During a speech on foreign and domestic policy at the Reagan Library on Thursday night, Nebraska GOP senator Ben Sasse called for the creation of a “NATO for the Pacific” to counter the threat of Communist China.
“The rise of this belligerent, confident, expansionistic, indeed imperialist Communist Party is the competitive challenge that will define much of the next half century,” Sasse said during his speech that was part of the library’s “Time for Choosing” series.
Sasse described the communist regime as more than a threat to the American military and economy: “Most fundamentally, 21st century Beijing is now a competitor on the field of ideas — with a different vision of humanity,” he said. “Beijing proposes a new way of life — an unprecedented digital totalitarianism that would govern and regulate the most intimate details of individual and family and communal life, turning every person and the devices they carry into the eyes and ears of the regime, that’s what we face.”
“China’s power-hungry leadership is coming for us, whether we reflect sufficiently on this reality or not. No amount of pretending or ignoring or hiding is going to make it go away,” he added. “The defining national security question of the next two decades is whether we will have a second ‘American Century,’ or whether it will be a CCP-led order.”
Sasse later laid out a list of specific policies to counter China, including a trillion-dollar U.S. defense budget and a “NATO for the Pacific”:
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Let’s pass a trillion-dollar defense budget, but let’s radically cut the share that goes to legacy systems and platforms that employ an army of lobbyists. In a new era of cyber and asymmetric war, let’s make sure we’re getting maximum lethal capacity for every taxpayer dollar spent – by overhauling procurement policies that aren’t just too expensive but primarily way, way too slow.
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Let’s build a “NATO for the Pacific.” We need allies to get back on the offensive against the CCP, and those allies need US leadership. NATO in Europe has been the greatest treaty organization in history. It held the line against the Soviets, and it’s now holding the line against bloody Putin. But as Chairman Xi looks to expand his sphere of influence, we need a new military alliance centered far out into the Pacific. This is our main foreign policy work.
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Let’s streamline our intel agencies so we can win a shadow war with the Chinese Communist Party.
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Let’s arm the Taiwanese military to the teeth. Let’s amend the Taiwan Relations Act directly to make our security guarantee explicit. No more strategic ambiguity.
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Let’s pair military partnerships with economic partnerships and end the nonsense anti-trade policies of the last two administrations. Pacific NATO should be a free-trade zone, too. Trade is a win-win because when Americans compete, we win.
In the nearly hour-long speech, Sasse laid out a broad vision for how America’s lost self-confidence can be restored. He called for a series of domestic policy reforms in education, technology, health-care, and employment—reforms he said are necessary to maintain America’s status as the most powerful country in the world. He also broadly defended the American-led world order of the last 75 years as he spoke out against isolationists and authoritarians on the Left and the Right:
The last 75 years, with the U.S. as the globe’s unrivaled superpower, we have seen shocking peace and shockingly prosperity, by every historical measure. Too often, we pit idealism and realism against each other in ivory tower, philosophy-seminar kind of way that don’t really grapple with the world we’ve actually inherited.
For in flesh-and-blood lived experience, American idealism about human dignity helped create immense realist, geopolitical stability. And American military, our might, enabled the spread of human rights and broader representation, and private property rights and land reform, and unleashed entrepreneurial innovation on every continent, thereby uplifting millions of families and innumerable communities. That’s the reality of the last 75 years.
Stated more brass-tacks: American military and economic engagement wasn’t some charity. After the Second World War, our grandparents literally built the world.
We created a global infrastructure of trade organizations and military alliances that became dang-near beautiful, like the pictures of Ellis Island in the President’s office upstairs, Reagan leading us to avert World War 3 and win the Cold War, barely having to fire a shot.
But this creative process wasn’t born of altruism. Although it was indeed very good for the world, but we did it because it was good for America.
You can find the full transcript here and see the full speech below:
