When asked whether same-sex marriage bans across the country will eventually be struck down following the landmark Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage, National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, that he didn’t think that it would be ” inevitable.”

Despite this week’s rulings, which declared part of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and dismissed an appeal made by supporters of Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage in California, Brown downplayed the victories claimed by gay marriage supporters, saying that the Court did not establish a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the case that considered the California ban passed in 2008.

“The court said, well, the proponents don’t have standing. It did not say that there was a constitutional right to redefine marriage,” Brown said on “This Week” Sunday.

ABC News

President of the Human Rights Campaign Chad Griffin also joined “This Week” and said he’s prepared to continue to “fight this battle on all fronts,” through referenda, state legislation and federal court cases to expand same-sex marriage rights further.

Brown said the precedent set in California, where state officials refused to defend Proposition 8 — a law passed by popular referendum — is “horrific for our republic.”

“If the governor and attorney general don’t to want defend that law, you’ve just gutted the initiative and referendum process. This is not an American value,” Brown said.

Brown called Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority decision in the DOMA case an “absolute travesty” and “incoherent.”

He added that Justice Kennedy “says something that is patently untrue,” that a person who believes “this truth, that marriage is the union of a man and a woman is somehow motivated by animus and discrimination.”

Such an assumption, Brown said, “leads to discrimination against those of us who know that there’s something unique and special about husbands and wives, mothers and fathers coming together in marriage.”

“There will be a lot of attempts to use this decision to redefine marriage in other states. And we will stand for the truth wherever it is,” Brown said.

Griffin, an advocate of gay marriage whose wins this week prompted congratulatory calls from President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, spoke of the broader status of same-sex marriage across the United States.

“At the same time while we celebrate, we have to acknowledge that there are 37 states in this country that still don’t have equality,” Griffin said.

Asked if he thought gay marriage supporters will win victories to expand same-sex marriage to other states, Griffin said, “I have all expectation that we will.”

Griffin pointed to the history of social movements to predict the outcome of the same-sex marriage debate.

“This country has always moved historically — whether it was women’s rights, or the Civil Rights Movement of the 50′s and 60′s to today — we have always moved to greater inclusion and treating all of our citizens equally under the law,” Griffin said.

“We’re well on our way. We’re not there yet, but we’re well on our way,” he added.

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ABC News

Below you can find some of the notable comments made Sunday on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” Our roundtable guests included ABC News Political Analyst and Special Correspondent Matthew Dowd; ABC News Anchor and Chief Foreign Correspondent Terry Moran, who covers the Supreme Court for ABC News; Rep. Donna F. Edwards, D-Md.; and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan.

Noonan concerned about the severity of what Wendy Davis is standing for

NOONAN: Here’s what — in the story of this young woman, she’s so spirited.  You know, she has such energy and she seems to have such commitment.

But it seems to me — and I think it seems to many Americans — that what she is speaking for and standing for is something we would recognize as infanticide, late-term abortion, the taking of a little child’s life.  That is really, really serious.

Moran says Justice Kennedy used ‘most irresistible force’ in constitution on DOMA ruling

MORAN: [...] there’s no reason the congress could possibly have to could treat gay married couples differently from straight married couples.  The court could have just said congress overstepped its bounds, shouldn’t tell every state what marriage is, let the states decide.  But Justice Kennedy opinion goes further.  He picked up the most powerful, the most irresistible force in the constitution, that principle of equality, and in the broadest and most ringing terms, he framed the claims of gay Americans in that.  That’s going to be hard to stop for those who don’t approve of this decision.

Edwards backs ‘three strikes and you’re out’ approach to lifting bans on same sex marriage

EDWARDS:  Well, I mean, there were plenty of people, both through the amicus process and others who put the argument forward.  I mean, and the court could have come to a different conclusion had it wanted to.  I mean, I think it’s almost three strikes and you’re out.  DOMA, Prop 8, and the next to go are the state bans.  And I think that’s appropriate.

Moran believes Voting Rights Act is ‘probably the most successful law ever passed’

MORAN: The Voting Rights Act is probably the most successful law ever passed in this country.  [...] It changed American democracy.  We have a different country because of the Voting Rights Act.

Dowd confident that undocumented immigrants help drive economy

DOWD:  There’s 12 million people in this country that to a large degree drive economic growth.  I live in Texas, I live in Austin, spend time in California, those two states without a huge body of these folks who are undocumented, who drive a huge part of the economy, this country would not be the same country it was without that.  We have to do something about this.
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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said this morning in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” that there is no stopping the release of additional NSA secrets obtained by Edward Snowden, a former contract employee of the organization.

“There is no stopping the publishing process at this stage.  Great care has been taken to make sure that Mr. Snowden can’t be pressured by any state to stop the publication process.  I mean, the United States, by canceling his passport, has left him for the moment marooned in Russia.  Is that really a great outcome by the State Department?  Is that really what it wanted to do?” Assange said, speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

“I think that every citizen has the right to their citizenship,” he continued. “To take someone’s principal component of citizenship, their passport, away from them is a disgrace.  Mr. Snowden has not been convicted of anything.  There are no international warrants out for his arrest.  To take a passport from a young man in a difficult situation like that is a disgrace.”

Snowden is currently believed to be in the transit zone of a Moscow airport, after fleeing Hong Kong last week. He faces espionage charges in the United States for leaking information about government surveillance programs.

TIMELINE: Edward Snowden’s Life as We Know It

The Obama administration has called for Snowden’s extradition back to the U.S. and the State Department recently revoked his passport. He is currently believed to be seeking asylum from other countries, and is receiving counsel from Assange and Wikileaks.

ABC News

This morning on “This Week,” Assange told Stephanopoulos that the Wikileaks legal team has “been in contact with Mr. Snowden,” and praised the 30-year-old leaker.

“He is a hero.  He has told the people of the world and the United States that there is mass unlawful interception of their communications, far beyond anything that happened under Nixon.  Obama can’t just turn around like Nixon did and said, it’s OK, if the president does it, if the president authorizes it,” he said.

The United States has asked other countries to turn down Snowden’s requests for asylum. But world leaders have pushed back against that request, with Russian President Vladimir Putin calling Snowden a “free person” and allowing him to stay in a Moscow airport.

Assange acknowledged the diplomatic sensitivity of the situation, calling it “a matter of international diplomatic negotiations.”

On Friday Vice President Joe Biden spoke to the president of Ecuador and asked him not to grant Snowden asylum. Assange called that phone call unacceptable.

“Joseph Biden the day before yesterday personally called President Correa, trying to pressure him.  That’s not acceptable.  Asylum is a right that we all have.  It’s an international right.  The United States has been founded largely on accepting political refugees from other countries and has prospered by it.  Mr. Snowden has that right.  Ideally, he should be able to return to the United States,” he said.

Snowden’s father, Lonnie Snowden, has also called for his son to return to the U.S. and raised questions about Assange’s  involvement, saying, “I think WikiLeaks, if you’ve looked at past history, you know, their focus isn’t necessarily the Constitution of the United States. It’s simply to release as much information as possible. So that alone is a concern for me.”

Assange responded, “Mr. Snowden’s father, as a parent, of course he is worried in this situation.  Every father would be worried in this situation.  We have established contact with Mr. Snowden’s father’s lawyer to put some of his concerns to rest, but I mean this isn’t – this isn’t a situation that, you know, Wikileaks is in charge of, if you like.”

Assange told Stephanopoulos there is “little that I can productively say” about the status of Snowden, who is presumed to still be in a Russian airport.

Wikileaks has also faced criticism for their release of many classified government documents. In a leaked email published by “Time” magazine in 2010, Assange is quoted as writing that Wikileaks’ revelations are intended to bring about “the total annihilation of the current U.S. regime.” When asked if this was still his goal, Assange denied that the email existed.

“I did not say that and there is no such email,” he said. “That quote is simply false.”

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FORT WORTH, Texas — The Democratic state senator who is leading the fight against significant new restrictions on abortions in Texas said Gov. Rick Perry and other Republicans were hypocritical, claiming to support smaller government but actually trying to increase state intrusion in people’s lives.

Wendy Davis, the lawmaker who single-handedly overcame and outlasted the Republican majority in the state senate last week, is preparing for another battle on Monday. Armed with her new-found fame in Democratic circles in Texas and across the nation, Davis vowed to fight even harder.

“He’s awfully fond of talking the talk of small government,” Davis told ABC’s “This Week,” escalating an intense quarrel with Perry. “But this [anti-abortion legislation] is big government intrusion, there is no question about it.”

In an interview to be broadcast Sunday, Davis sat down with “This Week” inside the Stage West Theatre in Fort Worth, where she worked her way from being a waitress to a Harvard-educated lawyer to a heroine in the eyes of many Democrats.

ABC

She offered a window into the secrets of standing and talking for more than 11 straight hours during a legislative filibuster: her dusty running shoes (size 7 Mizuno, narrow); a catheter that allowed her to avoid bathroom breaks (“I came prepared,” she explained); and how she felt the spirit of her hero, the late Gov. Ann Richards, during her marathon session in the Capitol in Austin.

“I was going to wear just some little flat dress shoes. At the last minute, I was running out of my apartment and I thought maybe I might need something with a little more support, so I grabbed these on the way out the door,” Davis said, pointing to her sneakers that have gained Internet fame. “These are actually my running shoes. They’re dusty from the trail around Ladybird Lake.”

In an expansive interview about her life, the state of Texas politics and her future, Davis said she was heartened by the outpouring of support from women and Democrats, which catapulted her from local legislator to one of her party’s prospective rising stars. Asked if she planned to run for governor in 2014, she smiled.

Perry, who has singled out Davis for sharp criticism for her efforts to stop legislation to make Texas one of the most restrictive states in the country to get an abortion, is calling the state senate back Monday for another 30-day special session to try passing the bill.

The measure would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and require abortion clinics to match the requirements of surgical centers. Critics of the legislation say it could force the closure of all but five of the state’s 42 abortion clinics.

“I just refuse to say I believe it will happen. I’m an eternal optimist,” Davis said. “I believe in the power of democracy and I’m going to fight with every fiber I have to keep it from passing.”

For more of the conversation with Davis and ABC News’ Senior Washington Correspondent Jeff Zeleny, tune into “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

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Anthony Devlin/AFP/Getty Images

In an ABC News exclusive, George Stephanopoulos goes one-on-one with WikiLeaks founder and international man of mystery Julian Assange, who has been hiding out in London’s Ecuadorean embassy after fallout from his website’s publication of a trove of classified U.S. material in 2010.

This Sunday only on “This Week,” Assange speaks out on the latest on Edward Snowden’s run from the law after his blockbuster leaks on the NSA’s secret surveillance programs. How has Assange and WikiLeaks aided Snowden as he seeks safe passage from Russia? Should Snowden and WikiLeaks’ partners be considered whistle-blowers or law-breakers? And what is the future of WikiLeaks as its controversial efforts remain under scrutiny around the world?

Plus, following this week’s historic Supreme Court decisions on the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin and National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown come to “This Week” to debate the future of same-sex marriage in the U.S.

The powerhouse roundtable also weighs in on those landmark decisions and tackles all the week’s politics, including the next steps in the battle over immigration reform, with ABC News Political Analyst and Special Correspondent Matthew Dowd; ABC News Anchor and Chief Foreign Correspondent Terry Moran, who covers the Supreme Court for ABC News; Rep. Donna F. Edwards, D-Md.; and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan.

Plus, Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis reflects on her epic filibuster that drew national headlines and her fifteen minutes of fame.

See the whole political picture, Sunday on “This Week.”

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]]> http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/06/coming-up-on-this-week-exclusive-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/feed/ 0 http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/06/noah-feldmans-advice-for-president-obama-on-china/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/06/noah-feldmans-advice-for-president-obama-on-china/#comments Thu, 27 Jun 2013 19:22:50 +0000 Benjamin Bell http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/?p=850717

(Image Credit: Random House)

This week we asked Noah Feldman, author of  ”Cool War: The Future of Global Competition” to answer six questions about his book, U.S. relations with China and Edward Snowden. You can also read an excerpt of his book here. 

Q: Your new book is called  ”Cool War.” Why that title? What does it mean?

A: A great power struggle is taking place between China and the U.S. at the same time as deep interdependence exists between them. This amounts to a new historical era, where conflict is real and pervasive and even quasi-military; yet Chinese firms buy U.S. firms, the U.S. buys Chinese goods; and military allies of the U.S. such as Japan negotiate free trade with China. The rules are different from a cold war.

Q: What, if anything, can be gleaned from the recent meeting between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping? What’s your takeaway?

A: China wants what Xi calls “a new type of major power relationship,” which means increasing Chinese influence in Asia and beyond without provoking the U.S. to stronger containment. Any improved communication deepens interdependence and helps China. Xi gained just by showing up alongside Obama. For Obama, it’s much harder:  He needs to warn China not to overreach without himself seeming needlessly bellicose. And it is hard to bring up human rights without a public component to shame the rights violator, so the U.S. lost some ground on that issue.

Q: President Obama has said that some of the recent cyberattacks coming from China on United States targets are state-sponsored. Does China have any incentive to change its behavior?

A: Only if Obama and the U.S. give teeth to their rhetoric. The key is to make it clear that more cyberattacks will cost the Chinese in the economic realm. Military retaliation or escalation is too risky. Without linking further Chinese attacks to economic consequences, it will be hard to deter cyberattacks. China has too much to gain from narrowing the technology gap between the militaries.

Q: How closely are you watching what’s happening with Edward Snowden? The New York Times reported that China allowed Snowden to leave Hong Kong against the wishes of the United States.  What do you make of their choice?

A: I’m watching Snowden’s movements with fascination, because he’s a test case for whether “Cool War” alliances will thwart or aid the attempt to prosecute him.  From the U.S. government perspective, Snowden weakened national security to the detriment of the U.S. side in the Cool War. China didn’t want to be associated with him, given the U.S. focus on cyberespionage from the Chinese side. But it is also in Chinese interests for the international community to see the U.S. as a bully trying to use its influence to get Snowden home. Passing him on was a logical move from the Chinese side. Plus he’s popular on the Chinese Internet.

Q: You’ve discussed the scenario of China deciding to take back Taiwan by force in your interviews for this book. Under what circumstances do you see China taking that action and risking war with the United States?

A: Ideally, China would wait until it as unthinkable for the U.S. to defend Taiwan. We are not there yet. But before that happens, Taiwan could elect a president who demanded formal independence. That could trigger  a crisis.

Q: What advice would you offer President Obama? What should the United States be doing or not be doing in terms of its relationship with China? How does the U.S. win this ‘Cool War?’ 

A: The U.S. needs to deepen economic ties, then use the leverage of economic necessity to show China’s leaders – whose own continued legitimacy rests on keeping their economy strong – that China needs the relationship to keep growing. At the same time, the U.S. needs to grow its military advantage, not sit back and assume China can’t catch up for 20 years.

The only surefire way to limit China’s move toward regional Asian hegemony is to show China that efforts in that direction would destabilize the region and, therefore, be too costly for China. Victory is relative: not total defeat, as in a cold war, but keeping China a powerful and interdependent economic force while discouraging its military and geostrategic advance.

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Random House

Excerpted from COOL WAR: The Future of Global Competition by Noah Feldman. Copyright © 2013 by Noah Feldman. Reprinted with permission by Random House, New York, NY.  

Are we on the brink of a new Cold War? The United States is the sole reigning superpower,  but it is being challenged  by the rising power of  China,  much  as ancient  Rome was challenged  by Carthage and Britain  was challenged  by Germany  in the years before World War I. Should  we therefore  think  of the United States  and China as we once did about the United States and the Soviet Union, two gladiators doomed  to an increasingly globalized  combat  until one side fades?

Or are we entering a new period of diversified global economic cooperation in  which  the  very idea  of  old-fashioned,  imperial power  politics  has  become  obsolete?  Should  we see the United States  and  China  as more like France and  Germany  after  World War II, adversaries wise enough to draw together in an increasingly close circle of  cooperation that  subsumes  neighbors  and  substitutes economic exchange for geopolitical  confrontation?

This is the central  global question  of our as-yet-unnamed historical  moment. What  will happen  now that America’s  post-Cold War engagements  in Iraq  and  Afghanistan  have run  their  course and U.S. attention has pivoted to Asia? Can the United States continue to engage China while somehow hedging against the strategic threat  it poses? Can China go on seeing the United States  both as an object of emulation and also as a barrier to its rightful place on the world stage?

The answer is a paradox:  the paradox  of cool war.

The term cool war aims to capture  two different, mutually contradictory historical  developments  that are taking place simultaneously.  A classic struggle  for  power is unfolding  at  the same time as economic cooperation is becoming deeper and more fundamental.

The current situation differs from global power struggles of the past. The world’s  major  power and its leading challenger  are economically interdependent to an unprecedented  degree. China needs the United States to continue buying its products. The United States needs China  to continue  lending  it money. Their  economic  fates are, for the foreseeable future,  tied together. Recognizing the overlapping  combination of geostrategic  conflict and economic  interdependence is the key to making sense of what is coming and what options  we have to affect it.

In the first decade  of the twenty-first century, the major international question was the relation between  Islam and democracy. In this second decade of the still-young century, the great issues of conflict and cooperation have shifted. Now U.S. leadership  and Western democracy  are juxtaposed  with China’s  global aspirations and its protean, emergent governing system.

The stakes of this debate could not possibly be higher. One side argues that the United States must either accept decline or prepare for war. Only  by military  strength  can the United States convince China  that it is not worth  challenging its status  as the sole super-power. Projecting weakness would lead to instability  and make war all the more likely. The  other  side  counters  that  trying  to  contain  China  is the worst  thing  the United States  can do. Excessive defense spending will make the United States less competitive economically. Worse, it will encourage  China  to become aggressive itself, leading  to an arms race that neither side wants and that would itself increase the chances of violence. Much better to engage China politically and economically  and encourage  it to share the burdens of superpower status.

What we need, I believe, is to change the way we think and talk about  the  U.S.-China  relationship–to develop  an  alternative   to simple  images  of  inevitable  conflict  or  utopian  cooperation. We need a way to understand the new structure that draws on historical precedent  while recognizing  how things are different  this time. We need to understand where the United States and China can see eye to eye, and  where they cannot  compromise. Most  of all, we need a way forward  to help avoid the real dangers  that lie ahead.

That way lies through recognizing that we have entered a new historical period. What future historians will call the “post-Cold War” era of unquestioned U.S. global dominance is over. In this new period, the interests  of  the United States  and  China  often overlap in the realms of  trade  and economics  yet still diverge dramatically when it comes to geopolitical power and ideology. This situation of simultaneous cooperation and  conflict  needs  a new  name–cool war–to  capture  its distinctive features and new, developing rules.

We also need a more sophisticated understanding of the Chinese Communist Party. No longer ideologically communist, the leadership is pragmatic and committed to preserving its position of power. It seeks to maintain legitimacy through  continued  growth, regular transitions, and a tentative form of public accountability. It aims  to manage  deep internal  divisions  between  entitled  prince­ lings and  self-made  meritocrats via a hybrid  system  that  makes room for both types of elites.

The emerging cool war will have profound significance for countries  around  the world, for institutions that exist to keep the peace through international cooperation, for multinational corporations that  operate  everywhere-and for the future of human  rights. The  complicated  interaction between  the United States and China will shape war and peace globally and reveal whether  the dream  of  peaceful international cooperation­ embodied, albeit shakily, in the European  Union-can be extended to countries  with less in common.  It will determine  the future  of democracy as a global movement, structure the international strategies of growing powers like India and Brazil, and guide the movements  of  companies   and  capital.   It will  influence  the  United Nations, the future of international law, and the  progress or regress of human  rights. Ultimately, like the Cold War before it, this new kind  of  international engagement  will involve every country  on earth.

**

A powerful argument  can be mounted  that despite its economic rise, China  will not  try  to challenge  the position  of  the  United States as the preeminent  global leader because of the profound economic interdependence between them. Trade accounts  for  half  of  China’s  GDP, with  exports  significantly  out­stripping  imports.  The  United States  alone  accounts  for  roughly 25 percent of Chinese sales.9 Total trade between the countries amounts  to a stunning $500 billion a year. The government of China holds some $1.2 trillion  worth of U.S. Treasury debt, or 8 percent of the outstanding total.  Only the Federal Reserve and the Social Security Trust Fund hold more; all U.S. households combined hold less.11

As of the most recent count, 194,000 Chinese students  attend U.S. universities; some 70,000 Americans live and study and work in mainland  China. We are not  in the realm  of  ping-pong  diplomacy:  we are in the world of economic and cultural  partnership. These many cooperative projects require trust, credibility, and commitment-all of which were lacking between the United States and  the Soviet Union.

In the long run, China  would like to rely less on exports  and to diversify its customer  base, and the  United  States would  prefer  a more  dispersed  ownership  of its debt But for now, each side is stuck. For the foreseeable future,  the U.S.-China economic  relationship is going to remain a tight mutual embrace.

Yet in the past, close economic  ties between rising and dominant powers have not always managed  to stave off conflict between them. The great powers of Europe traded extensively with one another in the years before World War I. Germany, which was conceived by Britons as the most significant  potential  challenger   to  their   global   position,  was  an important trading  partner of the United Kingdom.

The extent of trade  between Germany  and imperial  Britain was still substantially less than that of the United States and China today. Germany’s economy  was not dependent  upon exports.  The British economy, which was export-driven, had a highly diversified customer  base, of which Germany  was only a proportionate part.

In this same era,  the United States,  another rising power, did trade with Britain on a scale comparable to the U.S.-China trade of our time. The United States sent roughly half of its exports  to Britain between 1885 and 1895. Over the next two decades the propor­ tion declined, but it still remained at around  one-quarter on the eve of World War I and held steady during the war years. Britain, for its part,  exported  between 10 and 15 percent  of its products  to the United States during the same pre-World  War I period.

Economically, the current relationship between the United States and  China  is  even  deeper  than   was  that   between  the  United States  and  the United  Kingdom.  Governments  of earlier eras did not typically own the debts of other sovereign nations. The central banks of the United States and Britain rarely held each other’s  treasury  bonds. The idea of a sovereign wealth fund  that  would seek simultaneously to make money in capital markets  and advance its owners’ national  interests was still far in the future.

But there was no ideological  divide between the United States and the United Kingdom,  two liberal democracies  commit­ ted to capitalism  and free trade. If anything,  British imperialists saw the potential  American  empire  as a kind  of adjunct  to their own, sparing  them the expense of expanding  still further. The United States and China, however, are ideological opponents. Although the pragmatism of the Chinese Communists means that the main source of ideological conflict is the United States, the values of the rule of law, democracy, and human rights are all core elements of the Western idea of governance – and China rejects all three in practice, if not in theory. Over time, this could change. But for now, the united States could not tolerate the broader spread of the emerging Chinese model of governance around the world.

In essence, then, the argument that the United States and China will not find themselves in a struggle for global power depends on one historical  fact: never before has the dominant world power been so economically  interdependent with the rising challenger it must confront. Under these conditions, trade and debt provide overwhelming economic incentives to avoid conflict that would  be costly to all. Over time the mutual  interests  of the two countries  will outweigh any tensions that arise between them.

Appealing as this liberal internationalist argument may be, seen through the lens of realism, China’s economic rise, accompanied by America’s relative economic decline,  changes the global balance of power. It  gives China  the means, opportunity, and  motive to alter  the global  arrangement  in  which  the  United  States  is the  world’s  sole super­ power. According to the logic of realism, the two countries are therefore already at odds in a struggle for geopolitical  dominance. One is the established superpower, the other its leading challenger. Under the circumstances, a shooting war is not  unavoidable-but conflict is.

Of all the potential  flashpoints for real violent conflict between the United States and China, Taiwan is the scariest. In 2012, Tsai Ing-Wen’s Democratic Progressive Party won 47 percent of the vote on a platform  of active independence. If she or another like-minded politican were to be elected in the future, and Chinese  leaders  wanted  to shore up their legitimacy by distracting their public from a lagging economy, a hawkish Chinese leadership with close ties to the People’s Liberation Army could send a new aircraft carrier into the strait. The president  of the United States would  then face an immediate and pressing dilemma: to respond in kind, inviting war, or to hold back and compromise  sole global superpower  status in an instant. The Cuban missile crisis looked a lot like this.

Moreover, to alter the balance of power in a fundamental way, China does not need to reach military parity with the United States – and once again, Taiwan is the demonstration case. From China’s  standpoint, the optimal  strategy  toward Taiwan is to build up its military capacity and acquire Taiwan without a fight. The idea is that  the United States might be prepared  to tolerate the abandonment of its historic ally out of necessity, the way Britain ceded control over Hong Kong when it had no choice.

To see why this scenario is so plausible, all that is required is to ask  the  following  question:  Would  the  president  of  the  United States go to war with China over Taiwan absent some high-profile, immediate  crisis capable of mobilizing domestic support?   If the United States were to abandon Taiwan, it would have to insist-to China,   to  Japan   and  South   Korea,  and  to  its  own citizens-that Taiwan was in a basic sense different from the rest of Asia.

Failure to do so credibly would transform  capitulation on Taiwan  into  the  end  of  American  military  hegemony  in  Asia. It would represent  a reversal of the victories in the Pacific in World War II. It would put much of the world’s economic  power within China’s sphere of control,  not only its sphere of influence. In short it would mean that China was on a par with the United States as a global superpower.

That   moment  of  imagination may  already  have arrived:  although U.S. defense experts  might  think  otherwise, many  close watchers of U.S. domestic  policy can conceive of a compromise  on Taiwan that  would restore Chinese sovereignty. The future  is now. For the United States to concede Asia to China’s  domination would entail stepping down from being the world’s sole superpower  to being one of two competing superpowers.  But notice  what  this means. The only way the United States can credibly commit itself to the protection of its Asian allies is for the United States to remain committed to sole-superpower status.  China, for its part,  need only grow its military  capacity to the point where it would be big enough not to have to use it.

Military  rise takes place over decades,  not  months.  Too fast  a buildup  would spook the United States  and encourage  hawkish  anti-Chinese sentiment there. Complete secrecy with regard to such a major buildup would be impossible. The party  has done  a good  job of convincing  the Chinese public that  the nation’s rise must proceed slowly, with economic  growth first. It helps that  the party  is not subjected  to the electoral cycles of  democratic governments,  with  the  limited  time  horizon  that such a structure imposes.

Nevertheless, as most Chinese seem to realize, China’s  long-term  geopolitical  interest  lies in removing the United States from  the position  of sole global super­ power. The  reasons  are  both  psychological  and  material. Like the  United  States,  China  is a continental power  with  vast reach. It has a glorious  imperial  history, including  regional  domi­ nance of what  was, for China,  much of the known  world. In the same  way that  the  United  States  is proud  of  democracy  and  its global spread, China has its own rich civilizational ideal, Confu­ cianism. During the years of China’s ascendance, the cultures of Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam-sometimes called the Sinosphere-were deeply influenced  by Chinese ideas. Confucianism still plays a meaningful  part  in the thinking  of at least 1.7 bil­lion people.

The  Chinese  public  is deeply  nationalist, which  matters   to China’s  unelected political leadership  as much as U.S. nationalism does to American politicians. As China  becomes  the world’s  largest  economy, there is meaningful public pressure for its power status  t.o advance in parallel.  Any al­ ternative  would  be humiliating. And  as all Chinese know, China has suffered its share of humiliation in the last two centuries.

This does not mean making Japan  or South Korea into part of China. It does mean eventually replacing the existing regional security system that is designed to contain  and balance it. The increasingly  belligerent  conflicts over small islands in the East and South China Seas are products of the fact that everybody knows it.

Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who has been a mentor  to every major Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping, was recently asked if China’s  leaders intend to displace the United States as Asia’s preeminent  power. “Of  course,” Lee replied. “Why not? … Their  reawakened  sense of  destiny  is an  overpowering force.”  Indeed,  Lee explained  bluntly, “It is China’s  intention to become the greatest power in the world.”

There is plenty of hard evidence to support this interpretation. China’s defense budget has grown by more than 10 percent for several years, rising officially to $116 billion in the most recent published reports, with actual defense spending as high as $180 billion. In  2011 China  bought  its  first  aircraft  carrier  (a refitted  Soviet model), announced plans to build several more, and openly tested its first stealth  aircraft.  In 2012, party-controlled media acknowledged more ambitious plans to develop ballistic missiles that would carry multiple warheads-and therefore be able to get around  the U.S. missile defense shield.  China  is also working  on submarine­ fired missiles that would avoid U.S. early-warning systems left over from the Cold War. It is building up its space program  on both the civilian and military sides.

Cyber war, a fast-developing new front  in global  conflict, is another facet of China’s  effort  to change its power relationship to the United States.  Cyber attacks  are not what makes the cool war “cool.” As a strategic matter they do not differ fundamentally from older tools of espionage and sabotage. (The same is true of drone strikes, which are just the latest varant on the use of air power.) But cyber attacks are just now an especially fruitful  method  from  the Chi­nese perspective. Because they do not (yet) involve traditional military  mobilization, they  exploit  a  dimension  in  which  U.S. and Chinese  power  are  more  symmetrical.  They  involve  a  certain amount  of deniability, as efforts can be made to mask the origin of attacks,  making  attribution difficult. They may have a significant economic upside, especially if they involve theft of intellectual property  from  American  firms. Cyber  war  takes place largely in secret,  unknown  to the general  public  on  both  sides. Best of  all for  China,  the  rules  for  cyber  war  are  still  very  much  in  flux. That  means public  retaliation  is still extremely unlikely, reducing the danger  of  public  embarrassment if  things  go badly. Regular cyber  attacks   are  therefore  likely  to  be  an  ongoing  facet  of  a cool war, even if they are not definitional.

**

The Cold War’s major strategic developments, from Soviet expansion to containment, detente, and Nixon’s opening to China, all clustered around the question of who would be aligned with whom. The cool war, too, will involve a struggle to gain and keep allies. The  meaning of alliance, however, will differ from earlier wars, in which trade between the different camps was severely constricted.  In the cool war, the protagonists are each other’s largest trading partners. Each side can try to offer security and economic partnership, but cannot  easily demand  an  exclusive relationship with potential  client states of the kind that obtained  in the Cold War. Instead  the goal will be to deepen connections  over time so that  the  targeted  ally comes to see its interests  as more  closely aligned with one side rather  than  the other. Much more than during the Cold War, key players may try to have it both ways.

The Pacific region is the first and most obvious place where the game of alliances has begun to be played – and it challenges the post-World War II “hub  and spokes” arrangement of bilateral treaties between the United States and  Japan, South Korea, Tai wan, and Australia that  guaranteed security without  joining them into  a single regional  alliance  on  the model  of  NATO.

Over the course of the last decade, China has replaced the United States as the largest trading  partner with each of these Pacific countries.  The  United States, in other words, now increasingly guarantees the capacity  of the countries  in the region to engage in a free economic  relationship with China.

In November 2012, China  joined Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, and  the  ten  members  of  ASEAN to  announce negotiations for  what  the group   calls  a  Regional  Comprehensive   Economic   Partnership. Taken as a whole, the proposed  free-trade  group  would include a population of some three billion people with as much as $20 trillion in GDP and approximately 40 percent of the world’s trade.  It represents an alternative to an American-favored pro­ posed Trans-Pacific Partnership  that includes the United States but excludes China.

China’s long­ term interest is to supplant  and eventually replace the United States as the most important regional actor. It has benefited from U.S. security guarantees, and now sees no reason why it should be hemmed in by U.S. proxies. At the same time, it must be careful not  to frighten Japan  and South Korea so much that  they cling to the American embrace.  Creating a regional trade alliance that  includes  traditional U.S. regional  allies  but  not  the  United States  would  serve these complicated  and  slightly  contradictory goals. It would provide countries like Japan  and South Korea with the incentive to draw closer to China while framing that movement in terms of economic advantage rather  than security.

Emblematic of the contradictory new reality is that China is negotiating for free trade with Japan at precisely the moment when geopolitical tensions between them are at the highest point in decades. The conflict over the Diaoyou/Senkaku Islands went from civilian to military in a matter of months, as both sides scrambled jet fighters.  This conflict is itself logical: the product of uncertainty over the changing balance of power. Yet the economic partnership is strengthening simultaneously.

The U.S. response to the changing geostrategic situation has been to signal increasing willingness to empower its regional allies, particularly Japan. The incorporation of a Japanese admiral as the second in command  at last summer’s RIMPAC exercises was a signal that the United States viewed with favor a potential Japanese  shift  away from  pacifism and  toward  a more active regional security role.

But this regional response will not be enough. The United States also will have to broaden its base of allies using the tools of ideology. The strongest argument that can be made to countries who trade freely with china is that Chinese hegemony would threaten their democratic freedoms. Senator John McCain’s proposed league of democracies is therefore likely to be revived eventually, though probably under another name.

India is the leading candidate for membership. The inventor of non-alignment is not in the same position  as it was during  the Cold War. Now nonalignment risks letting China rise to regionally dominant status. India’s interest is to balance China in the realm of geopolitics  while urging it to respect international law, especially the laws of intellectual property  and trade. India must, of course, be careful not to push the Chinese too far. China could use border troubles with India to feed domestic nationalism. But India should be increasingly open to joining a democratic league that might have the long-term effect of  pressuring  China  toward  human  rights  and  democracy.  The natural  ground  for the alliance is democracy  and human rights-the features  that  the  United  States  and  India  share  but China lacks.

China’s great advantage in the race to find allies is its pragmatism. Unlike the United  States , China  typically makes no demands  that its allies comply with international norms of human  rights or other responsible behavior. China’s natural allies are, as a result, often bad international actors, as the examples of Iran and Syria make clear. China has an independent interest in opposing any form of humanitarian intervention or regime-change based on a human-rights justification. So it is natural – and so far, low-cost — for China to provide cover for such allies. Russia shares the same interests, and the once-chilly Chinese-Russian relationship has been considerably warmed by overlapping interests in the trying to limit Western regime change. Indeed, Russia may emerge as China’s most important geostrategic ally – a development signaled recently by Xi Jinping making Russia his first stop on assuming the presidency. If the United States reached out  to China in the cold War to weaken the Soviet union, China may try to use Russia similarly in the cool war.

China has also been highly effective in creating alliances with resource-rich African states. China  became Africa’s leading trading partner in 2010. China typically opts to work with existing governments-whether they are autocratic does not matter-to build infrastructure that is sorely lacking. The Chinese tout their own expertise in rapid devel­ opment;  they bring Chinese labor to do the job; and they promise to  deliver  the  benefits  of  improved  roads,  rivers,  and  revenue streams for government.

China’s pragmatic  approach  to Africa is free of the evangelical spirit and appeals frankly  to its in­ terlocutors’ naked self-interest-and the Chinese  make no  bones about the fact that they are pursuing their own self-interest as well. They  make no attempt  to reform  African governance  or African ways of life. They may condescend,  but they do not lecture. Unlike Western interactions with Africa, the Chinese encounter  does not seem plagued by bad conscience. How much this will ultimately matter to Africans remains to be seen. But a policy  of pragmatic  honesty  may confer  real advantages  when dealing with countries  and peoples who are accustomed  to being met with self-serving lies. China aims to get the benefits of resource colonization without paying the international price of being hated as a colonizer-and it has a reasonable chance of succeeding.

**

Extensive cooperation in economics, intense competition in geopolitics:  this  new  situation poses  extraordinary risks.  China and the United States are bound  together in a mutual  embrace of economic interdependence. They are also on a course  to conflict driven by their divergent interests and ideologies. Escalating hostility might lead not only to violence but to economic disaster.

Yet economic interdependence also poses unique opportunities for  the  peaceful  resolution  of  conflict.  What  is more,  it  creates common interests  that mitigate  the impulse to domination. Trade is the area where cooperation can have the greatest transformative effects. Today, China is an active participant in the WTO regime, which is the most effective expression of international law-as-law ever created. Nations obey the decisions of WTO tribunals out of straightforward self-interest: the cost of defection is outweighed by the benefits of staying in the international trade regime.

To manage  the cool war, we  must  always keep in mind the tremendous gains that  both the United States and China have achieved and  will continue  to experience  as a result of economic cooperation. Both sides should use the leverage of their mu­ tually beneficial economic  relationship  to make fighting less attractive. The positive benefits of trade will not render geopoliti­cal conflict obsolete.  But focusing on them can help discourage  a too-rapid  recourse to violence.

The world is going to change under conditions  of cool war, and efforts to keep the war from becoming violent must take account of these changes. New networks of international alliances are emerging. International organizations like the Security Council and  the WTO  will have more power than  before, and should  be deployed  judiciously  and  creatively. International economic  law can increasingly  be enforced as a result of the mutual self-interest of the participants. Global corporations will develop new alle­ giances as part  of a cool war world-but they can also provide in­ centives to discourage violence and associated economic losses. Human  rights, long treated as a rhetorical  prop in the struggle be­ tween great powers, will still be used as a tool. But over time, respecting  rights may come to be in China’s  interests-with  major consequences for the enforcement of human  rights everywhere.

What unifies these conclusions is a willingness to embrace persistent contradiction as a fact of our world. We must be prepared to acknowledge both diverging interests and also areas of profound overlap. We must be forthright about ideological  distance, yet re­ main open to the possibility that it can gradually  be bridged. We must pay attention to the role of enduring  self-interest  while also remembering  that  what we believe our interest  to be can change what it actually is.

The United States and China really are opponents-and they really do need each other to prosper. Accepting all this requires changing some of our assumptions  about friends and enemies, al­ lies and competitors. It means acknowledging that opposed forces and  ideas do  not  always merge into  a grand  synthesis, and  that their struggle also need not issue in an epic battle to the finish.

It would be uplifting to conclude that peace is logical, that rational  people on all sides will avert conflict by acting sensibly.  But such  a conclusion  would  betray  the  analysis  that  I have tried  to develop. Instead  I offer  a more  modest  claim.  Geostrategic conflict is inevitable. But mutual economic interdependence can help manage that conflict and keep it from spiraling out of control.

We cannot project  a winner  in the cool war. If violence can  be avoided, human  well-being improved,  and human rights expanded, perhaps everybody could emerge as a winner. If, however, confrontation leads to violence, it is also possible that everyone could lose.

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ABC News’ Chief Business and Economics Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis stayed after her roundtable appearance on “This Week” to answer viewer questions submitted on Facebook.

Jarvis discussed what the possible impact will be on ordinary Americans following Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recent announcement that the Fed may wind down its stimulus program.

“For the average person…what it means was stocks traded a little bit lower in light of the Federal Reserve Chair’s comments.”

Jarvis added, “But in the bigger picture I think what it will really mean is interest rates are starting to go up. And when you try and buy a mortgage or a home rather with a mortgage, when you need a car loan or you want to expand a business, it is getting more expensive.”

In addition to her assessment of the economy, Jarvis, the runner-up on season 4 of Donald Trump’s reality TV competition, “The Apprentice,” offered insider info on the business mogul’s signature coiffure.

“The number one question I got from it was — after “The Apprentice” was — his hair, right? Everyone wants to know the hair. Well, I can tell you that up close, it looked like it was attached to his head, like in a natural way,” Jarvis said.

Read Full Interview Below:

Redd Stahl: When are businesses going to REALLY start hiring?

That’s been the question now for five years, really. Five years ago, four years ago, unemployment was 10 percent in this country. Now it’s 7.6 percent. And while we are seeing improvements in the picture at healthcare companies, improvements in the hospitality/leisure companies and in many of the service industries, manufacturing and construction have lagged. Now, one of the areas where we are seeing some small improvements is in construction, and that’s really tied to housing because home builders are actually having to build new houses as demand for housing picks up. So we’re seeing that. But the Federal Reserve in its report this week said that next year they expect the unemployment rate to go to 6.5 percent. So that would that mean businesses would have to start hiring more heavily in the late months of this year and the early months of next.

Dre: Rebecca, when are banks going to start approving more mortgage loans…[for] average Americans?

It’s difficult still in this country to get a loan, and part of the reason for that is it was too easy before. When the housing bubble burst, one of the things behind it is that people were getting approved for loans that they shouldn’t be getting approved for. They were getting talked into or personally decided to go for houses that were just far too expensive. Well today, we see the after effects of that. We see you must have 20 percent down payment. You must have seller credit in order to get a loan. And that, I believe, is here to stay for some time because the banks have had to learn the hard way that they can’t do business like they used to.

ABC News: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke made an announcement this week that roiled the markets, but it’s hard for some people to understand. What exactly did he say, and what is the bottom line impact for the average American?

So our economy has been running on training wheels, you might say. The Federal Reserve month after month has been pumping 85 billion dollars of its own form of stimulus — what’s known as “quantitative easing” — into the economy. This week, the Fed Chair said to the markets and to the world, the economy’s showing some signs of improvement, and he hinted that because of those signs of improvement, he could dial back on some of the stimulus starting this Fall. In layman’s terms, what it means is, we’re an economy; we’ve had training wheels on; training wheels are going to be coming off soon. Can we ride this bike on our own without that help from the Federal Reserve? For the average person, this week what it means was stocks traded a little bit lower in light of the Federal Reserve Chair’s comments. But in the bigger picture I think what it will really means is interest rates are starting to go up. And when you try and buy a mortgage or a home rather with a mortgage, when you need a car loan or you want to expand a business, it is getting more expensive. And in just one week’s time, the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage went up almost a quarter of a percent from 4 percent to 4.24 percent. The reality is that’s still a record-low rate. You’re still getting one of the best deals in history if you can get access to that loan. But for those who have thought they were going to get the rock-bottom rate on those interest rates, well it’s rising.

ABC News: And of course we had a ton of questions about you being on “The Apprentice.” Tell us a little bit about that. What was it like working with Donald Trump?

It’s funny because I’m 31 years old now, and back then I was 23 years old, so it does feel like a long, long time ago in my life. The whole experience was sort of a whirlwind, and going through that experience as someone who was — I had just come out into the workforce two years before. I had had a couple of jobs, but it was total learning experience being around all these completely different people, and of course Donald Trump. The no. one question I got from it was — after “The Apprentice” was — his hair, right? Everyone wants to know the hair. Well, I can tell you that up close, it looked like it was attached to his head, like in a natural way.

ABC News

Lightning Round:

One piece of advice  to young journalists?

Go for it and work harder than everybody else and in my case I studied a different topic than others did, I studied economics. So feel free to study whatever you want, but learn to write.

One thing you can’t live without?

Coffee. In this world.

Favorite Sandra Bullock movie? [A number of viewers pointed out how closely Rebecca resembles Sandra Bullock]

“Speed,” love “Speed.”

Guilty pleasure?

Reality TV. I’m sorry to say. That’s a little embarrassing.

Viewer questions have been edited, shortened and condensed in some cases.

Below you can find some of the notable comments made Sunday on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” The foreign policy roundtable guests included ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz, Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass, and co-founder of the Foreign Policy Initiative Dan Senor. The political powerhouse roundtable guests included Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-Texas; Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Penn., ABC News Chief Business and Economics Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis; former Lead Auto Adviser and Counselor to the Treasury Secretary Steven Rattner, now chair of Willett Advisors; and Amity Shlaes, director of The 4% Growth Project at The George W. Bush Institute.

Castro warns that immigration bill won’t pass House if ‘Hastert Rule’ applied

CASTRO:  If the speaker insists on using the Hastert rule, which essentially says that you’ve got to have the support of a majority of the majority, which means a majority of Republicans, that means that 25 percent of the body can control 100 percent of the agenda and the legislation.  It will not pass if he uses the Hastert rule.

Haass asserts that Snowden is a ‘felon’

HAASS: We’ve got this system that depends upon millions of people…and there’s always going to be a couple of weak links, and we’re vulnerable to that…But the fact that, look, so many people in media and elsewhere called this guy a whistleblower.  He’s not a whistleblower.  He’s a felon.  He has endangered the lives of Americans.

Raddatz on concerns about making the case for intervention in Syria

STEPHANOPOULOS: Martha, we only have 30 seconds left. I have not seen any indication from the president that he’s willing to go out there in a big public way and make the case for intervention in Syria.

RADDATZ:  He doesn’t want to, because once you put that giant toe in the water, that’s it — he’s in.

Amity praises what immigrants bring to the economy

SHLAES:  Yes, that’s right.  I mean, the Republican Party can be sour.  And that’s — that’s — you know, one of the sour parts of Calvin Coolidge was, he didn’t always appreciate immigrants.  But what he did appreciate was, once they were here, the whole process of Americanization, they said, or becoming part of America, whatever words we would use now, he said…we’re all in the same boat here.  And what I emphasize in that book and indeed in this conversation is that immigrants make the economy stronger.  That’s the number-one — that — it’s there.  It’s true.

Castro confident that border is the ‘most secure’ it has ever been

CASTRO:  And I would point out, George, that the border is more secure now than it’s ever been.  For example, in 2004, there were 10,000 Border Patrol agents along the border.  Now there are 21,000.  The amendment in the Senate, the Corker amendment, would take that to 40,000 Border Patrol agents…So if there’s any time to do it, it’s now.

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This week’s “Sunday Spotlight” shines on a freshman congresswoman with a unique resume. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is an Iraq war veteran, the first Hindu member of Congress, and the youngest woman serving in Congress, at age 32.

Gabbard told ABC’s “This Week” that she doesn’t mind standing out on Capitol Hill.

“Someone asked me recently when I went back to Hawaii — they said, ‘So, you know, how’s it going in Congress?  Are you fitting in there?’” Gabbard said. “And I told them not fitting in is actually a good thing.”

Gabbard served two tours of duty in the Middle East and said her military service gives her a unique perspective in Washington.

With the military planning  to integrate women into combat units by 2016, Gabbard reflected on her own experience in Iraq.

“During my deployment, there were missions that I volunteered for and was not allowed to go on, simply because I’m a woman,” Gabbard said. “They said, ‘Sorry, no. No girls allowed.’”

Gabbard argued that there should be equality on the front lines.

“As long as we’ve had a United States military in place, women have been raising their hands to serve our country,” Gabbard said.

“If you can pull your weight and if you can do the job, you should be able to do it,” she continued. “What we see in the policy change, now that we’re seeing starting to be executed, is just a reflection of what women have already been doing in the military.”

While critics argue that men and women don’t have the same abilities to handle the challenges of war, Gabbard said she and her fellow servicewomen recognize the harsh realities of combat.

“Some of the so-called uncivilized parts of what occurs when you are in combat, when you’re at war, that’s the reality that we train for,” Gabbard said. “This is not something new and it’s not something that any woman who raises her hand to serve in uniform finds as a surprise. We know what we sign up for.”

Another issue facing the military is the rate of sexual assault, highlighted by rising statistics and recent high-profile cases. Lawmakers are currently moving forward with legislation designed to curb the number of sexual assaults in the military.

ABC News

On “This Week,” Gabbard urged lawmakers and military leaders to address the skyrocketing number of sexual assaults in the military.

“That  just places a greater responsibility on those in leadership to do something about this,” she said. “We have to do something about this now.”

Gabbard said that being concerned about sexual assault while serving in the military was “an eye-opening experience.”

“When I was deployed to Iraq, we heard and saw incidents that were being reported or incidents that were occurring within our camp,” Gabbard said.

She also spoke about preventative measures in place during her tours of duty.

“We got issued rape whistles so that, you know, as we walk out of our tent or walk out of our hooch, we’ve got our body armor, we’ve got our helmet, our weapon, and we’ve got our rape whistle,” Gabbard explained.

When she’s not speaking out on behalf of servicemen and women, the Democratic rising star travels over ten hours to her home district in Hawaii.

“You can smell the ocean breezes as soon as you get off the plane,” she said. “Immediately I feel my shoulders drop, the stress goes away.”

Gabbard said time spent in Hawaii allows her to escape the hustle and bustle of Washington and “hold on to the aloha spirit.”

“I hold on very tightly to my surfboard when I’m home,” Gabbard said smiling.  ”I appreciate having the opportunity to not only be home, but to understand why I’m working in Washington.”

Gabbard first assumed public office in 2002, when she was elected as a Hawaii state legislator at the age of 21, and today believes that the “next generation” of leaders can make a big impact.

Check out our web extra HERE for Gabbard’s thoughts on being a freshman representative and the need for bipartisanship on Capitol Hill.

The congresswoman is also featured in the upcoming issue of Vogue magazine, which hits newsstands on June 25.

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