 as we discussed reaching across the aisle without getting a backache to try to develop a bipartisan consensus for demilitarization. And tonight we're very proud to have with us, well on video will be Kelly Vlahos who's the editorial director for the Quincy Institute's Publication and Responsible Statecraft and Mark Perry who's a senior analyst at the Quincy Institute. Before we do that though we're gonna take a moment to update the events that are happening around the world and honey, why don't you start? Sure, thank you so much, Marcy and good evening everyone. My name is honey, I do that Barnes, with some delegates and allies and I co-host the code pink calls with Marcy Vanagrad and media Benjamin gladly every Tuesday evening. Yeah, I'd like to give some updates on what Secretary Blinken has been up to in terms of Guantanamo Bay. So Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken said on Monday that the Biden administration is actively looking into recreating the position of the State Department Envoy for the closure of the prison at the Guantanamo Bay. Naval Base in Cuba, you may recall this was one of the demands we send during our previous Code Pink Congress Capitol Hill calling an emailing party. So these calls do work greatly, I'm glad to say. Overall about 800 detainees have been held at the US military prison. Many tortured, most never charged with a crime. Now about 40 remain and nine of those have been recommended for transfer to another country. And I know Marcy that Code Pink has been leading on this effort for a long time as well as Muslim delegates and allies. We also put together a petition on this with Nadi Ahmed, so. Yes, thank you, honey. And thank you to Roots Action and Progressive Democrats of America. Many of you are on this call for your leadership to close Guantanamo as well. Nothing can happen, I guess. That's what we heard from the ACLU when we featured one of their attorneys. Nothing can happen to close Guantanamo until we have a special envoy overseeing the entire process for resettlement. So hopefully something concrete will happen on that front. In terms of Palestine, Israel-Palestine, I just wanted to share two things. Some of you probably read that the parliament in Ireland voted unanimously to denounce Israel's annexation of Palestine. And this was significant in that Ireland was the first member of the European Union to do so. In Los Angeles, where I'm based part of the time, United Teachers of Los Angeles, which represents 35,000 teachers as the second largest school district, they will be taking up a resolution to support a boycott divestment and sanctions in September. And in the run-up to that, it's quite charged, quite heated with the, you know, the Israel lobby is working overtime to complain to the school board, to complain to schools where teachers are talking about this to try to essentially silence the debate and derail this resolution. It's a significant effort. It comes on the heels of San Francisco, the school district there, the teachers, also voting to support BDS. And I know we have, I'm sorry, RJ Thompson, who's with Code Pink, who's one of our experts, along with our co-founder, Jodi Evans. And don't let me forget to say that we love you, Medea. We know she's in Peru representing all of us beautifully. She's there for the elections and it's a tight race and some disagreement and charges of this and that, but she's there fighting for us. So RJ is going to update us on China and what's happening, what just happened in the Senate and what will be happening in the house. So we can unmute RJ, yeah. Yeah, all right. Thank you, Marcy. So the US Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, it started as some separate bills in the Senate like the Endless Frontiers Act, the Strategic Competition Act and the Meeting the China Challenge Act, and they were combined last month. Some of the worst aspects of the bill, it undermines John Kerry's climate agreement with China. It demonizes Chinese and Chinese American students with yellow peril and McCarthyism. It allocates 1.37 billion in military funding around China in the Indo-Pacific region, including 655 million for foreign military funding. It vests new unchecked emergency powers to the Secretary of Homeland Security and it calls on schools and state legislatures to identify and remain vigilant to the risk posed by the undue influence of the Chinese Communist Party in the US, that is a quote from it. It passed the Senate, unfortunately, just today by 68 to 32 vote. And so now it will be going to the house in the house. There is a companion bill proposed by Gregory Meeks, the Democrat from New York's Fifth District and Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The bill is called the EGLE Act in the house and in its introduction, Gregory Meeks acknowledged a need for cooperation with China on some issues like climate and COVID-19, but also said that China was the biggest threat to the US. So it is yet to be voted on in the house and it's a place where we could perhaps impact some change. Thank you. Thank you very much, RJ. Yeah, we don't have the roll call vote yet so it'll be interesting to see who cast those no votes. A lot of problems with this bill that sailed through the Senate, it awards a lot of billions and upon billions of dollars for technology hubs. They're basically hubs of robotics and artificial intelligence, STEM programs, semiconductor industry, but sandwiched in between all of that and this 1,445 page bill is, as RJ mentioned, a lot of militarism centering our foreign policy on future of Taiwan. We'll see what happens in the house. I checked with the Progressive Caucus Center to see if they thought that the house would be voting on this bill or if they would vote separately on Meeks' bill which is called the EGLE Act and we're not clear on that. So tonight when we host our calling party we're gonna focus on two issues, one of which is Palestine and no money, no more money for the Israeli military, right? They won another billion dollars. They just received seven or got the green light for 735 million in weapons sales, but also to weigh in with our house members on this bill, the US Innovation and Competition Act and say vote no until we hear further on what the future of that bill is, we want them to study it and vote no. Meeks' bill is 450 pages, not over 1400 but still there are a lot of problems with that bill. All right. Marcy, thank you for the update and thank you RJ for the update really quickly. If you could all introduce yourselves in the chat, that'd be wonderful. We do ask that you keep yourselves on mute and post your questions in the chat for honorable speakers until the very end where we would unmute and say goodbye to our guests. Great, thank you. So we came up, we were talking about ideas for CodePin Congress and we thought, well, what about reaching across the aisle, building a bipartisan consensus? And at this point, that might be a joke, but maybe not, right? There is precedent for this. We saw this at the end of the Vietnam War when Congress defunded that war and then we saw it and even overrode Nixon's veto of that. And then we saw it again in 2019 with the war powers resolution to stop US complicity in the war on Yemen. Trump vetoed that and Congress did not override that veto. So what is the future? Is there a future for bipartisan consensus on demilitarization? We invited two wonderful speakers, those who have been in the trenches with both Democrats and Republicans, libertarians, fighting this ever-increasing militarization and increases in the Pentagon budget. So we're gonna start with Kelly Blajos and we have her on video and she is the editorial director for Responsible Statecraft, which is the publication of the Quincy Institute. She has had a long history with the conservatives in this country. She was formerly the executive editor of the American Conservative Magazine and Grace Yourself. She spent 15 years as an online political reporter for Fox News in Washington, DC. She was also the Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine, which I haven't read, but I get the picture. So at this point, we're going to cue it up to my interview with Kelly. She couldn't be with us tonight, it's her birthday. But she did do an interview with me earlier and I asked her about the background of the Quincy Institute, how it came to be in 2019, who's involved and her thoughts on bipartisan demilitarization efforts. So, Mary, if you could cue that up. We'll take a look. Don't fit. You know, there is such a, there's such enthusiasm out there for changing the way that we approach our role in the world, the wars, you know, the militarism, the military-industrial complex, but yet the two parties aren't doing it for us. And, you know, there's nobody in Washington because all the think tanks are funded by either the left or the right. And so they got their, they got their sticks. So it really was this idea that, oh, wow, we can find this common ground. And maybe if the both sides get together, we can really pack a punch. And so that's why it was real, really novel that you had George Soros on the left and the Charles Koch Institute on the right becoming the two major anchor funders for this. And, you know, people, you know, there were a lot of people who were nay saying, and, you know, because either they were on the right and they didn't want anything to do with George Soros or vice versa. But, you know, I feel like, you know, with the intellectual power that we have. So we have all the, you know, we have the impulse, you know, Trita Parsi, who's, you know, my boss, he's the vice president of the programs. He's really the, he really started this thing. He wanted us to be an action tank, you know, not just a think tank that sits around and writes papers and, you know, ponders things and it's sort of like engaging in this sort of Washington, you know, ivory tower space, but to actually get out there and start mixing it up with the interventionists, with the neocons, you know, with the right wing, with the liberal, you know, interventionists, you know, the Hillary Clinton types too. And so marrying that impulse with, you know, really a number of scholars on regional issues like China and Middle East, Afghanistan, we have a grand strategy program or we have a Russia expert, you know. So we got the intellectual foundation for why we're arguing for the things we are, you know, matched with a real advocacy so we can take that and then go on the hill and talk directly to members of Congress and even the White House and say, you know, this is how we should be talking about this. This is how we can affect change. And look, this isn't just fly by night, you know, advice. You know, this is stuff that's really rooted in some serious scholarship and research. And then I'm running the magazine Responsible Statecraft, which is sort of like a, it's an online magazine that takes outside contributors, as well as staff and our fellows and talking about restraint and talking about non-intervention and talking about how the military industrial complex is sort of like this self-licking ice cream cone that only benefits the defense industry and the politicians and has been screwing us for the last several decades and getting us into these wars and taking money, you know, from real domestic needs. So that is sort of our front-facing. So, you know, put that all together and I think we're making an impact because you got the blobby, you know, establishment people actually paying attention to what we have to say. They don't always agree, but then they're like, oh, because, you know, you got these smart people or saying things and they're real scholars with PhDs and so they can't just be dismissed as cranks or whatever. You know, so we're kind of making impact. And like I said, we're actually affecting policy by having these relationships with members of Congress. Now, right now it's kind of easy because you have the Democrats are in charge, you've got a Democrat in the White House. So they're a little more open, but, you know, I think we're making some strides on the Republican side too. It might be a little more difficult, you know, in terms of like building a consensus, you know, on the right, but, you know, with that advocacy role, I think that that's actually having an impact. So you see the impact, what in the withdrawal from Afghanistan with the reversal of the criminalization of those who cooperate with the ICC and extension of start? Yeah, I mean, specifically the Afghanistan issue, we actually brought together a campaign with both left and right nonprofits and other think tanks and action tanks. A few months ago, I'd say about one, I wanna say three or four months ago in earnest. And basically saying, okay, we're gonna do stuff on Twitter, we're gonna do op-eds, we're going to have letters and have them signed and delivered to the White House and to, you know, specific targeted members of Congress and we're gonna do videos and we're just gonna nail this issue. We had events, you know, panel discussions, we just did not let up. And it started with, you know, basically saying, hey, Trump did one thing right. He signed this Doha agreement. He wanted to get us out of Afghanistan. The Pentagon slow walked it, but now we have a deadline and it was May 1st. And so for months, we were saying, get out by May 1st, get out. And everybody was like, oh, we can't get out on May 1st because it's precipitous withdrawal and logistics and the Taliban's gonna take over. And we just said, you know what, we're just gonna get out in front and just say it because nothing's gonna change with us staying for, you know, another six months, another year. Another 20 years. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, Biden came out and he said, you know, obviously we're not leaving by May 1st, but he said, I'm getting us out by September 11th. And we said, you know, okay, we'll take it. I mean, but we're gonna make sure you actually stick to it. And so, you know, so we're, our latest campaign is we wanna see all those interpreters with people that worked with our troops there, get out if they have to because a lot of them are in danger right now. I mean, we're not Pollyannish. We know what's gonna happen. The Taliban is already making gains on the floor there, on the ground there. It's gonna be a real hard road, but we are not convinced that staying is gonna make it any better. It's either gonna prolong the inevitable or it will actually instigate more violence because we already made this agreement with the Taliban and we'd be seen as breaking it. The Afghan people, I believe in what I've read and with people who know much more than I do have said that Afghan people really do wanna take control of their own country. And it's just, we haven't been able to let them do that on so many levels. And so it has to happen. It has to be organic. And yeah, it's gonna be ugly. And I think that as long as we continue to work with the Afghans, keep the channels open, keep aid flowing if that's necessary, making sure that the aid actually gets to the right people and isn't corrupted and not just blow them off like we did the Iraqis. When we got out of Iraq, we left nothing there except for troops and then even they were gone until ISIS took over and we had to go back in. But we didn't leave a real strong diplomatic presence there. Kelly, two other issues before you leave us. Do you see any hope for changing Congress's support, blanket support, unconditional support for Israel? And what about Yemen? We had great hopes that Biden would enter office and he would immediately suspend those weapons shipments to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. We don't see that happening. And people are dying every day. Children are dying every day in Yemen. When is this going to end? It's very disappointing because the president seemed to come on really strong about getting out of Yemen and ending our support to Saudi Arabia for their offensive operations. And that whole offensive operations has sort of been hanging there. Like what does that even mean? Are there loopholes that we're not seeing and have we actually ended that assistance? And the more that the administration has been pressed on this, the less information we have. So we don't know what's going on there. As you mentioned, we suspended the arms sales to the Saudis, but it's still pending. And as far as UAE, we are selling them all of that high tech weaponry, including F-35s and bombs and drones, even though they're still involved in Yemen, even though they say they aren't. And they're responsible for all sorts of human rights violations in their own country in Libya. They're supporting, they're breaking an arms embargo there. I mean, it's very disappointing. We've given more weapons to Israel, I mean, Egypt. And then the big question, of course, is Israel. I'm heartened because there was a movement by Democrats to cut off the aid or at least, you know, there's some that want to cut it off, but after what happened in Gaza while it was going on, they said, can we at least suspend the $735 million worth of, you know, precision guided missiles you're gonna send them? And there was some hope there. Unfortunately, I think the Biden administration is just letting that those weapons flow in there. But the fact that people are rising up and feeling emboldened to question the $3.8 billion of aid that we give, the relative blank check that we give Israel with nothing in return. I mean, they've abandoned the two-state solution. They've abandoned the peace process. They've expanded the settlements. They've done everything to thwart peace, but yet we still keep giving them money and there's just no sense of any leverage. And I think people questioning that for the first time is was refreshing because as you know, it's been a third rail in Washington politics to even speak ill of that relationship. And now they want another billion dollars for the Iron Dome. So that's another struggle. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us on Code Pink Congress. Kelly Garner is the editorial director for Responsible Statecraft at the Quincy Institute and a senior advisor as well, working night and day to try to change US foreign policy. Thanks, Susan. Oh, thank you so much, Marcy. All right, back we are. So that was Kelly as you heard the editorial director for Responsible Statecraft, which is an excellent publication, check it out online. And now we have Mark Perry with us and Hania is going to introduce Mark. Yeah, it's such an honor and a great pleasure, Marcy. When I was reading Mark's bio, I kept getting chills. So what an accomplished guest speaker. Mark Perry is a senior analyst at the Quincy Institute. He is a widely published military and foreign affairs reporter and analyst. He is the author of 10 books, including the Pentagon's Wars, the military's undeclared war against America's president, the most dangerous man in America, the making of Douglas MacArthur, the Boston Globe named this book on General MacArthur, the best nonfiction work of 2014. Mark served as a senior foreign policy analyst and political director for Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, which founded the international campaign to ban landmines, which won 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. It's a great honor to have you, Mark, and please take it away. Thank you very much. And thank you all for being here. I'm honored to be here. I'm a little bit intimidated by the numbers of people that this conference is attracted and impressed. You should be proud of the work you've done. And I agree with Kelly about reaching across the aisle. I know it's difficult. There is an emerging kind of libertarian Republican conservatism that is rearing its head. Now, reaching across the aisle is always difficult with that political party given its recent history. But I think we're gonna see more of this emerging libertarianism. And with that libertarianism comes cuts to the US budget and especially the defense budget. There are few and far between now, but there are going to be a lot more. But I wanna take a little different tact than Kelly took about reaching across the aisle and talk about reaching across cultures. And to do this, I'm gonna tell you a story. Back in the 1990s, I was a political director for Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, which founded the international campaign to ban landmines. And it was a terrific initiative and very successful. We worked with Human Rights Watch and a number of other organizations. We signed up over 135 countries for a ban on landmines, but we didn't sign up the United States. So I got together with the Leader of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. We decided that what we would do is reach across cultures, not the aisle, but reach across the culture. Cultures in America and recruit military officers who would agree to a landmine ban. It seemed that we would never find any of them. We wrote a letter to the president that they would sign and we sent out the letter to West Point graduates and senior military officers. This is April, 1996, October, 1996. And waited and waited and waited and finally I received a phone call from General Volney Warner, who said, you wanna ban landmines? I said, yes, sir. He said, and what does Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation do? I said, well, we run clinics that puts legs on people overseas. He said, including Vietnam? I said, yes. He said, anyone who wants to help the Vietnamese people, I'll help. So you can sign me up. And we got 14 senior military officers, Norman Schwartzkoff, Volney Warner, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, David Jones, signed this letter. We published it in the New York Times and it changed everything. It worked. So my appeal here now is much the same. I think Code Pink, certainly the Quincy Institute, that's why they brought me aboard, can reach across cultures to appeal to the military on the defense budget. Now it's kind of a default position of the US military that they'll always support increased defense spending. And everyone seems to think that's the way they think. But there are many military officers I know who are beginning to question the utility of more money that buys less defense, which is what's happening. And we all know it. And the particular focus of many officers now with the current Biden defense budget, which is a disappointment, but the focus of many military officers now is on nuclear weapons. I know Marcy has written about this for a responsible statecraft, but I appeal to all of you to kind of back this effort. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit here. The F-35 doesn't work. We don't need another aircraft carrier. The army is too big. We're spending a lot on our overseas accounts for these useless losing wars. But the focus of many military officers I talked to has been on nuclear weapons because they are the most destabilizing part of our arsenal. I know many of you have done this before you've talked to military officers. You've appealed to senior officers. But I think if we have a singular focus, if the progressive movement in this country can have a singular focus on the nuclear issue, we can make real progress. As I saw this defense budget promoted by the Biden administration, I couldn't believe they basically kept the Trump nuclear upgrades the same. And I just, something tells me I just, I don't buy what they're trying to sell. And I'm not sure they're trying to sell it that hard. There are many members of Congress who we know who are gonna focus on this nuclear weapons upgrade. And I think the one low-hanging fruit, it's almost on the ground that bears our attention is the upgrades to the ICBM. The upgrade is called the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. And it would replace the ICBM Minuteman Three Missiles by 2029, it's money wasted. And it's dangerous and it's destabilizing. So in our work at the Quincy Institute, I've kind of urged people who are our coalition partners and the Pentagon budget coalition to focus on a nuclear weapons issue. We have lots of allies and we have military officers who are beginning to recruit who agree with us on the issue. And if you can get 15 or 16 U.S. Air Force officers retired, because nobody who's currently serving would ever step out of line. But if you can get 15 or 16 retired U.S. Air Force officers who would agree with cutting the Minuteman Three and oppose these upgrades and these billions of dollars of wasted money on nuclear weapons, including new two new types of tactical nuclear weapons, I think we can make an incredible progress. I know that Elizabeth Warren in the Senate is extremely interested in this issue. Barbara Lee and Ro Khanna and Mark Pocan in the house are extremely interested in this issue. So there's a lot of waste, I don't have to tell you all, there's a lot of waste depending on budget. But we're not gonna kill the F-35, we're just not gonna do it. And we're not gonna kill two new aircraft here, it's not gonna happen. And we're not gonna kill, we're not gonna take 100,000 soldiers out of the Army and they could do with 100,000 fewer soldiers. That's not gonna work. But we, with the help of our allies in the Congress in both parties, and with the help of the military, including U.S. Air Force officers who don't believe in these systems and consider them dangerous, I think that this is something we can win if we will focus on it. So I'm happy to take your questions or your comments and I hope that my presentation has helped you. Thank you so much, Mark. Wonderful to have you with us tonight, Mark Perry, senior analyst with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. I'll start off. So Mark, can you identify any Republican or independent? Well, not Bernie Sanders, we know he would not be supportive of increased militarism. But can you identify any Republicans in Congress who you think would join us in a call to cut, reduce the military budget and nix the ICBM replacement, the ground-based strategic deterrent? And aside from identifying those in Congress, can you identify any constituencies that might be attracted to those Republicans who would join us? I can name two or three variables and perhaps one Republican, but there will be more if one joins. Rand Paul has real doubts about the ICBM. We're not gonna get any member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, that's part of the missile caucus, the ICBM caucus. These, excuse me, these land-based systems are in North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and the members of Congress and the Senate from those states view this as a jobs creator. So they're not gonna join us. Southern Democrats and Southern Republicans are probably not gonna join us. But I think we could probably pick off members of California Delegation Center and members of the House. I think we can pick off New Englanders, but we can pick off more if we have a retired lieutenant general, and I have one of mine I've been talking to, who will stand up in the Congress and testify and he have testimony that says I'm an Air Force officer and I think these things are dangerous. And let's not forget, we have former Secretary of Defense William Perry who's been on this and has been crusading on this and Daniel Ellsberg, but basically William Perry who has real stature on this issue who would join us and he talks to Republicans every day, they know this is a destabilizing weapon. What they're worried about is the jobs that would create the money that they get from defense contractors, let's not forget. Defense contractors have one lobbyist per member of Congress. We have one advocacy director at Quincy. So we're all gun and we're all spent, but on this issue, on this issue as a matter of principle, I think we have a shot, especially if we can get an Air Force officer who will walk in, if I walk into a senator's office, my name is Mark Perry, I'm at Quincy Institution, so that's great. Welcome to our discussion on national security. But if you have a lieutenant general in the Air Force walk in and say, we can get rid of these weapons, they're dangerous, that makes a huge difference. Thank you, Hania, would you like to read a question? Yeah, I definitely would. Now, how did we transition economically from our dependence on private military contractors and military spending in general? And what about the profit seeking motives of the current existing military industrial system and the people who run this system? De-coupling to our industrial base from military spending is the biggest obstacle we face. And I'll give you one example. Senator Sherrod Brown has voted for money for the M1A1 Abrams tanks, 2,000 of which are sitting in the California desert unused, because we don't need them. But year after year, he does this because there's 983 jobs out in Lima, Ohio that are dependent on tank manufacturing. And it's a disappointment. This is Sherrod Brown. This isn't, you know, Jim Imhoff. This is Sherrod Brown. So decoupling, you know, the industrial base from military spending is our, it's the one thing that we have got to figure out how to do, nobody's figured it out yet. Now, I've had discussions with people who thought long and hard about this and say, well, you do the green new deal. I just don't think that's gonna work. The idea here isn't to substitute new spending with more spending on different things. I want to cut the defense budget. And I would like to get rid of these weapons no matter what the cost. So I think, you know, some kind of industrial repurposing policy which happened in the 90s happened even in the midst of the Cold War during the Eisenhower administration. This is even at the Heritage Foundation to be blunt with you. There's real questions about whether we really need 495,000 soldiers in our army. There are military officers who are raising money for K through 12 education because there's not enough money in our budget but they won't cut the defense budget. So that decoupling is essential. I wish I had a simple answer on how to do it. When I come up with the answer, I'll give you all a call because this is, I think this is the hardest job we face. Thank you, Mark. I have a follow-up question. You said that you thought the low-hanging brute, so to speak, was the ground-based strategic deterrent. That's the replacement for the land-based intercontinental missiles. So you mentioned, I think, an ad that you had placed about land mines during Vietnam. What do you think about, do you think there's any point or that we would get mileage from Senator Warren, for example, holding Senate hearings on destabilizing impact of the land-based missiles? I think she'd be happy to do it. And I think the appeal to her is, your first witness is Secretary of Defense William Perry. No relation, by the way. And your second witness is a retired Lieutenant General Air Force officer, who I know. And let's blow up the balloon here. Let's get this a lot of attention. She was, when Kathleen Hicks, who's Lloyd Austin's deputy, was in her confirmation hearings, Elizabeth Warren asked her very specifically, now you're gonna review this nuclear posture review that the Trump administration brought out and you're gonna, and you're going to subject it to real criticism. Do I have your word on that, Kathleen Hicks said yes. Well, they didn't do that. They cut it a very fractional amount and they haven't reviewed it. Now, Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense says he's gonna review it, but here we are, the first Biden budget would have been the perfect time to do it. I think that Biden is protecting himself on the infrastructure bill, all kinds of political reasons. And I'm sure he's got very good excuses that he can rattle off about why he did this, keep the military office back and all the rest of it. But at some point, he's going to have to face the music with somebody like Elizabeth Warren because they gave a pledge to her that they would take a hard look at this and that they just would not swallow what Trump was selling. They haven't done that. They've swallowed almost whole. Somebody posted in the chat, it was Obama that began this quote, nuclear modernization of what I call the armament program. And I read that the reason he made that promise was because he wanted Republicans on board to extend the start journey or to first start initially. But regardless, it was a Faustian bargain. And then Trump awarded the $13 billion sole source contract to Northrop Grumman to develop the ground-based strategic deterrent. So back to the hearings for a minute. So you feel that hearings are effective? Well, I think they're effective in kind of building support beyond the progressive left. You know, it's, you're not going to convince a guy like Jim Emhoff, but the hearings are effective because there are Republicans who are scratching their heads on this nuclear deterrence issue and wondering about it and they need to hear other voices. The other thing is, like, you know, looking back on Obama, I mean, there's a lot to regret about Obama and this nuclear posture review is one of the things we can get. And he did, you're right. He did trade, you know, upgrades and modernization in exchange for the start treaty. And it's possible that Biden will be doing the same when he talks to Putin. I mean, you know, Biden has a history here. When he talks to Putin, whenever it's going to be in next month, you know, he's going to be tough, the American elections and Ukraine and, but sooner or later, they're going to walk around the barn and get to strategic arm reductions. They're going to because it's in Biden's heart. Now, I know it's in Jake Sullivan's heart. I know it's in Tony Blinken's heart. They're going to get to it. And if they start cutting strategic warheads, not just warheads, but delivery systems, then the Minuteman III is going out the door. And Biden, if he does that, and there is some chance that he will, certainly I'm not a mind reader. He's going to need support in the progressive left, stand up and cheer, getting rid of these, you know, whatever they are, 480 missiles in the middle of the country, because they're there to be attacked. I mean, that's, that would be a huge victory for us. And I think it's, you know, all the things in the defense budget, that's the thing I look at that is very doable for us. Thank you, I appreciate your perspective. Somebody raised in the chat the question about China and where do you think this is all going? Earlier we gave an update on the Senate passing 68 to 32, the US Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, which is a recipe for war as far as I'm concerned, with China, of course we don't want that and we need to push back, but it looks like this is heading to the house and there's lots of bipartisan support. Your thoughts on China, US-China relations. Well, it's a disappointment. My wife will tell you that what I'm doing now is spraying the garbage with Lysol, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I don't think Biden wants a confrontation with China. I really don't. But these are easy votes to get in the House and Senate. And he can walk down the street, nobody says that guy is weak on China. So he's doing the typical kind of triangulation that sickened me by the Clinton administration that he protects his right and he harvests the votes of conservative Democrats by banging the table on China. So now the Lysol is dissipated and here's how the garbage smells. This is really dangerous. The Pentagon calls China a pacing threat. That means that China is matching our defense budget increases, but their defense budget is a quarter of ours. Their technical know-how, their fighter aircraft, their fighter bombers don't match ours. They have one aircraft carrier, it's lousy. They certainly don't have the heritage we do of interfering in foreign countries by dropping their military in the middle of it. But nevermind, they're a pacing threat. But what that means in reality is they're not a peer competitor, which is the military's term for somebody to be afraid of. The United States military is not afraid of China. They're using China as a way to build their budget. It's a dangerous thing to do. I would like to say we're not headed to war, but history shows us that increased defense budgets often lead military officers to the belief that they need to use what they build. And that's the danger here. I don't think that China's a peer competitor. They're certainly not a military peer competitor. I mean, we wanted them to be a market competitor and now that they are a market competitor and have opened up their economy, we're complaining about it and we shouldn't be. Mark, I've thought that we need to engage in outreach directly with the military on this to the rank and file military to say, we are sending you a letter and we do not want you to attack China. Because I feel as though we have mad men and women running our government when it comes to building up, weaponizing the Indo-Pacific, the South China Sea area. I'd like to ask you about three or four representatives and get your take. Adam Smith, so he's chair of the House Armed Services Committee from Washington. He's a hawk, although he is co-sponsoring the Snow First Strike Bill. He is facing a primary challenge from a teacher who has the backing, I believe, of the National Education Association, large organization, Cynthia Gallardo. I read something that Adam Smith had written recently in which he was defending, vigorously defending the, I don't call it the defense budget, the military budget and the US Space Force saying, absolutely we have to have both of these that Biden has supported trillions of dollars for relief for the suffering from COVID and the economy slow down. And all means we need this for our military, just adamant about that. So your take on Adam Smith, he also takes hundreds of thousands of dollars from military contractors, no shame there. So he's won. I'd also like your take on Senator Diane Feinstein. These would be the nuclear issue. We were out there, Code Pink recently. We held a rally, not a protest, a rally in front of her office, met with her, one of her representatives in DC who happens to be a, quote, defense fellow. I never knew there was such a thing where the Pentagon actually pays the salary of defense fellows that are embedded in the offices of senators, outrageous. We met with her urging Senator Feinstein who is the chair of the House of, of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee over energy, the Department of Energy, which would be overseeing the development of the ground based strategic deterrent to say, hey, speak out, oppose this. Because I believe in 2014, she wrote an editorial for the Washington Post, an op-ed saying that our nuclear weapons program is unnecessary and unsustainable. So Diane Feinstein, bring back that, that Diane Feinstein. And the last person I wanna ask you about, so it's Adam Smith, Diane Feinstein. And lastly, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Now, he talks a good game often. And wasn't he involved in pushing for the ban on landmines? Yeah, no, for that. But he also escorted the F-35 into Burlington. I know Bernie supported it as well, but from those I've spoken to in Vermont, they really do blame Leahy for bringing the F-35 to the middle of Burlington, Vermont, at the airport there. He is chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. So I would think that he would have a very powerful role to play in the military budget. Your take on those three. Yeah, I wish this was off the record, but there are so many people here. Adam Smith is probably the best, I understand the problem with Adam Smith. But Adam Smith is probably the best military thinker on the Hill. He really knows what he's doing, he does. And he has come out with statements over the last three or four months. This is the Lysol Spray game. He has come out with statements over the last three or four months talking about how the United States should not be seeking military hegemony or dominance in the Pacific, but parity, which is a lot different than what his colleagues are saying. I understand his voting record. I know where he is on military spending, but he's the one guy who understands these military systems and understands military strategy and talk to the military far better than anyone on the Hill, in my opinion. He's gettable, he's gettable. Before you go on to the others, has he come out against the ground base strategic deterrent? Well, he has not, and he's not likely to, but he's gettable. I'm not an expert on the Hill, so I'll leave Cynthia to you guys. Cynthia Gallardo, the primary challenge. I know her record, I'm not impressed. She says she's anti-imperialist, I like that. Well, you know, I like that too, but you know, let's see where the votes go. I am not a big fan of the senator from California, and I think it's past time for her to retire. And I have seen over the years that she is easily swayed by conservative voices. One of the great secrets of the mid-90s was that Diane Feinstein listened to Trent Blatt a lot, which I found embarrassing for her. I just don't have much of a brief for her. Patrick Leahy, I know personally, and I have admiration for him. I hear he's gonna run for another term in the Senate. He loves his job. He's gettable. He doesn't really understand the military that well. It's not his thing, he's a judiciary guy. He's a court system guy, which he's very, very good. But his aides and his staff are first-rate on military issues, and they guide him, and he's very gettable. Mark, one last question. It's almost time for our Capitol Calling party. I ask everybody to stay. We'll be calling about Palestine and China today. Mark, here's the question. Can you talk about the disastrous plans for plutonium pits and how it impacts WIPV? Can this be a good bipartisan campaign? Also, can you touch on the proposed whole-tech nuclear waste facility? I can't, you know, honestly, I can't speak on any of those issues. I'm just not that familiar with them, and I'll leave that to your experts. But I wish you'd ask me the question you asked Kelly about the Israel-Palestinian issue. Okay, I'm asking. Because I worked in the West Bank Gaza in Israel for 20 years, and... What were you doing there? I was helping FATA, the mainline Palestinian organization, do politics. Not for pay. I lived in the Palestinian territory, I was ended up really having a love affair with the Palestinian people. Broken as they are, and for good reason. But I think that the recent conflict that we've seen there is different. And profoundly so, primarily because we now have an uprising, which is continuing, but not in the pages of the paper, but it's continuing inside of Israel itself where Arab Israelis are now in the streets and being rounded up in massive numbers, 1700 in jail in Israel. And this is new. It's, this is, this is Black Lives Matter comes to Israel, and it's about time. So this is a very sensitive issue that we can make progress on. There's real discomfort in the halls of Congress with what Israel is doing. Of course you get the standard, Israel is right to defend itself, we'll defend Israel no matter what. You get Americans who are more Israeli than the Israelis. But if you're around, and as old as I am on this issue, in the 80s and 90s, you couldn't mention the Palestinians in Washington, D.C. or in the national media without being criticized as some kind of anti-Semite or being anti-Israel. That has changed, and that's significant. And I hope that we can continue to press on that issue. Well, thank you so much, Mark Perry for joining us. Thank you all. Mark is a senior policy analyst for the Quincy Institute, writes for responsible statecraft, prolific author, and we are so grateful for your presence here tonight and has given us a lot to think about. Thank you Mark. Thank you, thank you very much. And Mark, before you go, I'd like to ask for our audience members before we go into our Capitol Hill calling party, please unmute yourselves, send your love to Mark, and let him know that we appreciate his presence here. And thank you for the time that you've spent educating us on this call. Thank you Mark, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks a lot, thanks a lot. Unless it's a happy birthday, let's say happy birthday to Kelly. She was with us earlier. Can we say happy birthday to Kelly? Happy birthday Kelly. Happy birthday Kelly. Happy birthday Kelly. Happy birthday Kelly. Want to meet us there? Mr. Church around the center. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, yeah, yeah, so if I can have you all, please mute yourselves again. This is where the action begins and we're very honored to have, how many people now on the call? We have about 105, so let's all stay these calls. Make a huge difference. So what we're gonna do today,