At the second annual Royce International Symposium held earlier this month, former U.S. Rep. Ed Royce and a panel of foreign policy experts and scholars offered their perspectives on what is happening in Europe and Asia and why these events are important for America. The symposium was organized by Cal State Fullerton.

During his keynote address for the symposium, which was held at the Richard Nixon Library, Royce pointed out that Nixon was instrumental in reestablishing communications and partnerships between America and China in the early 1970s.

“While China is challenging, we have to remain engaged,” Royce said. “I think Russia is destined to be destabilized.”

Royce ’77 (B.A. business administration-accounting, finance), a CSUF alumnus who served in Congress for 26 years and chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 2013-19, currently serves as policy director of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. He believes that because Nixon (and John F. Kennedy before him) were young men during World War II, they were able to observe what happens when totalitarian countries are “on the march and begin carving out territories.

“How a nation treats its own people tells us how likely it is to treat its neighbors.”— Former U.S. Rep. Ed Royce ’77

“When the United States sees free people fighting back against regimes that would replace democracies, our security is at risk,” he said. “In China, we see increased militarization and aggressive behaviors toward Taiwan, the Philippines and others. I believe we should transfer missile systems to Taiwan so they can launch a credible defense if necessary.

“We should also be sending arms to Ukraine,” he added. “If Europe is sending arms, so should we. We need to supply defensive weapons to the free people of Ukraine. A strong defense system is a credible deterrence.”

Following the keynote address, Cal State Fullerton professors moderated panels that focused on two specific territories of concern: Russia/Ukraine and China. 

Europe Panel

Moderator: David Traven, associate professor of political science at Cal State Fullerton and author of “Law and Sentiment in Internal Politics: Ethics, Emotions and the Evolution of the Laws of War”

Tom Sheehy, principal at Quinella Global LLC and former staff director of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representative

• “There are many challenges in Europe and elsewhere. You’ve got Russia invading Ukraine, Russia and China meeting together, and let’s not forget Iran and North Korea. This is an era when the U.S. and its allies are confronting daunting challenges. The balance of power is important, and alliances are being created for stability. Right now, the U.S. is the greatest world power with China at number two. If Vladimir Putin (president of Russia) succeeds in Ukraine, it extinguishes any possibility of that country remaining a democracy.”
• “Ukraine is important in defending world order. The indiscriminate bombings; the savage, brutal attacks; the suffering of the Ukrainian people; and the violations of territorial areas should be a concern to all.”
• “There is debate and there needs to be debate on how to help Ukraine. The risks of escalation are real, and we need to be attentive to details. Putin is desperate to keep power, which is why he’s meeting with Xi Jinping (president of the People’s Republic of China).”
• “There has been incredible resolve by the people of Ukraine and Europe’s response has been admirable. Also consider that many Russians have left Russia. Even if Russia wins, it’s in a weakened state. This war wasn’t started by the Russian people, but by their leaders. The vast majority of Russians are lukewarm or keeping their heads down when it comes to supporting the war.”
• “How long can Russia continue with these losses? The number of Russians killed has been quoted as anything from 20,000 to 200,000…and it could be higher. There is the possibility of exhausting their military power. That’s why Putin needs China and others to assist. This is the most precarious time in European history since 1939.”

Paul D’Anieri, professor of political science and public policy, at UC Riverside and author of “Ukraine and Russia: From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War; Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and the Russian-Ukrainian War”

• “In 2014, Putin annexed Crimea; now he wants all of Ukraine. If Russia takes Ukraine, what is next? If Putin’s goal is to return Russia to its imperial boundaries, that would include Warsaw and Finland. Does European unity last?”
• “Much has been made of sending $46 billion to Ukraine, but recognize that this is just 5.5% of the military defense budget. The greatest cost to America would be the cost of lives lost if our troops were in Ukraine and the Ukrainians aren’t asking for that. We should give Ukraine the ‘hardware’ it needs to defend itself.”
• “This isolationist idea of ‘Why should we care?’ doesn’t reflect realist thinking. Do we believe if Ukraine collapses, it won’t affect us? That’s naïve. If Russia wins, we’ll have to put troops in Europe because Russia will continue to invade other territories. Ukraine is important to defend world order.”
• “It’s hard to see any military gains for nuclear weapons. Also remember that nuclear weapons come in different levels. There are tactical weapons that can take out a battalion and strategic weapons that can vaporize large areas.”
• “The number of Ukrainians who support Russia is about 2%. Ukrainians don’t believe they are Russians. How do you define a win? For Russia, it would be to regain all the territory it has lost. Maybe China can disrupt the process. If they could, that’s a good look for China among the world’s nations. I’m not sure how long Russia can sustain the losses of life, their world standing, etc.”

Asia Panel

Moderator: Alexei Shevchenko, professor of political science at Cal State Fullerton and author of “Quest for Status: Chinese and Russian Foreign Policy”

Sean K. O’Neill, U.S. State Department visiting professor at George Washington University, career member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Services, and former foreign affairs fellow on staff of the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs

• “Does diplomacy exist? It does, but how effective is it? As the world changes, our strategies can’t remain static. For instance, we need to change our practices of diplomacy in response to China’s global ambitions. I hope the U.S. never keeps strategy on the shelf like an old encyclopedia that gets opened anywhere from one to 10 years. Close enough isn’t good enough.”
• “China’s rise, relative to the United States, is not a zero-sum competition. The U.S. will stand up for our values. China often uses coercion — Wolf Warrior diplomacy that is confrontational and combative. You shouldn’t be coerced into making a choice. You should have free choice.”
• “We’re seeing the rise and advance of China’s military. The PRC (People’s Republic of China) has expanded their naval presence in the south China sea. They now have at least 350 nuclear warheads and have indicated that by 2027, they will have 700. They could take Taiwan. After the first gulf war, the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) noticed that the U.S. was ahead, and they needed to catch up.”
• “We need to make Xi understand what a disaster it would be for the people of China if he makes moves on Taiwan.”  
• “It’s important to recognize the difference between intent (what you want to get done) and consequences (how to avoid unintended consequences). Intentions matter, but the consequences are what is important.”

Xiaoyu Pu, associate professor of political science at University of Nevada, Reno and author of “Rebranding China: Contested Status Signaling in the Changing Global Order”

• “The U.S. has always played a leading role with China. As China’s economic influence has increased, we have been the number one trading partner.”
• “Our peaceful use of strategy hasn’t ended tensions, but neither side is applying their military strength.”
• “U.S. power isn’t declining, but China is rising and there is a gap. However, the U.S. is a resilient power and the West is still more powerful.”
• “The U.S. will compete with China, but we need a peaceful framework to coexist. There is a difference between conflict and competition.”

In addition to Cal State Fullerton, sponsors include Richard Nixon Foundation (title sponsor), Brownstein Hyatt Farmer Shreck and SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union (gold sponsors), and KyleHouse Group and Paul Carter, ’92 (silver sponsors).

Source : CSUF News

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The new conservative House of Representatives has taken power and is ready to take on President Joe Biden and his foreign policy.

As part of the deal that emerged as Rep. Kevin McCarthy persevered through 15 rounds of votes to secure the speakership last week, a group of 20 far-right lawmakers reportedly won concessions to cap the federal budget at 2022 levels in exchange for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling. If McCarthy’s caucus does follow through on that, it would put the gargantuan military budget — $817 billion of the $1.7 trillion federal budget this fiscal year — under the microscope. It could lead to significant cuts, perhaps up to $75 billion.

That may be unlikely for many reasons, particularly the bipartisan consensus on the threat of China. The Republican House committee chairs tasked with national security are certain to push back against calls to slash defense spending, even if it means confronting members of their own party, and both parties are eager to avoid the defense cuts triggered by the 2013 debt ceiling crisis. But the proposal, and the backlash to it, say a lot about how Washington is thinking about its role in the world, and how the new GOP House majority might add its own flavor of oversight to Biden’s statecraft.

Republicans are also entering Congress with some members pushing for more scrutiny of US policy toward the Ukraine war, which has included about $50 billion of military and financial assistance to Kyiv. McCarthy had brought attention to that “blank check” in November. His criticisms may have been the impetus for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s surprise Washington visit just before Christmas, to reinforce support for his country in advance of the Republican takeover. Despite Zelenskyy’s appeal to Americans, polling shows that Republican voters are increasingly skeptical of continuing aid in perpetuity as the war approaches its one-year mark.

Now, members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus that, after much jockeying, allowed McCarthy to clinch the speakership are trying to express a clear message on national security. “We can be both a budget hawk and a defense hawk,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said on the Hugh Hewitt Show. “I support us going to absolute war, so to speak, to make sure that our defense is strong enough and our country is strong enough to take on China. But look, we have to do it responsibly and we haven’t been. We’re letting the swamp beat us. We’re letting the swamp set the terms.”

But looking ahead, defense cuts seem aspirational. Roy himself has disavowed them. And the staying power of the Republican Party’s leadership in key House committees, namely the many Mikes — Rep. Mike D. Rogers on Armed Services, Rep. Michael McCaul on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Mike Bost on Veterans Affairs, and Rep. Mike Turner on Intelligence — as well as the Biden White House’s own position, cannot be understated. “This push to defund our military in the name of politics is senseless and out of line with our national security needs,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said.

Or as one senior Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, texted me, “There’s waaaaay too many hawks on their side. And for that matter on our side.”

Three reasons the budget won’t change

The hawkish consensus around the threat of China is a primary reason that cuts to the military budget are highly improbable.

Andrew Lautz, a policy director at the National Taxpayers Union, says that, even without compromising US national security, big cuts are possible on outdated military programs.

But he is pessimistic that those would happen in the near future and pointed out how quickly Republican leaders, even some of the holdouts that McCarthy negotiated with, are starting to dispute the notion that defense cuts have ever been on the table. And so-called Reagan Republicans want to see a bigger budget to counter China.

“The solution is always more spending,” Lautz told me. “I don’t think we will, anytime in the next two years, see meaningful cuts to the defense budget happening through the appropriations process.”

A second reason for the unlikelihood of significant defense budget cuts is the mess that unfolded in 2013, when debt ceiling negotiations led to the complex wrangling of a congressional super-committee and a sequestration process that caused mandated, across-the-board defense budget cuts that the military and lawmakers of both parties hated.

No one wants to repeat what happened with knock-on effects of the Budget Control Act of 2011. “Congress has to be a critical partner in resourcing the military and it must be done through a predictable process that allows for discussion, debate, and careful decision-making,” Joseph Votel, a retired general who is now president of the nonprofit trade group Business Executives for National Security, wrote in an email. “What appears to be happening now does not reflect any of those qualities.”

A third reason: The political energy that might go into pushing for a military budget cut is likely to be channeled into probing the utility and the limits of US aid to Ukraine.

Since 2021, the Biden administration has provided almost $25 billion of military aid to Ukraine as well as $24 billion in financial and humanitarian assistance. There are right-wing voices who support the aid, and progressives too see the importance of maintaining aid to beat Russia’s invasion even if it comes at the expense of empowering military contractors. National security officials argue staunchly in favor of it. “We need to make sure that we hold together the political support here,” former acting CIA director Michael Morell, who is currently a consultant at Beacon Global Strategies, said recently.

Even if that aid continues, House Republicans are likely to expand oversight. Republican concerns about the US public debt, longstanding worries about corrupt practices in Ukraine that could lead to difficulty in monitoring the use of weapons, and the aid’s effect on the US’s own national security, will all likely be raised in hearings.

The US is sending so many weapons to Ukraine that supply chains are strained and stockpiles have been depleted. “Our current policy toward Ukraine is just not sustainable financially and in terms of what we are actually giving Ukrainians,” says Dan Caldwell, vice president for foreign policy at the conservative organization Stand Together. “You can’t indefinitely provide the types of support we’re doing. We’re running out of ammunition to give them, we’re running out of certain types of equipment to get them.”

Not all Republicans agree. “The people who want to cut Ukraine aid are probably in the minority. I think often when you’re in the minority, you maybe speak louder, because you want to be heard,” says Mira Ricardel, a former deputy national security adviser during the Trump administration.

Even those who support Ukraine’s defense say that renewed congressional attention will be positive. Ricardel, who now works at the Chertoff Group consultancy, says that oversight will force the White House to sharpen its thinking. “The beauty of having two branches of government working on this particular matter [is] it forces you to articulate what you stand for, why, and how you are going to do things and to defend them,” she told me.

The defense budget might not change, but there is a growing group of lawmakers pushing for it nevertheless

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates says there is “bipartisan opposition” to military budget cuts — but there is also bipartisan support.

A loose coalition of Republicans and Democrats has been calling for a more restrained and realistic US foreign policy. It’s not an organized cohort by any means. Some push for views that might be called isolationist. Others have voted for aid to Ukraine, just continuing to advocate for a negotiated end to the war. What unites them is their criticism of some of the articles of faith of US foreign policy that have led to an over-reliance on military force abroad.

The Koch-backed nonprofit Stand Together, where Caldwell is an executive, supports many think-tank experts who are pushing for a rethink of such entrenched policies. “We have seemingly unstoppable growth in the defense budget that is not tied to a realistic strategy,” he told me. “The only way that you can realistically reduce defense spending is by effectively changing America’s grand strategy.”

The military budget has been growing — by 4.3 percent, adjusted for inflation, over the past two years. Rep. Mike Rogers, who will chair the influential House Armed Services Committee, has advocated for increases of up to 5 percent each year.

Though in so many senses the US is more polarized along partisan lines than ever, progressives and far-right Republicans at times agree that the military budget is inflated and wasteful. It’s not clear they agree about enough else on national security to challenge the status quo.

Many former senior Trump administration officials have decamped to the America First Policy Institute. The organization notes that “Maintaining a strong military is not exclusively about having a large top-line budget,” though some of its suggestions for cuts would make progressives bristle, like eliminating “non-military issues such as climate change and democracy promotion from military doctrine and defense policies.” (Though many progressives would agree with the sentiment of ending the “use of military or tax dollars for nation building.”)

It’s also not clear what role the so-called rebel wing of the Republican Party will play in the House. As the backroom negotiations that brought McCarthy the speakership become clearer, the experts I spoke with told me that defense budget cuts seem unlikely — a sign that the disruption could reach its limit here.

Nevertheless, the mainstream discussion presents an opportunity to consider how massive spending outlays on the US military reflect the inertia of military adventurism that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks, bolstered by the entrenched financial interests of the military-industrial complex.

Interestingly, it is Hewitt, the right-wing talk show host, who said the House rebels’ messaging was too muddled. On his program, he pushed Rep. Chip Roy to more clearly articulate how Republicans can be China hawks while limiting the debt. The answer didn’t offer much: “We must end woke and weaponized government, and stop funding bureaucrats that are engaged in tyranny over the American people,” Roy replied. “We can have a strong national defense, we can beat up DOD to be non-woke, go find savings, and then stretch and increase what we need to to beat China.”

Source : Vox

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