[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 157 (Monday, October 26, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7480-S7481]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRESIDENTIAL FLAG AND SEAL ANNIVERSARY
Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise today to commemorate an important
but largely unheralded anniversary. Seventy years ago yesterday,
President Harry Truman changed the design of the Presidential flag and
seal. That moment, which is a small moment in the grand scope of
American history, was nevertheless very symbolic. I would like to
discuss it.
First, some context on President Truman. Truman was a great wartime
President. He fought bravely in World War I in France, and then he had
to make very momentous decisions at the close of World War II. Some
would argue, and I think properly, that the decision on whether to use
atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been the single
most momentous decision ever made by a President. He wasn't even aware
of the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic weapons
program until FDR died in April of 1945 and within a very few months
had to make the decision whether to use those weapons against Japan.
Nobody would question or challenge whether Harry Truman was a softy.
In fact, even after World War II, in March of 1947, America was war-
weary, but he went to Congress and in an address to Congress said that
we need to continue to provide military and economic support to nations
that are battling against Soviet influence. In this case, it was the
nations of Greece and Turkey. That began the Truman doctrine, the basic
strategic principle whereby the United States, for the next 40 years,
would sort of check off efforts by the Soviet Union to expand their
influence. Harry Truman was a great wartime President.
Harry Truman did something on October 25, 1945, that was most
unusual. He called the press into his office and said: Look what I have
done. He unveiled the fact that he had taken the seal and flag of the
Presidency of the United States and redesigned them. That design is
essentially the same today with the exception that two stars were added
for the States of Alaska and Hawaii that came in after the Truman
Presidency.
The seal of the President, as everybody knows--if we look around the
Chamber, we can see some up on the wall here--was originally an eagle,
and the eagle has two claws. In one set of claws the eagle is grasping
the arrows of war, and in the other set of claws, the eagle is grasping
the olive branches of peace and diplomacy. Prior to the Truman
Presidency, the eagle faced toward the arrows of war. Harry Truman,
this great wartime President, changed the seal so the olive branches of
diplomacy would be in the right claw, the sort of preserved position,
and the eagle would be facing toward the olive branches. When he did
this he said: ``This new flag faces the eagle toward the staff, which
is looking to the front all of the time when you are on the march, and
also has it looking at the olive branch for peace, instead of the
arrows of war.'' Truman biographer David McCullough stated that Truman
meant the shift in the eagle's gaze to be seen as symbolic of a nation
that was on the march and dedicated to peace and diplomacy.
Significantly, right around the same time President Truman did
something else that was notable and symbolical. He renamed the
Department we think of as the Pentagon from the Department of War to
the Department of Defense, also symbolic of the Nation's postwar
dedication to peace.
While we want to be the strongest--and we are the strongest military
nation in the world, as the Presiding Officer knows so very well--we
want to always suggest to the world that our interest is not primarily
war; no, our interest is peace and prosperity for all.
We always have to preserve and advance America's military strength
because we know the connection. Sometimes the better your military
strength, the more successful you can be diplomatically, but it is also
the case that the strength of your diplomacy can also add to the
credibility of your military might.
I wish to talk quickly about the olive branches of peace and
diplomacy and then the arrows of war. America has a great diplomatic
tradition. Let's talk about recent Presidential history. President
Truman went to Congress and said: Let's spend, in today's dollars, tens
of billions of dollars to rebuild the economies of Japan and Germany,
the two nations that had been at war against the United States. Germany
had been engaged in two wars with the United States in the previous 30
years. Japan had invaded the United States at Pearl Harbor, but
President Truman said: Tomorrow is more important than yesterday. Let's
spend dollars to rebuild these economies. It was controversial when he
proposed it, but the Marshall Plan ended up being one of the most
successful things the United States has done from a foreign policy
perspective.
Right after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, President Kennedy
engaged in negotiations with the Soviet Union to reduce the nuclear
threat, and the result was an agreement in 1963 to ban atmospheric
nuclear tests, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
President Reagan was actively engaged in trying to undermine the
power of the Soviet Union and communism, but during those very vigorous
and aggressive activities, he was also negotiating with the Soviet
Union on arms control agreements. Probably the paramount example of
that during the Reagan Presidency was the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces Treaty in 1987 that he successfully negotiated.
I happen to believe that history is going to judge the recent Iran
nuclear deal in the same way. It is an effort to make tomorrow more
important than yesterday and to find--even in the midst of significant
challenges between the United States and Iran--a way to reduce nuclear
tension. Diplomacy is always a judgment where we should try to let go
some of the baggage of the past and see if we can find a better way to
tomorrow.
I am a little bit worried that the Truman legacy of putting peace and
diplomacy first is fraying in this body and maybe nationally. I hope by
bringing to mind this anniversary today, it will remind us of our great
diplomatic history and the power of our diplomatic principles. A number
of times in recent years we have seen bits of evidence of a fraying
commitment to diplomacy in this Chamber, in my view.
One of the great Truman institutions was the International Monetary
Fund which was designed to help nations work together on economic and
monetary policy issues. It is a great global institution. When you set
up an institution like that in the 1940s, the challenge is that when
new nations emerge and rise, how do you incorporate nations that are
newly powerful into the Fund? The most recent and challenging example
has been the nation of China. As China has gotten more and more
important, there were many who advised us to bring China more closely
into the Fund so they could assist nations throughout the world, but
Congress refused to change the bylaws of the IMF to give China
proportionate responsibility given its population and the strength of
its economy. What did China do after we would not change the bylaws to
allow them a proportionate place at the table? China established their
own development bank completely separate from the IMF.
There is a debate going on right now in Congress about whether we
should reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank--now, this dates back to FDR's
Presidency--a premier institution that helps American companies find
export markets abroad. Again, it is part of our broad diplomatic effort
in outreach, and suddenly it is controversial after 80 years.
There are a number of U.N. treaties that we could profitably advance
our interests on. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, if the
United States had ratified that, we would have an additional diplomatic
tool to challenge Chinese island building in the South China Sea.
The U.N. treaty on the rights of women and on the rights of those
with disabilities are treaties that would, frankly, reflect American
values and American principles because we are the leaders in the world
in these areas, and yet we will not ratify these treaties.
The prospect of trade deals is much less popular in Congress than
they were 15 years ago. Trade is going to happen, the question is
whether the United States will play a leadership
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role in writing the rules, and if we step back and don't play a
leadership role, some other nations will, but these are getting more
and more complicated in this body.
Finally, something I feel very strongly about is that it is hard to
face the world with this strong diplomatic might when there are a lot
of ambassadorial positions that are vacant. Especially in the last 6 or
7 years we have seen efforts to block or delay ambassadorial
appointments that have left key posts in many nations around the world
vacant.
It sends a message to other countries. When they look at us, as the
United States, not putting an ambassador in place, they basically
conclude that the United States may not think we are important, and
that is a very bad signal to send to other nations, especially when
many nations that are allies have been without ambassadors for a while.
I am hoping we can reembrace on this 70th anniversary the wisdom of
Truman, who said: The nation has to be vigorous and forceful and look
toward diplomacy first.
With respect to the arrows of war--I am on the Armed Services
Committee, and just like President Truman, I prefer diplomacy. I think
we should lead with diplomacy, but we have to be willing to use
military force. I voted for military force twice during my 3 years in
the Senate.
In 2013, in August, the President asked us to vote for military force
against Syria to punish Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons
against civilians. The only vote that was taken in either House was a
vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I voted for it with a
kind of foreboding and heavy heart because I knew there would be
Virginians, some of whom I might know, who would be affected, but
nevertheless I thought it was an important principle for America to
stand for.
Since September of 2014, I have also been pushing to have Congress
cast a vote to authorize the war against ISIL that has been going on
for 15 months. There is a lot of critique in this body--and I have
critique--about the way that war is being waged about strategic
decisions that the President is undertaking with respect to the war,
but I think at the end of the day it is hard to just be a critic. Under
article I of the Constitution, it is supposed to be Congress that
authorizes war rather than a President just doing it on his own.
Earlier I mentioned how the Truman olive branches of diplomacy and
arrows of war reinforce one another. Obviously, you can be a stronger
negotiator at the table in advancing a diplomatic solution if people
understand that you have significant military capacity and the
willingness to use it in the appropriate instance. The more we can do
and the better we can do to empower or military through wise budgeting,
for example--as we hope to find an end to sequester and a path
forward--the stronger we will make our diplomatic effort. Similarly,
the reverse is also true. The more we are vigorous in going after
diplomacy, the more moral credibility we have in those instances where
we can say, when looking at the world, looking at our citizens, and
looking at our own troops, that we now think we need to take military
action and we have exhausted the diplomatic alternatives first. That
improves the moral credibility behind a military effort. It enables us
to make the case better to all about the need for a military effort,
and often it even creates a better international justification for a
military effort.
I believe the Presiding Officer and I were together last week when
former Secretary Gates testified before the Armed Services Committee.
It was one of the best bits of testimony I have seen in my time in the
Senate. He had a word of caution for us. He said: ``While it is
tempting to assert that the challenges facing the United States
internationally have never been more numerous or complex, the reality
is that turbulent, unstable and unpredictable times have recurred to
challenge U.S. leaders regularly since World War II.''
We do live in a very complex and challenging world, where we see
challenges that are known but also many unpredictable challenges. Other
leaders of this country, since our first days, have lived in worlds
that looked equally as challenging and confusing to them. We are true
to our best traditions if the United States does what Truman so
emblematically suggested we should do and we push in a vigorous and
creative way all of the diplomatic tools at our disposal, and that
involves diplomacy, but it also involves trade and humanitarian
assistance. The United States is one of the most generous nations in
the world.
The strength of our moral example is something that stands as so
important. If you live in a nation where journalists are being put in
jail, the U.S. freedom of the press stands as a moral example. If you
live in a nation where people are prosecuted because of their sexual
orientation, the United States stands as a great moral example. We are
not exemplary in everything. We have room to improve in everything, but
we are exemplary in so many things. People around the world still look
at us, and that is in fact a diplomatic area of importance. Let's be
exemplary and stand for the principles we expose.
Finally, I will say this. So many of the challenges we are facing now
are challenges that at the end of the day are about diplomatic
solutions. In the Armed Services or the Foreign Relations Committees,
we are often talking about the vexing conundrum and humanitarian
disaster in Syria, but at the end of the day we hear it has to be about
a political solution to the civil war. There has to be a political
solution to the conflict in Yemen. There has to be a political solution
to the decades-long conflict between the Taliban and the Afghanistan
Government. To find a political solution, you have to have strong
diplomacy. Military action will not be enough to forge a political
consensus moving forward.
Ultimately, this was the message of what Harry Truman did 70 years
ago. This strong wartime President, who made some of the toughest
decisions that have ever been made by anybody in the Oval Office,
recognized that America was a great nation because when push came to
shove, we would prefer, push, and advocate for diplomacy first knowing
that we would be militarily strong if we needed to be. It is my hope
that we in Congress will take a lesson from that anniversary and
continue to pursue that same path.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, what is the pending business?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are in a period of morning business.
Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
permitted to speak for up to 15 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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