[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16506-16508]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 PRESIDENTIAL FLAG AND SEAL ANNIVERSARY

  Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I rise today to commemorate an important 
but largely unheralded anniversary. Seventy years ago yesterday, 
President Harry Truman changed the design of the Presidential flag and 
seal. That moment, which is a small moment in the grand scope of 
American history, was nevertheless very symbolic. I would like to 
discuss it.
  First, some context on President Truman. Truman was a great wartime 
President. He fought bravely in World War I in France, and then he had 
to make very momentous decisions at the close of World War II. Some 
would argue, and I think properly, that the decision on whether to use 
atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been the single 
most momentous decision ever made by a President. He wasn't even aware 
of the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic weapons 
program until FDR died in April of 1945 and within a very few months 
had to make the decision whether to use those weapons against Japan.
  Nobody would question or challenge whether Harry Truman was a softy. 
In fact, even after World War II, in March of 1947, America was war-
weary, but he went to Congress and in an address to Congress said that 
we need to continue to provide military and economic support to nations 
that are battling against Soviet influence. In this case, it was the 
nations of Greece and Turkey. That began the Truman doctrine, the basic 
strategic principle whereby the United States, for the next 40 years, 
would sort of check off efforts by the Soviet Union to expand their 
influence. Harry Truman was a great wartime President.
  Harry Truman did something on October 25, 1945, that was most 
unusual.

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He called the press into his office and said: Look what I have done. He 
unveiled the fact that he had taken the seal and flag of the Presidency 
of the United States and redesigned them. That design is essentially 
the same today with the exception that two stars were added for the 
States of Alaska and Hawaii that came in after the Truman Presidency.
  The seal of the President, as everybody knows--if we look around the 
Chamber, we can see some up on the wall here--was originally an eagle, 
and the eagle has two claws. In one set of claws the eagle is grasping 
the arrows of war, and in the other set of claws, the eagle is grasping 
the olive branches of peace and diplomacy. Prior to the Truman 
Presidency, the eagle faced toward the arrows of war. Harry Truman, 
this great wartime President, changed the seal so the olive branches of 
diplomacy would be in the right claw, the sort of preserved position, 
and the eagle would be facing toward the olive branches. When he did 
this he said: ``This new flag faces the eagle toward the staff, which 
is looking to the front all of the time when you are on the march, and 
also has it looking at the olive branch for peace, instead of the 
arrows of war.'' Truman biographer David McCullough stated that Truman 
meant the shift in the eagle's gaze to be seen as symbolic of a nation 
that was on the march and dedicated to peace and diplomacy.
  Significantly, right around the same time President Truman did 
something else that was notable and symbolical. He renamed the 
Department we think of as the Pentagon from the Department of War to 
the Department of Defense, also symbolic of the Nation's postwar 
dedication to peace.
  While we want to be the strongest--and we are the strongest military 
nation in the world, as the Presiding Officer knows so very well--we 
want to always suggest to the world that our interest is not primarily 
war; no, our interest is peace and prosperity for all.
  We always have to preserve and advance America's military strength 
because we know the connection. Sometimes the better your military 
strength, the more successful you can be diplomatically, but it is also 
the case that the strength of your diplomacy can also add to the 
credibility of your military might.
  I wish to talk quickly about the olive branches of peace and 
diplomacy and then the arrows of war. America has a great diplomatic 
tradition. Let's talk about recent Presidential history. President 
Truman went to Congress and said: Let's spend, in today's dollars, tens 
of billions of dollars to rebuild the economies of Japan and Germany, 
the two nations that had been at war against the United States. Germany 
had been engaged in two wars with the United States in the previous 30 
years. Japan had invaded the United States at Pearl Harbor, but 
President Truman said: Tomorrow is more important than yesterday. Let's 
spend dollars to rebuild these economies. It was controversial when he 
proposed it, but the Marshall Plan ended up being one of the most 
successful things the United States has done from a foreign policy 
perspective.
  Right after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, President Kennedy 
engaged in negotiations with the Soviet Union to reduce the nuclear 
threat, and the result was an agreement in 1963 to ban atmospheric 
nuclear tests, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
  President Reagan was actively engaged in trying to undermine the 
power of the Soviet Union and communism, but during those very vigorous 
and aggressive activities, he was also negotiating with the Soviet 
Union on arms control agreements. Probably the paramount example of 
that during the Reagan Presidency was the Intermediate-Range Nuclear 
Forces Treaty in 1987 that he successfully negotiated.
  I happen to believe that history is going to judge the recent Iran 
nuclear deal in the same way. It is an effort to make tomorrow more 
important than yesterday and to find--even in the midst of significant 
challenges between the United States and Iran--a way to reduce nuclear 
tension. Diplomacy is always a judgment where we should try to let go 
some of the baggage of the past and see if we can find a better way to 
tomorrow.
  I am a little bit worried that the Truman legacy of putting peace and 
diplomacy first is fraying in this body and maybe nationally. I hope by 
bringing to mind this anniversary today, it will remind us of our great 
diplomatic history and the power of our diplomatic principles. A number 
of times in recent years we have seen bits of evidence of a fraying 
commitment to diplomacy in this Chamber, in my view.
  One of the great Truman institutions was the International Monetary 
Fund which was designed to help nations work together on economic and 
monetary policy issues. It is a great global institution. When you set 
up an institution like that in the 1940s, the challenge is that when 
new nations emerge and rise, how do you incorporate nations that are 
newly powerful into the Fund? The most recent and challenging example 
has been the nation of China. As China has gotten more and more 
important, there were many who advised us to bring China more closely 
into the Fund so they could assist nations throughout the world, but 
Congress refused to change the bylaws of the IMF to give China 
proportionate responsibility given its population and the strength of 
its economy. What did China do after we would not change the bylaws to 
allow them a proportionate place at the table? China established their 
own development bank completely separate from the IMF.
  There is a debate going on right now in Congress about whether we 
should reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank--now, this dates back to FDR's 
Presidency--a premier institution that helps American companies find 
export markets abroad. Again, it is part of our broad diplomatic effort 
in outreach, and suddenly it is controversial after 80 years.
  There are a number of U.N. treaties that we could profitably advance 
our interests on. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, if the 
United States had ratified that, we would have an additional diplomatic 
tool to challenge Chinese island building in the South China Sea.
  The U.N. treaty on the rights of women and on the rights of those 
with disabilities are treaties that would, frankly, reflect American 
values and American principles because we are the leaders in the world 
in these areas, and yet we will not ratify these treaties.
  The prospect of trade deals is much less popular in Congress than 
they were 15 years ago. Trade is going to happen, the question is 
whether the United States will play a leadership role in writing the 
rules, and if we step back and don't play a leadership role, some other 
nations will, but these are getting more and more complicated in this 
body.
  Finally, something I feel very strongly about is that it is hard to 
face the world with this strong diplomatic might when there are a lot 
of ambassadorial positions that are vacant. Especially in the last 6 or 
7 years we have seen efforts to block or delay ambassadorial 
appointments that have left key posts in many nations around the world 
vacant.
  It sends a message to other countries. When they look at us, as the 
United States, not putting an ambassador in place, they basically 
conclude that the United States may not think we are important, and 
that is a very bad signal to send to other nations, especially when 
many nations that are allies have been without ambassadors for a while.
  I am hoping we can reembrace on this 70th anniversary the wisdom of 
Truman, who said: The nation has to be vigorous and forceful and look 
toward diplomacy first.
  With respect to the arrows of war--I am on the Armed Services 
Committee, and just like President Truman, I prefer diplomacy. I think 
we should lead with diplomacy, but we have to be willing to use 
military force. I voted for military force twice during my 3 years in 
the Senate.
  In 2013, in August, the President asked us to vote for military force 
against Syria to punish Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons 
against civilians. The only vote that was taken in either House was a 
vote

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in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I voted for it with a kind 
of foreboding and heavy heart because I knew there would be Virginians, 
some of whom I might know, who would be affected, but nevertheless I 
thought it was an important principle for America to stand for.
  Since September of 2014, I have also been pushing to have Congress 
cast a vote to authorize the war against ISIL that has been going on 
for 15 months. There is a lot of critique in this body--and I have 
critique--about the way that war is being waged about strategic 
decisions that the President is undertaking with respect to the war, 
but I think at the end of the day it is hard to just be a critic. Under 
article I of the Constitution, it is supposed to be Congress that 
authorizes war rather than a President just doing it on his own.
  Earlier I mentioned how the Truman olive branches of diplomacy and 
arrows of war reinforce one another. Obviously, you can be a stronger 
negotiator at the table in advancing a diplomatic solution if people 
understand that you have significant military capacity and the 
willingness to use it in the appropriate instance. The more we can do 
and the better we can do to empower our military through wise 
budgeting, for example--as we hope to find an end to sequester and a 
path forward--the stronger we will make our diplomatic effort. 
Similarly, the reverse is also true. The more we are vigorous in going 
after diplomacy, the more moral credibility we have in those instances 
where we can say, when looking at the world, looking at our citizens, 
and looking at our own troops, that we now think we need to take 
military action and we have exhausted the diplomatic alternatives 
first. That improves the moral credibility behind a military effort. It 
enables us to make the case better to all about the need for a military 
effort, and often it even creates a better international justification 
for a military effort.
  I believe the Presiding Officer and I were together last week when 
former Secretary Gates testified before the Armed Services Committee. 
It was one of the best bits of testimony I have seen in my time in the 
Senate. He had a word of caution for us. He said: ``While it is 
tempting to assert that the challenges facing the United States 
internationally have never been more numerous or complex, the reality 
is that turbulent, unstable and unpredictable times have recurred to 
challenge U.S. leaders regularly since World War II.''
  We do live in a very complex and challenging world, where we see 
challenges that are known but also many unpredictable challenges. Other 
leaders of this country, since our first days, have lived in worlds 
that looked equally as challenging and confusing to them. We are true 
to our best traditions if the United States does what Truman so 
emblematically suggested we should do and we push in a vigorous and 
creative way all of the diplomatic tools at our disposal, and that 
involves diplomacy, but it also involves trade and humanitarian 
assistance. The United States is one of the most generous nations in 
the world.
  The strength of our moral example is something that stands as so 
important. If you live in a nation where journalists are being put in 
jail, the U.S. freedom of the press stands as a moral example. If you 
live in a nation where people are prosecuted because of their sexual 
orientation, the United States stands as a great moral example. We are 
not exemplary in everything. We have room to improve in everything, but 
we are exemplary in so many things. People around the world still look 
at us, and that is in fact a diplomatic area of importance. Let's be 
exemplary and stand for the principles we expose.
  Finally, I will say this. So many of the challenges we are facing now 
are challenges that at the end of the day are about diplomatic 
solutions. In the Armed Services or the Foreign Relations Committees, 
we are often talking about the vexing conundrum and humanitarian 
disaster in Syria, but at the end of the day we hear it has to be about 
a political solution to the civil war. There has to be a political 
solution to the conflict in Yemen. There has to be a political solution 
to the decades-long conflict between the Taliban and the Afghanistan 
Government. To find a political solution, you have to have strong 
diplomacy. Military action will not be enough to forge a political 
consensus moving forward.
  Ultimately, this was the message of what Harry Truman did 70 years 
ago. This strong wartime President, who made some of the toughest 
decisions that have ever been made by anybody in the Oval Office, 
recognized that America was a great nation because when push came to 
shove, we would prefer, push, and advocate for diplomacy first knowing 
that we would be militarily strong if we needed to be. It is my hope 
that we in Congress will take a lesson from that anniversary and 
continue to pursue that same path.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, what is the pending business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are in a period of morning business.
  Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
permitted to speak for up to 15 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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