ukraine.
That is the war objective that we're solving for.
That's what I take as my understanding of your question.
That is my position and the present position of the entire NATO alliance.
And again, just descriptive here.
Not sort of drawing an argument, but just to get the viewpoints on the table.
So is Crimea then part of Russia or is it part of Ukraine?
It's part of Ukraine as the Russian Federation agreed at the Bell of Asia Agreement in 1992. So I think that's at least constructive because we are able to have a discussion where we know what we're disagreeing on.
I think it is absolutely not only unrealistic, it is unfathomable that from these conditions, we're going to get to a place where somehow by waving a magic wand, Crimea is going to be returned to Ukraine, Zaporizhia, talking about all of the other parts that are occupied today.
That's just not going to happen.
It is lunacy.
And one example of how that's lunacy is, let's just track the recent history.
Let's not debate 40 years ago.
We could go back that far too.
Let's debate the last two years.
In 2022, Zelensky was willing to negotiate terms of peace before the West, including Boris Johnson, but also the United States, goaded him out of negotiating for peace then.
Had Zelensky negotiated in April of 2022 without being goaded by the West, Ukraine would have done a better deal territorially than they could possibly do right now or any time in the foreseeable future.
And I think that that is a damning indictment of our own interventionist policies.
It wasn't not only not good for the United States, where we've now spent $175 billion more since then, that frankly we could have used to protect our own borders, as well as we wish to protect Ukraine's.
But it hasn't even served Ukraine's best interests, where you have one million people across both Ukraine and Russia that have either been killed or injured in the conflict since then.
So the fact of the matter is, our increased engagement since then has actually been a disservice, not just to the United States, but also to even Ukraine itself, in a way that it's just, for anybody following this war, the idea that somehow Crimea, we have a plan possibly for Crimea,
let alone the other regions, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, being restored to Ukraine, this is mythology, and I don't think that it's going to happen just by wishing it into existence, in contrast to a reasonably negotiated deal That achieves peace in the near term and actually achieves other U.S. objectives like weakening the Russia-China alliance in the process, which I do believe is a far more realistic, important, and achievable goal along the way.
I'd like to know when, in 2022, Joe Biden, one of the worst presidents we've ever had...
I agree with that.
Goaded Ukraine into further war.
It's Biden's incompetence, as much as anything else, his inability to lead the NATO alliance to provide assistance to Ukraine in a strategic fashion that has led to the gridlock we had.
Biden's sole goal has been to avoid Ukrainian defeat, not to win, and that's part of the problem.
Well, I think a Big part of the problem here.
A lot of this rests at the feet of Biden as well in terms of cutting off our own Keystone pipeline while allowing the pipeline in Western Europe to proceed right through from Russia to Germany.
This doesn't make any sense.
But we can criticize Biden and be in violent agreement all day here long from multiple different angles.
But the question of what we should do from here.
There's two options.
One is we continue to fund and escalate this war without either a clear war aim or a war aim that is patently unachievable and unrealistic.
Or we can acknowledge where we are today and settle on reasonable terms that best advance American interests, including security guarantees for Ukraine, that are backstopped by American self-interest, which I believe is better for Ukraine.
And so what was the answer to the question about J.D. Vance's plan?
Look, J.D. has spoken in broad sense.
Do you agree or disagree?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
I agree that we should actually look at what best advances American interests, right?
Yes or no?
Is that hard?
State your question.
Do you agree with the J.D. Vance peace plan for Ukraine?
State your premise of it.
Because he's actually in very broad strokes.
He has not offered, and Donald Trump, I think, has been intelligent to say that we're going to actually negotiate on the facts.
He's not going to show his cards to Putin five months before he takes office and has that negotiation.
Let Ambassador Bolton ask the specifics, because I want to go to China in a second.
Look, J.D. Vance said a few weeks ago that his plan, he believed a reasonable plan, Was that Russia keeps the territory in Ukraine it now has.
You created the militarized zone between the Russians and Ukraine.
Along the ceasefire line, and Ukraine agrees not to go into NATO. He said that would be reasonable.
Do you agree with that or disagree with it?
It depends on what other conditions come with it.
If it comes with conditions that require...
He didn't put any other conditions.
Do you agree with what he said so far?
You can talk to J.D. Vance in your own time.
You know what the answer is, ladies and gentlemen.
You know what the answer is.
If I may, I'll give you my perspective.
Very quickly, because I want to go to China.
And my perspective is, if that comes with commitments to weaken the Russia-China alliance and get the Russian military presence out of the West, that's absolutely a reasonable starting point for discussion.
Now, my question back for you is, are you okay?
What is your perspective on whether an American-made missile would be appropriate for Ukraine to use against Russia?
And the second part of that question is, what's your perspective on the U.S. response and what it should be if a Russian-made missile hit the U.S.? Look, your plan to condition peace in Ukraine on Russia splitting from China is delusional.
I think it's far more realistic than the idea of Russia getting...
No, it's not.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
I believe...
It's a great argument.
I believe it's an accurate statement.
I respectfully disagree.
I believe that when a country is the subject of unprovoked aggression like Ukraine is, that implicates fundamental American interest.
The fundamental American interest being peace and stability in Europe, which we have sought through three wars, two hot and one cold in the 20th century, that the Russian invasion imperiled, that we should provide the means for Ukraine to defend itself and vindicate our interest in peace and stability.
That means that you don't allow the war to be fought only on Ukrainian territory.
And yes, the defense of their country should involve the ability to strike targets in Russia.
Now it's difficult at this point because of the way Biden has mishandled it, but there's no doubt That that's something that we should do.
And if Russia chose to do what you would do, then we would respond to it.
Exactly.
And Vivek, I'm going to let you respond, but no more questions to each other, because I do want to get to China.
I think the conversation is great.
All I do think is, especially for the next generation, you know, for whom we strive to set, I think, a good example.
I'd love to keep it focused on policy differences.
And I have no doubt that Ambassador Bolton, one of the things I love about talking to him is he has a depth of experience that I respect.
But I also think that it is going to be the next generation that is impacted by the decisions that the prior generation makes.
It's going to be the people in this room who security that we actually care about passing on to the country.
And so, though many of these people may not have also been there at the time that George Kennan made that statement in 1998, I think that having a discussion about the future ought to actually be done based on reason rather than on, you know, I'm certainly not going to participate in dunking on my part.
But what I will say is this.
The hard truth of the matter is, do you believe it is realistic for us to have Russia on the terms of the war that exists right now, to return Crimea and the other occupied regions to Ukraine?
I don't think there is a single person who in good faith believes that is a realistic aim at all.
Versus a negotiated deal that involves reopening some economic relations with Russia, but weaken Russia's alliance with China because of the economic relationship, I think that is the far more realistic path.
And one that far better advances U.S. long-run interests.
But I'd like for you to make sure we get a clear answer to your second question.
Because your first answer to the first question was clear.
You're okay with American-made missiles being sent in to target Russia.
What exactly do you think the U.S. response should be if Russian-made missiles hit the United States?
I don't think they dare do it.
And I think if they did, they would face severe consequences.
Our deterrence works.
They would dare do it sometimes, but not others.
The deterrence that failed was the deterrence against the Russian invasion.
Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine repeatedly.
There's been no evidence that it's anything but pure bluff.
His military, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said a year and a half ago, is being fed into a wood chipper in Ukraine.
And that's something that happens to be very much in American interest.
But what we need to do, particularly because we'll come to China here in a minute, to convince the rulers in Beijing that we still have the resolve to oppose their efforts to break through the first island chain and to take over the South China Sea, is to convincingly show That aggression, like Russia's against Ukraine, will be defeated.
Because if they think that they can succeed, others will take advantage of it.
And I will tell you, the calculus in Beijing is if America and the West won't defend against an unprovoked aggression in Europe itself, we will never come to the side of Taiwan.
So I think this could be a good bridge to the discussion.
I think we both share a view that it would be a bad thing for the United States and our long-run interests if China were to annex Taiwan any time in the foreseeable future.
I think that would be a foreign policy disaster for the United States.
But where we disagree is that China is in a stronger position to do so when, number one, Russia is actually in China's camp in the Russia-China military alliance.
And number two, when the United States is actually stretched thin with other wars that don't directly relate to the United States' interests as much as the one in the South China Sea would.
The fact of the matter is, the reason we're delayed on many of those shipments to Taiwan is precisely because of other wars, particularly the Ukraine war, that we're involved in.
The reason that we moved a carrier strike group out of the Asia-Pacific region, leaving us for the first time in the last 25 years without a carrier strike group in the Pacific region, It's precisely because of the conflicts in the Middle East.
So we have to focus on the actual threat that we face, and that is staving off aggression from Communist China.
And I reject the premise that China somehow deals by way of analogy.
That if they're going to allow them to take a part of Ukraine, then we get to take part of Taiwan because we have the moral authority to do it.
China doesn't reason based on moral authority.
They reason based on hard power.
And our hard power with respect to China is weaker when we're involved in other foreign conflicts that don't advance our interests.
Alright, so I'm going to ask both men that original question.
It's 2028, 2030. China is moving, you know, blood banks, etc.
It's about to invade Taiwan.
Should we intervene with our full force to prevent that invasion or at least obstruct it?
Well, if we got to that point, it would show our policy had fundamentally failed.
But it is clear that if China breaks through the first island chain at any point, that it would mean the collapse of our alliance systems all over the Indo-Pacific.
What we need to show to Beijing is not about moral authority.
It's precisely about hard power.
Russia used hard power in Ukraine twice, and it's getting away with it.
And I think it leads the Chinese to conclude they can do the same, whether it's on Taiwan or their continued advances in the South China Sea or in the land borders in Asia.
I think you prevent this by building up, not tanks and And land-based weapons for Taiwan because I don't think the Chinese ultimately are going to invade.
I think they're going to create a political pretext and try and throw a blockade around China.
We're talking about two entirely different sets of weapons systems.
And to the extent there's any strain at all, you need to increase the defense budget.
That's what I said at the very beginning.
But what about if we're at that point?
I mean, if we're at the juncture of force?
If we have done what we can to put Taiwan in a position to defend itself, and the Chinese do attack, whether through blockade or invasion, yes, I think we have to come to Taiwan's defense.
Mr. Ramaswamy?
First of all, about the weapon systems being different.
I mean, this involves a hubris of expecting that we know exactly how that conflict is going to play out.
And it is a hard fact of the $20 billion military supply backlog that we now face up with respect to Taiwan.
$6.7 billion or more was actually due to equipment that otherwise was routed to Ukraine.
Not just M1 Abrams tanks, but Harpoon Coastal defense systems, stingers, and other military supplies as well that could be relevant to Taiwan's actual defense.
So what should we be doing?
I agree with Ambassador Bolton that if four years from now we're in a position where Taiwan is either being forcibly or indirectly annexed by China, that will be evidence of a disaster in our own policies.
We should actually be strengthening our alliance with countries like India.
And I don't say that because of, you know, obvious reasons.
Some people ask me that.
But I say it because actually China gets a good portion of its oil supplies and other supplies through the Indian Ocean, through the Andaman Sea, that if they know that India's on side with the United States to be able to block the Andaman Sea under those conditions, if we know that we have appropriately deterred action, turned Taiwan into a porcupine, occupying that...
Arming that island with the ability to deter Chinese aggression, that's what a successful strategy looks like.
But we are in a weaker, not stronger position to do it when we're also funding wars in Ukraine without clearly directed or realistic war aims to win, when we're drawn into other conflicts in other parts of the world.
And I should say it's entirely hypocritical.
To wear the mantle of just protecting democracies from invasions when we have other situations in the world that we're otherwise, I expect, not going to talk about today.
Like Armenia, like Azerbaijan's one-sided steamrolling of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, also on the Soviet periphery, where 120,000 Armenian Christians were displaced, where the last time I could check, nobody in the United States stopped to even mention it on the news.
So we can't selectively say and have the moral authority to say we're defending democracies, except sometimes when we're actually funding Azerbaijan to displace 120,000 Armenian Christians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, but somehow wear the mantle of defending democracy when it comes to Ukraine.
But Mr. Ramaswamy, to that specific question, you're the National Security Advisor, 2028, 2030, the Chinese are going in.
Should we fight to defend Taiwan?
I think that right now, first of all, 2024, looking forward, we should do everything we can to deter that from happening.
And under 2028, we should look at what best advances American interests, but I think it would be a disaster for Taiwan to be annexed by China.
We'd obviously look at the conditions of that.
Thank you for that answer.
Unfortunately, even though I'm sure many of you have submitted questions, I'm having some internet difficulties.
So I'm hoping if there are people, and because you're all well-trained cadets, you're not going to do a speech from the floor.
But I'm hoping if anyone has a question and a profound voice in Shakespearean fashion, you might be able to ask that and then I will relay it to our panelists here.
Anyone have a question?
Madam, here.
Speak loudly if you can.
Okay.
Well, so what about the question then, should we trust the national security bureaucracy, Ambassador, the deep state as a sort of relevant point there, as former President Trump would say?
Yeah.
Well, let me say, I don't favor the United States being the policeman of the world.
I favor us pursuing our national interest, which is not the same thing.
And as to whether there's a deep state, they're not smart enough to be a deep state.
If there were a deep state, we wouldn't be here having this debate, I can tell you.
There are a lot of good people out there trying to do the right thing, but the idea that we're run by a deep state is deeply paranoid.
I respectfully disagree with that, actually.
We use terms like America first.
I'll define it for you.
Because sometimes we are lazy, we bandy it around, we don't say what it means.
Here's what it means.
Two things.
One is the people we elect to run the government are the ones who actually run the government.
And number two is those leaders owe their sole moral duty, sole moral duty, to the citizens of this country and not another one.
That's what it means to stand for America First principles.
Let's start with number one.
Today the people who set most public policy are not the ones who were ever elected to run the government.
In fact, there are four million people in the federal bureaucracy, including, I'm sorry to say, the national security establishment, who are not only never elected to their positions, but actually, according to the supposed interpretation of civil service rules, cannot even be fired by the people who were elected to those positions.
That's not actually a democracy.
That is a new type of modern technocracy that would make our founding fathers, including those you quoted at the start, roll over in their graves that they never imagined.
So I do think that a root cause of many of our foreign policy failures is also the same root cause as many of our domestic policy failures, including the rise of the welfare and the regulatory state.
It is that the people we elect to run the government aren't the ones actually running the government.
And I do think that the warfare state is upstream of the welfare state.
When you invade the rest of the world, you effectively invite them.
That's exactly what's happening to Europe, and it's deeply linked to our own border crisis in this country.
So the question is, how do we best advance the interests of the United States of America?
I'll start again with the question that I... I mean, very quickly, because I want to see if we can...
Just a quick...
I'll be very quick here.
I just want Ambassador Bolton to give an opportunity to address a question I raised at the outset.
If we can pick one example Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, any example from the 21st century where that foreign intervention on behalf of the United States actually ended up advancing American interests, I'd wait for the answer to that.
Afghanistan, let's start there.
Well, let's start there, absolutely.
Maybe you'll give me a chance to finish.
After the 9-11 attack, We went into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and defeat Al Qaeda and prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States.
And at least until 2021, When pursuant to the Trump-agreed withdrawal proposal with the Taliban and the Biden actual withdrawal, we had succeeded.
There were no terrorist attacks against the United States from Afghanistan after 2001. Now that foreign terrorist fighters are returning to Afghanistan, and even the Biden administration has testified publicly that ISIS-K has the capability to launch terrorist attacks against the United States, As it launched earlier this year in Iran and in Russia.
This is where we have a difference in opinion.
If you call Afghanistan a success, I look 20 years later, that same Taliban is still in charge, armed with 80-plus billion dollars of U.S. military equipment that we left behind.
Because we gave it back to her, for God's sakes.
How hard is that to figure out?
The intervention, it's like a Marxist argument, right?
The Marxists always argue that the problem with the state intervention is we didn't do enough of it.
And that's exactly the form of argument that we have for the interventionist philosophy as well.
We had a very imperfect government in Afghanistan.
We were not there to make it into the Switzerland of Central Asia.
And the Taliban is in charge today.
I will finish my sentence.
Had we stayed, the Taliban would not be in charge.
But it was Donald Trump's desire to get American forces out that produced this catastrophic mistake.
I suppose you supported the withdrawal.
You're responsible.
That position is responsible for the consequences of Taliban being back in control.
I respectfully disagree when you actually could have executed a withdrawal in the manner that President Trump laid out.
Don't do it during fighting season.
Do it in an intelligent way.
You really don't understand what you're talking about.
Ambassador, I'll let you come back.
So the bottom line is I judge a set of policies by its results.
Iraq is more vulnerable to Iranian incursion before we showed up.
Libya is a failed state.
Syria, Afghanistan now run by the Taliban.
If we fail to learn from our mistakes of the past, we are doomed to repeat them in the future.
And that's why I think we have to recenter the obligation of US elected leaders to focus on exclusively what advances American interests, rather than advancing a bureaucratic state's vision of what they call advancing democracy.
Let me just say, you asked me to name one example, which I did.
If we had about another three hours, I'd be happy to explain why the others were good examples, too.
Okay.
All right.
I want to ask a question here in terms of, you know, we talk a lot about NATO and varying degrees of support for NATO, but is there not a truth, Ambassador Bolton, to former President Trump's argument that wealthy Europe, that the United States should not be expected to defend wealthy countries that cannot even spend 2% of GDP on defense?
Do you think there's some legitimacy to that?
Look, I am one of thousands of Americans who have argued with the Europeans for decades they need to spend more money on defense.
And Trump's argument about spending more money on defense I think did help contribute increased spending.
The trouble with Trump's approach is he wants to withdraw from NATO. And that's what I fear.
But in terms of getting them to spend more, that's correct.
But it's also important to understand that it's not simply A question of reaching a 2% target or anything else.
Let me give you one example.
Iceland, a NATO member from the beginning, doesn't have a military.
Its share of defense and its gross domestic product is zero.
Should we throw Iceland out of NATO? Should we allow the Russians to build air and submarine bases there?
I don't think so.
Look at a map.
What is Iceland's contribution to NATO? It's Iceland.
And I think that's worthwhile.
So you have to look at the total picture.
But there's absolutely no dispute that our allies have often been free riders and that should be unacceptable to us.
Vivek, you can respond to that if you want, but there's another question here I want to ask.
The quick response to that is those arguments, as valiantly as they might have been made, weren't very successful.
If as of 2023, last year, a majority of NATO countries were still not spending the 2% requisite of their GDP on their own national self-defense.
And so I do believe it has this historical model of diplomacy of the last 20 years through these multilateral institutions best advanced the interests of the United States of America.
The answer to that question is decidedly no.
And I do believe that those arguments have been less successful without using the kind of leverage that President Trump, I think, brought effectively as a leader.
So, question here.
This thing is jumping around.
Anyway, how should the United States approach the growing role of China in Latin America?
And I'd also be curious to, gentlemen, your opinion about security at the southern border, especially in concerns with regards to terrorist infiltration, potentially.
Vivek, do you want to go first?
Sure.
So, here's one where I think there is a fissure on the America First right, actually.
Because I think the debate that we're having On stage today is mostly what you maybe in broad strokes would characterize as an America First vision of the conservative movement versus a neoconservative vision of the conservative movement.
Here I'd like to actually air a separate fissure even within the America First right, which would say there's a diversity of views here.
I believe the right way to actually get serious about declaring economic independence from China requires not just onshoring to the United States, but actually requires expanding our trading relationships with our allies.
South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, India.
You could talk about South America in this context where that becomes relevant.
And that's different from those whose economic policy is focused on protecting American manufacturers from the effects of foreign price competition.
So that's an internal debate to the America First movement that's not going to play out in the next 35 days, something much more relevant with an election coming up.
But I do think in the next three, four, five, six years is going to become an important dividing line is Is our seriousness about declaring independence from China so much so that we're willing to expand our relationships with other allies?
I believe the answer to that question should be yes, from an economic perspective.
But if your principal goal is to actually To protect American manufacturers from the economic effects of foreign price competition, you're necessarily delaying the timeline needed to declare independence from China.
So to your question, not relating only to South America, but even our other allies around the Asia-Pacific, I think that if we're serious about decoupling from China and the pharmaceutical supply chain and our military-industrial base, that will require more, not less, trade with those allies.
And the way that we actually make American manufacturers more competitive isn't by protecting them from the effects of that trade, but instead by dismantling the regulatory state Another species of the deep state that actually shackles the American economy, that I think is the path forward.
Ambassador.
Well, I think we have been asleep at the switch on China for a long time, and I think that we have failed to protect our own country and many others from Chinese theft of intellectual property, which they've been extremely successful at, and we've allowed them through the Belt and Road Initiative and a number of other approaches, including outright corruption, to make extraordinary gains, not just in Latin America, but in Africa and South Asia.
We come at this at a very perilous point because we've been asleep for so long under this illusion that China would be a responsible stakeholder in international affairs.
It was engaged in a peaceful rise None of which was true.
And the fact is, we need to do more to remove Chinese influence in places where it's gained considerable strength, not least of which is Venezuela, where between Russia and China, they have been able to prop up the Chavez-Maduro regime in ways that are very harmful across Latin America.
What this means more than anything else is that Americans have to pay more attention to foreign policy.
You can't decree a policy if people don't know what's going on and you have to be committed to a forward strategy around the world and not say our only problem is China in East Asia.
Gentlemen, another big topic looming with the presidential election is the idea of former President Trump's proposal for tariffs pretty significantly around the world, not specific to adversarial states.
What is your assessment of that and how you think it might interrelate with the exigent question of the resolution in terms of the utilization of American diplomatic power?
Because obviously that would be something that our allies, including good allies, would be very concerned about.
Vivek, do you want to start on that?
Sure.
So I think that there's two very different discussions to be had here.
One is, is your goal just to nakedly raise tariffs to protect American manufacturers from the effects of foreign price competition?
No, I think the way we protect American manufacturers is dismantle the regulatory state, including a lot of the internationalism through the climate change regulations and otherwise, that are shackling American industry vis-a-vis China or other countries, to which those same restraints don't apply.
That is different from saying that a country is actually already applying higher tariffs to us, either directly or indirectly, indirectly by otherwise subsidizing domestic industry in their own countries, while not actually giving similar favorable treatment to U.S. trading partners, If they're already applying that standard, then I think it is fair game for the United States to say, if you're going to effectively apply a tariff to us, we're going to at least level the playing field.
The right outcome of that can usually be both countries getting rid of those restraints altogether.
And I think that's a good thing.
But we aren't really engaging in free trade, that's a myth, if the other side is engaging in mercantilism.
That was the mistake we made with China.
By the way, with the bipartisan consensus in both parties dating back to the 1990s, We thought we could somehow use capitalism as a vector to spread democracy to China.
And I don't know if you were in the room when that happened either, but that has been, I think, a miserable failure where we thought we could export Big Macs and Happy Meals and somehow that was going to spread democracy to China.
The truth is we thought we could use our money, our investment to get them to be more like us.
They used access to their market, their money, in some ways our money to get us to be more like them.
And so when it's not an even playing field, when the other side is engaging in state-sponsored capitalism and air quotes, which is really just old world mercantilism, then no, we should not be pretending like they're a free trading partner and say that we don't do tariffs in the US. But if both sides are willing to say that we actually don't want restraints or favoritism on either side, and we actually want a level playing field to compete, I think the use of the threat of tariffs as a lever to drive change on the other side is smart, intelligent, and necessary.
And that is something I would support.
Well, Trump doesn't understand tariffs, which makes a coherent discussion of what he's trying to do almost impossible.
But I can tell you what I recommended when I was in the White House is that I wouldn't use tariffs, but I would say that I would pass legislation that said that it would be illegal to import any Chinese manufactured goods or services that were based in whole or in part on stolen American technology.
And the argument used against that within the administration was, well, that's almost all of it.
It would mean no trade with China at all, which shows that fundamentally we have the capacity to do a lot of harm to China because of the way it conducts trade, the way it performs in the World Trade Organization, that we just haven't taken advantage of.
You know, it's the Chinese that took advantage in the WTO of the ability to declare yourself a developing country and get more favorable terms on some trade agreements, which is outrageous given China's economic strength.
The answer to that, I thought, was declare the United States a developing country.
And then see what happens.
Very quick, because then we have to...
We soon will be if we're spending any more than $8 trillion on a lot of wars that don't advance our interest.
I do want to come back to the woman's question earlier, though, because this is the embodiment of the culture and character of the deep state.
And I think this is important for every American to understand.
I think a lot of the professional civil servants view the presidents, the ones we elect, who come along every few years as cute little puppets that come and go.
They don't really understand.
Actually, I happen to believe that Donald Trump really does understand what he's doing with respect to economic policy, including his use of the threat of tariffs.
But I do think when we think about the character of both the economic policy expert establishment And the national security policy expert establishment, there is embedded in it, and I think you see it on stage tonight, a fundamental skepticism of actual self-governance and democracy.
The idea that, okay, the guy you put in charge, he really just doesn't get it, therefore it's our job to do it instead.
And I think that's actually, we talked about the American Revolution at the outset, that's why we fought an American Revolution.
We said hell no to that vision, because that's the way old world Europe viewed it.
The people and the ones who they elect can't be trusted.
Let's let Ambassador Bolton come in and then we'll get a final sentence.
An essential distinction on display of exactly what goes on in true Washington, D.C. I'm glad he said earlier he wasn't going to engage in dunking up here tonight.
It was an observation of the character of culture in Washington, D.C. I will try and finish this sentence, too.
I couldn't agree more.
I'd love to see the size of the civilian part of the federal government reduced enormously, reducing the regulatory burden, the useless expenditure of money, but the idea that there's a, you use the term, warfare state, I'd love to hear that definition.
Alright, we could save your rebuttals for your closing remarks, but I would ask the ladies and gentlemen of the audience, I'm afraid we've run out of time here, to please cast your votes on the resolution to see if anything has changed, to remind you the resolution, the U.S. should use its diplomatic and military power around the globe to ensure America's national security.
So it looks like it's shifted a bit.
But anyway, on that note, I will invite Ambassador Bolton to make his closing statement.
You took the vote away.
Yeah, let's put the vote back up if we can.
Ambassador, start while we try and figure that out.
So it looks like it shifted a little bit into Mr. Ramaswamy's corner.
Anyway, Ambassador Bolton.
I don't know why we keep taking it down, but Ambassador, why don't you start?
Because we're running low on time here.
Look, I think it's important that we understand what's at stake in the wider world.
The United States has concrete national interest That go directly to the kind of life we enjoy in this country, our economic prosperity and our freedom, that depend on a certain measure of stability and order in the world.
And the fact is, since 1945, what little order and stability there is in the world has come because of the United States and our alliances, not because of anybody else.
Now, it is a fact that other people benefit from the order we bring, but we benefit from it most.
And the fact that others benefit doesn't mean we're doing this out of the goodness of our hearts or because we're nice people, although we are.
It's because it's in our interest to do so.
This is something that is fundamental to continuing to enjoy those benefits.
And if we're not prepared to do it, if we're not prepared to bear those burdens, then we will see significant changes.
It's not to say that there haven't been mistakes made over the past 25 years.
Of course, that's right.
But let me ask you this.
Who else in the world will protect our interests better than us?
The Europeans?
The Chinese?
The United Nations?
These are all fantasies.
What little order there is and what prospect there is for it to continue is for us to engage in what Ronald Reagan called peace through strength.
This is something that Washington referred to in his first State of the Union message, what the Romans called si vis pacum parabellum, if you want peace, prepare for war.
This is the fundamental basis for the privileges we enjoy Because of our strength around the world.
And the idea that because we've encountered difficulties or made mistakes, that we can fade away from Europe, that we can fade away from the Middle East, that it's only China we have to worry about, doesn't take into account that right now China is an active participant in the war in Ukraine.
And the idea that you can split them apart is a fantasy.
It is a growing axis that we need to worry about on a worldwide basis.
And not simply to say, we don't want to defend anything else in the world except maybe we'll defend Taiwan until that gets kind of dicey and then we probably won't defend them.
But what we need more than anything else in this country, which we do not have and we do not have in the election campaign that we're going through now, are candidates That can say, here's our understanding of the threats that we face around the world and the burdens that we need to sustain to prevent those threats from becoming real.
There are countries that realize that.
Israel is a country like that.
More threatened now than at any point in its history, yet more determined to make sure that it survives.
We could learn a lot from them and we could learn a lot From the vision of the founding fathers, the framers of the Constitution, who understood that a strong national defense is an absolute prerequisite to anything else we do.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
First of all, I want to thank you for moderating a great debate, and Ambassador Bolton, at times, obviously a heated discussion, but I want to thank you for your participation in obviously a heated discussion, but I want to thank you for your participation
And I think the heated nature of our dialogue reflects the fact that we deeply care about what makes the United States stronger for the next generation of Americans, even if we have some deep disagreements on exactly how we get there.
Now, I believe in peace through strength.
But I believe in peace through actual strength, which is different than the appearance of strength.
I believe there's a generational difference on stage tonight.
And I don't just mean that in the fact that we're obviously of different ages, but of different perspectives from our experiences.
I think if you come from an era in the United States where you remember that era of the Apollo missions, remember the era of putting that man on the moon, the idea that we as Americans can achieve anything we set our mind to, Of course, I believe you're likely to see the world through a prism where you believe that we can intervene in multiple different foreign conflicts and prevail at the same time, including achieving goals in Ukraine that involves the restoration of Crimea and all the other regions that are occupied, because we've done it before.
That was the America we know, we love, we miss.
And for my part, you have a generational bias too.
I'm a millennial.
I'm the youngest person ever to run for U.S. President as a Republican.
I grew up in the era of not only the Afghanistan War, but the failed Iraq War.
We're jaded, we're cynical about the possibility that, you know what, we're able to use this warfare state to somehow achieve our goals when it hasn't worked out that way.
My message to our generation is this.
We can't just be cynical about our country.
I want to get back to that country, that shining city on a hill where we know we can achieve even what others will say is impossible.
But we can't get there through the appearance of strength, through projecting that strength in multiple regions when we don't actually have it.
We need to rebuild our military.
We need to close the gap of recruitment in the U.S. military.
We have a 25% recruitment gap in the U.S. military right now.
Less than 16% of Gen Z says they're even proud to be an American.
There's a deep deficit of national pride in this country, and that is in part due to the failures of the last 20 years.
After the Berlin Wall fell, after we achieved that ultimate victory, I do think that it was a failed bipartisan consensus of democratic capitalism to China, to engaging in conflicts that didn't directly advance American interests in ways that came back to actually harm American interests, That have left our generation so cynical that you have young people not like those in this room, but many, especially those who aren't, to say if that's what's going to happen with my service in the U.S. military, then I don't want to do it.
Versus actually rebuilding a country that is strong and achieves peace through actual strength rather than the artificial appearance of it.
And so my call for the future of our movement, the conservative movement, of which I think Ambassador Bolton and I are both a part, Is to revive the principles that made this country great the first time around.
End the welfare state in all of its forms.
The domestic regulatory state, the domestic entitlement state, but also the foreign policy nanny state as well.
We don't want to replace the left-wing nanny state with the right-wing nanny state.
The right answer for the future is we want to get in there and dismantle the nanny state in every form.
Not just the entitlement state and the regulatory state, but this broader foreign policy nanny state as well.
To look our allies in the eye, And say that our relationship is stronger when we're able to be honest with one another.
To say that we're going to provide protection where it advances our own interests.
But we're also going to be downright stern in demanding that you pay for your fair share of it.
Not because we're just saving dollars for the United States, though that's important enough when we face a $34 trillion national debt.
But also because then we're not going to be chain-ganged into wars where those countries are not internalizing fully the costs of actually entering those wars.
That's not an isolationist position.
It's a pro-American position.
And I think that duty of our elected leaders flows back not to the rest of the world, but the duty of the US elected leaders is to the citizens right here at home.
And so yes, at a moment where we have a more porous southern border than we have at any point in our national history, when the synthetic fentanyl with inputs from China are flowing through that border, killing 80,000 plus Americans every year on American soil, at a time when we have a deficit of national pride that's the greatest we've seen in our modern national history, Where recruitment in the military has declined.
When you see the U.S. depending on China for our own military and national defense, yes, we require a new way forward that's different from copying the methods of the last 20 years that got us here.
And so that's what I'm calling on us to do, to not only have this conversation and use this as a useful starting point, but to say that we don't have to repeat those mistakes if we're willing to learn from them.
And if we do, then I don't believe we have to remain this nation in decline.
Decline is a choice.
We don't have to be ancient Rome.
We don't have to be the nation in decline.
I believe we still can be a nation in our ascent.
not in some fake politician way, but in a true way.
And you know how we achieve peace through strength?
If the shining city on a hill no longer shines, what hope does the rest of the world have?
The way we're going to do this isn't by intervening elsewhere, but by making sure that our shining city on a hill is as strong as we possibly can be at home.
That's how we strengthen democracy abroad, is by remaining the strongest democracy right here in America.
God bless you and your families.
Thank you for coming today.
And thank you to our participants.
God bless.
Thank you.
Speaker 1: Gentlemen, thank you for a great debate.
If I could have your attention for just one minute, Colonel Gray and I would like to make very brief closing remarks.
Once again, thank you to our panelists and to our moderator for a great discussion.
And one more round of applause, please.
I'd like to again thank the VMI Center for Leadership and Ethics for their amazing support in making tonight's debate possible to the entire team here at VMI.
You have been wonderful hosts and it's been a true honor to be with you tonight.
I would also like to extend once again a special thanks to our sponsors.
The Adolph Coors Foundation and all of the others who make the Campus Liberty Tour possible.
If you enjoyed this evening's debate, we hope that you would consider supporting the Steamboat Institute so we can bring debates like this to more campuses across America.
And, you know, frankly, as Vivek said here in his closing remarks, really to inspire Americans to greatness, which is what we're all about.
Also, I thought it might be helpful one more time.
I think we should put the poll up because after the closing arguments were made, there were probably some more votes that came in.
And I'll...
Also, wow, okay.
We will post this on our website, steamboatinstitute.org, so if you want to refer to this later, you can certainly do that.
Finally, just thank you again for coming, and now I'd like to turn it over to Colonel Gray to wrap things up.
Well Jennifer, thank you very much for this emerging partnership between VMI and the Steamboat Institute on behalf of the Superintendent and Corps of Cadets.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.
So gentlemen, a spirited debate tonight that accomplished the purpose that we wanted.
And the purpose really was to explore that resolution across the spectrum of views.
And listening to both of you, point, counterpoint, fact, counterfact, is an example of civic discourse that sets the tone and a role model for all of our cadets.
So I want to thank you personally for accomplishing that vital mission.
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