[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 188 (Thursday, November 29, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7201-S7202]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Yemen

  Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, we saw yesterday that the vote on the 
Yemen War Powers Resolution has brought to light the broader issue of 
our alliance with Saudi Arabia. This is an issue that people have heard 
a lot about, obviously, in the last few weeks with the murder of a 
journalist, and the Yemen resolution vote has become a proxy over that 
matter.
  I have been outspoken in the past about why it matters that we speak 
out strongly about and against the murder of this journalist, 
Khashoggi, but also that we talk more broadly about what we need to do 
about it and how it applies to our alliance with Saudi Arabia.
  I want to tailor my comments today by briefly talking about exactly 
what the implications are based on the questions I get from people. Why 
does the murder of Khashoggi matter, and why should we care about it?
  First, this is part of a pattern. The Crown Prince, who is 
effectively governing Saudi Arabia now, has been continually testing 
the limits of the world's patience and also the limits of our alliance. 
There is a pattern here. We have seen it. He kidnapped, over 2 weeks, 
the Prime Minister of Lebanon. He has fractured an alliance that once 
existed with the Gulf Kingdoms. All of it has implications on U.S. 
national security. So this is just one more escalation in a pattern of 
testing the limits of our alliance.
  Then there are human rights. Why do human rights matter? For a 
practical reason, human rights matter. From a practical perspective, 
when human rights are violated, the result is a humanitarian crisis, as 
we have seen often around the world, which often leads to mass 
migration.
  Let me they tell you something else a violation of human rights leads 
to: radicalization. When you violate a group of people, you mistreat 
them and abuse them; you leave them ripe for radicalization--for a 
radical group to come in and basically pull them in and say: We are the 
ones with the power, the weapons, and willingness to fight. Join us to 
go after your oppressors.
  In fact, if you look at what is happening in Yemen, much of it and 
the Houthis comes from years of abuses against the Shia. It doesn't 
justify the radicalization, but it explains that, as it does what we 
have seen in Iraq and in Syria.
  Here is one other thing that happens with human rights abuses. The 
abusers often get overthrown. Here is the problem. When an abusive 
government that violates human rights gets overthrown, the people who 
take over hate us because we have been supporting their abusers. These 
are practical reasons why human rights matter.
  And there is a moral one. Perhaps in the ranking and order, that is 
the most important one--the moral one. It is because that is what makes 
us different from China and Russia and other countries around the 
world. This is what makes America different. In fact, I would say that 
the murder of Mr. Khashoggi is more about us. When it comes to our 
debate, it is about us. It is not just about him. It is about us and 
who we are and about whether we, as a nation, are prepared to excuse, 
overlook, or sort of brush away this horrifying incident because 
somebody buys a lot of things from us or produces a lot of oil.
  Assuming we can mostly agree on that, the question is, What do we do 
about it? There is this false choice that has been presented to us. 
This false choice is that there are only two choices: Either ignore it 
or abandon and fracture the Saudi alliance. That is not true. There are 
other choices. It is not just either-or, those two. That is a false 
choice.
  What I do believe is the wrong thing to do about it is to pull and 
yank away our support for Saudi operations in Yemen. Let me explain 
why. The first is, right now, the only hope of ending that is not 
winning an armed conflict; it is a peace negotiation. And the people 
who have to be at that table aren't just the Houthis but the deposed 
Yemeni President, who is in Saudi Arabia. If we yank our support, the 
chances of that peace happening diminish significantly. In fact, the 
Houthis probably say: The Saudis no longer have U.S. support; they are 
not as strong as they used to be; I think we can beat them; we don't 
need a peace deal. So it actually makes peace less likely.
  The second thing, from a practical perspective, is that we will have 
less influence how the Saudis conduct the war, meaning that we will 
have no standing to have any influence whatsoever who they bomb, how 
often they bomb, and who they target. Some people argue that they will 
not have the

[[Page S7202]]

weapons to do it with. That is not true. If you don't think you can buy 
weapons from immoral and amoral regimes around the world, you are 
wrong; they can. If you think that somehow this will end their 
engagement, you are wrong. The reason they are involved in Yemen is 
that they feel it is an effort by Iran--and, rightfully, they feel this 
way--to encircle them.
  If you look at it today, Iran is their enemy. Iran now controls large 
parts of Syria and is probably the closest government in the world to 
the Syrian regime to their northwest. Iraq is closer to Iran than it 
has ever been in the last 20 years to the north. Iran is to their east. 
Yemen would be to the south with the Houthis operating from there. They 
feel that they are being encircled by Iran. They are going to fight, 
whether we help them or not. We could lose our influence over how they 
do it.
  I want to tell you one more thing that will happen. If we pull our 
support, the chances of a broader, catastrophic conflict increases 
dramatically. I will lay one scenario out for you. If we pull our 
support, the Houthis get confident, and they start launching rockets 
into Saudi Arabia, targeting civilian populations and members of the 
royal family and killing people.
  The Saudis respond with disproportionate force or the same level of 
force, and we begin to escalate. They will not just respond against the 
Houthis. They may respond against the Iranian interests elsewhere. 
Suddenly, you have a real live shooting war that extends beyond this 
proxy fight. In response to that, the Houthis and Iranians use their 
presence on the coast and that port city to close off an important 
chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb, that choke point in the Red Sea that 
connects the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, where over 4.8 million 
barrels of oil a day go through. They start bombing oil tankers. They 
start hitting those, and all of a sudden, the world has to get engaged 
to open that up. This holds the real potential for a rapid escalation 
that could involve a much broader conflict than what we are seeing 
right now.
  I know that many of my colleagues yesterday voted for this resolution 
out of deep frustration. It was a message to the administration that 
the way they handled this Khashoggi incident is unacceptable. I hope 
that message has been received. But this is the wrong way to do the 
right thing, and that is to ensure that we recalibrate our alliance 
with Saudi Arabia into one where they understand they can't just do 
whatever they want. The Crown Prince cannot do whatever he wants.

  We have leverage in that regard. There is legislation that the 
Senator from New Jersey, Senator Menendez, and others offered. In 
addition to that, there are things we can do. The leadership of the 
Foreign Relations Committee asked for the imposition of Magnitsky 
sanctions. That is a powerful tool. I assure you, there are people in 
Saudi Arabia around the royal family, around the government, who deeply 
enjoy being able to invest and spend their wealth in the United States 
and around the world. They are going to care a lot if, as a result of 
this murder, they lose access to their money, to their property, to 
their visas. That is a real leverage point that we have.
  We have additional tools: religious freedom sanctions and visa bans 
against other individuals who may not have been involved in the 
Khashoggi incident but, again, another leverage point.
  We have leverage points in restricting U.S. investment. One of the 
biggest proposals the Crown Prince is making is that he wants to 
diversify their economy and encourage U.S. and Western investment into 
their economy. Placing restrictions on that investment is a significant 
leverage point.
  We should use this opportunity to use those leverage points to 
achieve real changes in our alliance and real changes in their 
behavior. For example, the release of Mr. Badawi, an activist in Saudi 
Arabia who has been repeatedly flogged in the past and unjustly held in 
prison--he should be released. The release of Saudi women activists who 
have been tortured and sexually harassed while in custody--they should 
be released. Education reforms--Saudi Arabia should finally stop 
publishing these textbooks encouraging and teaching anti-Semitism and 
radicalization and dangerous religious notions and theologies that 
encourage violence against others. We should require them to restore 
the Gulf alliance and restore their relationship with Qatar. If they 
don't, we will. We should force them to stop funding these Wahhabi 
schools around the world, in which they are exporting radicalization.
  All of these things need to happen. There may be other conditions we 
haven't thought of. These are real consequences that will begin to 
realign this alliance and make very clear that this is an important 
alliance, but it is not one that is unlimited or without restrictions 
or expectations on our part.
  If we fail to do this, the Crown Prince will take further escalatory 
and outrageous actions in the future. He will keep pushing the 
envelope. This is a young man who has never lived anywhere else in the 
world. He is a Crown Prince, which tells you, not only is he wealthy, 
he has rarely faced disappointment in his life or ever not had 
something he wanted. He has never lived abroad. I think he is largely 
naive about foreign policy and thinks he can get away with whatever he 
wants because at home, he can. We have to make clear that with us, he 
can't.
  You don't have to blow up the alliance to make that message clear. If 
we don't make that message clear, he will do more of this in the 
future, and one day, he may pull us into a war. One day, he may 
fracture the alliance himself because he goes too far. He needs to be 
stopped now. He needs to understand that there are limits or he will 
keep testing those limits. If we fail to do that at this moment, we 
will live to regret it, and its implications will be extraordinary, and 
it will be a gift to Iran.
  That is my last point. What happened here has been a gift to Iran. 
What they have done has been a gift. Instead of weakening their enemy, 
they have empowered them. We do need to take positive action on this. 
We do need to take things that change and recalibrate this 
relationship, but yanking support at this moment from the Yemen 
campaign is the wrong way to do the right thing.
  I hope that many of my colleagues, who yesterday voted to discharge 
this bill to the floor to send a clear message to the administration 
that they are unhappy with the response so far--I hope they will 
reconsider an alternative way forward that doesn't lead to these 
consequences I have outlined but allows us in the Senate to lead the 
way with the administration to reset this relationship in a way that 
avoids these problems in the future and lives up to our heritage as a 
nation whose foreign policy is infused with and supports the defense of 
human rights all over the world.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). The Senator from New Jersey.