Motion to Discharge--S.J. Res. 39

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, today the Senate will consider a motion to discharge a resolution of disproval from the Foreign Relations Committee. I oppose that motion because I believe it would harm our Nation's long-term strategic interests in the Persian Gulf and in the broader Middle East.

It would further damage our alliance and our partnership with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at a time when our moderate Sunni Arab allies are questioning whether our Nation is able to meet our traditional commitment to the region. The resolution would also ignore the shared interests we have with Saudi Arabia in combating Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Were this resolution of disapproval ever to be adopted, it would further convince the world that the United States is retreating, not only from its commitments but also as the guarantor of the international order we worked to create after the Second World War.

I will move to table this motion and encourage all of my colleagues to support the motion. We are nearing the end of the Obama administration. The next President will have a stark choice upon assuming office--whether to continue the drawdown of America's conventional military power across the globe or to restore our warfighting capabilities to both renew our alliances and restore America to its position as the guarantor of the international security order.

After nearly 8 years, the President's approach to foreign policy has become all too clear--to end the war on terror, to draw down our conventional forces and capabilities, and to deploy special operations forces in economy-of-force train-and-assist missions across the globe.

The essence of this foreign policy was captured in his speech at West Point in May of 2014. In that speech, the President described a network of partnerships from South Asia to the Sahel, to be funded by a $5 billion counterterror partnership fund for which Congress has yet to receive a viable plan. In those cases where indigenous forces prove insufficient and a need for direct action arises, the President announced his intention to resort to the use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles for strikes, as has been done in Yemen and Somalia.

So by deploying special operations forces for train-and-equip missions, the President hoped to manage the diffuse threat posed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Boko Haram, terrorist networks inside of Libya that now threaten Egypt, the al-Nusra Front, the Taliban, ISIL, and other terrorist groups.

The concept of operations allowed the President to continue the force structure cuts to the conventional forces and sought to manage the threat from global terrorism. He envisioned no need to reverse the harmful damage of defense sequestration, to rebuild our conventional and nuclear forces, or to accept that leaving behind residual forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was a means by which this Nation preserves the strategic gains that we have made through sacrifice.

The threat of some of these Al Qaeda affiliates, associated groups, or independent terrorist organizations has outpaced the President's economy-of-force concept. In some cases, the host nation's military which we had trained and equipped had proven inadequate to defeat the insurgency in question, as was the case with AQAP, the Taliban, or ISIL.

The Obama administration never answered the question: What was to be done when the host nation's force we trained for counterterrorism was incapable of counterinsurgency--Iraq, Libya, Yemen? The efforts of the Department of Defense to train a moderate Syrian opposition never provided sufficient reasons for the President to rethink the basic strategy.

The President's concept of operations countenanced a persistent, enduring terrorist threat from AQAP, the Taliban, and other groups in those countries where insufficient ground combat power could be generated by the force that we trained.

In Riyadh, our traditional longstanding ally Saudi Arabia warned of Iran's efforts to arm and support Shia proxies in Syria, in Yemen, and in Lebanon and to foment unrest across the region, all of which was lost on the White House.

Instead, they were called ``free riders,'' and Saudi Arabia's concerns with what a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo, instability in Libya, and the slaughter of Sunnis within Syria would mean for the region were completely ignored. The Obama administration has sounded an uncertain trumpet, but the words that resounded in Saudi Arabia and across the region were the commitment to our allies--that in negotiating with Iran to end its nuclear weapons program, no deal is better than a bad deal.

Well, this proved not to be true. The administration accepted the bad deal, and in its negotiation with Iran, the administration made concession after concession after concession: allowing Iran to retain a nuclear enrichment program, allowing for the retention of working centrifuges and a research and development program, providing financial relief and support, and lending legitimacy to the world's chief state sponsor of terror.

Under any net assessment, Iran has emerged from the nuclear deal with the Obama administration stronger--stronger than before the deal. The funds derived from the lifting of sanctions enable Iran to invest in proxy forces and conventional capabilities, such as advanced air defense systems, and to threaten Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Even more consequential is the fact that the Obama administration's single-minded pursuit of achieving and preserving the deal has held the other elements of our foreign policy toward Iran hostage. Iran is free to harass American vessels within the Persian Gulf, to test ballistic missiles, and to fund proxy forces.

After agreeing to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the President gathered the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council at Camp David. At that meeting, our President made commitments to those allies that we would help them in building their respective defense capabilities.

A vote in support of this resolution today undermines that commitment made by the President to help the Saudis. Our allies in the region, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, came to understand that after the fall of the Mubarak government, the decapitation of the government in Libya, and civil war in Syria, they must act in pursuit of their own sovereign interests, whether the United States would lead or not.

The specific foreign military sale in question here is for Abrams tank structures to Saudi Arabia. We have been selling ground combat equipment to Saudi Arabia for decades--for decades. There is no evidence--none--that the Saudis have used the Abrams tanks in ground combat within Yemen. These systems have been used along the Saudi Arabia border to defend against Houthi incursions.

The United States is actively working to improve Saudi targeting capability and to deliver humanitarian relief to the people of Yemen. So let us also remember that denying the sale of Abrams tank structures will simply lead some of our allies to pursue weapons systems from other countries.

Let me say that again. The Saudis don't have to buy this equipment from us. They can buy it from somebody else. So this motion comes at a singularly unfortunate time and would serve to convince Saudi Arabia and all other observers that the United States does not live up to its commitments.

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