[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 124 (Tuesday, July 30, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5574-S5576]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
National Security
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, Vladimir Putin and Xi often call for
what they call a multipolar world. By ``multipolar world,'' these
Presidents of Russia and China mean to criticize the post-Cold War
situation with the United States as the preeminent superpower.
Even some American commentators and politicians seem to agree with
Putin and Xi.
In some corners of American foreign policy thought, there is an
implicit acceptance of the premise that large, powerful countries are
entitled to a certain sphere of influence and where they can, at the
same time, dominate their neighbors against the will of the people who
live in those countries.
The Soviet Union previously had an ideology of exporting communist
revolution to other countries. The Soviet Union sought to dominate much
of the Eurasian continent and to export its economic and political
system to countries around the globe, either by cunning or by force.
When the Berlin Wall fell and the then-Soviet Union collapsed, many
previously captive nations became free to chart their own course. As a
result, many of them chose free market democracy.
Those countries also naturally chose to develop good relationships
with the United States and what we call the West--countries of the
West.
Putin clearly sees this as a humiliation. And he famously called the
collapse of the Soviet empire as ``the greatest geopolitical disaster
of the 20th century.''
By contrast to the Soviet Union, the United States is what we might
call a reluctant superpower--I think sometimes too reluctant.
We never set out to have the most powerful military. The instinct of
the American people was to stay out of World War I and World War II. We
then learned that our failure to nip aggression in the bud and do it
early comes at a tremendous cost.
Still, our instinctual reluctance to get involved in foreign wars is
to our credit. I am not saying that we have never deviated from our
general nature or made mistakes. But I believe that imperialism is
contrary to the American character.
During the Cold War, Margaret Thatcher had this to say--and bear with
me because it is a fairly long quote. Margaret Thatcher said this:
It is fashionable for some commentators to speak of the two
super powers--United
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States and the Soviet Union--as though they were somehow of
equal worth and equal significance. Mr. Speaker, that is a
travesty of the truth! The Soviet Union has never concealed
its real aim. In the words of Mr. Brezhnev, ``the total
triumph of all Socialism all over the world is inevitable--
for this triumph we shall struggle with no lack of effort.''
Indeed, there has been no lack of effort.
Contrast this with the record of the West. We do not aim at
domination, at hegemony, in any part of the world. Even
against those who oppose and who would destroy our ideas, we
plot no aggression. Of course, we are ready to fight the
battle of ideas with all the vigour at our command, but we do
not try to impose our system on others. We do not believe
that force should be the final arbiter in human affairs. We
threaten no-one.
I will further quote her in just a minute.
Now, listen to this point that Thatcher makes, because I think Putin
still thinks like a Soviet.
I continue quoting Thatcher:
In talking to the Soviet Union, we find great difficulty in
getting this message across. They judge us by their
ambitions. They cannot conceive of a powerful nation not
using its power for expansion or subversion, and yet they
should remember that when, after the last War, the United
States had a monopoly of nuclear weapons, she never once
exploited her superiority. No country ever used such great
power more responsibly or with such restraint.
Where she says ``no country ever used such great power more
responsibly and with such restraint,'' she was referring to and
complimenting the United States.
Putin and Xi talk about the United States as some sort of hegemony,
pushing our values on others. The fact is, whatever they think,
America's principles and systems of government have spread across the
world primarily through example, not by force.
To understand the American view, let's look back on a speech made by
John Quincy Adams on the Fourth of July, 1821. There are a lot of
lessons that you can draw from a speech 200 years ago.
A small excerpt of this speech is often quoted in arguing for more
isolationist foreign policy. I will get to that point later.
First, I want to mention about the broader point of Adams's speech,
which was to celebrate the Declaration of Independence as an
articulation of America's founding principles.
John Quincy Adams goes on at length extolling the American founding
based on natural rights, rejecting monarchy, as we all know.
America, with the same voice which spoke herself into
existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the
inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful
foundations of government.
At the time, revolutions had broken out in Europe and Latin America,
threatening monarchies and empires of that day.
Adams--meaning John Quincy Adams--castigates empires that seek to
nominate people by force.
He then ends the speech with a call for the spirit of liberty--that
spirit of liberty that is talked about in the Declaration--and he asks
that to descend upon Britain and all monarchies.
In fact, the diplomat in attendance from the Russian Empire was
appalled at the statement that John Quincy Adams was making.
He reported to St. Petersburg that the speech was ``an appeal to the
nations of Europe to rise against their governments.''
This was provocative stuff for monarchists.
In the excerpt of the speech that is most often quoted, Adams makes a
digression to clarify that he is not suggesting the United States
intervene directly to support every anti-monarchy revolution.
Adams explains that the United States has respected the independence
of other nations and has not intervened even when ``conflict has been
for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that
visits the heart.''
In this case, he is referring to the anti-colonial revolutions taking
place at that time in Latin America or Greece.
The most famous quote from that speech comes in the following passage
about the role of the United States. So quoting from John Quincy Adams
again:
Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been
or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions
and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of
monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom
and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator
only of her own.
People have argued how Adams' words apply to specific foreign policy
debates today, but what is beyond question is that John Quincy Adams
said Americans ought to at least root for freedom and independence. It
is in our American DNA to take the side of the underdog, fighting for
liberty against an empire.
As Margaret Thatcher explained, dictatorships and democracies aren't
morally equal.
However they feel about the prudence of any particular foreign policy
decision, Americans should reject the Putin-Xi vision of a multipolar
war.
Let's look at some examples and consider the alternative values of
the multipolar war Putin and Xi are offering to 8 billion people.
On Sunday, September 11, 2022, Grace Evangelical Church in Melitopol,
Ukraine, was full of worshipers. Worship leaders with guitars stood in
front of a giant, colorful screen displaying the lyrics of a praise
song. It looked like any evangelical church here in the United States.
As the congregation was singing praises to Jesus, armed Russian
soldiers in camouflage barged in and stopped the service. I encourage
every American to watch that video, and it is on video. The soldiers
took the names of all the worshipers and detained the minister.
In the same Ukrainian city, the largest church was the Melitopol
Christian Church, and that happens to be a charismatic Protestant
church. Russian soldiers broke into the church with sledgehammers. They
arrested the pastors in the middle of the night, waking one pastor's 9-
year-old son with a gun in his face. The large cross in the front of
the church was removed--the building confiscated by the Russian
occupiers not for religious reasons but for secular use.
Before the Russian invasion, there were more Protestant churches in
that city than orthodox churches. Now, as you see how the Russians
invade, there are no Protestant churches in that community. Evangelical
churches are considered undesirable by Russians for being too Western,
even being accused of being too American.
Religious freedom, as we know, is a core natural right. In fact, it
is the first right mentioned in our own Bill of Rights. The degree to
which a country respects this right of religious freedom is a good
barometer of the degree to which it respects individual rights in
general. You cannot call yourself a free country if you suppress the
freedom of religion.
Both Russia and China are among a handful of countries designated by
the State Department as being what we call Countries of Particular
Concern because of their severe violations of religious freedom.
China has been holding up to 2 million Uighurs and other Muslims in
detention camps. The State Department has now officially labeled what
China is doing to the Uighurs and other Muslims in detention camps as a
``genocide.'' They have been beaten with batons while being strapped to
chairs; interrogated while water is being poured in their faces; placed
in prolonged solitary confinement, constantly surveilled; deprived of
sleep and food; forbidden from speaking their own language or
practicing their own religion; and forced to sing patriotic songs that
only Xi would approve of.
The Chinese Communist Party says that these camps are for vocational
education to fight ``extremism.'' Here are some examples of what the
Chinese Communist Party calls extremism: having too many children,
being an unsafe person, being born in certain years, wearing a veil or
having a beard.
My staff met with a former internee from one of these camps--
obviously, because that person was able to get free. She described
widespread torture and rape. Since this started to result in children,
the Chinese Communist Party has subjected Uighur women to forced birth
control and sterilization. Uighurs in other countries, including in the
United States, have been subjected to harassment and intimidation,
including threats against family members for speaking out about the
genocide of their people.
The Chinese Communist Party sees a threat from any belief system that
provides an alternative to the Chinese Communist Party's ideology. So
it has
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co-opted religious institutions that it can control while suppressing
independent religious groups. This includes Tibetan Buddhists. Chinese
officials have demolished a number of Tibetan monastery buildings and
placed atheist Communist Party officials in important administrative
positions.
Tibetan Buddhists are very peaceful so they pose no threat to the
government except in their moral authority and their credibility in
undercutting the government's legitimacy in that region. In Tibet,
there have been reports of forced disappearances, arrests, torture,
physical abuse, and prolonged detentions without trial of monks, nuns,
and other individuals due to their religious practices.
Authorities arrest individuals for possessing photographs of or
writings by the Dalai Lama.
Also, practitioners of Falun Gong, which traces its roots to the
traditional Chinese religion, have been labeled ``members of a cult.''
Freedom House independently verified 933 cases of Falun Gong
adherents sentenced to prison terms of up to 12 years in just a 3\1/2\-
year period, often just for exercising their rights to freedom of
expression in addition to freedom of religion. Thousands more are
believed to be held at various prisons and extralegal detention
centers. There are reports of cases of torture, disappearance,
brainwashing, rape, and death of Falun Gong practitioners by the
Chinese Communist Party.
When a person dies while imprisoned, their families are told that
their loved ones committed suicide or died of a disease, but the bodies
are cremated before evidence can be gathered.
In recent years, there have been credible reports of Falun Gong
practitioners and other political prisoners having been victims of
forced organ harvesting.
Christianity also has had a deep historical and cultural impact on
modern China, but in the mid-20th century, the Communist Party
suppressed the religion. The growth of Protestantism in China in recent
decades has led to the emergence of what we call house churches. These
are independent and not part of one of the state-sanctioned, Chinese
Communist Party-controlled churches.
The Chinese Communist Party has clamped down on Christian activities
outside of registered venues, banned unauthorized evangelization
online, and intensified its crackdown on unauthorized Protestant
meeting points and underground Catholic churches. Christians seeking to
practice their faith free of government control have to fear their
identities being discovered and facing punishment or imprisonment.
By contrast, Taiwan has complete religious freedom. Note that the new
Taiwanese President, Mr. Lai, is part of a vibrant Protestant minority.
I met him a few years ago when he was Vice President-elect, and he came
to Washington for the National Prayer Breakfast.
Aside from geopolitics, it is only natural that Americans would
sympathize with Taiwan over communist China because of religious
freedom in Taiwan versus no religious freedom in communist China.
To repeat the words of John Quincy Adams, ``Wherever the standard of
freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her
heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.''
So I have laid out for my colleagues the multipolar world that Xi and
Putin want versus the freedom that is declared in our Declaration of
Independence and practiced here, and by practicing it here, we hope we
are an example for other countries that prefer democracy and religious
freedom.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk called the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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