Military Construction, The Department of Veteran Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016 -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, 3 years ago when President Obama's opponent said that Russia was our chief geopolitical rival, President Obama chuckled and said: ``The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back.''

Well, now the 1930s are calling President Obama, and they want their foreign policy back. Yesterday was the anniversary of Munich. How fitting that Russia conducted its first major military operations outside of its near abroad since the end of the Cold War on that anniversary in Syria yesterday, because the President's foreign policy has invited exactly this kind of provocation all around the world. President Obama and Secretary Kerry keep saying that they don't know what Russian intentions are, that they don't know Russia's goals are in the region.

It is very simple. So let me lay it out clearly. Russia is an enemy. Vladimir Putin is a KGB spy who views the world as a zero-sum game. In the short term, he intends to prop up his tyrannical ally Bashar al-Assad, and he wants to preserve access to his expeditionary military bases outside of his country.

In the medium term, he wants to either preserve Assad or he wants to replace him with a like-minded ally. He wants to diminish the power and prestige of the United States in the region. He wants to establish Russia as the main Middle East power broker, and he wants to divert attention from his continued occupation of Ukraine.

In the long term, he sees an opportunity to divide EU and divide NATO at lower risk than it would take to conduct military operations such as Estonia or Latvia. If Europeans are going to be divided because of a refugee crisis of a few hundred thousand, imagine what could happen when Vladimir Putin turns up the heat in Syria and drives hundreds of thousands or more of those refugees into Europe.

How has this come to pass? Why would he think he could get away with all of this? Because of the unending series of concessions and appeasement of Barack Obama toward Vladimir Putin. Before he was even elected to office in 2008, when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, Barack Obama--then a candidate--called for Georgia to exercise restraint while they were under an invasion.

Just a couple of months later, he called for a reset in relations while there were still Russian troops on Georgian soil. A few months after that, he withdrew missile defense systems from the Czech Republic and Poland--on the 70th anniversary of Russia's invasion of Poland--without so much as a heads-up and without getting anything in return.

He entered into the New START treaty, which allows Russia to continue to grow their nuclear forces or requires the United States to reduce ours. In a ``hot mic'' moment, he was caught with Dmitry Medvedev, promising more flexibility toward Russia after the election of 2012. He fought tooth and nail against the Magnitsky human rights act, only accepting it once he realized it had overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. He continues to look the other way as Russia violates the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. He jumped at the opportunity that Vladimir Putin provided him in 2013 to avoid carrying out his airstrikes in Syria and to enforce his own red line.

Just as in Georgia, when Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea, he demanded restraint from the government of Ukraine. When Vladimir Putin began to conduct operations in eastern Ukraine, he looked the other way, he imposed weak sanctions. To this day, he refuses to arm them in the ways they are desperately calling for.

So what should we do now? Again, I think it is very simple. Let me lay it out. We should make it clear that Vladimir Putin and Russia will not be a power in the Middle East. We should pressure our partners to do the same thing. We should establish no-fly zones in Syria and make it clear that any aircraft that enters those zones will be shot down. We should make it clear that we will fly where we want and when we want, that any aircraft in Syria--or, for that matter, in the vicinity of a NATO country--that turns on the transponder will be shot down as a menace to civil aviation and to our allies. We should ramp up our airstrikes in Syria against our enemies such as the Islamic State. We should threaten Iran with termination of the nuclear deal because they are continuing to provide support for Bashar al-Assad. We should make it clear that Israel retains the right to interdict missile shipments from Iran through Syria to the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Let's not forget about Ukraine and Europe. We should arm Ukranian forces. We should give them the intelligence they need on Russian forces and rebels who are amassing on their border. We should enhance sanctions by expanding them across all sectors. We should move troops to base them--at least temporarily, if not permanently--on our eastern NATO flank in places such as Estonia and Latvia.

Some say these responses will be provocative, but where will Putin's provocations end? What is really provocative is American weakness.

Putin is humiliating the United States. If we don't draw a line now and enforce it, it will not be a choice between humiliation or war; it will be a choice between humiliation and war.

I yield the floor.

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