For understanding what is happening in the world today, as the Sino-Russian partnership displaces American power globally, this chart is fundamental.
The ultimate means of a nation to wage war and exert economic influence successfully is its industrial capacity. In this vein then it’s notable that:
▪️China alone matches the Western Bloc of the United States and Europe in productive output.
▪️ When joined by Russia, this becomes a decisive industrial output advantage paired with the necessary resources to power this vast manufacturing base.
▪️ Russia alone is 2x the size of France in terms output, and is also larger than Germany. Metrics like nominal GDP are entirely data mirages in this vein.
Simply put, Europe lacks the means to contain Russia and the U.S. can’t be everywhere at once, especially given it and Europe are objectively in relative decline at a minimum. The entire world order is changing before
Hawley Delivers National Security Speech ‘China and Ukraine: A Time for Truth’
Remarks as prepared can be found below.
China and Ukraine: A Time for Truth
Three years ago, in October of 2019, I went to visit Hong Kong.
It wasn’t a standard, ceremonial sort of visit. In fact, the State Department wasn’t a big fan of my going there at all.
I went there in the midst of major protests against the Chinese government. Beijing had originally promised the people of Hong Kong that, once the city passed into Chinese control, it would keep its unique freedoms. “One country, two systems.” Or so it went.
But that was a lie.
As soon as it could, the Chinese Communist Party cracked down on Hong Kong with a draconian “national security law” to crush any dissent. Xi Jinping’s way would be the only way.
I wanted to see what was happening for myself.
When I was there, I saw cars blazing in the streets, and protestors calling to “free Hong Kong.” I heard the explosions. I saw Chinese riot police, facing off with young men and women struggling for freedom.
I made friends there. Many of them went to prison, like Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai.
I’ll never forget that trip. Because there I was able to see, firsthand, the nightmare that the Chinese Communist Party offers the world.
In the Hong Kong crackdown, we saw the real face of Chinese tyranny. We all may see it again soon in Taiwan.
And we may not be able to do anything about it.
It’s not popular to say that openly. Dozens of lawmakers and experts and talking heads have claimed an invasion of Taiwan simply won’t happen—or if it does, that we can prevail. That China will be too afraid to challenge us or won’t.
Instead they prefer to tell a familiar and comforting story, where winning the Cold War meant that we could—police the world for all time.
They want us to believe that our military might is infinite, that American power faces no real constraints, and that we ought to use it to reshape the world.
They want us to believe we can fight an endless proxy war in Ukraine. And somehow, this won’t impact our ability to deter China from invading Taiwan.
Curiously enough, this story of American omnicompetence isn’t really partisan. It’s told both by neoconservatives on the right, and liberal globalists on the left. Together they make up the “Uniparty”—the D.C. establishment that transcends all changing administrations.
It’s hard to challenge the Uniparty. They’ve gotten very good at telling their favorite story. That’s why anyone who questions them gets called “anti-American” or “Vladimir Putin’s puppet” from a hundred different quarters.
But today, I want to tell you something else. I want to tell the truth.
And the truth is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods. Our current foreign policy isn’t working.
It is not working for the American people. It’s cost many of them their jobs, their towns, their communities—all thanks to the bad trade deals that we were promised would make us all richer.
That didn’t work out so well for the people of my state. Or for anyone who witnessed their manufacturing job shipped overseas.
But our current foreign p