[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 40 (Tuesday, March 11, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H2294-H2299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2030
          HISTORICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE SITUATION IN UKRAINE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rodney Davis of Illinois). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized by 
you and to address you here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives.
  I would first like to say I appreciate the gentleladies'--and that is 
plural--presentation and the breadth of their attention to the part of 
the world that has been the center of our discussion here tonight and 
that should be the center of our American discussion, and will be, for 
some time to come.
  As I watch this unfold, and think of the time in 2008 when I found 
myself in the Nation of Georgia within a little more than a week after 
the Russians invaded two provinces or states of Georgia, one of them 
South Ossetia, and having arrived there and met with the leadership in 
Georgia, including President Saakashvili and his cabinet that were 
young people, and a minister of defense that was still awaiting his 
30th birthday, I heard the narrative from inside Tbilisi on what the 
Russians had planned and what the Russians had done.
  Now, history is little bit undecided, Mr. Speaker, about who fired 
the first shot in Georgia. It may have been the Russians baited the 
Georgians into it. It may have been that the Russians actually fired on 
the Georgians and the Georgians fired back.
  In any case, the narrative that I received there that was part of a 
briefing that was synced with our State Department and with the 
representatives of the Nation State of Georgia brought together 
information that there was a single underpass, there was a two-lane 
underpass; that within a 24-hour period of time, some 2,200 Russian 
vehicles, tanks, armor and other equipment went under that underpass.
  They had to have staged that invasion of Georgia. It could not have 
been a spontaneous response on the part of the Georgians firing on the 
Russians or the Russians who may well have fired the first shots at 
Georgia.
  In any case, when the Russians went in and occupied those parts of 
Georgia, that began a movement, a strong movement of hegemony, and I 
think that it was passed off that the Georgian circumstances were 
somehow an anomaly, that somehow it was regional tensions that were 
brought up, and that the eye to the sea wasn't necessarily what Putin 
was thinking about.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I believe that he was. I believe it was the first 
piece on the giant geopolitical chessboard, the chessboard that our 
President doesn't seem to think actually is in play any longer, that 
Cold War chessboard.
  But when I look at the map of that part of the world and look at the 
flow of energy that goes back and forth, Ukraine and Georgia have 
similarities. One is, they have ports.
  The second one is that they are a nexus for energy, transmitting 
energy through their countries with pipelines and, in the case of 
Georgia, rail lines. It is important that if you can control Georgia 
you can control a lot of the energy that comes through from the east, 
and if you can control Yugoslavia, you can control a lot of the energy 
that comes through from the east.
  Those two things, plus the historical involvement of the Russians in 
the Crimea. I take us back to the gentlelady from Ohio who laid out the 
case of the 1994 treaty that the Russians signed and the interested 
parties signed that all would respect the territorial and sovereign 
borders of the Ukraine, and of course the Russians violated that.
  I don't expect much of anything else to happen. I don't think they 
are bound by their honor in any way. I think they are only bound by the 
limitations of the static tension that comes from power, and that power 
can be economic, it can be political. It is probably not very much 
cultural, but it also is, in the highest degree it is military.
  When there is no military deterrent in place, then Putin is going to 
be determined to move forward and reconstitute the old Soviet Union. He 
lamented years ago that the worst thing that happened in the 20th 
century was the implosion of the Soviet Union, or the disintegration of 
the Soviet union.
  I would also point out that the world is not going to tolerate a lone 
superpower, which the United States of America is, the unchallenged 
greatest nation in the world, the strongest superpower there has been, 
with global reach everywhere.
  When the United States pulls back--first, Mr. Speaker, we project 
power. We project power in the ways that I said, economically, 
culturally, militarily and strategically, and when the United States 
pulls back from that, when we decide that we are not going to exert 
influence in parts of the world, then the lust for power that comes in 
the embodiment of someone like Putin fills that vacuum. In fact, it is 
pushing constantly. It doesn't need a vacuum to push in.
  Russian pushed into Georgia in 2008. They gave us a preview of what 
was to come.
  Now, here we are, these few years later, these six or so years later, 
and we are watching now, as Putin finished up with his Olympics, his 
50-plus billion dollar endeavor, I think a lot of it had to do with 
raising the spirits of the Russian people and their sense of support 
for him so that he could get away with this cold tactic of a military 
invasion and conquest of the Crimea.
  I don't have any doubt that he has got his eyes on the balance of the 
Ukraine, that he has got his eyes on the balance of the Soviet Union in 
whatever order that he can pull this off.
  If we show weakness, if we don't stand strong, if we don't stare him 
down, if we don't put the kind of equipment and resources in place to 
block his move, then Putin is going to march through these countries, 
one after another.
  It is a fairly long hiatus between Georgia and the component of the 
Ukraine that has now been invaded and occupied that we call now the 
Crimea, but I think it is interesting and I think it is ironic, Mr. 
Speaker, that it is the Crimea that has been grabbed as part

[[Page H2295]]

of the Ukraine, and now they are seeking, the Russians have already 
annexed it, Mr. Speaker, and now they are about forcing a referendum 
this Sunday.

  When they talk about how the Duma has to operate and what the legal 
structure is in Russia, it is all a matter of what does Putin command. 
Whatever the sequential order of the Duma is, and whatever we might 
think they have to jump through for hoops, I think it is just this: if 
Putin commands, then they will jump through the hoops at his command.
  We should think about this. Georgia, and now the Crimea and the eyes 
of the Russians and Putin, in particular, looking into the Ukraine, and 
think about what happened the last time we had a dictator who had such 
a desire for conquest and occupation.
  I would take us back to this piece of history where, as I saw this 
happen, when the Russians went into the Crimea, Mr. Speaker, 
immediately, I began to rethink the sequence of history, when Adolf 
Hitler demanded that they receive the Sudetenland, a component and the 
western perimeter of at the time Czechoslovakia. The pretense that he 
used was identical to the pretense that Putin has used to go into the 
Crimea.
  It was Hitler that said there are German-speaking people and they 
deserve German representation, and someone has got to protect them and 
represent them, and I need to do that, as the leader, the Fuhrer of 
Germany. They are German-speaking people, they are German people, they 
need to be under German rule. That was the pretense that he used that 
forced the negotiations that took place in Munich in 1938.
  Before we go to that spot, there was a peaceful march into and 
invasion of the Nation of Austria, and pulling us back in that history, 
Mr. Speaker, there was significant pressure that was put on the 
Austrians that began back prior to 1938, and Hitler made the arguments 
too.
  Austria, still, to this day, is a German-speaking country. They 
identify very closely with the German people. They flow back and forth. 
The difference between an Austrian and a German isn't a particularly 
distinct one, although they are separate nation states today.
  But Hitler put pressure on the Chancellor of Austria, and as he 
brought them to an agreement and got the Chancellor of Austria to make 
some appointments of Austrian Nazi officers, he weakened the resistance 
of the leadership by doing so.
  On March 12 of 1938, essentially the day--March 11, the Chancellor of 
Austria resigned. March 12 Nazi troops flowed into Austria. By the 13th 
of March they had declared Austria to be a protectorate, a separate 
protectorate of the German empire that had begun.
  Now, this is a recovery of a nation that was defeated in World War I. 
They had gone through tremendous economic crisis and chaos, as had 
Austria, and they were vulnerable, and Austria was powerless to stand 
in the way of the Nazi military machine, and the Wehrmacht. So March 12 
was essentially the date that the flow of the Nazis marched into, went 
into Austria and Vienna, March 12 of 1938, Mr. Speaker.
  Now, think of this. In the spring of 1938, Nazi troops flow into 
Austria, essentially annex the country without firing a shot. Pretty 
similar to the Russians going into the Crimea.
  Now, they did fire some shots in Georgia, a lot of shots in Georgia, 
and people were killed, and a number of Russian planes were shot down 
by the Georgian military, but we are back in 1938. Spring of 1938, 
Austria taken over by the Nazis. In September of 1938, Hitler has been 
spending the whole summer agitating that the Sudetenland needs to also 
come into the German sphere of influence in a similar fashion that 
Austria had been brought into the German sphere of influence.
  Neville Chamberlain, the now infamous failed peacekeeper, peacemaker 
then flew to Munich to meet with Hitler and made an agreement called 
the Munich Agreement with Hitler and signed off on it and got a letter 
that Adolf Hitler signed which said, we are going to have peace now in 
Europe if you just give me the Sudetenland, the German-speaking area 
which was the western perimeter of Czechoslovakia.
  The date was September 29, 1938, when Neville Chamberlain met with 
Hitler in Munich. He flew back to England and landed, had a press 
conference on the airstrip on September 30 of 1938 and waved the letter 
in his hand that said, peace for our time.
  We remember it as peace in our time, but he actually said peace for 
our time and waved the letter, did the press conference, and let all of 
England and the free world know that Hitler didn't have any further 
designs on any kind of real estate; he didn't intend to take over any 
other part of Europe, that he was going to be happy with what he had 
achieved, which was Austria and the Sudetenland, the western perimeter 
of Czechoslovakia. Peace for our time.
  So after that press conference, I am sure that Neville Chamberlain 
went to bed thinking that he had accomplished something, and the very 
following day the Nazis then flowed into Sudetenland, and they stayed 
there and occupied throughout the winter.
  That takes us through the winter of 1938 and the spring of 1939. By 
March 16, the Nazi troops had flowed throughout the balance of 
Czechoslovakia, occupied it.
  Now, you would think that we were going to have peace for our time at 
that time because, after all, Hitler didn't announce his planned 
operations to go in and invade and occupy any other part of Europe. He 
had been announcing that he was peaceful. He signed the letter. He just 
didn't keep his word.
  Sound a little curious, doesn't it, Mr. Speaker. The Russians signed 
the agreement with the Ukrainians in 1994 that they would respect the 
territorial boundaries of the Ukraine. They kept that deal as long as 
it was suitable to the Russians.
  The Russian signature, of course, means nothing to Putin if they have 
territorial aspirations, if they have territorial greed. So Putin, in a 
very similar fashion to Adolf Hitler, went into the Crimea and took the 
Crimea over.
  He had it planned. He had it strategized. He should have been able to 
see it coming. I would like to think that our intel predicted this as a 
strategic move, rather than just a response to a military move. I don't 
know that and probably will never know that, if that was ever the 
dialogue of the people who were watching very closely in that part of 
the world.
  When Hitler went in and occupied the balance of Czechoslovakia, and 
we had the summer then of 1939 wondering, but not very intensively, we 
have got peace in Europe again. Land for peace. Worked out pretty well, 
Neville Chamberlain thought.
  Yet, September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. He had already cut a 
deal with the Russians that they were going to carve Poland up. It took 
the Russians another 12 days to get mobilized to go in and start 
carving up their part of Poland, but the Nazi divisions were prepared 
to go, and they launched a blitzkrieg invasion of Poland and invaded 
and occupied and penetrated to the predetermined line that he and 
Stalin had agreed to, and Poland was carved up.

                              {time}  2045

  Now that crossed the line for the rest of Western Europe. That did 
launch World War II in a formal fashion. So as the Western World began 
to mobilize for a war that they hoped to never see fought and were not 
very well prepared for, the following spring, in April of 1940, the 
Nazis invaded Norway. April 13, they invaded Greece and Yugoslavia.
  Think how fast this took place. They had been planning for a long 
time. They had mobilized for a long time. They had the strategy put in 
place, and by April 13 of 1940, in a short 2-year period of time, they 
had gone through Austria, the Sudetenland, the balance of 
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Greece, and Yugoslavia by April 13, 
1940.
  Mr. Speaker, this was a dramatic takeover of real estate and 
property. At some point, Hitler no longer needed to put up the pretense 
because the war was declared then, and it was declared on September 1 
of 1939, shortly after September 1 of 1939, Mr. Speaker.
  These are dramatic changes that took place across Europe. They were 
ideological clashes, economic clashes, geographic clashes, and cultural 
clashes that came to a head in that part of the world. We think it 
can't happen

[[Page H2296]]

again or it won't happen again. We fought the cold war for 45 years, 
and, finally, the Berlin Wall went down, and Marcy Kaptur went over and 
chiseled a piece out with her own hand. I learned that tonight on the 
floor. I am impressed, and I am proud of her for having the conviction 
to go and do that, knowing and understanding what that meant then and 
what it means today.
  Mr. Speaker, we are watching a Russia push back on this. We have seen 
the character and the culture under Stalin; we have seen it under 
Brezhnev; we have seen it under Khrushchev; and we have seen it under 
Lenin, the territorial hegemony attitude of the Russians and a Putin 
who would like to reconstruct the old Soviet Union and do so by 
military conquest. That is what we have in the Crimea. I don't have any 
doubt he is looking again at Ukraine.
  Now I will go through some of the rest of these countries that fell 
at the beginning of World War I. I have taken you through Austria, the 
Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland carved up by Russia and the 
Nazis. They made a deal, a cold and cruel agreement to carve Poland up, 
and they executed a lot of Jews, and they executed a lot of Poles just 
for being Jews and Poles.
  History marks that kind of brutality on both sides of that line that 
came into Poland. I recall meeting in Cologne, Germany, a few years ago 
with some leaders in that part of the world. The gentleman who was 
sitting next to me at a dinner table and I got into a conversation--
about the same age--what did our parents do during the Second World 
War? Mr. Speaker, I listened as he told me that his father fought at 
Auschwitz. I said: Did he fight to liberate Auschwitz? He said that he 
fought in the Russian invasion of Auschwitz in September of 1939 when 
the Russians went in and invaded Poland from the east and invaded and 
occupied, and Auschwitz was part of that territory that the Russians 
carved out.
  It is quite a thing to listen to that kind of a narrative. Clear over 
on the east side of the line that we didn't think about enough 
throughout that course of history, there were people that were invading 
armies that were launched in September of 1939 to go and take the free 
country of Poland and carve it up in a cold-blooded and greedy way to 
latch on to the property of Poland.
  So the pattern is there. And they are on this together, and they are 
staring each other down across this line. But it takes us through 1939 
and into 1940, when Norway and Greece, in the spring, were occupied 
along with Yugoslavia. And then on the 10th of May, the Nazi panzer 
divisions rolled through Belgium and into France. Belgium lasted about 
18 days and ended about May 28, 1940, when they fully surrendered. And 
France lasted until about the 22nd of June. Paris capitulated and 
surrendered June 14, and the balance of France was handed over under 
Nazi control with Vichy cooperation as late as June 22 of 1940.
  Then the Battle of Britain began--and that was fought over the 
English Channel, much of it, and over the land area of Great Britain. 
That essentially ended. You don't know when it ends, but looking back 
on the calendar, it ended in the late fall of 1940. And we are still 
not in this war, Mr. Speaker. This country is still sitting here 
watching the lot of the rest of the world engage in the conflict--not 
that I wanted to be in that conflict any earlier than that--but we were 
neutral, although we were trying to help out our Allies and help out 
the British. And I am thinking, what are the Russians looking at at the 
time? They are wondering, their ally, Hitler, was not very reliable, 
but they went through 1940 and through all of the spring of 1941 
believing that they had made an agreement to carve up Poland, and 
somehow they were going to have the static border between Germany and 
the Russians. They probably believed that Hitler didn't have any 
further land aspirations either.
  Now, I bring this up because we should not believe that Putin doesn't 
have further aspirations. Hitler did have. On June 22, 1941, he 
launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded Russia itself, from a treaty 
to carve up Poland to an all-out assault and offensive on Russia, to 
invade and occupy Russia, and nearly got it done.
  That, Mr. Speaker, is a very long and complex history that can be 
read in a book entitled ``Absolute War,'' written by Chris Bellamy. It 
is about 750 pages. It goes through the details, in great detail, of 
that Operation Barbarossa and the German invasion of Russia. It was, of 
course, turned back at Stalingrad.
  While that went on, it was easy to see that Hitler was planning the 
invasion of Russia for a long, long time. He was retrofitting his 
railcars to be able to go on the different gauge rails as they were 
sending men and equipment into Russia. He had an agreement with the 
Russians that they were going to send him the things he needed, raw 
materials and feed grains and the raw materials that they could use and 
that they needed badly in Germany in exchange for German engineers 
going to Russia. He had his German engineers that were helping the 
Russians develop and build military equipment and munitions, except the 
German engineers were ordered to slow-walk the Russians and do very 
little to help move them along in their progression of developing their 
military capability, all the while raw materials--food and supplies 
that Hitler needed from Russia--were pouring into Germany and becoming 
part of the resources for the war effort that was about to come.

  That launched June 22. It would have been earlier by about 6 weeks if 
it hadn't been for an uprising revolution in Yugoslavia that took five 
German divisions to go down there to put the uprising down, the 
revolution down in Yugoslavia. That delayed the planned invasion of 
Russia for Hitler from May 12 up until June 22. It likely was the 
difference in whether the Nazi troops would have been successful in 
Stalingrad and in Moscow.
  But if one, today, Mr. Speaker, travels to Moscow and you land at the 
airport and take ground travel from the airport, that long high traffic 
area on into Moscow, you will see just outside of Moscow a large tank 
barrier that is sitting there which marks the furthest most easterly 
advance of a German tank that was part of the invasion attempts in 
Moscow.
  We don't think about how close that came. It came within perhaps 
weeks of being successful, that difference between the delay of that 
invasion which would have been scheduled for May 12 that turned out to 
be June 22, 1941. We don't study this in our history very much, Mr. 
Speaker, because we turn our focus to Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, 
and then the need and the necessity for us to launch a two-front war 
almost immediately.
  That conflict set the borders for today, a conflict of the Second 
World War. I take you through this piece of history, and I will be 
naming some of the countries that may well be targets of Putin. But I 
take you through this history to get, Mr. Speaker, people that are 
paying attention to this discussion, to get you to Yalta on February 
11, 1945. I briefly mentioned it while the gentlelady from Ohio had the 
floor.
  I think about that meeting between Franklin Delano Roosevelt, between 
Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill, the three leaders that were the 
central players in the Second World War European theater--not the 
Japanese or Pacific theater, but the European theater. They met at 
Yalta. It is ironic to me that Yalta is in the Crimea. Putin has 
annexed, not only annexed the Crimea, he annexed Yalta itself, the very 
place where those three leaders took a map of the world, of Asia and 
Europe, and drew a line on that map.
  West of the line--after the war was over, they planned that they 
would defeat this Nazi Germany that has marched through all these 
countries that I have described. They planned that they were going to 
defeat Nazi Germany, that they were going to invade and occupy all of 
the countries from the east on the Russian side and from the west the 
Allied side. By that time, it was just post the Battle of the Bulge, 
which ended near the end of January in 1945.
  So they decided they were going to carve up Europe. If the war ended 
in victory for them, then the Russians were going to take a half of 
Germany. We know where that line was. It became the Iron Curtain wall, 
and in Berlin it became the Berlin Wall. And they were going to take 
the Eastern Bloc countries that we know of, and that was Poland, 
Czechoslovakia, Romania,

[[Page H2297]]

and Bulgaria, the list goes on, Yugoslavia, those countries, parts of 
them.
  So that agreement was made at Yalta. The agreement was agreed to by 
Churchill, by Roosevelt, and by Stalin. And then they collapsed in on 
Germany and carved that part of the world up according to the plan at 
Yalta.
  Now, can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, sitting at Yalta in the Crimea 
with a map of the world and drawing on that map, this is the line east 
of which people will live under the Soviet influence--which hadn't 
technically formed yet--west of this line people will live under 
Western influence and, by the way, even carved up Berlin itself so that 
we had a U.S. sector, we had a French sector, a British sector, and a 
Russian sector of Berlin itself.
  That set the destiny for a lot of history that was to come after 
that. What we saw happen over the course of, then, 45 years of cold 
war, Mr. Speaker, was that these countries that had been taken over by 
Russia, and some of them were closely within the sphere, but I will say 
the countries that are Eastern Bloc satellites of the Soviet Union, 
occupied and influenced by them, Hungary, Georgia, I mentioned the 
Crimea, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Baltics, Poland, 
Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and now the Slovak Republic, 
Croatia, Austria, Belarus, to name some, to leave some out, but to get 
most of them, these are countries that are now on Putin's list. He puts 
Crimea in his little pocket and says, I have got that, I am going to 
hold it, and not many people in this country can devise a plan to get 
it back. He has got parts of Georgia in his hand.
  If we don't step up our resources so that there is a deterrent in 
place, this man, Putin, will march on down the line. I believe he will 
march into eastern Ukraine. I believe that some of those operations 
could be going on now. I think he will be looking very closely at 
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, members of NATO, member countries that 
we are pledged to defend. But I think that Putin looks in the eyes of 
our Commander in Chief and wonders how much resolve is actually there, 
and I think he concluded that the resolve wasn't there. That is one of 
the contributing factors that Putin went into the Crimea.
  I don't suggest that he would not have done it if we had had a 
different President; although, I suspect that if this had been a 
stronger President, I will just say, Mr. Speaker, it is less likely if 
we had had a stronger President.
  Now, the countries that are along that perimeter, that see Russia on 
their border and they see what has happened with troops marching into 
the Crimea and they see the threats that the balance of Ukraine is 
under, they see what has happened in Georgia--and, by the way, the 
amount of Georgia that remains as sovereign is a fairly large share of 
their original real estate. They are the furthest, most easterly 
outpost of Western civilization in the nation of Georgia.
  They have a strong spirit. They love freedom, they love free 
enterprise, and they love Americans. That is the case for a lot of 
countries up and down through that part of the world. We need a 
stronger presence in each one of them. We need to have a stronger force 
lined up. I would say one of the first moves that we need to make, and 
I recall the Poles and the Czechs, but under the Bush administration, 
we had negotiated the placement of missiles and radar in Poland and 
Czechoslovakia, respectively, and shortly after our President was 
elected, Mr. Speaker, he canceled the agreement to place the missiles 
and the radar in those two countries.

                              {time}  2100

  The headlines in the Warsaw paper--and they found out about this in 
the news. It wasn't the President calling them up saying, I'm not going 
to follow through on this; they found out about it in the news. The 
headlines in the Warsaw paper read: ``Betrayed.'' The United States 
agreement with Poles and the Czechs was a betrayal of our word, and it 
was because Putin influenced Barack Obama into canceling the agreement 
that established the missiles and the radar in Poland and 
Czechoslovakia. The headlines said ``Betrayed'' in Poland. They were 
betrayed.
  I have had some conversations with Poles since the invasion of 
Crimea, and I am convinced that they would accept the missiles again 
even though we haven't been very reliable in our partnership. They are 
taking a lot of heat. They are right there. Russia is next door, and 
the Poles have stood in the middle of invasions going two directions in 
the memory of many of the Poles yet today. They have enjoyed a long 
period of peace, fairly long considering their history, but the Poles, 
I believe, would accept the missiles today, and we ought to place them 
there. The Czechs, I don't have as good a measure on, but I would be 
hopeful we could place a radar there and start to build up the missile 
defense shield.
  We did operations on the ground in Poland last August. We need to 
ramp them up again and do more ground operations, more joint military 
exercises. We need to expand those exercises along that part of the 
world, working in conjunction with the NATO troops and the troops of 
the sovereign countries along that border that is now on the west side 
of the new Iron Curtain that Putin has essentially announced by his 
invasion into the Crimea. We need to put whatever kind of advisory 
support the Ukrainians need right into Ukraine so that their people are 
trained and their people are ready to step up and defend themselves. If 
Putin decides to move into the balance of Ukraine, how could they do 
anything but defend themselves. I think they must. I would like to see 
that they are ready.
  Mr. Speaker, I am known as a fiscal conservative in this House. I 
supported the resolution that advanced the $1 billion in loan 
guarantees to the Ukrainians. I don't think that is enough. I think we 
should be prepared in this Congress to go down the line and match Putin 
dollar per dollar with loan guarantees, provided we could condition 
them in such a way that Putin himself doesn't get his hands on those 
resources. We need to demonstrate our commitment to the Ukrainians and 
let them know that we will be there.
  We need to invite Georgia into NATO. We should have done that back in 
2008. We should have brought Ukraine into NATO during that same period 
of time. Those kind of things could well have been a deterrent to 
Putin, and we didn't take advantage of the opportunity to bring them in 
the NATO sphere of influence.
  So I would offer again to Georgia, come on into NATO. Ukraine, get 
stabilized a little bit so we can see what kind of government is going 
to emerge, but we ought to consider a stabilized government of Ukraine 
being an eligible candidate for NATO. We need to build our defenses up 
along those borders. We need to understand that, back to that static 
nature, that this is the renewal of the cold war launched by Putin, and 
we can't continue to back up thinking that he is not going to push.
  I have read through and delivered the history of the Nazi regime from 
1938, March of 1938 on until the invasion of Russia by the Germans, by 
the Nazi regime, because there is a distinct difference, on June 22, 
1941, when the Second World War was launched in a large way. This is 
not going to happen in a way that Putin is going to put it out on the 
calendar and tell us that he has his eye on some of the eastern regions 
of the Ukraine and then maybe he thinks he is going to put a little 
pressure on some of the other countries, maybe back to Georgia again or 
Belarus, but they are so closely aligned there, it is hard to draw a 
distinction. Maybe it is one of the other countries along the way. 
Maybe it is Estonia. Maybe it is Latvia. Maybe it is Lithuania; maybe 
it is all of them. I have gone through this history of what happened at 
the beginning of World War II, and I think we understand how quickly it 
can happen and how little is the time to get ready and how important it 
is to be prepared.
  Mr. Speaker, we must be a strong military Nation. We must be 
prepared. About the same time that Secretary Hagel announced drastic 
military cuts is about the same time that Putin went into the Crimea. 
It is possible it is a coincidence, but the military cuts information 
was already out. I think we should suspend those cuts now. I think we 
should be prepared to match Putin dollar per dollar in the Ukraine. I 
think we need to put the missiles up

[[Page H2298]]

and the radar up in Poland and Czechoslovakia. I think we need to sail 
a few more operational ships into the Black Sea. I think we need to 
have more presence in that part of the world, and we need to get our 
military back to ready. If they are cutting our military down to pre-
World War II levels, and I look at some of the troop levels that we 
have for all of our arenas of operation, and I see what can be mustered 
by the Russians in one location, and I see how weak the military is in 
Western Europe, and how weak their resolve is, Mr. Speaker, I am very 
concerned that this second cold war has been relaunched, and you never 
know if it is going to turn into a shooting war, but trading land for 
peace has no successful precedent in history that I can think of.
  Neville Chamberlain tried to trade off the Sudetenland for peace. 
What did it get us? That gave up the rest of Czechoslovakia and the 
invasion of Poland. I recall the Gaza Strip being traded off, land for 
peace, and what does that get? That gets tunnels, and it gets rockets 
shot out of the Gaza Strip into the balance of Israel. Land for peace, 
Mr. Speaker: if someone can show me a successful trade of land for 
peace, I do not know what it is throughout the course of history.
  It isn't that this is something--the Second World War that happened a 
long, long time ago in a different place and a different time. A lot of 
Americans are buried in that soil in Europe, and they gave their lives 
so that freedom could live.

  We are going to commemorate and celebrate the successful landing at 
Normandy this upcoming June 6. That should be enough to bring our focus 
to what transpired then in that period of history, and it should bring 
our focus into the prevention of anything like that happening again. It 
should bring our focus into having peace through strength, being strong 
militarily, being strong economically, and being strong spiritually and 
strong culturally. Those are the credentials of the United States of 
America, to live free and be strong.
  Each time we have been involved in wars that were, some would say as 
critics, foreign interventionism, then we have decided there was a 
peace dividend, chopped our military down. We don't need them so much 
anymore; we will have a core group of our military because, after all, 
we are Americans. Just being Americans is a deterrent.
  Obviously, it is not. Putin thumbs his nose at us. I will take us 
through the cycles. We were late getting into World War I. We went over 
there very highly mobilized, and made a significant difference to help 
close out the end of World War I. It was a travesty in that part of the 
world, and World War I did not end it. It did not end decisively and 
conclusively, and it set the stage for World War II.
  We instead cut our troops back down going into 1940. We were weak. 
The Japanese knew it. That is why they had the audacity to attack us in 
Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Nazis didn't respect us or they would have 
been more hesitant in their part of the world they were invading and 
occupying.
  A strong America has always been successful. Ronald Reagan came onto 
the scene, and recognized that we were weak. He recognized, Mr. 
Speaker, that there was a cold war and a geopolitical chess game taking 
place. As Jeane Kirkpatrick described it, chess and monopoly on the 
same board. The only question was, during the cold war--and this was in 
1984 when she said this, and 5 years later, we found the answer. In 
1984, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ambassador to the United Nations, appointed 
under Ronald Reagan, as she stepped down, she said chess and monopoly 
on the same board in this cold war between the United States and the 
Soviet Union, and the question is whether we bankrupt the Soviet Union 
economically before they checkmate us militarily.
  We know the answer to that. We bankrupted the Soviet Union before 
they checkmated us militarily. They could not keep up with our 
investment and America's innovativeness. They couldn't keep up with our 
missile defense system that we were putting place, either, the 
Strategic Defense Initiative that was announced by President Reagan, 
and should I say demagogued here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives by Democrats calling it Star Wars. I thought it was a 
tactical and a messaging error on the part of President Reagan not to 
embrace it and say that's right, it is Star Wars. We are going to build 
a missile defense system, and that seemed a long reach at the time. It 
doesn't seem like such a long reach today, and that defense system 
should have deployed in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
  There is a defense system that is deployed in other places around the 
world, and a defense system, of course, that is deployed to protect 
Israel today. That is a product of SDI, that is the vision of SDI; but 
the vision of Putin, Vladimir Putin, is hegemony. That means if you 
were once a Soviet state, he wants you back as a Soviet state. If he 
can get it militarily, he will get it militarily. If he can get it 
politically, he will get it politically, but we should understand that 
these countries that I have named off are countries that he looks at, 
that he would like to have back as part of the Russia Federation, to 
re-create the old Soviet Union. I will name these countries again: 
Georgia. He invaded and occupied Crimea, that is part of it. Ukraine, 
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech 
Republic, the Slovak Republic, Croatia, Austria on the edges, and 
Belarus. That is some of them, not all of them. We have a big challenge 
in front of us.
  Mr. Speaker, I would challenge and encourage the Members of this 
Congress to get better informed, to get up to speed on what is taking 
place in foreign relations.
  For about the last six months, I have been very concerned that I 
don't hear a foreign policy discussion or debate here on the floor of 
the House. I don't see much for legislation come through. I don't hear 
it in the dialogue among my colleagues. I hear a handful of Senators on 
the other side of the Rotunda that will go out and engage in foreign 
policy and have those kinds of discussions.
  Yes, I agree, the President sets the foreign policy and he is the 
Commander in Chief, but he is not the sole source of knowledge and 
input. He needs good advisers. I think he needs to make better 
decisions than he has made. He needs to be strong and he needs to be 
bold. He needs to be able to look Putin in the eye and see the KGB that 
John McCain identified, and understand that there is an agenda there, 
and Putin can be deterred if the price is high, but the price has to be 
high enough to deter Putin.
  I want to challenge and encourage the Members of the House, Members 
of the Senate, get engaged in foreign policy. Travel and meet the 
leaders of these countries and build relationships in those countries. 
When it is time that things must be done, it is too late to start 
building a relationship; then it is time to act. Build a relationship 
first, build an understanding first, and we need far, far more 
expertise on foreign policy than we have today.
  We have a Presidential election that is starting to emerge, and among 
the Presidential candidates, I strongly encourage them, get your 
foreign policy credentials up. Travel now while you can. As the 
campaign gets closer, there is less time available to do it, and it 
will look more and more like you are trying to burnish your foreign 
policy credentials. From my standpoint, you need to go to those 
countries and you need to see the leaders. You need to know them face 
to face and eye to eye. They need to recognize you when you walk into 
the room.
  This Congress needs to get more focused on foreign policy. This 
country needs more focus on foreign policy. When something like that 
happens, then we can have a more open discussion. I was encouraged to 
hear the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) talk in depth on the 
relationship with Ukraine, and as chair of the Ukrainian Caucus, Marcy 
Kaptur has been very good on these issues. There are not enough of us 
engaged in a similar fashion.
  Here is what I would do if I were moving the pieces around on this 
chess board, rather than having my voice and my vote here in the House 
of Representatives. I would put the missiles and the radar back up in 
Poland and Czechoslovakia. I would amp up our energy production here in 
our part of the world. I would release it so we could ship liquefied 
natural gas out of the United States over to Europe, to help give them, 
back them up in the event that Putin decides to shut their gas off.

[[Page H2299]]

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  Having that supply stream would be very useful. Putting more energy 
out on the market does go into Russia's economy and it makes it harder 
and harder for Putin to have the resources to be able to do the things 
he wants to do militarily. I think that is all delayed reaction, 
however, and in the short-term offer NATO membership to Georgia. Take a 
look at doing that as soon as the government could be established by 
and for the people of Ukraine by bringing them into NATO. I would 
encourage the EU to take a look at broadening their membership also, 
because I think it is easier to support a NATO membership if they are 
also a member of the EU, although I am only slightly thrilled about 
that particular proposal.
  Special trainers in operations and forces to help support the 
Ukrainians in any place up along the border of the countries that 
border on Russia, and land operations up and down through that entire 
theater. Build then a military shield of deterrent, and start building 
it so that he knows that any aggressive move that he makes is going to 
be met by a countermove, strategic countermove. And the Ukrainians need 
to be prepared to fight for their land.
  At this point, I haven't heard very much about what they might do if 
Putin decides to go forward and invade. You may not be the military 
that can stand up to the Russian military, but if you don't defend your 
own country, no one else is going to be able to step in and help. I say 
that, Mr. Speaker, to the Ukrainians, and encourage them: love freedom; 
love liberty.
  Let's strengthen our relationships with the Ukrainians so that the 
growing economy of the West, the freedom that comes with free 
enterprise and liberty-loving people, strengthens the Ukrainian people 
and all the people up and down along that border.
  Mr. Speaker, I don't want to see a replay of what happened at the 
beginning of World War II. I don't want to see countries on the Eastern 
Bloc side eventually taken over, some without firing a shot, some by a 
brutal invasion.
  But I will just go through the march that took place from Hitler 
again, and it started in 1938. Austria, then the Sudetenland, then the 
balance of Czechoslovakia, then Poland invaded by the Nazis and by the 
Russians in September of '39, then Norway in the spring of 1940 by the 
Nazis, and then Greece and Yugoslavia by the Nazis, then on into France 
essentially the same day. France capitulated June 22. A year later, 
Hitler invaded Russia in Operation Barbarossa and nearly succeeded in 
his invasion of Russia.
  That is the march that went through by a country that essentially was 
fighting a two-front war--Germany. The Russians don't have that 
problem. They are a one-front situation. But the hegemony of Putin 
needs to be recognized. He will take the old Soviet bloc countries when 
he thinks he can get away with it. He will only be restrained by that. 
If he thinks he can't achieve, then he can be restrained. The ways that 
we make him do that are: respect economic power and respect the 
military deterrent.
  We need to call upon our European allies to remember these lessons of 
the Second World War that I have described. I know that some of them 
announced that they have had a vote that declares them to be neutral in 
every conflict. I recall sitting in Vienna not that long ago with some 
of the leaders of their country and they announced they are a neutral 
country, and their policy is they will be neutral in any conflict and 
they will never fight another war and that nothing good comes from war. 
That was a discussion.
  I happen to have been to the site that overlooks the Battle of Vienna 
that took place in September 11 and 12 of 1683 when the Polish King Jan 
Sobieski launched a cavalry charge down into the Turks that had Vienna 
surrounded, and they were a matter of days before they would have 
succeeded. The Turks would have succeeded in invading and occupying 
Vienna, and if they were successful, nothing likely would have stopped 
them in a march all the way across Europe.
  I pointed out to the Austrians: it is a good thing that your 
ancestors didn't have such a resolution in September of 1683, because 
we would all have been occupied by the Ottoman Empire if it hadn't been 
for the courageous battle that took place right there in Vienna where 
we sat, and it was the West versus the East.
  So history does turn on battles; it does turn on wars. They are 
enabled by or sometimes stifled by a successful or a failed economy. 
They are promoted by people who believe in themselves, and the 
overreach of brinksmanship brings about war.
  I am opposed, of course, to war. I don't want to see our American 
troops go overseas. I don't want to deploy our military in a place like 
that. But we have got to provide support. We need to provide that 
support in a nonkinetic way now. If we do that, we might be able to 
deter what otherwise likely could come, which could very well be Putin 
deciding that in his lifetime he is going to reconstruct the entire 
Soviet Union.
  That is what I fear, Mr. Speaker. That has to be our caution and our 
byword. If we act as if it is not a threat, as if it is not going to 
happen, if we turn our policy to let's make sure that--and this seems 
to be the policy that is emanating from the White House, Mr. Speaker. 
Give Putin an off-ramp. Don't close the gate on the off-ramp. Let's 
push a little bit, give him a little pressure, but give him room to 
pull back out of Crimea.
  Mr. Speaker, I can tell you it is not about an off-ramp for Putin. He 
pulled in there, he is not pulling out. He wants Crimea. He is going to 
hang on to it, and his eyes are on the balance of Ukraine right now.
  The idea that we are going to coalesce our foreign policy around not 
pushing on Putin too hard because otherwise there isn't a way for him 
to get on an off-ramp, I would mark the times it was mentioned by our 
administration on my hand, and I have, in Sarah Palin-style, eight 
different marks on my hand the times that they mentioned ``off-ramp.''
  It isn't about an off-ramp, Mr. Speaker. We can't be obsessing about 
an off-ramp. Putin doesn't want an off-ramp. If he wanted an off-ramp, 
he never would have gone up the in-ramp that he took to go into the 
Crimea.
  This is about deterring him from going into the balance of the 
satellite states, in particular, in Eastern Europe. It is necessary 
that we put the deterrents in place. It is necessary that we go through 
these steps that I have described, Mr. Speaker.
  I appreciate your attention and urge all those that have listened to 
my words to follow them.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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