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(gentle instrumental music) - Hello everyone, welcome to the Crosscut Festival.

My name's Connie Anthony.

I am in the political science department at Seattle University, and I teach and do research in the area of US foreign policy.

Today we are here to talk about the war in Ukraine and the impact this war is having in many other areas of international affairs and politics.

I'm joined today by Congressman Adam Smith.

He represents Washington's 9th congressional district and has served on the House Armed Services Committee, which he is currently chair of.

He's also served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the New Democrat Coalition.

Congressman Smith, welcome, and thank you so much for joining us today.

It's an honor to have you.

- Thank you, Connie.

I appreciate it.

I should say I am sadly not actually the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

- Oh, I'm sorry.

- But I was chair for four years, but the Republicans retook the majority, so now I am the ranking member.

And Mike Rogers is the chairman.

- That makes sense given that the Republicans control the Congress.

- Indeed.

- So we have several interview questions or questions that we wanna ask you to elucidate or begin our conversation about the war in Ukraine.

And the first one I have is, while supporting the war, I think many people in the United States are still working to understand it.

Can you explain in a general respect why the war in Ukraine is important to the United States?

- Certainly.

And I'll set a frame of sort of the global picture of US foreign policy at this point, and then drill down specifically to what's going on in Ukraine.

I mean, and there's a lot of, you know, interpretation or different aspects of this, but by and large, the US wants to continue to play a pivotal role in global affairs.

We want to be able to help develop a rules-based international system whereby we resolve our differences through international organizations, and you know, we maintain partnerships and alliances across the globe.

We want to be involved in that.

Now, China is a rising power.

Russia is resistant to US influence in the world.

And the situation we have right now is you've got Russia, China, and to a lesser degree, Iran, North Korea, and transnational terrorist organizations, all of which have one thing in common.

They would like to see the US have less influence in the world.

They wanna push us down so they can have freer reign to do what they wanna do in the world, basically, in their parts of the world specifically.

But China, Russia, they're very active in Latin America as well.

So they are, you know, of a mindset that would be better off if the US had less influence.

And we're pushing back against that because of, well, we want to have influence and because we are deeply concerned about the way China, and Russia, and Iran, and North Korea, and those other groups are interacting with the world.

So that's sort of the big overarching challenge.

Russia wants to more clearly establish their sphere of influence.

You know, what exactly that sphere of influence is is open to debate.

I mean, you can listen to speeches that Putin is given and some others about, you know, Russia should be a Eurasian power and all that.

But at a minimum for Russia, it's starts with Ukraine, Belarus, and the caucuses, Georgia, Armenian, and Azerbaijan, as places that they think they oughta have a control over.

And they were upset that Ukraine was sort of flirting with the West, if you will, mostly economically, frankly, through the EU.

But the thing is, that's a difference that you have to resolve peacefully.

The reason Ukraine matters, aside from the fact that the Ukrainian people have a right to be a sovereign democracy and not simply be attacked and brutalized in the way that they are, is because if Russia can do this successfully, then it sends the message that sovereignty really isn't that big a deal.

We saw the Chinese ambassador to France just last week, couple weeks ago, speculating that, well, you know, the former USSR countries, you know, they're not really sovereign, you know, and China has claims on, I dunno, seven, eight, nine, different countries, including Russia, by the way.

So respect for sovereignty is the number one biggest thing that Ukraine is about.

If Russia's able to succeed, that is in jeopardy globally.

- Thank you.

So NATO has recently expanded to include Finland, which like many other parts of Europe is much closer to the fighting.

Even though we are members of NATO, do Europe and the the United States share the same goals in Ukraine or are there any important differences?

- Well, I think there are important potential differences, I would say.

Right now you've got a coalition of 54 countries, NATO certainly, but there are some from outside of NATO as well, Australia, Japan, South Korea, who are helping in a variety of different ways to try to defend Ukraine.

And I think, you know, president Biden has done a great job framing this issue.

Our goal is to maintain a sovereign, democratic Ukraine.

That is the objective.

And I think there is wide consensus on that within that coalition, including folks in Europe.

Now, what does that mean in terms of, you know, well, in terms of what is Ukraine?

Crimea is a potential area of disagreement.

How aggressive should Ukraine be about, you know, trying to retake Crimea itself?

So as we move down the road here, there could be differences of opinion about how much of sovereign Ukraine must we help Ukraine try to retake militarily?

And then also, what would a peace negotiation ultimately look like?

Because I think everybody wants this war to end.

What does diplomacy look like?

How do we work with Ukraine, - Yeah.

- and bring Russia in, and bring our allies in, and get to a peaceful resolution?

There could be some definite nuanced differences there, but the overall goal, protect sovereign, democratic Ukraine, I think there was a strong consensus on across NATO.

- Well, your answer actually blends right into my next question, which is, and you've probably noticed that this is a little quiet right now, but there have been these conversations about peace.

And so given that, should the United States be supporting the idea of a negotiated settlement, France, as you know, Macron went to China, or work hard to get better weapons into the hands of the Ukrainians, which you probably also know many people in the government constantly talk about the need for greater weapons, including Zelenskyy.

- Yeah, my answer is we should do both.

I mean, the only path to negotiating table is to stop Putin, in my view.

He has not completely given up on the idea that he will be able to subsume Ukraine into the Russian orbit.

And until it's clear that he's not going to be able to do that, he is gonna be reluctant to negotiate.

So we have been working aggressively with those 54 partner nations to arm, train, and equip Ukraine so that they can retake as much of their territory as possible.

And as I'm sure most everyone here knows, this counter offensive is imminent.

Basically as soon as the ground solidifies enough for tanks to roll across it, Ukraine is gonna try to retake substantial chunks of the territory that was taken beginning in February of 2022.

So that's going to be a crucial part, you know, moving forward.

And yes, we need to arm Ukraine, but I am also of the opinion that we need to, you know, have the conditions in place so that there can be a negotiated settlement.

I think it's a mistake, if we talk about, you know, Putin has to go, and you know, basically being overly aggressive about going after them as war criminals.

At the end of this, you know, there's gonna have to be an off-ramp for Putin in Russia, and we need to make it clear we do not threaten sovereign Russia.

You know, we respect sovereignty in Ukraine, we respect sovereignty in Russia.

And if Russia wants Putin to be their president, well, that's their choice, however they figure that out.

It's not for us to go in there and and change that.

So we want to have a path to a negotiated piece.

I simply argue that that path begins with successfully pushing the Russians back in the parts of Ukraine that they currently occupy.

- Hmm, yes.

How do you see Orban and Erdogan as national leaders who partly support Russia and occasionally appear to be undermining NATO?

- Yeah, well and that's a really interesting question, sort of going back to my initial framing of things of the US trying to get a rules-based international order in place.

You know, there has been, as has been well documented, a rise in autocratic government.

I mean, by and large the US believes that economic and political freedom, and as I've mentioned, the rules-based resolution of differences, is the way to go.

That's where we want to head towards.

Now, look, democracy is not perfect, none of that is perfect.

There are certainly going to be countries that we're gonna work with and support who don't live up to those ideals, in the minds of some, and some cases in the minds of many, but we want to continue to push that forward.

While meanwhile we have had backsliding in Turkey and Hungary, you've had governments that have become more and more autocratic and less and less democratic in terms of freedom of the press, in terms of free and fair elections and a balance of power.

Heck, you're seeing that in Israel right now as, you know, Netanyahu is trying to reform the judiciary to consolidate more power in his hands.

But at the same time, as you mentioned, this sort of mixes in and out.

It's an oversimplification to say we're team democracy and here's our team.

You know, democracy is a fluid concept to some degree.

And you know, that team is gonna ebb and flow, depending on the issue.

Now, what I think is really important that we haven't focused enough on is the number of countries who are not in China and Russia's camp, but they're also not in our camp.

India, Brazil, South Africa, many countries in Africa and Latin America.

How do we get them to be more supportive of that economic, political freedom, rules-based international order system as we go forward?

And I think we need to be smart about that.

I don't think we can show up and say, you know, we are morally superior, so therefore you have to be with us.

We have to understand what are India's interests?

You know, what are South Africa's interests?

And how can we work with them on that?

And the final point I'll make on this is I don't envision a zero sum game with China.

I don't think we have to have an inevitable conflict with China.

China can absolutely be part of a rules-based international order.

How do we work with the rest of the world to help tug China in that direction?

'Cause look, people ask me, you know, what's my policy towards China?

I sum it up in two words, peaceful coexistence.

That's where we have to get to.

Now there's a whole bunch of different policies that go into that.

But this notion that somehow we're gonna stand up, you know, beat our chest, and you know, bring down China, it's not gonna happen, they're a global power, we gotta figure out how to coexist.

- Yes.

You mentioned other countries internationally.

So should we be giving more foreign aid to Africa or providing more military support for governments in Asia?

I know you probably have notice this, and probably this has been debated in Congress, but you know, China's Belt and Road Initiative has been more or less a diplomatic success.

I mean, there's the debt issue here, but I'm wondering how you see, given what you just said, is there some practical things we need to be doing in terms of developing countries?

- Absolutely.

I mean, and that's it is, it's a matter of we're trying to persuade people to support that vision that I keep describing, and we got a lot of tools in that toolbox.

But you gotta understand what do the countries need?

And yes, you know, military support is part of it.

We have the best military equipment and the best military training in the world.

A lot of countries want that, they need security, you know, so that's one way that we can build relationships.

But also countries need development.

They need help in building roads, and bridges, and meeting healthcare challenges, you know, and developing education, and a whole host of issues.

And we have a lot of programs to do that, but nowhere near as much money is going into that as China's putting in.

- Right.

- And you know, I always like to quote, you know, a friend of mine represents the Cambodian government and he says that the Cambodian prime minister is like, "You come to us and you say China's bad and we shouldn't buy Huawei, and their human rights record is terrible and all of that.

But the thing about China", and this is what the Cambodian guy said was, "With China, it's all money, no judgment.

With the US it's all judgment, no money."

Okay, yeah, you can talk about how terrible China is, but they just built a bridge for us and we kind of needed that bridge.

So what do you got?

And I think we have to be mindful of that.

Now, China is also, as you alluded to briefly with the debt trap, China is not necessarily terribly benevolent in their development aid.

They come in, yes, they create huge debt bombs for people.

And by the way, one of the things that China does is they will not publicly let people know how much debt a given country owes them, which makes it very, very difficult to restructure debt and help countries that are in a challenge there.

They're not working with the international community on that.

And also a lot of times they bring in their own workers and they basically just suck resources out of a country, in many cases they will simply pay off the prime minister and others, but is it really benefiting the people of Africa or the people of South America?

Now, it is important to point out here, and one of my central messages for US foreign policy is it should be humble, okay?

We should have some humility about this.

Because what I'm describing, and you may well know this, is a lot of what the US and the west did in the developing world in the '60s, and '70s, and even into the '80s.

We created debt traps, we extracted resources without adequately helping people.

- Right.

- And we changed that over the course of the last 30 years.

But when you go down to, I don't know, Brazil and say, oh, here's all the terrible stuff that China's doing, they're like, you know.

- Yeah.

- that's what you guys did.

So I think we have to be aware of that history as we're trying to build relationships in the developing world.

- Thank you.

So we're beginning to get some questions from the audience.

So I've gotten one that I think, I mean, maybe you won't find this hard to answer, but it's certainly something that people are thinking a lot about, and in fact, Putin raised it, you know, pretty directly, it's hard to remember now, it might have even been before the initial occupation, but what do you think the risk is for nuclear war coming off of the war in Ukraine?

- It is far lower than a lot of people are worried, but I understand that that's not overwhelmingly reassuring.

You know, a low risk of something catastrophically bad is still deeply troubling.

I mean, all of the evidence that we can see is that Putin is using his nuclear weapons as a bluff, trying to get the rest of the world to abandon Ukraine to his military through the use of the threat of nuclear weapons.

Because look, Russia, their economy is not great, they need the rest of the world, you know, and there are a lot of, China certainly is helping them economically, but India and others.

If Russia were to use a nuclear weapon, they would become a pariah state in the blink of an eye.

And Russia can't survive that.

You know, they can't survive without some economic support and certainly, you know, trade with China and India alone, but elsewhere as well.

So I think, you know, the benefits are small of Putin using nuclear weapons and the costs are enormously high.

So I think it's unlikely he's going to do that, but he's absolutely gonna threaten it as a way to try to reduce support for Ukraine.

And look, Russia, they're really good at propaganda.

I mean, they spread every story they can possibly spread to try to undermine support for Ukraine.

And you know, I mean, they're spreading the story about the attack on the Kremlin today, that seems highly unlikely that, you know, Ukraine would be, you know, doing a drone attack on the Kremlin for no benefit and considerable cost.

You know, they are gonna try to spin this to reduce support for Ukraine so that they can get what they want there.

And so, yeah, the abuse of nuclear weapons is something that Putin is always gonna have, but highly unlikely that he's gonna do it.

- For me that's reassuring, listening to the policy debate.

Well, one of the audience questions is, I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit on today's report that there's been a bombing attempt in the Kremlin?

Do you think that's an internal political group?

I know that they're accusing Ukraine of having done this, I saw a media discussion that said that this was a bit of a spin on Russia's part in terms of its future attacks on the Ukraine.

I'm wondering how you see it?

- Yeah, at this point, I don't know.

- Yeah.

- I mean, it's just come across, I haven't had the chance to get, you know, sort of the high level briefs.

But I would guess that, look, things are not going well for Russia and Ukraine.

Their casualties are off the charts, for all of the people that they threw into Bakhmut, they still haven't been able to take that tiny, little militarily unimportant village in East Ukraine.

And you know, Putin had to call up and draft a lot of people, it's escalated tension, he needs something to get the Russian people to stay behind his war in Ukraine.

So you know, the burning of the Reichstag, if you will.

- Yeah.

- You know, something that shows, hmm, they're threatening us, so that that can motivate them.

That would be my strong suspicion, because again, it just makes no sense, why would they do a drone attack on the Kremlin?

I mean, how is that going to advance Ukrainian interests?

It's only gonna motivate the Russians more and not do anything militarily to help Ukraine.

So it'd be highly unlikely if it played out, but, well, you know, I'll get the information, we'll see what happened.

- So I'm gonna move to another question I have, but I want to make sure the audience is aware that they can send us questions, and so we're so happy to take them.

So staying with the war in Ukraine, but moving regionally, there's been all this complicated diplomacy and even lots of military drama and theater, you know, kind of hocus theater between China and the US over Taiwan.

Do you think the US needs to step up its military presence?

There's been some critique of Biden's diplomacy.

Or are we kind of in the right place on how we're dealing with this?

- Well, I think the one thing we need to do is we need to better arm Taiwan so that they are a harder target, the porcupine thing that's becoming a cliche, make it so that Xi never thinks that he can be militarily successful in Taiwan.

And I think we can better arm and better train Taiwan to make sure that they have that ability to defend themselves.

And I think the other thing though is to reassert some basic bedrocks of US foreign policy towards China and Taiwan.

You know, number one, we have a one China policy.

We acknowledge that Taiwan is part of China, and you know, we're not going to advocate for independence for Taiwan, and we should not, that is an unnecessary provocation.

Number two, I think strategic ambiguity makes sense.

There are a number of members of Congress now who are advocating that the US state the clear policy that we will defend Taiwan, basically making Taiwan a treaty ally.

I think that would be an enormous mistake.

Strategic ambiguity has worked quite well thus far, and I think we should stick to it.

And I mean, are we really gonna pass an AUMF that says we're going to war in Taiwan?

I just think that's gonna be very difficult in Congress.

I think we should stick with strategic ambiguity and continue to put pressure on China and say, look, the deal always was one China, they're not gonna declare independence and you're not gonna attack them.

Okay, that's the deal.

It's working, let's just stick with it, all right?

China's doing well, Taiwan's doing well, let's just everybody chill and not get involved in a war that doesn't need to happen.

Now I do understand, and I've met with Chinese ambassadors and councils and they are incredibly passionate about Taiwan.

I think they're wrong.

I think they're allowing pride to get in the way of common sense.

I can't quote "Pulp Fiction" on that one because it's a little bit blunt, but I feel the same way about pride as was stated in that movie.

It can get you in a hell of a lot of trouble.

Look, China is a global power and they're obsessed with this whole a hundred years of humiliation thing, that they must show the world that they will never again be, you know, okay.

Life's tough, I mean, everybody's been humiliated at one time or another, let's not go starting a world war in order to make sure that you feel like you've never been humiliated.

China's back, - Yeah.

- they're a global power, they've got a great economy, their military's booming, they've got a great relationship with Taiwan for that matter.

I mean, the economic trade back and forth that's going on in the last 20 plus years now has been incredible.

So I think, yes, we need to make Taiwan more defensible, but we also need to maintain those other cores of US policy on strategic ambiguity and one China.

- So we have one question from the audience that kind of dovetails with something I was gonna ask you.

So one audience member is asking if you wouldn't mind addressing a little bit what US domestic priorities would be?

And I was gonna ask how CHIPS addresses some of our domestic priorities in manufacturing and technology?

- Yeah, well, I mean, there's a couple different pieces in that.

If you're asking about domestic policy in terms of the China competition, that's where the CHIPS Act comes into it.

Look, I think one of the most important policies, and I know, you know, we're talking about Ukraine a lot here and certainly what Russia's doing in Eastern Europe and making sure that Russia can bully its way across Eastern Europe, again, is important.

But our relationship with China is gonna be the most important issue for the fate of the globe for at least the next 50 years, and probably the next a hundred.

So how do we think about our relationship with China?

Number one, like I said, peaceful coexistence.

We should look for opportunities to work with China on climate change, on global development, on terrorism in some cases.

I mean, there's all manner of issues that affect the globe that we ought to be better able to work together on.

But then we also have to be able to compete with them economically on a fair playing field.

And that's the big problem with China is they, well, they cheat, I guess would be the word.

They steal technology, they steal IP, they don't allow access to their markets in the way that the WTO would require.

But the way I like to think about this is, you know, for the last 20 plus years, going back to China PNTR, which by the way, I still think was a good idea, I know that's not a popular opinion, but, you know, China was coming, one way or the other, the idea that if we kept 'em out of the WTO they weren't gonna be a problem down the road, I think is naive in the extreme.

They were going to be a growing economy.

And you know, yes, it would've been better if they had followed the rules a little bit more along the way.

But having kept them out of the WTO I don't think would've fundamentally changed that.

But for the last 20 years, China has become the global corporate easy button.

It's where so many corporations wanted to go because huge market, you know, cheap labor, no environmental regulations, you know, let's go, to the point where we concentrated a lot of industries in China, and I think one of our cornerstone policies now has to be to diversify that.

And it's not about bringing it all back to the US, big supporter of the CHIPS Act, here in the state of Washington we're talking about, you know, building some semiconductor manufacturing plants, we're gonna do that across the country.

But it's about, you know, what about Mexico and Latin America?

What about Vietnam and Malaysia, India?

There are other places to go so that it isn't all concentrated in China.

So economically, we have to put ourselves in a better position to fairly compete with China.

It's not a matter of burying them economically.

It's a matter of being able to compete in a way that meets our core interests and creates fair economic competition, which is why the CHIPS Act is so important, it's why the Inflation Reduction Act that made all those investments in clean energy is so important.

Pivot ourselves so that we're able to compete economically with China, who is now a peer economic competitor without question.

- Okay, thank you.

So another couple questions from the audience.

If Trump would become president, how would these current international policies and approaches that the US is embracing, how would they play out?

- Poorly, would be my one word summary.

Look, I mean, this gets me down the road here of the unique, you know, individual cult that is Donald Trump and all the damage that it's doing to the country.

And I believe in bipartisanship, I work very closely, as I mentioned at the outset, with Mike Rogers, who's the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, but Trump's a whole different story.

Well, on the night of January 6th on CNN, I called him a narcissistic psychopath.

And I stand by that, by the way, I think it's a pretty decent summary.

So whatever he would do as president is going to be about what's good for Trump, not what's good for the globe.

And if a huge part of our argument is that we need to move away from autocracy, electing an autocrat president isn't gonna help us make that case.

Right off the bat, it's pretty clear, and he said this publicly, he would let Russia do whatever Russia wanted to do in Eastern Europe, he wanted to pull us outta NATO, he doesn't believe in international alliances, international alliances that are the core of our ability to meet our national security interests.

And the other thing I'm worried about is the one foreign policy that he seemed to seize onto was to bash on China.

He loves bashing on China.

Could he, you know, stumble into a conflict with China as a result of that?

But more than anything, Trump does not believe in government as a functioning entity.

The damage that he did to our state department during four years as president is impossible to overstate, you know, our diplomatic skills atrophied horribly.

So I just worry about our ability to have an effective presence in the world if President Trump is running the government.

- Thank you.

So staying a little bit with China, but also the war in Ukraine, China has been putting itself forward as a potential mediator, and apparently Xi and Zelenskyy had an hour long conversation on the phone.

Do you see this as, I guess I'd say the real deal, or is there something else going on in a diplomatic respect that may not be totally visible?

- Yeah, it's not the real deal.

It's China's in a bit of a bind here, because as I mentioned at the outset, the one big thing they have in common with Russia is they wanna see the US fail, they want us to be less influential in the world.

So, you know, if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, it accomplishes that goal.

Xi does not want to see Putin fail because it undermines some of the core aspects of his argument.

On the other hand, he has to show respect for sovereignty.

But you know, China was making significant inroads into Europe, and if they appear to be sympathetic to Russia, you know, and all of the violence that they're reigning down upon Ukraine, that undermines China's credibility in Europe and in other parts of the world.

So China's basically trying to walk that very delicate balance there.

And peace negotiations is just sort of a cover for that, you know, oh, we're not backing Russia, we're trying to find a solution.

At the moment it doesn't seem to be very serious.

All that said, back to my off-ramp point from earlier, what's the off-ramp for Putin?

If we are going to get to that point, and I believe we must get to that point where we are negotiating a settlement, China could potentially play an important role in forcing Putin to the bargaining table.

- So there's another question from the audience that says, this kind of plays into what you're beginning to talk about, like how will the war end?

- Yeah, well, as I like to say, the future is notoriously difficult to predict, so I try not to do it.

But I can tell you what the plan is.

- We're giving Putin an off-ramp, so how would we get.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, okay.

- Yeah, here's the plan.

So first of all, you know, the Russians did their counter offensive over the course of the last six months or so.

It didn't go well, I don't know, some fairly small number of kilometers in the east they were able to take at enormous expense.

All that while we have been training and equipping Ukrainian brigades to be ready to retake territory.

And so now, to give you a little geography lesson here, if you basically go from Kharkiv up in the east, maybe a little northeast of Ukraine, and work your way all the way down around in sort of a crescent to Kherson, that's what the Russians kind of have, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, big chunks of Donetsk and Luhansk.

And the plan would be to push 'em back as close to the February, 2022 borders as possible.

And that's distinctly possible, because the Russians are spread thin, they've absorbed enormous casualties, and the Ukrainians have proven to be quite surprising in their ability.

If that counter offensive is successful, you're in a position where A, Putin's gotta realize that he's not getting any more territory in Ukraine, he's back on his heels.

B, Crimea is threatened at that point.

They're already, you know, doing a fair number of gorilla attacks within Crimea.

It's undermined the stability of Crimea for Russia to a great extent.

And so Putin has to stare down the barrel of the very real possibility that he could lose Crimea, that forces him to the table, at which point, in my opinion, that's funny, I said that we ought to have a one Ukraine policy where Crimea is concerned.

Crimea is part of Ukraine, it is sovereign Ukraine, there is no disputing that, you know, but we're not gonna quibble about the details in terms of how it gets reunited.

There's a whole bunch of different ways to do that.

And then the final crucial piece of this is having security guarantees for Ukraine.

Basically a guarantee that we will train, arm, and equip Ukraine so that they are not, you know, two, three, four, five, eight years down the road subject to another Russian invasion, that they become a porcupine themselves to any potential future Russian attack.

That's kind of what it looks like, and it all goes well, we can move towards that negotiated phase, I don't know, October, November.

But we need to lay the groundwork now and I believe that we are.

- That would be terrific.

So one more question from the audience.

Do you think that COVID moved from a lab in China?

And I'm sure you've noticed this, but the UN has been debating that, you know, maybe in the last six months or so, I was surprised to see that they brought it back up.

- Yeah, I don't know is the short answer.

It's plausible both ways that it, you know, escaped from a lab.

It's also plausible that it just, you know, occurred naturally in the environment.

What is absolutely clear is that China did an enormous disservice to the world in the way they handled it.

And that's one of the things, I mean, China's running around the world saying, you know, democracy doesn't work, autocracy is better, our system of government is a better way to run a country.

And that's what's really changed under Xi Jinping is China used to be, we do our thing, you do your thing, they weren't really proselytizing, per se, but Xi decided that he was gonna be some sort of, you know, transcendental leader of, you know, all time and was gonna sell autocracy to the world.

And so got very aggressive about that.

But COVID sort of shows some of the flaws in autocracy.

You know, when you don't have a system of checks and balances, when people feel like they can't say something that the leadership doesn't want to hear, you'll wind up with a very bad situation.

And their lack of transparency, their lack of global cooperation from when COVID came forth, you know, China's paid a huge price for it, so has the world.

It really shows the limitations of an autocratic approach to governing.

And that's the most important thing.

I mean, maybe someday we'll find out, but I think part of the reason that we've been unable to find out is because China has been blocking it.

They haven't cooperated with the international community in the way that they should have to help us figure out what happened and how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

- So I've gotten now three questions.

If you're willing to discuss this, several people in the audience are wondering what do you think the biggest domestic priorities are for the United States right now?

- Yeah, I think there are, well, ticking 'em off in my brain here, but three occur to me.

Number one, income inequality.

The concentration of wealth in our society and the growing number of people who struggle day in and day out to meet their basic needs is really, really a problem.

You know, there's too much food insecurity, there's too much housing insecurity, there's too many people who can't get access to the education and job training that they need.

While at the top there's an enormous amount of money being made, which in many instances simply drives up the price of everything so that the people struggling, you know, have a hard time, you know, paying for it even worse.

Housing in King County, you know, you've got a whole bunch of investors and shareholders out there who got enough money to plop down 2 million for, I don't know, 2,800 square foot house in Bellevue, so they drive the price up.

That income divide, that lock them opportunity for the working class is the number one biggest problem we face, I believe, economically in terms of how we approach it.

- Yeah.

- Number two is, and these are in no particular order, less people get offended in the order that I put them in, the threat to our democracy.

I think we are moving away from the idea that representative government and all of the values that come into it is the right way to go.

I mean, that's what the January 6th crowd was all about.

They didn't like the outcome, you know?

They felt that it was unacceptable for Joe Biden to be president instead of Donald Trump.

And if democracy could deliver them that outcome, well, great.

If it didn't, well, we'll try to get it by another means.

And this is right and left, you know, both sides seem less willing to accept the outcome of a robust debate and more focused on silencing everybody who disagrees with them to make sure they get their way.

I think that is threatening our ability to address a whole bunch of issues.

Then the third thing I would say is global warming, is the fact that our current energy policy, primarily, but other policies as well, are jeopardizing the long-term health of the globe.

And it's the only one we've got, journeys to Mars notwithstanding.

So I'd say those are the three biggest issues, income inequality, the erosion of democratic principles, and global warming.

- Thank you.

So this is largely a affection of my own, to a certain extent to my own friends, and colleagues, and students, and when I speak to or teach on questions of international affairs, one of the things I'm aware of is that really domestic, you know, and you've mentioned January 6th a couple times, domestic issues around race, economic inequality, right now the laws that are being proposed on certain groups within society to limit rights are really on people's minds.

And I'm wondering, 'cause I weigh this myself quite a bit, whether you think the national security interests that the war in Ukraine raise, and as you were mentioning, the larger concerns with China, if these national security interests are more important than the domestic interests?

'Cause my sense is that people in the larger society don't find that to be the case.

- Yeah, they're not more important, but they are important.

And it's not like if we weren't engaged in Ukraine in the way that we are everything would be fine domestically.

You know, the challenges that we face domestically are really complicated, and I've seen a lot of people oversimplify, gosh, if we didn't send, you know, $70 billion to Ukraine, everything would be fine.

That's utter nonsense, okay?

And I'll tell you why, I mean, in the last three years, Congress passed $7 trillion in additional domestic spending.

The CARES Act, the American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS Act, the infrastructure bill, over and above the normal amount of money that we spend.

So, you know, it's not the case that if we didn't care about what was going on in the globe everything would be fine here locally.

And I do believe that if China and Russia are able to continue to consolidate power, that we will have a more chaotic, unstable globe.

And I alluded to this a couple times earlier, - Yeah.

- but so you know, the US doesn't have a perfect record when it comes to human rights or democracy, we don't.

But here's the thing, we debate the issue, okay?

People will say, well, you know, what are we doing in Ethiopia?

Are we upholding human rights?

China and Russia, they don't debate that issue.

- Right.

- There's nobody saying, okay, we shouldn't do this because it violates human rights, or it's not democratic, or whatever.

Okay, it's game over if we're not out there, at least trying to say that there ought to be a debate over these issues, and that impacts us domestically as well as internationally.

So I think we have to be able to both deal with the globe and deal with our domestic concerns.

- Thank you very much, Congressman Smith.

Well, I think we've run out of time, so I want to thank the audience today for coming, and again, to our distinguished guest, and our, depending on what district you're in, House Representative, and thank you for your time.

And to the audience, thank you for coming, and also thanks for the questions from the audience.

- Thank you very much.

I really appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

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