[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 15761-15762]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BILL

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, on another matter before the Senate 
this afternoon, I was glad to see the Senate come together yesterday to 
advance the bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act. This 
bipartisan Defense bill will support our men and women in uniform in 
many, many ways.
  The bill attacks bureaucratic waste, authorizes pay raises, and 
improves quality-of-life programs for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, 
and marines. It will strengthen sexual assault prevention and response. 
It will help wounded warriors and heroes who struggle with mental 
health challenges. Most importantly, it will equip the men and women 
who serve with what they need to defend our Nation.
  The chairman of the Committee on Armed Services was unrelenting in 
his work across the aisle to craft a serious defense bill with input 
from both parties. Senator McCain can and should take pride in 
yesterday's 73-to-26 vote to advance this bill. He should take heart in 
today's vote to send it to the President as well.
  That is where this legislative process should end--with the 
President's signature, with a win for our forces, and with a win for 
our country at a time of seemingly incalculable global crises. But the 
White House has issued threats that the President might actually veto 
this bipartisan bill for unrelated partisan reasons. That would be more 
than outrageous--truly outrageous, Mr. President. It would be yet 
another grave foreign policy miscalculation from this administration, 
something our country can no longer afford.
  Just a year ago, the President announced a strategy to degrade and 
destroy ISIL. Today, the threat remains as versatile and resilient as 
ever. ISIL has consolidated its gains within Iraq and within Syria. 
Russia is now deploying troops and attacking the moderate opposition 
forces in Syria. Iran is reportedly sending additional forces to the 
battlefield. Civilians are dying and refugees are fleeing.
  John Kerry calls the situation ``a catastrophe, a human catastrophe 
really unparalleled in modern times.'' He is right.

[[Page 15762]]

  According to news reports, this is all forcing the President to 
reconsider his strategy in that region and craft a new one. Regardless 
of what he decides, it is going to be a protracted area of struggle. It 
has been profoundly challenging already. That is to say nothing of the 
countless other mounting global threats, from Chinese expansion in the 
south China Sea to Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.
  Many Americans would say this is the worst possible time for an 
American President to be threatening to veto their national defense 
bill, and especially to do so for arbitrary partisan reasons. I wish I 
could say it surprises me that President Obama might, for the sake of 
unrelated partisan games, actually contemplate vetoing a bipartisan 
defense bill that contains the level of funding authorization that he 
actually asked for. Let me say that again. This bill contains the 
funding authorization the President asked for. So I am calling on him 
not to, especially in times like these, but if he does, it will be the 
latest sorry chapter in a failed foreign policy based on campaign 
promises rather than realistically meeting the threat before us.
  The President's approach to foreign policy has been nothing if not 
consistent over the past 7 years. I have described this in detail many 
times before. From repeatedly seeking to declare some arbitrary end to 
the war on terror, to discarding the tools we have to wage it, to 
placing unhealthy levels of trust in unaccountable international 
organizations, the President's foreign policy has been as predictable 
as it has been ineffectual.
  Take, for instance, his heavy reliance on economy-of-force train-and-
assist missions. This has been the primary tool of the President to 
cover our drawdown of conventional forces. The train-and-equip concept 
is to train indigenous forces to battle insurgencies in places such as 
Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These forces ideally partner with 
U.S. capabilities, but under the President's policy, they have been 
left to fight alone as we continue to draw down our conventional 
forces.
  The essence of this was captured in a speech he delivered at West 
Point just last May. In that speech the President described a network 
of partnerships from South Asia to Sahel to be funded by $5 billion in 
counterterrorism funds. By deploying Special Operations Forces for 
train-and-equip missions, the President hoped to manage the diffuse 
threats posed by terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian 
Peninsula, Boko Haram, the al-Nusrah Front, the Taliban, Libyan 
terrorist networks that threaten Egypt, and, of course, ISIL.
  The President never explained the strategy--beyond direct action such 
as unmanned vehicle aerial strikes--for those cases when indigenous 
forces proved insufficient, as we have seen in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. 
Nevertheless, this concept of operations suited the President because 
it allowed him to continue with force structure cuts to our 
conventional operational units. It allowed him to continue refusing to 
accept that leaving behind residual forces in places such as Iraq and 
Afghanistan might represent a means by which this Nation could preserve 
the strategic gains made through sacrifice. It also allowed him to 
continue refusing to rebuild our conventional and nuclear forces.
  This was never, never an approach designed for success. Today it is 
clear this is now an approach that has also reached its limits.
  The New York Times is hardly an adversary of this administration, but 
it recently ran a story titled ``Billions From U.S. Fail to Sustain 
Foreign Forces.'' Once again, this is the New York Times. Here is what 
it said:

       With alarming frequency in recent years, thousands of 
     American-trained security forces in the Middle East, North 
     Africa, and South Asia have collapsed, stalled or defected, 
     calling into question the effectiveness of the tens of 
     billions of dollars spent by the U.S. on foreign military 
     training programs, as well as a central tenet of the Obama 
     administration's approach to combating insurgencies.

  Without rebuilding the force, we cannot deter China's efforts to 
extend its conventional reach in the South China Sea. Without 
rebuilding the force, we cannot deter Russian adventurism in places 
such as Crimea. Without rebuilding and deploying the force, we cannot 
hope to deter Russia's gambit to increase its Middle East presence or 
its air campaign in Syria. And under this strategy, when the host 
nation militaries we trained and equipped proved inadequate to defeat 
the insurgency in question, the strategy allowed for a persistent, 
enduring terrorist threat in those countries. That is just what we have 
seen with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, with the Taliban, and now 
with ISIL.
  I thought the growth, advance, and evolution of ISIL last year would 
have presented a turning point for the President. I thought the fall of 
Anbar Province and the threat posed to allies such as Jordan, Saudi 
Arabia, and Turkey would have provoked a reconsideration of his entire 
national security policy, but it didn't. If the latest stories of White 
House efforts to revise its ISIL strategy are to be believed, then 
perhaps the President now finally realizes the threat from terrorist 
groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda have outpaced his economy-of-force 
concept. He may even be accepting the reality that withdrawing 
arbitrarily from Afghanistan is neither consequence-free nor is it a 
good idea.
  One year after the President's ISIL speech, it is time to reverse the 
withdrawal of our military from its forward presence. It is time to lay 
the groundwork for the next President to rebuild America's credibility 
with friend and foe alike. That is true of ISIL and it is true of 
dissatisfied powers such as Russia, China, and Iran, who are all 
looking to exploit American withdrawal in pursuit of regional hegemony 
and dreams of empire.
  To paraphrase the President: Russia is calling, and it wants its 
empire back. Russia wants its empire back. China is calling, too, and 
so is Iran. They have watched as both our economy-of-force efforts to 
mask American withdrawal and as other U.S. commitments have proven 
quite hollow--like the announcement of a strategic pivot to Asia, 
without the investments to make it meaningful. The next President, 
regardless of party, will need to craft plans, policies, and programs 
to balance against expansion. Signing the bipartisan National Defense 
Authorization Act we pass today--and of course matching the 
authorization with its corresponding funding--would represent a good 
first step along that path. If the President is serious in his just-
restated commitment to taking all steps necessary to combat ISIL, then 
he will know that signing this bipartisan National Defense 
Authorization Act is anything but the waste of time some of his allies 
might pretend it to be. In fact, this bill is essential.

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