[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 16 (Wednesday, January 27, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S158-S159]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              NOMINATIONS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday, we confirmed Antony Blinken, 
our new Secretary of State. Like the Director of National Intelligence, 
the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Treasury, it was 
another big, bipartisan vote here in the Senate.
  Four years ago, Senate Democrats subjected mainstream nominees to 
lead State and Treasury to a full gauntlet of partisan delay tactics. 
They forced cloture votes. Those were nearly party-line. So were the 
final votes. Neither got on the job until February. But this 
President's mainstream nominees to key posts are receiving fair 
consideration and a timely process.
  Republicans have no shortage of substantive policy differences with 
the new administration. We will be discussing them with Secretaries 
Austin, Yellen, and Blinken in the course of normal committee 
oversight.
  But unlike what took place 4 years ago, Republicans are not 
gratuitously delaying people who are mainstream and qualified whom the 
new President has asked to serve in key posts. If we find somebody 
unfit, unqualified, or outside the mainstream, you bet we will oppose 
them.
  But I have just spent 4 years arguing that Presidents deserve some 
latitude to assemble their team. I meant it, and I mean it now.
  With my vote to confirm Mr. Blinken, I wanted to reinforce the need 
for a true bipartisan consensus on the core objectives of our foreign 
policy.
  Yesterday, while discussing the legislative filibuster, I talked 
about the chaos that would ensue if every domestic policy swung wildly 
back and forth with every election. The same goes for our foreign 
affairs. American statesmen should make commitments and issue threats 
that can endure beyond their terms in office.
  To be clear, Presidents bear the primary responsibility for foreign 
policy, and I am not suggesting different leaders should not have 
different ideas. But they will be more successful and their legacies 
more enduring if they make the effort to build bipartisan support among 
Congress and the American people.
  Neither America nor our allies will like the world that results if 
the world's leading Nation starts over like an Etch A Sketch every 4 
years.
  For starters, in several important areas, the new administration 
should build on bipartisan consensus that actually already exists.
  Let's start with China. The Trump administration helped build a long

[[Page S159]]

overdue awakening to the reality that we are in strategic competition 
with the PRC, that Beijing will not magically conform itself to the so-
called international community, and that these challenges demand fast 
and serious action from the United States and from our friends. 
President Biden and his new Cabinet must keep working with Congress to 
continue building a whole-of-government, whole-of-economy approach to 
checking China.
  We need Secretary Austin to keep focus on modernizing our forces, 
deterring Chinese threats from the Indo-Pacific to space and cyber 
space, sustaining robust defense spending, and investing in defense 
partnerships across the world.
  We need Secretary Yellen to keep focused on the coercive manipulation 
the PRC uses to ensnare the developing world in its orbit.
  We need Secretary Blinken to keep clarifying the China threat to our 
allies and European partners, to focus on contesting their growing 
influence in Africa and the Middle East, and to hold Beijing 
accountable for its unacceptable repression in places like Tibet and 
Hong Kong and its hostility toward Taiwan.
  Now, we know China is not the only great power with whom we need to 
hang tough. In concrete policy terms, the United States just spent 4 
years developing a more clear-eyed approach to Russia. Rather than 
chasing naive ``resets'' with the Kremlin or worshipping arms control 
like a religion, we leaned into military assistance to Ukraine, serious 
sanctions, cyber countermeasures against meddling, and other strong 
steps.
  The Biden administration will find willing partners on Capitol Hill 
if it builds on this process, keeps imposing real costs on Moscow, 
pushes back on expansionism in the eastern Mediterranean, and, 
importantly, encourages our allies to join in this effort.
  Great power competition is key, but, of course, it does not exhaust 
the threats that we face. In the Middle East, I know President Biden 
will face political pressure from the left to rejoin Obama's Iran deal, 
just as President Trump faced pressure from the right to abandon it.
  Had President Obama not tried to circumvent Congress and pursue a 
partisan policy, this critical national security challenge might not 
have become so polarizing, but that is where we are.
  There is no question that Iran is the biggest threat the United 
States and our partners face in the region. It poses threats beyond 
just its pursuit of nuclear weapons: sponsoring terrorism, its 
sectarian agenda, its work to undermine its neighbors' sovereignty, its 
development of ballistic missiles and lethal drones, and its 
appalling--appalling--record on human rights.
  Confronting this multifaceted challenge will take bipartisanship at 
home and solidarity with Israel and our Arab partners abroad. Those 
things need to exist before making major changes or racing to rejoin a 
deal.
  And our new President must be ready to respond to violence with 
force, as the Trump administration did when they removed Soleimani from 
the battlefield.
  Speaking of the Middle East, I have consistently and vocally stood up 
during administrations of both parties against withdrawing our limited 
forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria too rapidly or without a smart 
plan. A supermajority of the Senate joined me last Congress in warning 
against abruptly abandoning battlefields recklessly on bad terms.
  Finally, all of this important work will require that we keep our 
friends close. The United States needs to be a partner that neither 
strains alliances unnecessarily nor hands out free passes. President 
Biden should continue prodding our partners to honor their promises, 
pay their share, and put real capabilities on the table--and 
reemphasize that we have their backs.
  One early test for the new administration and congressional Democrats 
will be the defense budget. If President Biden and his team are serious 
about contesting China, Russia, and these other threats, they will need 
to show it. Without continued, robust investment in a modern global 
force presence, American leadership would be little more than hollow 
rhetoric.
  I voted to get President Biden's top foreign policy advisers on the 
job swiftly. I hope and expect that our shared work will lead to 
frequent, close, and bipartisan work with the Senate.

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