GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Green Bay’s Mike Gallagher says Russia and China have launched a “new Cold War” against the U.S., and he’s disappointed in the response from the Biden administration.
From touching on his recent visit to Taiwan to calling the suspected Chinese spy balloon ordeal a “massive embarrassment” for the U.S., the Republican Congressman is “unsatisfied” with how Biden is handling the tenuous relationship with China.
Gallagher said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have launched a new Cold War against the U.S. The two nations appear to be deepening relations, as Russia supports China amid tensions with the U.S. over Taiwan and China refuses to criticize the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Further, tensions have been particularly high as U.S. officials urge China not to send weapons to Russia in its war with Ukraine.
“Putin is Xi Jinping’s junior partner in a new Cold War they launched against the United States,” said Gallagher. “I just came back from Taiwan and that was one of the messages I picked up from leadership — that the invasion of Ukraine has been a wake up call on the need for the West to re-arm and, also, they see these two problem sets as intimately connected.”
Gallagher emphasized that tensions over Taiwan are not “just an over there problem.”
And regarding the string of balloons the U.S. saw earlier this month, there are a lot of unanswered questions remaining for Gallagher.
“I still haven’t heard a coherent explanation for why we didn’t shoot it down earlier,” Gallagher said of one of the balloons. “It seems we’ve gone from being very unwilling to take these off to being trigger happy with balloons that may have been research balloons or hobby balloons.”
The congressman said he believes the balloon situation was purposefully planned to embarrass the U.S. ahead of Sec. of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China.
That trip was postponed, but Blinken met with Wang Yi, the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official, in Munich last week.
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