[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 149 (Tuesday, September 24, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6340-S6341]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           National Security

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday, the Pentagon announced the 
deployment of additional U.S. servicemembers to the Middle East. The 
proximate cause, of course, is the threat of war on Israel's northern 
border. But ongoing Iran-backed attacks against U.S. personnel from the 
Red Sea to Iraq and Syria offer plenty of reminders that America's 
enemies lack neither the resources nor motivation to target us.
  Democrats and Republicans alike should recognize that America's 
enduring security interests in the Middle East are not served by 
abandoning the region to Iran, Russia, and China. But what the Biden-
Harris administration is grappling with right now is a problem of its 
own making. It is the combination of a weak and ineffectual response to 
Iran-backed aggression. It is the predictable and forewarned inadequacy 
of a force-planning construct that rules out serious preparation for 
meeting multiple threats at the same time.
  I have spoken repeatedly about the naivete of abandoning a multiple-
war, force-planning construct, underresourcing our military, and 
ignoring the growing and interconnected threats our adversaries pose to 
our interests.
  It is worth remembering how former British Prime Minister Harold 
Macmillan reportedly responded to a question that the greatest 
challenge for a statesman is ``events, dear boy, events.'' Well, 
events have proven particularly challenging for the Biden-Harris 
administration.

  At the risk of repeating myself, losing resolve to meet and defeat 
adversaries when they threaten us only emboldens them. Retreating from 
difficult challenges only invites even bigger ones. And most 
importantly, there

[[Page S6341]]

is no serious accounting of the global threats to America's interests 
and our allies today that concludes they can be dealt with one at a 
time, at our leisure.
  The enemy gets a vote.
  The demand for a U.S. military that can meet simultaneous challenges 
is acute, and we ignore it at the peril of the entire American-led 
international order that underpins our security and our prosperity.
  Today, when President Biden addresses the U.N. General Assembly, we 
will no doubt hear about the grave challenge these interconnected 
threats pose to America and the entire world. But the President's 
concern will carry little weight without explicit commitments to the 
sort of hard power necessary to address them. The President will insist 
that his leadership has ``produced results.'' That is true--just not 
good results. For years, by its neglect of the urgent requirements of 
the national defense, its anemic--anemic--defense budget requests, and 
its ongoing preference for micromanaging allies over confronting 
adversaries, the Biden-Harris administration has compounded the 
challenges that we face.
  What the Commander in Chief is reckoning with this week is the 
product of nearly 4 years of failing to check Iran and to prepare 
adequately for great power competition--4 years of appeasement, 
hesitation, naive and desperate nuclear diplomacy, as well as outright 
retreat.
  It is, indeed, too late to undo this administration's record of net 
cuts to defense investments. Likewise, it is too late to roll back the 
disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
  Here in the Senate, after weeks of partisan show votes, it is now too 
late for the Senate to discharge a fundamental obligation of this 
body--to provide for the common defense--and debate the annual Defense 
authorization and appropriations bills before the election.
  It is not, however, too late to stop treating Israel as an escalatory 
regional force in need of finger-wagging micromanagement and, instead, 
like a sovereign democracy encircled by the forces of the world's most 
active sponsor of terror. It is not too late to stop responding to 
proxy violence with the sort of unwavering force necessary to change 
Iran's calculus--and, for that matter, Russia's and China's as well.
  It is not too late to show our adversaries that, in their race to 
undermine America's global influence and threaten its global interests, 
they will meet determined opposition.