Robert F. Kennedy Jr., challenging President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, told Newsmax on Tuesday he believes China wants global domination, but through economic and not military means.
“China doesn’t want a war with us but it does want to compete with us,” Kennedy told “The Record With Greta Van Susteren." “It wants to dominate us on the economic landscape. I’m not scared about that kind of confrontation.
“America with the freedom in our country, with what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called America’s industrial genius, our entrepreneurial spirit, we can compete with China anywhere in the world as long as we stop wasting our money on these military expenditures that are bankrupting our middle class, destroying our industrial base.”
Kennedy’s father was a former U.S. senator, and was attorney general under his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. He said the U.S. should be deescalating tensions with China but added there are people in the Biden administration who want a war with China over Taiwan.
“That’s not a good thing for anybody,” he said. “That would be World War III.”
China has been testing U.S. resolve by sending a spy balloon that traversed the country, saber-rattling with Taiwan and now reportedly opening a base in Cuba, about 90 miles from the U.S. shore. Kennedy said it’s time to sit down and talk to China to straighten out these issues.
“We have a huge military presence in the South China Sea,” Kennedy said. “Of course, China is going to feel justified putting a military presence in our hemisphere. In 1962, when [Soviet Union leader Nikita] Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba, he did that because we put Jupiter missiles in Turkey.
“As soon as my father, my uncle met with [Soviet] Ambassador [Anatoly] Dobrynin, they said to him we will remove our nuclear missiles from Turkey if you remove them from Cuba. Khrushchev did so. There’s no guarantee the Chinese will end their military presence in our hemisphere if we do something to deescalate over there. I think there’s a good chance they will, but we won’t know until we at least sit down and negotiate with them about these issues.”
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