[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 142 (Thursday, September 12, 2024)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E890-E891]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         U.S. GLOBAL LEADERSHIP

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. J. FRENCH HILL

                              of arkansas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 12, 2024

  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, history has a way of ``upending'' best laid 
plans or the logical outcome; the wishful thinking; or even the old 
admonition that ``things work for the best''.
  It was a beautiful calm day . . . until it wasn't--at 4:30 a.m. in 
Charleston on April 12, 1861; 7:55 a.m. Honolulu time on December 7, 
1941; at 8:46 a.m. on that spectacular early fall day of September 11, 
2001; and, horrifically, at 5:07 a.m. on an overcast cold morning of 
February 22, 2022, in Kyiv, Ukraine.
  Wishful thinking is not a strategy.
  Across our Nation there is a growing movement of wishful thinking 
that somehow the United States is best when isolated from the world's 
woes of war, and authoritarian communism and radical religious fanatics 
who are ``committed to the death'' of America or Western Values.
  I witness it on the floor of the House of Representatives.
  I see and hear it in both mainstream and social media.
  And I am face to face with it in regular conversations at home in 
Arkansas.
  The consistent line goes something like this:
  We should give no money to other nations because we are running huge 
deficits.
  We should only spend national security money here on our borders and 
our defense, not the defense of some other nation's freedom or their 
sovereign borders.
  We should abandon the United Nations because our contributions there 
just fund those who hate us.
  We must end our support of Ukraine as Putin has no beef with us; 
Ukraine and Crimea are Russia's anyway; and Ukraine is a failed, 
corrupt state.
  Some even argue why bother to continue to support Taiwan--it belongs 
to China anyway.
  Of course, these type of arguments are not new.
  We have faced these movements as a part of our politics since our 
founding.
  In stark contrast, without allied financial support, no one denies 
that there would simply be no United States of America.
  Our beacon on liberty would have been still born.
  Yet thankfully the Continental Congress took the risk based on 
Benjamin Franklin's wise observation that ``we must all hang together, 
or most assuredly we will hang separately'' by dispatching Dr. Franklin 
and John Adams to French Court and the Dutch bankers, respectively, to 
achieve essential military and financial aid.
  In a modern context we have learned the age-old maxim that 
appeasement does not work--and, as successive U.S. Presidents in both 
political parties have urged: peace is, in fact, achieved through 
strength.
  Appeasement of Hitler was advocated by many in the 1930s, including 
famous Americans, flyer Charles Lindbergh and FDR's own ambassador to 
the United Kingdom, JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy.
  These partners in a Munich Mentality were in stunned silence after 
Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland.
  Appeasement coupled with weak, ineffective security capabilities--
demonstrated by history, and reality--result in failure, misery and 
subjugation.
  So, we must ask ourselves, what is the response to these arguments by 
these successors of Lindbergh?
  Yes, our federal spending levels are unsustainable. We all agree on 
this.
  And, yes, I will also agree that there could be tremendous 
improvements in the scope and effectiveness of U.S. defense spending.
  But, our support of our allies' freedom, strategic foreign aid in key 
regions, and our global military and economic leadership are not 
driving our deficits.
  Our deficits are driven by our unreformed mandatory spending programs 
and big government advocates that continue to initiate new massive, 
multitrillion dollar federal spending programs as well as enormous, 
often overdone and poorly structured federal intervention as in the 
2008 financial crisis or the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
  Such intervention is always clouded by the fog of the ``unknown 
unknowns'' of the particular predicament.
  To those Americans that continue to resist NATO, the United Nations, 
and are cool on our allies in Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, my message to 
them is that these institutions and alliances are a key to peace 
through strength.
  America is a less prosperous place when we abdicate leadership. 
Global leadership without the United States is a ``Venn Diagram'' with 
no intersection. And, very importantly, to be successful, peace through 
strength is not achieved alone.
  And this is the lesson of the post-Cold War decades. Looking at the 
world through the lens of the post war period of 1945 to 1995 is a 
mistake.
  We now reside in a multipolar world with changing alliances and new 
risks.
  The binary choice of Soviet Union vs. United States is dead.
  In that post war period, the United States rode in as the cavalry in 
any conflict pitched as counter to our national interests or ``the 
heads we win, tails you lose'' cold conflict with the Soviets.
  Today, achieving open seas, improved trade market access, deterrence 
of warfare and invasion on land, under the sea, in space or via a 
computer network are all at the core of the U.S. led global order.
  But in a multipolar environment, accomplishing these agreed upon 
outcomes require more complex diplomacy and partnership.
  To be against the global order is to be for chaos and expanding 
threats and destruction.
  This will result in fewer sales and fewer jobs for the world's 
largest economy and her families--us, our home, our country, the United 
States.
  I believe that to be for America First, then one must support U.S. 
diplomacy crafting flexible alliances that while built on the 
foundations of the post war period, are in no way nostalgic.
  Standing against this global order of open seas, open markets, 
deterrence of invasion of sovereign nations, safe and secure use of 
cyber and space are the self-described ``axis of resistance''--China, 
Russia, Iran, North Korea.
  And, in my view, their very active proxies around the world: state 
actors like Cuba, Syria, and Belarus, and nonstate fundamentalist 
terror groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS; and the Houthis.
  Their coordinated malevolence has only grown since the 2002 now 
almost quaint description by President George W. Bush of this group of 
actors as the ``axis of evil.''
  Unfortunately, through ``resets, unenforced red lines, and 
appeasement, the Obama Administration empowered this axis of resistance 
and any constraints imposed by Trump officials have, for the most part, 
been dismantled by the Obama 2.0 policies by the Biden-Harris 
administration.
  Iran sells 80 percent of its oil--free from sanctions by President 
Biden--to China.
  Iran takes this funding, and additional funds freed by President 
Biden in frozen accounts in South Korea and Iraq and uses it to build 
its weapons arsenal and spread its disorder:
  Sending drones and missiles to Russia to kill Ukrainians.
  Sending Shia militia to Iraq and Syria to protect the murderous Assad 
regime, and to kill Americans along with Syrian women and children.
  Sending missiles and targeting technology to the Houthi rebels in 
Yemen to kill Yemenis, attack cargo ships and U.S. and Allied vessels 
in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
  Sending money and weapons to Hamas in the Gaza Strip to kill Israelis 
and start the now 11-month long war.
  Sending millions of dollars in weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon to 
attack and kill Israelis and, ensure that beautiful Lebanon is a 
bankrupt, failed state.
  China and North Korea are aiding Russia with material necessary for 
its continued economic advance as it bombs children's hospitals in 
Ukraine.
  North Korea and Iran continue to advance their offensive nuclear 
weapon capabilities.
  And, in the midst of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia, according to 
public reporting, is launching a nuclear weapon in space in violation 
of treaties and as a threat to the entire global civilization.
  The December 1950 Time magazine quoted one of Putin's role models, 
Lenin as saying--``the road to Paris lies through Peking'' signaling 
Russia will partner with China to advance global domination of 
communism.
  Never has it been more true.
  These new authoritarian axis powers have set out to achieve global 
domination by way of countering the United States and the rule of law 
and by poisoning the minds of millions with cyber warfare propaganda.

[[Page E891]]

  To preserve our economic vitality and opportunity for our future, the 
United States and likeminded peoples, must echo Churchill in his 
commitment to repel the Nazis . . .
  We must commit to fight this toxic blend of communism and terror on 
the beaches, in the streets, on the seas, in the air--but also on the 
network and in orbit.
  Failure to do so will impoverish our economic future and our American 
spirit best voiced by President Kennedy in his inaugural address when 
he promised:
  ``Let every nation know, whether it wishes well or ill, that we shall 
pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, 
oppose any foe to ensure the survival and the success of liberty.''
  Or maybe, as we are in a multipolar world you may find an old Chinese 
proverb (a favorite of Mao's) more compelling: ``you have to choose 
between killing the Tiger or being eaten by it.''

                          ____________________