By Capt Joseph R. John, February 3, 2023
 

Elected to his Fourth Term in Congress, Congressman Michael John Gallagher, Cpt-USMC (PhD) (R-WI-8), of Green Bay, was the 110th endorsed Combat Veteran For Congress.  He serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.  Cong Gallagher was just selected as the Chairman of the vital House Select Committee on Communist China; it is a sorely-needed instrument to drive the Communist China policy debate in Congress.  The Mission of the House Select Committee on Communist China is to focus on the growing military imbalance between the United States and Communist China, the imbalance has worsened over the last two years, because of the weak Foreign Policy of the Biden/Obama administration in Southeast Asia. 

Cong Mike Gallagher is a fiscally conservative Congressman who has tried to rein in the out-of-control spending by irresponsible Social Democrat members in Congress, and worked to reduce the national debt.  He is a seventh generation Wisconsin native and was born in Green Bay on March 3, 1984.  Cong Gallagher comes from a large Irish Catholic family that first settled in Northeast Wisconsin in 1845, and remain there to this day.  His grandfather, father, godfather, and sister are all well-known obstetricians. 

In June 2006, Mike received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Near East Studies from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; he majored in Near Eastern Studies and Arabic.  In June 2010, Michael Gallagher received a Master of Science Degree in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University in Washington, DC.  Michael received a Master of Arts Degree in Security Studies in 2012, and in 2013 he received a Master of Arts Degree in in Government from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.  Michael was subsequently awarded a Doctorate Degree in Government-International Relations from Georgetown University in June 2015 , where his dissertation focused on presidential-decision making and the conditions under which presidents and Congress make major foreign policy changes.  He has published articles on foreign policy in Intelligence and National Security, The National Interest, Parameters, and The Marine Corps Gazette. 

In February 2004, while matriculating at Princeton University, Michael Gallagher was sworn in to the US Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class Program at the US Marine Corps Recruiting Headquarters in Princeton, NJ.  During the summer following his junior year at Princeton, Michael attended Officer Candidate School at the US Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Virginia, and graduated in September 2005.  Upon graduation from Princeton on June 5, 2006, Michael Gallagher was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the US Marine Corps. 

In September 2007, 2nd Lt Gallagher deployed from Camp Pendleton to Iraq’s Al Anbar Province.  During that deployment, 2nd Lt Gallagher was a Human Intelligence Exploitation Team Commander serving in general support of Regimental Combat Team-2 Assessment, where he conducted over 100 tactical interrogations and supported over 38 regimental Aero Scout missions.  In April of 2008 he returned to Camp Pendleton and re-deployed to Iraq one month later in May 2008. 

During his second deployment, on May 26, 2008, 2nd Lt Gallagher was promoted to First Lieutenant, and served in direct support of Task Force 2/2 in the border town of Al Qaim, Iraq as a Human Intelligence Exploitation Team Commander.  Upon 1st Lt Gallagher’s return from his second deployment, he was temporarily assigned to General Petraeus’ Central Command Assessment Team—serving at both CENTCOM Forward HQ in Qatar and National Defense University—where he was the only Company Grade Officer participating in this comprehensive review of the CENTCOM AOR. 

1st Lt Gallagher was promoted to Captain on July 1, 2010.  Capt Gallagher was Honorably Discharged from the Marine Corps on August 31, 2013 and accepted a commission as a Captain in the US Marine Corps Reserve.  While on active duty, Capt. Gallagher earned the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, the Navy Unit Commendation  (Gold Star in lieu of 2nd award), and various Campaign and Service Medals.  

While on active duty, Capt Gallagher was named by the Center For a New American Security as a “Next Generation National Security Leader”, was selected as a Foundation for the Defense of Democracies National Security Fellow, and was listed as a “Top 99 under 33 Foreign Policy Leader” by the Diplomatic Courier.   

As a civilian, Mike served from September 2013 to February 2015 as the Republican Professional Staff Member for Middle East/North Africa and Counterterrorism on the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  In that capacity, he was the lead expert for over 20 countries including Iran, Israel, Syria, and Iraq, and for global counterterrorism operations.  He was responsible for conducting State Department/USAID oversight and, as a Captain in US Marine Corps Reserves, served as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency Director’s Development Group. 

As the Select Committee Chairman on Communist China, Cong Michael J. Gallagher will focus on the Select Committees central task.  The Select Committee’s central task is to focus on the geopolitical reality in Southeast Asia that the Biden/Obama administration has been working tirelessly, trying to blur the fact that Communist China is preparing their population for war, and he will reveal to the American electorate just how seriously the military imbalance of power has become under the Biden/Obama administration.   

Over the last two years, the military balance has shifted severely against the United States, since the Biden/Obama administration has neglected and degraded the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US Armed Forces.  Communist China now has a largest Army and Navy in the world, and they are involved in a massive warship building program, expanding the number of China’s aircraft carriers and their nuclear submarines.  

Cong Gallagher’s focus as the Chairman of the Select Committee on Communist China is to grapple with the reality of the severe modifications that have occurred in Southeast Asia over the last two years, where Communist China’s growing military power, and America’s declining military capabilities have destabilized the status quo.  Those realities have threatened America’s allies of South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, Guam, and Thailand in the region.

The military imbalance in favor of Communist China has also undermined the strategic status quo in Europe and in Asia. Unless the Select Committee exposes the military imbalance to the American electorate, and convinces Congress to take action to rectify it, primarily through a major expansion of the US Armed Forces and a commensurate increase in America’s defense industrial capacity, it will only be a matter of time before an element of the strategic status quo cracks. The most likely result of any future fissure would result in the invasion of Taiwan.  We encourage you to read the below listed article. 

Copyright by Capt Joseph R. John.  All Rights Reserved.  The material can only be posted on another Web site or distributed on the Internet by giving full credit to the author.  It may not be published, broadcast, or rewritten without the permission from the author.  
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Opinion Cong Mike Gallagher Chairs Vital House Committee. Its Only Focus: Communist China 

George F. Will

January 25, 2023

Cong Mike Gallagher, Cpt-USMC (PhD) (R-WI-8) speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill on Jan. 3. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) 
Voracious reading — “I am reminded of Andrew Gordon’s masterful book ‘The Rules of the Game’ about the decline of the Royal Navy before the Battle of Jutland” — fuels the fluent writings of Cong Mike Gallagher (R-WI-8). Their distilled essence is: People who are serious about national security should immediately speak loudly so that the nation can carry a big military stick. To qualify for the “marathon” competition with China, the United States must “win the sprint” right now. 
 

After Princeton and before earning a Georgetown PhD, Gallagher served seven years as a Marine, learning Arabic, and, during two Iraq deployments, learning the cost of good intentions combined with muddy thinking. Now 38 and in his fourth congressional term, he chairs the House’s newly created and instantly most important committee. Its single subject is China — meaning, practically, the Chinese Communist Party.

Deterrence failed regarding Ukraine, with a huge cost in blood and treasure; a comparable failure regarding Taiwan would be immeasurably more catastrophic. About this, Gallagher’s thinking is congruent with that of scholars Hal Brands (Johns Hopkins) and Michael Beckley (Tufts) in “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China.

"Demography, the authors say, dictates China’s destiny, which is decline. The danger zone is not this century — the marathon — but this decade, when China, “a falling power” facing an “ugly” future, might lunge through a closing window of opportunity for aggression.

The long run favors the United States, which is why “getting to the long run won’t be easy.”

China, Brands and Beckley write, is at “the intersection of ambition and desperation,” the latter because China’s 37-fold real gross domestic product growth 1978-2018 is certain to be followed by a prolonged contraction. By 2050, almost one-third of the nation will be over 60. Because of the long echo of the ruinous “one-child policy“ (1980-2016), China’s population, they write, “will be just half its current size by the end of the century and perhaps as soon as the 2060s.” And:

“From 2020 to 2035, China will lose roughly 70 million working-age adults and gain 130 million senior citizens. That’s a France-sized population of young workers, consumers, and taxpayers gone — and a Japan-sized population of elderly pensioners gained — in just fifteen years.”

Gallagher believes that China’s recklessness might increase as its dynamism wanes. Hence his questions, recommendations and complaints that the committee can explore.

Marc A. Thiessen: Who are the GOP’s future leaders? Let’s start with Mike Gallagher.

Why the seeming retreat from the long-standing goal of a 355-ship Navy? Why is China purchasing U.S. agricultural land? Why has Congress not funded improved air and missile defense systems on Guam, just 1,700 miles from Taiwan? Why is Saudi Arabia ahead of Taiwan in the line to receive Harpoon missiles?

There should be more surge capacity in munitions manufacturing. “On any given missile system,” Gallagher writes, “roughly 30 percent of the material requires lead times on restocking that may run beyond a year.” U.S. policy should protect Indo-Pacific nations from “Finlandization,” a Cold War term for large authoritarian powers reducing nominally independent countries to functional subservience.

Defeating an amphibious invasion of Taiwan would require U.S. strikes against China’s coastal facilities, according to Gallagher. So, crucial military munitions plants on the U.S. mainland should be hardened against potential retaliatory strikes by China’s precision weapons with conventional explosives.

Gallagher tartly says, “Silicon Valley, a leader in the corporate social responsibility movement, should modernize its conception of social responsibility to exclude technology partnerships” that facilitate China’s human rights abuses and weapons development. And in his summoning of the nation to seriousness, he is scalding about the Defense Department’s “woke commissariat.”

The growing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracy, wielding “fringe history and shoddy social science,” has bombarded the Navy with scores of recommendations — although this service is more diverse than the U.S. population. “The military,” Gallagher writes, “is an elite and meritocratic organization where only the most fit, disciplined, and lethal individuals should thrive, regardless of gender, race, or socioeconomic status. To that end, the military obsessively measures pull-ups, marksmanship, and a general ability to endure pain.” All other measurements are of secondary importance.

The House Select Committee on China was created by a bipartisan vote of 365-65. All of the opponents were Democrats, probably wary lest China’s threat complicates the progressive agenda of devoting evermore national resources to multiplying dependent domestic constituencies. Some congressional Republicans, speaking loudly (if vaguely) for frugality, would provide the nation with a smaller military stick rather than touch the two-thirds of the budget devoted to entitlements. To both factions, Gallagher cites another Marine who does not mince words, former defense secretary Jim Mattis: “America can afford survival.”