Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to share my deep concern over what appears to be the Trump administration's intention to go to war with North Korea.

North Korea may have bent over backward to appear conciliatory during the recently concluded Winter Olympics in South Korea, but the Kim Jong Un regime has not stopped its dangerous activities--far from it. North Korea is a serious and ever-worsening threat to its people, to our allies and partners in the region, and to the United States, but the responsible course of action is to use all tools of American statecraft to reduce those threats.

We have an obligation to American families, servicemembers, and our allies to say, unequivocally, that we did everything in our power to curb North Korea's dangerous behavior without resorting to armed conflict. Instead, I fear that the Trump administration is beating the drums of war.

While the North Korean regime was all smiles during the Olympics, its malign behavior continued. Engineers race to perfect a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile. North Korean laborers around the world--modern-day indentured servants--sent paychecks home to the regime, helping fund its illicit military programs. Illegal ship-to- ship transfers of refined petroleum products continued. North Korea's army of cyber warriors grew ever more capable. North Korean military officers reportedly continued to assist and empower Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons program in Syria, and the Kim regime's thugs made no efforts to scale back rampant human rights abuses.

Many smiled as the North Korean regime won a gold medal in propaganda at the Olympics. All the while, it got ever closer to its ultimate goal of perfecting a nuclear weapon that could reach the United States of America. We missed an opportunity to engage in talks with North Korea, and we did that at our own peril.

While we must continue to ratchet up pressure on North Korea, other elements of President Trump's approach threaten to make an already bad situation even worse.

First, we are all too familiar with the President's reckless rhetoric. Promising ``fire and fury'' does not minimize tensions. Threatening to ``totally destroy'' North Korea only increases the chance of deadly miscalculation. Boasting about the size of a nuclear button only makes the United States less safe. How does Donald Trump think Kim Jong Un would react if he believed his rule were under immediate threat? Would Kim restrain himself?

Second, contradictory statements from the Trump administration cause confusion that dampens the prospect of a peaceful solution. Is the Trump administration open to talks with North Korea? We certainly should be. If we are, what are the preconditions, and should we even have any? We hear different thoughts on different days. President Trump routinely undercuts his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and with it, our diplomatic high ground. Confusing our allies in South Korea and Japan, whose assistance in helping resolve the North Korean crisis is indispensable, only serves to embolden Kim Jong Un, who seeks to drive a wedge between the United States and our allies. We saw this during the Olympics, and we cannot allow that effort to ever take hold.

Third, the Trump administration's recently released budget request for fiscal year 2019 would drastically cut State Department funding. Yet there is no explanation as to why the President believes that it is prudent to cut diplomatic resources, especially in the middle of a crisis. The State Department is already alarmingly understaffed to handle the significant and increasingly more potent threats from North Korea.

Just this week, we found out that the Special Representative for North Korea Policy, Ambassador Joseph Yun--the lead American negotiator with North Korea--is stepping down tomorrow. He is one of the key players in any strategy with Pyongyang. But wait--there is more. We still don't have a U.S. Ambassador to South Korea more than a year into the Trump administration. We still don't have a confirmed Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. We still don't have a special envoy for North Korean human rights issues. We still don't have a sanctions coordinator. It seems the only thing this administration has to show for its concern about North Korea is Donald Trump's Twitter account.

I sent a letter to Secretary Tillerson asking him to explain how the State Department is sufficiently staffed to execute a wide-ranging strategy of diplomatic engagement and pressure, but as I wait for his response, the talk of conflict persists and the drum beat of war grows louder.

Sadly, we have heard this before. In less than 3 weeks, we will mark the 15th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. To be clear, the current situation we face with North Korea is not the same as the one we faced in the runup to the Iraq war in 2003, but, as Mark Twain once said, while history does not repeat itself, it does tend to rhyme. We should recognize the similarities and learn the appropriate lessons regarding the use of military force.

Unlike Iraq, North Korea has nearly completed development of long- range missiles, which will be capable of creating nuclear mushroom clouds in our cities. We all agree that we need to act to ensure that this never happens, but nowhere is there a convincing argument for military strikes. There might be a military option for the North Korean nuclear threat, but there is no military solution.

According to July 2017 polls, 76 percent of Americans are worried that the United States will become engaged in a major war in the next 4 years, and 86 percent of Americans believe the military should only be used as a last resort. We should listen to the American people.

Congress must demand that the Trump administration exhaust all diplomatic and economic options in North Korea short of war. I am not the only one who thinks another Korean war would be horrific. Warnings about the consequences of conflict are coming from all corners, including from the senior-most national security and defense officials.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said that conflict on the North Korean Peninsula would be ``catastrophic.''

Former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry said that a U.S. strike ``could turn into a disastrous military operation'' and that ``a war in the Korean Peninsula that extends to Japan and that goes nuclear would be 10 times worse than the first Korean War.''

Victor Cha, who was to be nominated as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea before being removed from contention, stated that ``the answer is not, as some Trump administration officials have suggested, a preventive military strike.''

Reports suggest that John Bolton, whom President Trump may be considering to replace H.R. McMaster as National Security Advisor, apparently ``supports preventive war through a massive strike, if sanctions fail.'' He said that the United States would have to ``simultaneously destroy all known North Korean ballistic missile sites, submarine bases, and artillery, mortar, and missile installments along the North's border with South Korea.''

That doesn't include the sites we don't know about. In October, the Department of Defense stated that the ``only way to locate and destroy with complete certainty all components of North Korea's nuclear weapons program is through a ground invasion.''

Reports from a war game last week indicated that approximately 10,000 Americans could be wounded in combat in just the first few days of a new Korean war. Apparently GEN Mark Milley, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, stated that the ``brutality'' of conflict on the Korean Peninsula would ``be beyond the experience of any living soldier.''

Even before these comments, 74 percent of Americans were concerned about a ``full-scale war with North Korea.''

So we must ask some fundamental questions. On what criteria will the administration judge that all nonmilitary options have been exhausted? Who will be the arbiter of that decision? Will the administration fulfill its constitutional obligation and come to Congress to ask for support? How will the Members of Congress respond to such a request?

It is because of these questions that I am here today. It is why I introduced the No Unconstitutional Strike Against North Korea Act. This bill would prevent the Department of Defense and other Federal agencies from spending any money to carry out an attack, conventional or nuclear, on North Korea without congressional approval, because we must only use the U.S. military--the most powerful fighting force in the world--if it is absolutely necessary.

At the same time, I recognize that we must do more to stem the North Korea threat. That includes addressing actions by China, the primary enabler of three successful generations of North Korean dictators. We should seek China's partnership in this process, but we must not fear offending the Chinese Communist Party, nor fear China's reaction.

In the interest of our security and the interests of a peaceful resolution, we must, No. 1, cut off the flow of crude oil from China to North Korea--if we do not do this, then we are not going as far as we need to on a package of sanctions; No. 2, give the Kim regime a warning that we expect them to stop selling the slave labor of its people and, in fact, receiving the revenues from that slave labor in order to prop up their regime and to fund a ballistic missile and nuclear program; No. 3, eliminate North Korea's illicit drug trade; No. 4, halt the procurement of key rocket fuel chemicals; and No. 5, restrict its use of the internet to evade sanctions through theft of cryptocurrencies and the committing of other cyber crimes.

We must continue the pressure on North Korea, but it must be combined with simultaneous and direct engagement with North Korea. We have yet to use all of the sanctions that should be imposed upon the North Korean regime. We have a responsibility to ensure that we exhaust all sanctions, and that includes doing everything we can to shut down the flow of crude oil into North Korea, which props up the regime, props up the ballistic missile program, and props up their nuclear weapons program.

Talks with North Korea about these issues are not synonymous with concessions. Talks backed by targeted pressure and stronger alliances are the path pursued by countries that are strong, confident, and wise, while the drumbeat of war, on the other hand, is the sound of fear and insecurity.

We are talking today about sanctions on imported steel and aluminum that come into the United States of America, but we are looking at that as a trade issue. If we want to do something about trade that truly endangers our country, we should be looking at the trade between North Korea and China. We should be looking at the crude oil that continues to flow into North Korea. We should not be talking about a military option until we have exhausted our diplomatic and our economic opportunities to bring North Korea to the table.

Without China's agreement on this, we will reach a debate on this floor talking about war with North Korea, but it will not be a debate that took place with the United States--the Trump administration-- having exhausted all of the opportunities that a cutoff of crude oil would have and could have presented to bring North Korea to the table. It worked in 2006, it worked in 1994, and I expect, for the sake of the American people, that the President will try to make that work right now. He has not done that yet. This administration has not done that yet.

It is wrong to be hearing this talk about military possibilities and military options before we have exhausted the cutoff of oil, of slave labor, of drugs, of cryptocurrency. We have to do that first. We owe that to history so we are not judged to have rushed irrationally into a war with North Korea that could quickly spiral out of control.

Let's return to a United States of statecraft, allowing our diplomats to advance our interests using our economic tools, our economic strength, as a way of ensuring that we avoid a frivolous loss of life in our country and other countries because we did not pursue a course that would work.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

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