[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17137-17143]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  NATO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is 
recognized

[[Page 17138]]

 for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight on the return of 
President Obama from his perhaps groundbreaking visit to Russia. I, as 
well, have recently returned from Russia.
  I was there just prior to President Obama's visit, and I rise tonight 
to discuss America's relationship with Russia, as well as our continued 
involvement in NATO, as well as today's threats of radical Islam and 
tomorrow's looming threat of a powerful Communist China.
  First and foremost, I think it's important for us to take a look at 
history, take a look at the present, and take a look at the future 
concerning America's exact positioning overseas. First and foremost, 
that would mean today that we need to look at NATO, the North Atlantic 
Treaty Organization.
  This organization, of course, if we are honest with ourselves, should 
be looked at not as an institution we should be relying on today but, 
instead, a relic of the cold war. Not only is it strategically 
irrelevant today, but it may be actually making the world less stable 
and our country less secure.
  Of course the United States needs to cooperate with other countries, 
and as such we need to reach out to potential friends in every part of 
the world, but when a relationship with another country or a group of 
countries no longer serves the goals of freedom, security and 
prosperity, when we no longer share those interests that bind us 
together as a people, we need to dissolve those relationships and seek 
different ones.
  We now have reached a point with NATO where we should take a second 
look at NATO and perhaps think about what type of relationships we can 
have in the future that would better serve our country and the cause of 
peace.
  NATO was a vital component to American security and world peace 
efforts in the late 1940s. In fact, in 1949, it was what an 
international relations theorist might call a tenet of realistic theory 
that we should form a powerful alliance to counteract the hostility of 
the Soviet Union and the threat of the expanding realm of communism, 
tyranny and militarism. That was in the late 1940s.
  It made sense to strengthen our NATO alliance during the 1950s while 
the USSR was forming its Warsaw Pact and while the fall of China to 
Communist tyrants and the Korean Wars halted the vision of a peaceful 
world that we had hoped for in the aftermath of World War II. But it is 
no longer the 1950s. The cold war is over. This is the 21st century, 
and NATO no longer serves its purposes and is, in many ways, 
counterproductive.
  Ronald Reagan's visionary leadership and the unrelenting courage of 
the American people brought an end to the USSR and the Warsaw Pact and 
also to the Berlin Wall. Eastern Europe was freed at this time. And in 
the 1990s, the Russian Federation, freed from its Soviet shackles, had 
a real opportunity to partner with the West, to embrace classical 
liberalism and free market economics. And we, of course, created this 
relic.
  NATO had a major impact in defending the peace and deterring a war 
with Russia up until this point. And let this cold warrior, who was 
very deeply involved in the cold war and supported cold war policies to 
the hilt, let me shock you by suggesting that Russia, after the fall of 
communism, attempted to embrace classical liberalism and free market 
economics. The Russian people and the Russian Government wanted to be 
part of the western community of nations. The door was open, and the 
Russians were not only willing but anxious to leave the cold war 
hostilities behind.
  Well, we squandered this historic opportunity. Worse than that, we 
let rotten elements in the West ally themselves with looters there in 
Russia who were there taking advantage of Russia's weakened and 
vulnerable condition. The Russian people, rejected and isolated when 
they expected to be partners in building a new world, sunk into deep 
despair.
  Now, it's easy, in hindsight, to look at the end of the cold war and 
to point out the mistakes that have been made since the end of the cold 
war. And it's easy to do that now because it has become clear that 
many, many mistakes were made by us and by our European allies and 
friends. Now, however, is not the time to lay blame. Now is the time to 
admit what has been wrong and to try to set things right and to push, 
as President Obama has said and Secretary of State Clinton has said, to 
push a reset button with the Russians. And, I would add, probably push 
the reset button with Russia and pull the plug on NATO. So let's look 
to the future. Let's take actions today that will overcome past 
mistakes and lead the world to a bright and prosperous future.
  Ronald Reagan used to say that the Oval Office was not his office; he 
was just a caretaker, a temporary occupant. Well, Americans today, all 
of us who are fortunate enough to live in this great country of ours, 
are merely caretakers of this place for a relatively short period of 
time. We have inherited this country from those brave freedom-loving 
souls who came before us, and we will pass it on to our children and 
our grandchildren just as it was passed on to us because that was the 
right thing to do, and those who came before us took those stands that 
were right and courageous.
  The stand today meaning, for me, that I'm making a new world for my 
children, my three small children, Anika, Tristan and Christian, who 
are now 5 years old, and will live in a country that will ensure 
liberty, justice, security, and hopefully prosperity, to its entire 
people. The decisions we make now will have long-term effects and be 
affecting my children and all the children of America today.
  Reagan gave us two decades of peace and prosperity because he did the 
right thing. The consequences of our actions since Reagan, however, are 
becoming more evident and more alarming with each passing day. We must 
have the wisdom and the courage to confront the enormous foreign policy 
challenges facing us and prevail over those forces which would, if they 
could, destroy America and would destroy our way of life.
  The national security threats before us are real and did not 
materialize out of thin air. But contrary to the dominant paradigm of 
our era, our ongoing relationship with NATO since the end of the cold 
war has not worked to our benefit, nor does it make peace, stability, 
or our Nation's security more likely.
  NATO has recently engaged in a number of operations, for example, 
around the world, from fighting the Taliban to combating pirates, but 
whether one views these missions as relatively successful or a failure, 
one can hardly look at them and not realize that the cost of our 
continued involvement in NATO certainly outweighs the benefits.
  In Afghanistan, the other 27 NATO countries sent a combined force of 
less than 5,000 troops, many in noncombatant positions. These 5,000 
troops are there as part of a coalition force. While these fighters 
from our NATO partners are heroic and are helpful, they are dwarfed in 
comparison to the number of American boots on the ground.
  The original members of NATO were the Americans, the French, the 
U.K., the Canadians, the Turks, and other European countries. Well, now 
add to that list Albania and Croatia, and others, and there is also 
talk about expanding NATO membership to other countries, smaller 
countries with little military relevance to the modern world.
  One of the primary tenets of NATO membership is that any member will 
come to the defense of any other member if attacked. But realistically, 
is the United States going to come to the aid of these other countries 
at any time, and is the reverse of that proposition worth the cost to 
us? Do we need Albania or Croatia to come to our aid if we are 
attacked? The answer is obviously no.
  And let us note that NATO's existence is unnecessary, and there is no 
strategic reason for us to stay in the alliance. And let us also admit 
that NATO can be counterproductive to the

[[Page 17139]]

peace by, for example, convincing people with territorial disputes, 
like the Government of Georgia, the United States--I think that an 
impartial analysis of what happened in Georgia is that the United 
States, through our discussions of NATO with that government, 
emboldened that government, the Government of Georgia, not to make 
compromises that were necessary for peace and stability in that region.
  But not only did they not make the compromises, they perhaps were 
emboldened to conduct a military operation. And while the people of the 
United States were told over and over again that Russia had done 
something horrible in that part of the world and confronting Georgia 
and that it was all the Russians' fault, and all kinds of language that 
was used that would make it look like Russia was doing something evil 
and villainous, but the fact is that once you took a second look at 
what happened in Georgia, Georgian troops broke a truce that had been 
carried on for 7 years. And when it broke the truce and invaded two 
parts of what had been part of Georgia--let me note, the Osselians and 
the Abkhazians, who are the two areas that did not want to be part of 
Georgia, they had never been part of Georgia historically until Joseph 
Stalin made them part of Georgia.

                              {time}  2245

  And the Georgian Government, of course, emboldened by our talks with 
them about NATO's support, broke an agreement, a truce agreement, and 
conducted a military invasion of those two breakaway regions, which 
ended up, of course, in a major loss of life and a counterattack by 
Russia on Georgia.
  Now, do we as Americans believe that we should have been involved in 
that? Does anyone believe that the United States should actually have 
Georgia as part of NATO or any of these other smaller countries in that 
part of the world as part of NATO so if there is a territorial dispute 
that we will send American troops into this far-off area and fight a 
battle perhaps with a country like Russia? Considering that this, of 
course, is in Russia's neighborhood and on the other side of the world 
from our country, that doesn't make sense. But it doesn't make sense at 
all for the United States to be in an alliance that might drag us into 
such conflicts that we have nothing to do with.
  So if Georgia wants to become part of NATO or other countries like 
that, if Albania and Croatia, countries that I am very sympathetic 
with, and, by the way, I am sympathetic with Georgia. I am sympathetic 
with Georgia's wanting to be a separate country from what was then the 
Soviet Union and later became Russia and broke away. They had my total 
support in that, just as the Kosovars in Kosovo had a right not to be 
part of Serbia. But does that mean that we are going to enter into 
agreements with Kosovo or with Georgia or any of these other countries 
saying that we will use U.S. troops as part of a NATO agreement to 
guarantee the borders that they claim? That's ridiculous. If Albania 
and Croatia, two good countries, countries I like and support, if they 
do want to become part of NATO, well, that's okay with me. But in this 
case, perhaps, if they're getting into NATO, we should be getting out 
of NATO.
  Because Americans are an open-minded people, we are more than willing 
to enter into relationships with other countries. And I am not 
suggesting isolationism, nor am I suggesting that we should not have 
bilateral agreements, perhaps even defense agreements with other 
countries. We are by our very nature networkers. Even at young ages 
people are using Facebook and Twitter, perhaps talking to friends who 
are on the Internet all over the world. And it is that sort of a sense 
of building alliances and relationships that is natural to Americans. 
We do this sort of thing at the government level too. At the outset of 
the Cold War, we saw a clear and present Soviet threat, and we went to 
work strengthening our existing relationships with friendly countries 
and building new relationships with other countries. Well, we should 
create alliances, as I said, but we need to be realistic and honest in 
our assessment of the factors that are in play.
  For whatever reason, perhaps just the lingering of Cold War attitudes 
and predispositions, Russia, which should have been a natural friend, 
Russia faces the same adversaries that the United States faces, but 
Russia has been positioned as our adversary. As I say, maybe that's a 
lingering of the Cold War mentality on our side, or maybe it's a 
lingering of the Cold War mentality on both sides that have brought us 
to this point, or maybe it's simply that we do not understand the 
Russian people and are wary about becoming their friends. But that 
would be contrary to America's personality. We are proud, and sometimes 
arrogantly so, but we are a friendly people. Whatever the reason, let 
this Cold warrior proclaim that the Russian people are a good-hearted 
people and they have the potential to be great friends to and allies of 
the United States of America. And that's us.
  There was no more fierce opponent of the Soviet Government and of 
Marxist-Leninist tyranny than I was during the Cold War. During the 
Soviet war in Afghanistan, I went there to Afghanistan and fought 
briefly along the side of Afghan warriors, the mujahideen, who were 
engaged in battle against a Soviet Army occupying their country. I 
personally was engaged in combat operations against Soviet troops 
during the Cold War. Very few people can say that.
  My chest swelled with pride every time Ronald Reagan spoke about the 
freedom for all subjugated peoples, including the Russian people, and I 
helped prepare some of those speeches that he gave as President. I was 
Ronald Reagan's speech writer for 7 years. When the President of the 
United States, Ronald Reagan, pleaded with Gorbachev to tear down the 
Berlin Wall, I was part of the team that broke through the foreign 
policy establishment's blockade that would have neutered this historic 
freedom statement even before Ronald Reagan gave it. And I cried with 
joy and retrospect when that wall finally came crashing down, hammered 
and chiseled down by freedom-loving people on both sides of that 
grotesquely evil barrier. I despised the Soviet Union because I loved 
freedom. Freedom for all people, including the Russian people.
  I was just in Russia and I met a Russian who had been active in his 
government and active in fighting for his government during the Cold 
War, and I told him, I had been your worst enemy during the Cold War. 
And he stopped me and he said, No, no. You weren't the Russian people's 
worst enemy. You were the enemy of communist tyranny, and thank God for 
that. There are many Russians today that fully understand that they 
have left communist tyranny behind and it is a wonderful opportunity 
for them now.
  But the Cold War was not a war between our people. We didn't have a 
fight with the Russian people. It was a conflict of ideologies. The 
Russian people were victimized by communism just as the people of the 
West were threatened by communism. But the Russians are a wonderful and 
a creative people. They share many personal values with us, their sense 
of humor, their love of children, of fun, of drink, of dance, and, yes, 
their reverence for God and faith that was never beaten out of them by 
atheistic communism, which held them in its grip for five decades. 
There was openness and vulnerability of these people as the Soviet 
Communist system collapsed. Yet they were vulnerable, and yet we did 
not do what was right by them.
  The Russians and the Americans share more than cultural traits. We 
now share very real common threats to our countries. And those are 
radical Islam, which is upon us, and a totalitarian China, which is 
rapidly becoming an enormously negative power in the world.
  The totalitarian Government of China is the world's worst human 
rights abuser. It is a natural enemy of the United States. It is also 
an enemy and a threat to Russia. Yet we embrace that government, the 
world's worst human rights abuser, Communist China, and we build their 
economy. We build their manufacturing base and their technological 
capabilities even

[[Page 17140]]

while simultaneously at the same time we find ways to continue 
hostilities and noncooperation with Russia. With open trade policies, 
credits, investment, and technology transfers, we run up massive trade 
deficits with China, and we haven't even been able to bring ourselves 
to officially end Jackson-Vanik economic restrictions on Russia. These 
are holdovers. The Jackson-Vanik restrictions on Russia are holdovers 
from the Cold War days. It is an insult and a sign of our own 
incompetence that we have not been able to lift the Jackson-Vanik 
restrictions on Russia. It's a joke, a cruel joke, when we even mention 
it to the Russians now after two decades of promising that these 
restrictions would be eliminated. All this, all this while we give 
China every benefit.
  Well, this relationship with Russia as well as our relationship with 
China has been wrongheaded and gravely so. China, in stark contrast to 
the great changes in Russia, where there has been political reform, 
where you have opposition parties and, yes, there are imperfections, 
but you go there and there is talk radio show complaining about 
leadership in Russia. In Russia you do have opposition parties, but, of 
course, the current party that's in power by its very nature is more 
popular because it won the election. And there were people on the 
ballot, but they were not elected. Well, there has been reform in 
Russia, although it's not perfect. It's far from perfect.
  But there has been no liberalization in China. China is not a worthy 
trading partner. China is not a worthy trading partner in any respect 
of the word, not an economic partner; and it's not a partner for peace 
nor is it a partner for world stability. China has had no reform of its 
political power structure, and it is, unfortunately, our most likely 
future enemy. Those words are very hard for me to say. They are not our 
enemy now, but it is clear that unless we have political reform in 
China, liberalization there, and the dictatorship there continues to 
grow stronger, it will be and it is today America's most likely future 
enemy. It is already a deadly economic competitor of our people, and it 
is also openly hostile to those basic values which make us Americans: a 
respect for human rights, religious freedom, the environmental 
stewardship that we have taken upon ourselves in recent years, treating 
each person with common decency. These things are not part of the 
Communist Chinese Government's agenda. In fact, they see these things 
as contrary to their basic concepts of what government should be all 
about and what their society should be all about, while we see these 
things as positive elements that should be fostered and nurtured in our 
society: human rights, religious freedom, environmental stewardship, 
prosperity, openness, opportunity.
  Because of the irreconcilable differences between the United States 
and the Communist Party apparatus in China, our current relationship 
with China has resulted in an economic and security disaster for 
America. It is time to have the courage to admit this fact, and it is 
time to reverse the poor decisions and bad policies that have made the 
world that we live in and led us to this point. If these are not 
reversed, if the policies that have led us to this point are not 
reversed, the result will be national and, yes, global catastrophe.
  Again, we are talking about government, a specific government, not 
its people. The Chinese people are hardworking, family-oriented people, 
and I have all the sympathy and respect for them in the world. They 
are, in fact, freedom's greatest ally, our greatest hope. The Chinese 
people, America's greatest hope, the American people's potentially 
greatest friends.
  The Chinese Government, however, is a loathsome tyranny, a 
dictatorial clique that has enslaved their people in that country and 
is intent on dominating the rest of it. It is a government that, as I 
speak, is shooting down Muslim Uyghurs in East Turkistan, which is that 
far region in the western provinces of China. A government that arrests 
and murders Falun Gong religious practitioners. The Chinese Communist 
Government arrests and murders these Falun Gong, and who are they? Pay 
attention, America. Who are they? The Falun Gong want nothing more than 
the religious freedom that we hold so dear. And what do they believe 
in? They believe in yoga and meditation.

                              {time}  2300

  Yet, thousands of them were picked up by the Chinese Communist 
dictatorship, thrown into prisons. And oftentimes they never come out 
of those prisons. And too often we find that what is coming out of 
those prisons where Falun Gong members have been thrown, what do we 
find is coming out of those prisons? Body parts being sold to Americans 
and other people as medical body parts. Kidneys and organs of the body 
that have been extracted from people who were put in jail for religious 
purposes and murdered. That is the type of ghoulish regime that now 
controls the country of China and the Chinese people.
  In China, there are no unions or workers' rights, there are no 
democratically created environmental standards. There are no concerns 
about human rights or considerations for the inherent dignity of all 
humankind. There is no liberty; no independent judiciary; no freedom of 
the press; no rule of law; no opposition parties; no right to criticize 
the nature of their government or to criticize the clique that rules 
it.
  For these reasons, a billion working people are held in bondage so 
that goods can be manufactured in China for far less than in the United 
States. And with the one-way free trade that we have permitted and the 
short-term profit desired by America's corporate elite, our country has 
been partners in building the Chinese economy into a monstrous threat, 
while at the same time weakening and destroying our own economic base.
  Over the last two decades we have built China from a relatively 
backwards economy into a Frankenstein monster. When I say we, I mean 
the policies of the United States government have lifted the economic 
capabilities of a country that has had no political liberalization, no 
political reform of their dictatorial system, and a country that, yes, 
is also engaged in rebuilding its military. And, yes, we have built 
this Frankenstein monster. And that monster is slowly turning on its 
creator. It is turning on us.
  We find ourselves today in an economic disaster. It is a severe 
recession. We can all feel it. It is around us. Our friends and 
neighbors and even our families are suffering. It is a Depression--
perhaps not as dire as the one in the 1930s, but it might get there. It 
is devastating. People are losing their jobs and their houses. And who 
is to blame for this horrendous situation and what can be done about 
it? The blame, dear Brutus, lies with us.
  We gave China Most Favored Nation status even though they have had no 
political liberalization. Despite our better judgment and despite the 
fact that China is a brutal dictatorship, we permitted them this 
advantageous economic relationship. We gave them this trading status 
because America's corporate elites wanted to make a quick buck for 
themselves with lots of good bonuses for the corporate elite and then 
to sell us goods--us, the American people--goods at a cheaper price. We 
should never have realistically expected to get goods that cheap, but 
at the same time there was a price to pay that was not on the pricetag.
  What have we gotten? What was that price that we paid? It's called 
economic ruin of the United States of America.
  We have given China everything and we are left wanting now, begging 
for favors. Small and mid-level manufacturing bases in the United 
States, our mid-level manufacturing base--small and mid-level--have 
been virtually destroyed. Our small and medium-sized and even large 
industry is gone. Our manufacturing jobs have gone.
  And where have they gone to? They have gone to China so their people 
have the jobs. And their country is accumulating the wealth. And 
because we have had this Most Favored Nation status and had a 
relatively one-way free trade agreement, the Communist bosses have been 
able to set the rules and to manipulate the trade so that it benefits 
their power structure.

[[Page 17141]]

  We were told that if we had Most Favored Nation status with China and 
that we had trade and we embraced them economically, there would be 
political liberalization. For 20 years, for 30 years we were told that. 
And that has not happened, but just the opposite has happened.
  What we have now is with China a massive debt that can be purchased 
and is now being purchased by China. We have a massive debt here. 
Actually, just even this year's debt is going to be $2 trillion 
higher--$4 trillion budget, $2 trillion in debt. And the Chinese are 
very happy to buy it because they are holding it over our head and 
grabbing us by the throat.
  We have given China everything, and we are left with nothing but ruin 
and cheap, poorly manufactured goods, poisonous toys and, all too 
often, poisonous food.
  We need first and foremost to demand that our policymakers who are 
negotiating trade agreements with foreign governments, that their 
primary concern be--and I say this emphatically--the primary concern of 
our negotiators should be what is good for the people of the United 
States and that those negotiators be patriots in their perspective and 
not globalists who are tied to some notion of what is good for the 
world or some philanthropist who wants to help other peoples and other 
countries at the expense of our own people, the American people. We 
have not had that.
  We have permitted a trade policy with China and other countries that 
have drained our country of resources with basically one-way free trade 
agreements. In China, we could only export our manufactured goods if 
they were made in China. So our capitalists were anxious to go there. 
But they could certainly export everything they wanted to into our 
country.
  That one-way free trade doesn't work, and it has been a major factor 
in the economic crisis we face today. And that policy was permitted to 
continue. Because people were telling us if we just do this with China, 
they will liberalize and become a liberal democracy. I call that ``hug 
a Nazi, make a liberal.'' That's the theory. Hug a Nazi, make a 
liberal. No.
  We can get as close to them and do favors for them all we want, but 
we should have demanded the political liberalization, which would have 
opened up a two-way free trade relationship rather than a one-way.
  Proponents of liberalization of trade, as I say, frequently claim 
that even the one-way trade, even the liberalization of trade as it 
existed, would create jobs in the United States, create U.S. exports, 
and improve the trade deficit with China. That's what we heard. Not 
only just that it would liberalize China, but it would be good for us 
in the meantime.
  President Clinton claimed that the agreement allowing China into the 
World Trade Organization, which was negotiated during his 
administration, and I quote President Clinton, ``creates a win-win 
result for both countries.''
  Well, has it been a win-win result? Our country's, as I say--our 
country's small and mid-level and even large manufacturing units have 
been decimated. People who had good manufacturing jobs now have low-
paying survival jobs. Their children have no really great aspirations 
to be industrial leaders or great entrepreneurs and businessmen because 
the lifeblood has been sucked out of our country as our manufacturing 
jobs have gone to China.
  And while it's true that exports support jobs in the United States, 
as we were told, we must now recognize that it is equally true that 
imports destroy American jobs. Yes, that's right. Exports create 
American jobs, but imports do what?
  I know that because in my two harbors, two ports that I represent, 90 
percent of all the commerce coming through those ports are containers 
coming in from China and the East, and only 10 percent are going out.
  We are destroying jobs of our people, those jobs that are necessary 
for people to live in homes, for people to have decent standards of 
living. The net result of the trade flow on unemployment, it's very 
clear when you see the trade imbalance that exists, why we have an 
increasing level of unemployment.
  And those people who are employed and have been employed over the 
last 10 years are getting jobs that are far worse and not as uplifting 
and not as socially mobile upwards as those jobs that their parents 
were getting back in the fifties and in the sixties.
  China's economy and China's as military capabilities have been 
growing and expanding even as our country has been declining. But the 
trouble of it is when you look at the economic and the military 
capabilities that are growing in China, it quite often is based on the 
utilization of technology that came from the United States. In fact, 
some of this technology was actually developed by American taxpayers, 
not even by these big corporate giants who go over there and set up 
their manufacturing units. They end up taking technologies that we have 
paid for, for the research, and doing what? Manufacturing it over in 
China.
  Right now, there's a big issue. What is that issue? It's whether or 
not we should loosen some of the controls on our technology exports. 
Well, I have been insisting we do that only to Democratic countries--
and we especially do not loosen the technology controls on China.
  It was just about 15 years ago during the Clinton administration when 
they permitted American satellites to be launched on Chinese rockets. 
At the time, I thought it was a good idea. I will have to admit that. I 
thought it was a good idea. But within a very short period of time I 
recognized what a horrendous reality was being created.
  What we were doing were perfecting those Chinese rockets in order to 
send up our satellites at a cheaper rate. Thus, we undercut the 
development of our own missile and rocket industry, our own aerospace 
jobs, and at the same time we perfected the Chinese rockets and 
missiles so that they could more easily what? Carry military payloads 
as well as civilian payloads.
  No, we shouldn't be loosening any of our technological restrictions 
on the transfer of technology to China. And even to this day, as we 
want to loosen them to democratic countries, there are moves here in 
Washington to try to take the exemption of China out.
  I will make this very clear. I am part of the team that's trying to 
move forward legislation to permit our high-tech industries to export 
to friendly democratic countries. But I have personally put into and 
worked with my other Members of Congress to ensure that part of the 
legislation restricts that loosening of controls to China so that they 
won't be able to launch American satellites on Chinese Long March 
rockets, because we know that will result in a technological transfer 
and an upgrading of those rockets.
  For example, we have developed a chip that serves as a gyroscope. 
Costs us hundreds of billions of dollars to develop that chip. That was 
15, 20 years ago. Today, of course, because of what happened 15 years 
ago, all of the Chinese rockets have a gyro on a chip. It didn't cost 
them a cent.
  And all of these other manufactured goods that are being shipped over 
here, the Chinese haven't had to pay for the development costs. We've 
paid for it. The taxpayers and the corporations. And when a corporate 
leader sends his company to China, guess what? Yes, he gives himself a 
bonus for a few years and then disappears with tens of millions of 
dollars of bonus while his own company, the stockholders, and 
especially the workers of that company, suffer the damages when their 
jobs are eliminated and actually when the company is taken over by the 
Chinese.
  Well, ironically, we have liberalized our trade with China, but China 
has not even liberalized its own government. In fact, China has been 
getting worse over these last two decades, not better. It was Tiananmen 
Square that was the turning point. Up until Tiananmen Square, there was 
a legitimate reason for us to build the economy of China to create 
closer ties because there was a movement on to create a new and 
democratic China that would be friend of ours and the world. There was 
a positive evolution going on politically and economically in China.

[[Page 17142]]



                              {time}  2315

  When it reached its tipping point at Tiananmen Square, the United 
States didn't stand tall. If Ronald Reagan would have been President, I 
can assure you he would have sent a telegram to the leaders, I'd say, 
to the gang who controls the Government of China. And he would have 
said, if you turn loose the army and slaughter the democratic movement 
in Tiananmen Square, all of the economic understandings we have, all of 
the capital investments and technology transfers, it's off. Reagan 
would have done that in a heartbeat. But George W's father, George 
Herbert Walker Bush was President. He did not share that same 
commitment, and there was no message sent to the Chinese, which was the 
worst message of all, because they now understood they could manipulate 
even the highest level of people in our government and of industry for 
short-term profit and that our elite does not give a damn about 
democracy or any of the other values that we, the American people, hold 
dear.
  So we let our corporate elite dictate to us, and our government, 
under George Herbert Walker Bush, took the easy way out. We acted like 
Tiananmen Square didn't count, and we let the corporations continue to 
make their quick buck so the corporate elites could give themselves 
their big bonuses. And in the end they were sending more jobs and more 
technology transfers and more capital investment to China, even though 
they had just slaughtered the democratic movement in Tiananmen Square. 
And now look at us. When we do something immoral, we come back and we 
pay a price for it.
  Part of the reason we are in such economic hardship today can be 
traced right back to the immoral decision that I just mentioned. We've 
permitted this China, an authoritarian, totalitarian China, to have an 
open free-trade policy with the United States. But it was only free 
trade in one way, and there was no liberalization going on whatsoever. 
China should never have been given most-favored-nation status, and of 
course, we look at it now. China's been given that. Russia can't get 
anything. Russia can't even get the Jackson-Vanik restrictions to be 
taken off.
  The tipping point in Russia came in 1991, which obviously caused a 
massive economic dislocation in Russia as it moved out of its socialist 
economy. So, in 1991, the great reforms were happening in China. The 
democratic movement wasn't slaughtered like it was in Tiananmen Square, 
but the Russian people were suffering hardship. The Russian economy 
collapsed, and there was a national despair in Russia, of course, and 
we watched this. While we built and fueled and invested in the Chinese 
economic machine, we said ``No thanks'' when it came to broadening our 
relationship with a liberalizing Russia.
  Russia's not a little country. Russia is not insignificant. On the 
contrary, in the long term and in the grand scheme of history, we need 
Russia just as much as the Russians need us. If we are to confront the 
menace of radical Islam and the terrorist threat, we are going to have 
to stop the rogue states that are trying to acquire nuclear weapons. 
We're going to do that or combat radical Islam.
  If we're going to combat, as I say, Iran or North Korea, we need to 
work with the Russians. We need to be partners with the Russians, not 
antagonists, and we certainly should not be looking at them as an enemy 
at a time when they have been trying to liberalize their country and 
have had great strides of liberalization since the Stalinist days of 
the Soviet Union. To be scrupulously accurate, we did, indeed, start a 
number of Russian-American partnerships in the 1990s.
  In 1992, Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar pushed us to work with 
the Russians to secure and dismantle nuclear weapons arsenals in and 
around the former Soviet Union, a project that would make everybody 
safer. It was brilliant, and eventually it evolved into the Cooperative 
Threat Reduction program. This program, the CTR, was a joint exercise 
between the United States, Russia, other former Soviet states and 
various military contractors. For a while, it went very, very well even 
though it had its ups and downs, and it's still going well. Despite the 
fact that certain people in the United States are complaining about it, 
they complain about the costs, but mostly they complain about working 
with the Russians to secure the Russians' weapons.
  Well, that makes all the sense in the world to me that we work with 
them to dismantle weapons, nuclear weapons, and that gets to the heart 
of the problem. The type of people who are now deadly against us even 
trying to help the Russians dismantle their own weapons. We have a 
chance. And President Obama--I will have to say I've been very critical 
of him in his dealings with countries like Iran and elsewhere where 
he's not being tough, but he's trying to reach out to the Russians, and 
I applaud that. What he's trying to do is to find something that is 
mutually beneficial to us and that would be a reduction in the number 
of nuclear weapons.
  Nuclear weapons cost a lot of money to both of our countries, and we 
are building them so that they can't be used. We are praying they will 
never be used. So if we are going to have money for the military, which 
we have to use to defeat radical Islam and to confront China, we need 
to make an agreement with Russia to bring down the level, not to 
eliminate nuclear weapons but bring down the level of those weapons 
that we believe should never be used so that we can afford to pay for 
the defense that we need to use.
  And why aren't we doing that? I mean, Obama has laid the groundwork, 
but already we have people on my side of the aisle raising their voices 
with an ingrained sense of hostility towards Russia on any idea of 
reducing nuclear weapons. Well, how come we don't have that same 
antagonism towards China, who we are sending hundreds of billions of 
dollars to? The United States did withdraw from the Antiballistic 
Missile Treaty. I supported that, and I still do, even though I know 
the Russians didn't like that and thought it was a hostile act. I 
believe in missile defense. That's why we withdrew from that treaty.
  I believe we should reduce our number of nuclear weapons and build a 
missile defense system, but I disagree with how the Bush administration 
rushed forward to deploy a system in the Czech and Polish Republics 
right on Russia's borders. We should have done what Ronald Reagan 
advised, and that is, if the Russians would withdraw from Eastern 
Europe and give up this Communist attitude of dominating the world, we 
should make the Russians partners in designing, building, maintaining 
and operating an antimissile system.
  So, instead, we set up this system that we knew would be considered a 
hostile act and would antagonize the Russians even at the same time as 
we were inviting Chinese military observers to observe our own military 
operations. We've got it totally backwards. The country with no 
liberalization whose government hates our way of life and imprisons 
people for religious purposes, that government we're inviting to 
observe our military operations and cooperate with their military while 
Russia, which has had every liberalization, even though they're 
imperfect, that country which wanted and would love to work with us on 
missile defense, we set up a system which is aimed at Russia. Well, if 
we keep expanding NATO and inching around Russia, you can expect them 
to think that we're doing this as a hostile act. We do this even as we 
try to open up our relations even further with China.
  We chastise Russia for its imperfections, but we have not bothered to 
make demands on China even as we have invited the Chinese military to 
observe our military operations. We keep expanding NATO, as I say, 
inching around, but we always have a negative word for Russia; yet, in 
China, there has been no reform of its tyrannical and repressive 
practices.
  So what else have we done? We haven't even offered support for those 
elements in China that do believe in reform and democracy. We can't get 
ourselves to have strong condemnations of

[[Page 17143]]

the brutal massacres going on now with the Uyghurs, the Muslims or the 
Tibetans or the Falun Gong. We can't get our government to actually 
condemn China for the brutality, the massive brutality that they are 
perpetrating on their own people, much less, I might add, condemn them 
for their continued insistence on territorial claims.
  China is not only an economic threat, but China is a massive threat 
to us as it builds its military, its rockets and missiles, in 
particular, as it claims huge territories of Russia and India and huge 
areas of the ocean right up to the shores of the Philippines. These are 
claims that China is making; yet the United States is not counteracting 
those claims even as we are antagonistic towards Russia.
  If we are to have a free world, if we are to combat radical Islam, we 
need Russia on our side. If we are going to combat those rogue nations 
in Iran and North Korea, we need Russia on our side. And if we are to 
live at peace and to thwart these desires by China to dominate the 
world, we must have Russia on our side.
  So far, American policy has been totally upside down in terms of 
Russia and China. We need to make sure that we enter new relationships. 
Instead of taking NATO and expanding it, we should now show Russia that 
we want a new coalition in this world and that Russia will be part of 
it.
  I would suggest that as we leave NATO, that we instead form a new 
coalition, perhaps not formally, but a coalition of interests, of 
security interests with countries like India, Japan, Russia and the 
United States. They are the four legs to the table that will create 
stability for humankind. Other democratic countries will join with us. 
But we need to have a relationship, a viable relationship with those 
countries in order to combat those challenges that are upon us with 
radical Islam and that threat that looms over us, which is an ever-more 
increasingly powerful Communist China.
  The future's up to us. We've got to be realists, but we've also got 
to remain true to our principles as Americans. And when we are not true 
to those principles, when we close our eyes to the repression going on 
in China, even as we speak at this moment, where Muslims are being shot 
down in parts of China because they are not willing to accept the 
repression of their own culture and the repression of their faith, or 
the Tibetans who have suffered the same, or the Falun Gong who want 
nothing more than to meditate and have yoga exercises, if we do not 
speak up for these persecuted people, we will be persecuted, and we 
will suffer as a result.
  The economy is suffering because of incredibly stupid policies, 
economic policies, and the China trade policy has been one of the 
worst. Our country will suffer in the future if we do not have a 
rational policy of security and cooperation with Russia, with India, 
and with Japan.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________