[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2880-2882]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          AMERICAN LEADERSHIP

  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I know today we have been focusing on a 
really important bill, the CARA bill, which has been led by Senator 
Portman, Senator Ayotte, and many others. It is a very important bill 
for our country, for States like Alaska that are seeing this explosion 
of opioid use, heroin use, and drug addiction that is impacting so many 
families. I had the opportunity to talk about this, when I was home in 
Alaska last week down in Juneau, in front of our State legislature.
  This legislation is showing bipartisan work, which is very important 
to the country and very important to States like Alaska. I am certainly 
proud to be a cosponsor of that bill. We are going to continue to try 
to get that over the goal line.
  I think it is important to focus on issues not only domestically, of 
course, but issues beyond our borders as well. What I want to talk 
about in terms of these kinds of issues this afternoon is the issue of 
American leadership in the world today.
  A lot of us in the Senate have experience in foreign policy and 
national security issues. There have been Members who have served in 
the State Department, decades in the military--the Presiding Officer 
has a lot of experience in international business--and so we have a 
fair amount of experience here. Certainly, it is part of our 
responsibilities under the Constitution, as Senators, to be very 
focused on these issues--these important issues of national security, 
of foreign policy. Attending hearings, codels, and meetings with 
foreign leaders are all part of our responsibilities.
  One thing is very clear. Foreign policy and national security issues 
are almost always messy, complicated, never really have easy solutions, 
and are often very opaque in terms of what is happening in the world 
and how it impacts the United States. We recognize that. That is 
usually the case. But sometimes in the world of foreign policy, 
sometimes in the world of national security, there are moments of 
clarity when big issues come into focus. It doesn't happen often. It is 
rare. But when it happens, you know it. When it happens, you sense it.
  I was recently part of a bipartisan congressional delegation led by 
one of the foremost experts on foreign policy and national security in 
the Senate, Senator John McCain. We all went to the Munich Security 
Conference in Munich, Germany. For over 50 years, this has been where 
leaders have come together--Americans, certainly, Prime Ministers, 
Foreign Ministers, Defense Ministers, international affairs experts--to 
discuss national security and foreign policy issues, usually as it 
relates to the Atlantic partnership--NATO, the EU.
  My experience there led to one of these clarifying moments, and I 
think I am speaking for many of the people who were at Munich about 3 
weeks ago. Here is the clarifying moment: The United States is 
withdrawing from its traditional leadership role in the world. Our 
allies know it, they feel it, and they are desperately worried about 
it.
  In meeting after meeting, in speech after speech, if you were in 
Munich a month ago, listening, paying attention, discussing the state 
of the world's security with our allies, you heard it. You heard it. 
Sometimes it was subtle, sometimes it was direct, and, occasionally, it 
was even pleading--pleading from our allies, pleading for American 
leadership in the world again. We saw that.
  One of the meetings we had was with an important leader of an 
important country in Europe. The Presiding Officer and I were there. At 
the end of the meeting, this leader was asked: What can the United 
States do to help your country in terms of security--aid, military 
cooperation? What can we do? This leader looked at a group of several 
Senators, bipartisan, and said: The United States has to lead in the 
world again. You are not leading, and the world is becoming a much more 
dangerous place because of the lack of American leadership. Whoever the 
next leader of your great country is, please tell that person that the 
United States has to lead again.
  Think about that. That was the message. That was the message from 
Munich. Our friends are worried. They have certainly lost confidence in 
us, and our adversaries are taking advantage of the vacuum that we have 
left all around the world. That was the message of Munich, and anyone 
who went there heard it.
  Now, I know some of my colleagues might be thinking: Well, this is a 
Republican Senator on the floor of the Senate, criticizing the Obama 
administration. That is probably a partisan criticism. But there were 
many people at Munich. There were Republicans and Democrats at Munich. 
Just a perusal of newspaper articles from those who went--and some who 
weren't there--shows that all are writing about the same issue--that 
one of the principal foreign policy issues facing the world, facing the 
United States right now, is what the lack of U.S. leadership globally 
is doing to the national security of our country and to that of our 
allies.
  Let me just provide a few examples. Senator Joe Lieberman, who graced 
this body with his knowledge and expertise and wisdom for many, many 
years--a Democrat--was in Munich. Not too long after coming back, he 
wrote in the Washington Post:

       The world has never seemed as dangerous and leaderless as 
     it does now. Only the extremists and bullies act badly, and 
     therefore have seized the initiative.
       It's a moment in history that invokes the haunting words of 
     W.B. Yeats: ``The best lack all conviction, while the worst 
     are full of passionate intensity.''

  That was Senator Lieberman, who was with us in Munich just a couple 
of weeks ago.
  Former Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, who has worked for 
Democrats and Republicans, was also there. I served under Secretary of 
State Condoleezza Rice with Under

[[Page 2881]]

Secretary Burns--a great career foreign service officer. He also 
stated: ``We are being humiliated. We've lost our strategic 
foothold''--he is talking about the Middle East--``and we've abdicated 
our leadership.'' That is not a Republican partisan saying that.
  GEN John Abizaid--in my view one of the premier military leaders our 
country has seen in a generation, whom I had the honor of serving with 
as a marine major--recently stated: ``Without American leadership, 
we're not going to move in a direction that's going to produce 
effective results.''
  There was another recent article in the Washington Post by another 
observer, an expert on foreign policy issues, Fred Hiatt, who wrote 
about what he saw at Munich. What he stated was that the endless 
negotiation by our Secretary of State ``that perpetually, and falsely, 
holds out the prospect of imminent progress'' on so many different 
issues ends up ``providing cover'' and ``is an excuse for inaction,'' 
an ``anesthetic,'' he said, where the Congress and the American people 
don't even have to feel about focusing on these issues, what is going 
on in the Middle East or the South China Sea or North Korea or the 
Korean Peninsula because we have endless diplomacy that covers it.
  Finally, another participant in Munich, former Senator Bill Cohen, 
who worked as the Secretary of Defense for President Clinton, stated: 
``We no longer seem to know what our role should be in the new 
century.''
  He was interviewed on the radio a couple of weeks ago right after 
Munich:

       Are we going to lead from behind? The truth is that 
     President Putin has been bombing and the United States has 
     been dithering.

  That is former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen, former U.S. Senator 
Bill Cohen.
  It is very clear, whether you are Democratic or Republican, that 
anyone who spent time at the Munich security conference a few weeks ago 
came away with a similar conclusion: Our allies are extremely worried 
about what is clearly happening--the withdrawal of U.S. leadership from 
the world. They are seeing it, and we are seeing it in almost every 
region of the world. It is leaving a vacuum. Other countries that don't 
share our interests and don't share our values are filling that vacuum. 
We know the list. We have been debating it on this floor. Russia, 
certainly. Whether it is in the Middle East, Syria, Ukraine, the 
Arctic, Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism--our 
diplomats and Secretary of State seem to spend more time with their 
diplomats and their Foreign Minister than almost any other country in 
the world--China and the South China Sea.
  In the face of these challenges, we are also starting to see 
something that is truly alarming. The postwar structure, the national 
security structure of the world that the United States was instrumental 
in building, is beginning to crumble in different parts of the world.
  So what should we do? What can we do? I think there is a lot we can 
do. We can certainly bolster the American-led order that was 
established after World War II. It certainly does not have to crumble. 
This is what our colleague Senator McCain laid out in his outstanding 
speech in Munich. He talked about how this is one of our most important 
inheritances, this world order, this American-led order, and how we 
need to focus on it--not with speeches but with action.
  What else can we do? We can look at the changing landscape of the 
world and see if we need to devise new political structures that 
address new challenges in places such as the Middle East, where borders 
seem to be being erased on a daily basis by terrorist groups like ISIS. 
This is something General Abizaid has written about recently.
  Both of these alternatives require American leadership. They are not 
going to happen without the United States in the lead. If you went to 
Munich, you realize their allies want us to lead.
  What can we do in the Senate? Well, we can certainly press for a more 
assertive and leading role for the United States of America from this 
body. The Constitution gives the U.S. Senate significant power in 
national security matters and foreign affairs, and we should be using 
that. We are using that.
  Under the new leadership of the Senate, we have been moving forward 
in many areas of foreign policy and national security. There are the 
North Korea sanctions that were passed by this body 2 weeks ago, and 
now the world is following our lead on that. Senators Gardner and 
Corker did an outstanding job in that regard. There is the bipartisan 
approach to Ukraine that we see on the Armed Services Committee. Every 
Member of that body, Democratic and Republican, thinks we should be 
doing more to help the Ukrainians defend themselves against Russian 
aggression. Afghanistan, the same thing--bolstering the need for troops 
there to guard America's security. The President has seemingly wanted 
to take all our troops out of there, as he wanted to do in Iraq, but 
again a bipartisan group of Senators have been questioning that 
strategy on a daily basis. In the South China Sea, we have been 
encouraging the administration to do what we have been doing for 70 
years--conducting freedom of navigation operations to keep the sea-
lanes of the world open. These are all things the Senate has been 
doing--in essence, trying to give this administration backbone, to 
assert the leadership we know is so important to our security and the 
security of the world.
  But there is another thing, another option that might be out there. 
We can ignore the problem of what is happening in the world.
  I hate to say this, but if you saw Secretary of State Kerry's speech 
in Munich, certainly compared to Senator McCain's keynote address, what 
the Secretary of State seemed to be doing was that fourth option. He 
seemed to be saying: Hey, things aren't going that badly. Things in 
Syria aren't that bad.
  He cautioned against pessimism and said that we have good reasons to 
be optimistic about what is happening. He talked about how fewer people 
are dying in conflict today than ever before. You literally heard a 
gasp in the audience in Munich when that was stated. That is not true.
  What this does when you have the Secretary of State making these 
kinds of statements at important security conferences with all our 
allies, it further undermines the credibility of the United States in 
terms of foreign policy and national security.
  We need to lead again. Our allies want us to. Most importantly, I 
believe the American people want us to.
  Why? Why shouldn't we just withdraw from the world and let everything 
catch on fire? Bring the troops home and have the two oceans protect 
us--the Atlantic and Pacific.
  We need to lead, and I believe the American people want the United 
States to lead because they know that when the United States leads in 
the world, it is a safer place abroad and it is a safer place at home. 
They know what Senator Lieberman said recently in his op-ed after 
Munich: ``The absence of American leadership has certainly not caused 
all the instability, but it has encouraged and exacerbated it.'' The 
American people also know that when there is a lack of U.S. leadership 
in the world, it not only turns to undermining our national security 
interests, but it turns to humiliation for our own citizens. Just think 
of the photos that we saw recently of U.S. sailors on their knees at 
Iranian gunpoint with their hands raised in surrender and what that 
does in terms of how Americans are thinking about our role in the 
world, the security of the world, and what is happening with regard to 
U.S. leadership. We have to change these policies of leading from 
behind.
  I will conclude by mentioning in terms of this lack of U.S. 
leadership what I fear the most. I started by saying that we were at a 
conference where our allies directly, indirectly were asking for 
American leadership once again. But what I fear the most is the day 
that a group of bipartisan Senators goes to another conference like 
Munich

[[Page 2882]]

or the Shangri-la Dialogue and we don't hear from our allies, we don't 
hear them asking for us to lead once again, because such silence will 
truly be dangerous indeed because that is when we will know that our 
traditional allies have given up on the United States; that is when we 
will know that our traditional allies have lost faith in America and 
have begun the process of making accommodations with our adversaries. 
We in the Senate must do all in our power to make sure that situation 
where we lose our allies, where they don't ask for our leadership, does 
not happen.
  I yield the floor.

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