Brookfield, WI – The world is changing, and a new reality is rapidly replacing old norms. Democrat Tom Palzewicz, running for Wisconsin’s Fifth Congressional District seat, knows America will need to adapt and change to navigate complex foreign policy in the future.
Russia and China dominate the foreign policy news. The cold war, the arms race, and traditional competition are being replaced by cyber warfare, an economic tug-of-war, and a struggle to preserve the balance of power. While Russia has been the focus because of election meddling and influence over President Donald Trump, China’s enormous economic growth and willingness to skirt international norms over the years may well mark a new battleground.
“Russia has been plowing their oil profits into cyber warfare,” said Palzewicz. “But as we move to a green energy structure, Russia’s ability to do these things will go down dramatically. They have nothing to offer the world in a green energy grid.”
While the threat of possible military conflict is ever-present, Palzewicz considers it a low possibility, largely because of the nuclear variable.
“It will be important for us to maintain our connections to our allies and build regional power structures that will counterbalance threats from Russia or China,” said Palzewicz. “I believe our young people understand this issue very well because they grew up with cyber and not with the nuclear threat. Moving forward, we will have to invest in countering what will inevitably come as hybrid and shadow operations.
“We have seen the disruption of global supply chains during this pandemic. We have a global economy. There are so many countries absolutely averse to doing anything to disrupt those supply chains. We saw it with the pandemic.
“It’s like we don’t even have a good healthcare supply chain and that healthcare chain was immediately disrupted as soon as we started thinking about closing the borders or not moving things around. Most countries don’t have the ability to exist on their own without some kind of trade movement. I would think the United States probably has the best ability to do that. China would just get through, but I think their people would suffer tremendously if it happened.”
Palzewicz believes that these will all be important issues that the next congress will have to deal with, and he looks forward to re-establishing America’s position all around the world.
