[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15892-15896]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Rohrabacher) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, let me just note I believe that our 
President is doing a terrific job. I think that the last Presidents of 
the United States have left us an incredibly dangerous situation, and 
this President is trying to deal with it with strength and purpose, 
and, yes, being a forceful leader.

[[Page 15893]]

  For example, during the Clinton administration, we provided $4 
billion to $5 billion to North Korea, the same way the last 
administration tried to provide funds for Iran.
  What do we have now?
  A crisis with possible nuclear weapons and missiles in North Korea. 
That is called kicking the can down the road. They sure kicked it down 
to us, and now the people want to kick the can down the road with the 
Iranians. No, let's not do that again and leave future generations to 
face the music that we left them.
  Our President wants to make sure that Iran does not become a nuclear 
power as long as it is controlled by radical, fanatic mullahs who don't 
even represent their own people. In fact, if Iran was more peaceful and 
actually more democratic, then we wouldn't have to worry about that 
because they wouldn't want to have a wasteful program of nuclear 
weapons.
  Those are the type of issues we face today. We face a lot of 
uncertainties at home and abroad, and it behooves us to look for 
explanations for the shifts in power, the dangers, and the influence 
that are taking place in the world today.
  Europe, along with the United States, for five decades, seemed to be 
the center of world order and progress. NATO, the European Union, and 
the common market all seemed to be the epitome of sophisticated and 
proper governance needed to offset humankind's destructive and 
combative inclinations. World Wars I and II had undercut, if not 
destroyed, the expansion of classical liberalism that was in the 
process of retiring royalist and imperialist domination of the world, 
which, of course, is where the world was at the turn and the beginning 
of the 20th century as classical liberalism began to replace 
imperialism and monarchy.
  Yes, the two World Wars that we experienced were traumas that still 
impact our lives. The Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I was 
the last gasp of European colonialism.

                              {time}  1800

  Maps drawn at that international gathering brought on World War II. 
Some of those other lines that they drew on that map plague us to this 
day.
  Those national borders mandated by the Versailles Treaty made the 
world temporarily tranquil. Maybe we just heard about that a few 
moments ago, how we have got to overcome the tragedy right now, like we 
did in Korea, by not having confrontations with those people who were 
engaged in hostile activity.
  Yes, the Treaty of Versailles gave the world temporary tranquility, 
but doomed following generations to instability and conflict. Such 
future challenges were left to the League of Nations. When that failed, 
the baton was passed to the United Nations.
  Humanity, obviously, hoped that global government, in one form or the 
other, would solve everything. The EU, the common market, NATO, and 
other multinational bureaucracies would demonstrate how nation-states 
can cooperate and achieve a collective peace, freedom, and prosperity.
  Well, just as things changed dramatically after the 19th century 
turned into the 20th century, and it became a different world, so, too, 
is our world changing. We must make sure that we have turned from the 
20th century into the 21st.
  The 20th century was dominated by the wars and by the defeat of the 
Soviet Union. Yet we are plagued with conflicts and upheavals that can 
be traced back to border and sovereign decisions made long ago by 
people who are now dead, not only from the 20th century, but, as I 
said, from the end of World War I.
  Many of the confrontations between various nationalities that we face 
today could be solved and the greatest threats of violence, 
insurrection, and war itself could be defused if our world would again 
recognize the right of self-determination.
  It seems to have been forgotten that the United States was not only 
founded on the principles of liberty and independence, but also of the 
right of people to demand their rights, and, yes, that right of 
independence. They had a right to declare their independence.
  This was the revolutionary idea that people have a right to select 
their government. This was the revolutionary idea that gave our 
Founding Fathers and Mothers the moral high ground to free themselves 
from the British Empire. Without this, they probably would not have 
won, if it were just a battle between powermongers.
  No. This was what the fundamental beliefs were: life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness, but also the right of people to declare 
themselves free and independent to create a country based on shared 
beliefs and shared ideals and values.
  This is what we hope--those shared values and beliefs in liberty and 
justice--are the things that unite us today. That is what united had 
our Founding Fathers and Mothers and that is what made us a nation. 
After all, we don't have one race or one religion or one ethnic group 
to identify us as being Americans and create that unity.
  But that said, there are many other countries of the world whose 
nationalism and patriotism are based on the fact that they have an 
identity with other people that share their cultural and racial 
identities. This is what unites them as a people. They are ethnically 
the same, they are culturally the same, and they have the same type of 
national and racial roots in their past.
  Yes, this is what most countries are like. That is what defines a 
nationality. Recognizing that people of similar values and culture do 
not want to live in the subjugation of others has been ignored and/or 
rejected by the powers that be throughout the world.
  So we live in a world where this idea of just recognizing that people 
want to be like people with similar people. For example, you have 
differences between Catholics and Protestants in many areas of the 
world.
  Yes, they like to have people who maybe speak their same language and 
have the same culture, enjoy the same music. There is nothing wrong 
with people identifying others as being part of their national family. 
We should promote that as a positive, rather than as a negative. We 
should encourage people to work together.
  There are many, for example, Jewish charities, which is wonderful 
that Jewish people now, because they have gone through a certain amount 
of oppression throughout the world, take care of each other in Jewish 
charities. We have that. We have Catholic schools and different things.
  Yes, it is meant because people do share certain values that they can 
work together on. That is a good thing. However, the idea that people 
like that might want to be in their own country, which is what our 
Founding Fathers said, because it was only shared values, it wasn't 
specific that we wanted freedom of religion for all people.
  Well, today the world is threatened by people who want to be 
independent of domination of others who don't share their same values 
and their nationality. The reason why it is being rejected is basically 
by the power brokers throughout the world because it threatens those in 
power with losing authority over people who don't want to live under 
their domination.
  That is what self-determination is all about: letting people decide 
their own fate. If a majority of people in an area want to be 
independent of a country, that is what they should be, according to our 
Declaration of Independence. And this is something that brings a more 
peaceful world, rather than trying to have subjugation of one people by 
another.
  There has been a major cause of conflict in the world today when 
people don't recognize that, yes, there are others who feel that they 
are being oppressed by being forced under the jurisdiction of a 
particular government. They would like to have their own independence.
  This, of course, has been especially true where people, since the end 
of the Cold War, have started looking at their own self-identification. 
When the right of self-determination is recognized, disputes are 
usually settled peacefully, as

[[Page 15894]]

happened when, for example, after the fall of communism, the Czechs and 
the Slovaks, who had one country before, under the Treaty of 
Versailles, Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic and the Slovak 
Republic. Well, that is fine. It is a good thing that they were able to 
separate. Now they can be friends.
  But when they were one country, if the Czechs and Slovaks felt like 
they were being oppressed, they weren't satisfied. It was a good thing 
to permit them right off the bat: If you don't want to be part of the 
country with us, yes, you can be a separate country. Otherwise, there 
would have been turmoil at one level or another.
  We also saw a peaceful solution in countries like Slovenia. 
Yugoslavia was breaking up, Tito was dead, the Cold War was over, and 
guess what. Slovenia and a bunch of other republics within Yugoslavia 
wanted to be independent, and they were able to do it.
  Well, perhaps they were able to do it because the Serbs had already 
launched attacks on the Croatians and the Kosovars and other people in 
Yugoslavia that now was splitting apart because these people wanted to 
be independent and free, but the Serbs attacked them.
  They didn't attack Slovenia, because I think by that time they 
realized that they could not succeed going to war with all of these 
various groups. Had the Kosovars and the Croatians been free to go and 
separate and become independent countries--as Croatia is today, and as 
the Kosovars would like to be, and as we are trying to help them to 
be--that would have been better for Serbia. It would have been better 
for everybody. There would have probably been by now an agreement for 
some kind of free trade zone.
  Instead, when the Serbs used force to keep those people under its 
jurisdiction, we had violence throughout the Balkans that has lasted 
for several decades. That is a tragedy. We should be working today in 
the Balkans.
  Let me just note that the Serbs today are an example of people who 
are reaching out, for example, to the Kosovars and others to try to 
find peaceful solutions and trying to come to some agreements that will 
make peace more likely.
  But, again, if you would have had people who were under their thumb, 
nobody would be talking to them because they would be afraid of them. 
No. People who treat other people as equals and have rights as people 
in the world, they are more likely to reach understandings that are of 
mutual cooperation that will bring peace to the world.
  I am not trying to say you have to submit yourself to some other 
group of people. The former Soviet Union, Ukraine, and other of the so-
called Soviet republics were actually permitted at the end of the Cold 
War to, basically, peacefully establish their own independence. I know 
it is not as simple as that, but it happened in a peaceful way in which 
thousands of lives were not lost trying to force groups of people who 
do not want to be under Moscow's control.
  Those people, whether Ukraine or elsewhere in the Baltics or the 
Balkans, had the right--and also in Central Asia--and people were 
permitted to have, basically, an independent government free from being 
only suppressed by Moscow and have to follow its orders.
  That happened relatively peacefully. Had that not happened, there 
probably would be conflict throughout that part of the world today. 
There certainly would have been, as communism faltered in Russia 
itself.
  So it took a lot of prodding for us to make sure that the Russians in 
the Soviet Union, in Moscow, understood that they could not keep people 
under their thumb. It was the Cold War.
  Thank God, we ended the Cold War peacefully, because that was the 
great gift that Ronald Reagan gave to us. I am very proud to have 
served with Ronald Reagan for 7 years in the White House as a senior 
speechwriter to the President for 7\1/2\ years, as well as being a 
Special Assistant to the President and very involved with his efforts 
to try to move peace in the world. A lot of it was peace by recognizing 
people's right to independence.
  Look back, for example--Ronald Reagan was an Irish American--at the 
needless violence that the British perpetrated and what happened in 
Ireland because the British insisted that the Irish be kept under 
British rule for so long, when it was clear that the Irish people 
wanted to be independent of Great Britain.
  Look at what happened, in contrast, in Singapore and Malaysia, where 
the British just peacefully permitted those countries that were 
basically under the domination--they were part of Great Britain and the 
British Empire--to leave and establish their independence peacefully. 
Then Malaysia and Singapore separated from Great Britain, and then 
separated from each other, peacefully.
  But in any one of these cases, if somebody demanded that these people 
stay in this particular status within this particular government, there 
would have been a lot more violence.
  When self-determination is respected, peace is more likely. When a 
people are subjugated to the orders of a government in a country they 
don't want to be part of, violence is more likely.
  How easy is that?
  Special interests and power elites throughout the world are not so 
inclined to this obvious reason.
  Why?
  Because it is not in their interest to let people just go when they 
have them right there under their control.
  So let's look at a few examples where self-determination has manifest 
itself in conflict.
  Today, one of the greatest conflict areas of the world is the Middle 
East. Again, many of the conflicts that we have seen, if not a 
majority, can be traced right back to the Treaty of Versailles, right 
back to World War I, and the decisions of colonialists and imperialists 
and royalists to draw borders in the Middle East, just as they did in 
Africa and elsewhere, which made no sense.
  Yes, we ended up separating whole nations. For example, one nation of 
people that we are aware of today are the Kurds. The Kurds were 
separated into various countries in the Treaty of Versailles by these 
British and French colonialists.
  And we are supposed to just abide by their decision of what the 
borders should be today, 100 years later?
  No, I don't think so.

                              {time}  1815

  The Kurds, of course, were not living just subjugating themselves to 
what they had been dictated. No, the Kurds have been our greatest ally 
in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism, and what they are doing 
today and what they just voted on recently was they had a vote to 
determine if their people wanted self-determination and wanted to be an 
independent country from Iraq.
  Yes, that was a good thing, and we should recognize that. They won 
overwhelmingly, and we should look at the map of--we should say a map 
of the Middle East needs to be changed so you can have a Kurdistan that 
flows all the way from Turkey and Iraq and Iran and Syria. There are 
more, for example, Kurds in Iran than there are in Iraq. In Turkey, 
there are more Kurds, and, of course, in Syria.
  This should be a modern country. Why are we letting this turmoil go 
on when our greatest allies are looking for their own self-
determination and these other countries are becoming or are already our 
enemies? Yes, it will behoove the United States to support the 
independence of Kurdistan and all the Kurds. We should support in 
bringing together these Kurdish people as a nation, because that is 
what they are. They are a nation without a state. Let them have their 
country.
  There has been so much bloodshed in trying to repress the Kurds from 
the Iranians, from the mullah regime, but also the Shah before him. The 
Kurds were oppressed by Saddam Hussein, and right now, what we have is 
a repression of people even in Iran where the mullah regime is 
oppressing not only the rest of its people, not only the other people 
who make up Iran, but the Kurds, in particular.
  Look at what is going on with the Baloch, for example. Now, a small

[[Page 15895]]

group--there are groups of people. There is an area in Iran where the 
vast majority of people are of the Baloch extraction. They would like 
their independence. They deserve their right to self-determination, and 
they are not suffering from the oppression of Iran.
  By the way, if we are going to try to deal with Iran, let's not 
ratchet up our military and threaten to attack them that way. Let's 
ratchet up our support for people like the Kurds and the Baloch and the 
Azaris and other people who live in Iran who don't like the oppression 
of the mullahs, and we can even be supportive of the Persian people who 
hate the mullah regime.
  These are not our enemies in Iran. It is the mullah regime, the 
fanatics that would drop a bomb on us and not even think twice because 
they think they are doing God's work. They are the enemy. So we need to 
be supporting, for example, the Baloch, when I talk about in Iran. The 
Baloch are also persecuted, mainly persecuted by the Pakistanis who 
have them under their thumb, and they murder people constantly. They 
pick these young people up and they murder them, and then they drop 
their bodies in little villages just to show people what is going to 
happen to them if they try to resist Pakistani authority.
  This is the history of Pakistan. Right now they are doing it to the 
Baloch, to the Sindhis, to the Singhs, you name it. You have got just a 
group of people--except for, of course, the Punjabis and then others, 
the Pashtuns who control that Government in Pakistan.
  Well, remember what happened before. We have seen it before. When the 
people of Bangladesh wanted to be a little independent of the Pakistani 
Government, have some way to, you know, control their own lives and 
control their own government, they were brutally repressed by the 
Pakistani Government, and that is what led to, basically, the uprising 
of the people in Bangladesh when they freed themselves.
  Remember, that same type of oppression is continuing not only on the 
Baloch, but, for example, the populations that came over from India, 
after India and Pakistan split. A lot of them went to Karachi. Those 
people in Karachi now, there are people who want to have Karachi--it is 
like a Singapore of that part of the world, an independent. That is 
what they want to do because they have a right of self-determination.
  They don't want to be subjugated by this corrupt, militaristic, 
proterrorist Government in Pakistan. We should be siding with people 
like that who want their independence and believe in these same values 
that we believe in.
  Another example of that, of course, is what we see in Spain today. 
Today, of course, now there are groups of people who live in Catalonia. 
Catalonia is a province with a long history in Spain. People identify 
themselves as Catalonians. Yes, Spanish, but also Catalonians. They 
should have a right to vote on whether or not they want to remain part 
of Spain, whether or not they give up their sovereignty to a central 
government in Madrid or do they want to have a government of Catalonia 
that they can have their own government, and yes, their own 
sovereignty.
  Well, the Spanish overreaction to the efforts of the Catalonians just 
to have a poll--basically it was a vote on independence, but it was--
you know, basically it had to be recognized for it to have effect. But 
instead of letting them do this and just saying, ``Well, it has no 
legal effect,'' instead, the Spanish Government came down with brute 
force and conducted violence, as you would think violence coming from 
terrorists would exert on a group of people in Spain. It was their own 
government that was exercising violence and force and intimidation 
against the people of Catalonia.
  Now, of course, the people of Catalonia are united because they know 
the brutality and subjugation of what is going on with Madrid.
  Now, the British knew how to do it. Unlike Madrid and Spain, the 
British permitted their people in Scotland to have a vote, and that was 
a wonderful thing. The Scots had their vote, there was no interference, 
and if they didn't want to be part of Great Britain, they didn't have 
to be, and that was a wonderful example to the world of how you should 
do this.
  Now, the Scots decided to stay part of England, part of Great 
Britain. That is fine, but they had their chance. The people in Spain 
weren't given that chance. No, instead their government came down and 
beat them up when they tried to go to the polls. And let's say also, 
the British seemed also to be demonstrating, they believe, in self-
determination.
  They are exiting--they are taking the Brexit issue of whether or not 
you should have Britain as part of the EU and the common market. That 
vote that they allowed their people to decide, it wasn't decided by an 
elite. The Brexit vote let all the people of Britain decide whether or 
not they were going to be basically part of a subjugated people in 
Europe or whether they were going to be an independent force and a 
nation, which is their history as a people of Great Britain.
  I am proud that they permitted Scotland to vote, and I am also proud 
that they voted not to subjugate themselves to the EU and to the common 
market, et cetera.
  We need to make sure that we stay true to our principles and have a 
vision about what this world will be. If you are just looking at things 
of what we can do every day, Ronald Reagan succeeded because he had a 
vision of a peaceful world based on those individual rights and those 
concepts of freedom and democracy that were at the heart of the 
American experience, but also an America that encompassed people from 
all over the world.
  Reagan had a vision, and it wasn't to get into a war with the Soviet 
Union and destroy communism. Reagan's vision was let's have--yes, we 
have to have strength in our military in order to defeat this enemy of 
Soviet communism, because it was threatening the world peace. It was 
taking over countries and overthrowing governments and replacing them 
with atheist dictatorships. Reagan knew we had to stop that.
  Just like today, our primary enemy today is no longer the Soviet 
Union because Reagan helped eliminate the Soviet Union, the communist 
threat. The threat today is radical Islamic terrorists who will murder 
our people and are murdering people all over the world and murdering 
people in their own countries in order to terrorize them into 
submission.
  Well, the bottom line is, Ronald Reagan's vision succeeded with 
Russia because, at that time, it was the Soviet Union, and now we have 
a Russia that we have so much more potential.
  Now, there are a lot of flaws. There are a lot of flaws in the 
Russian Government, and there are things that we have to make sure that 
we are taking care of and standing firm on, but, by and large, we have 
to understand that they, today, are being attacked and murdered by 
radical Islamic terrorists as well. They know that, and they know the 
dangers that we face because they face a common danger.
  We need to work to build a new alliance because what is happening is, 
Islam is making such inroads into the stupidity of our western European 
allies that the western Europe that we know--here again, time is going 
on, 19th century into the 20th century. Now we are in the 21st century. 
The 21st century will see that Europe becomes a whole different place 
than what it has been for the last 150 or 200 years.
  There will be Islamic countries in Europe, and they will be, then, 
either part of or they will not fight against a radical Islamic 
terrorist threat that today threatens the peace of the world just as 
the Soviet Union did that 10 years, or I should say, 10 decades ago.
  So with that, we need a vision, and one vision that we should have 
is, number one, a vision of self-determination that we all agree on.
  Number two, let's make sure that we ally ourselves in a positive way 
with people who are not going to be weakened by the onslaught of Islam. 
I would suggest that America will be a more peaceful place and our 
country will be more secure and the world will be more

[[Page 15896]]

peaceful and secure if we establish a new relationship in which we are 
watching out for each other with four countries. The United States, of 
course; the other one is India, and I will soon be going to India. In 
fact, I will be going to India tomorrow. And number three, Japan; and 
number four, Russia.
  Now, there is some work that needs to be done to make a coalition 
like that real, but a coalition of those countries working together, 
not mandated that we have to do this and we have to subjugate ourselves 
to decisions of what the four say, but, instead, seeking out 
cooperation with those countries where there is mutual benefit to do, 
we can make this a better world. We can secure our prosperity and 
secure the peace of our own country and the security of our own 
country.
  So with a vision and with a recognition of fundamental things like 
the right of self-determination and the right of life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness that our Founding Fathers talked about, and 
limited government where they said government only derives its just 
powers from the consent of the governed, let us champion these values 
and these ideals.
  Let us have a vision for the future, as Ronald Reagan did, and we can 
make this a more peaceful world as we side with people all over the 
world who want to control their own destiny by having their own nation 
rather than being subjected to someone else.
  Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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