S.J. RES. 54--MOTION TO DISCHARGE--Continued

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to share my deep concern over the Trump administration's approach to North Korea.

I thank the Senator from New Jersey, the leader of the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee, for asking the Members to come out here to speak to the Trump administration's foreign policy.

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. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has mismanaged our North Korea policy, and the potential consequences of failure are too great to ignore. North Korea may have bent over backward to appear conciliatory during the Winter Olympics and through its offers of talks with South Korea and the United States, but Kim Jong Un has not stopped his dangerous activities--far from it. While the North Korean regime is all smiles and open arms, its malign behavior continues.

Its engineers race to perfect a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile. North Korean laborers around the world--modern-day indentured servants--send paychecks home to the regime to help fund its illicit military programs. Illegal ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum products continue. North Korea's army of cyber warriors grows more capable, and the Kim regime's thugs make no efforts to scale back rampant human rights abuses.

However, President Trump's approach to date threatens to make an already bad situation even worse. Despite his recent announcement that he would accept a meeting with Kim Jong Un, President Trump has systematically undermined the effectiveness of the very agency--the U.S. Department of State--he will need to make talks successful. By so doing, he has harmed U.S. foreign policy right as the United States is poised to embark on a crucial diplomatic effort with North Korea.

By firing Rex Tillerson, President Trump threw the State Department further into chaos when what we need right now is more consistency. This is indicative of a President who considers himself to be his own diplomat, negotiator, and strategist. Yet the gutting of the State Department goes much deeper. It has been badly depleted of both staff and resources by the Trump administration and is consistently ignored in the opaque process the White House is using to try to conduct American foreign policy.

President Trump has stifled dissent, ignored experience, politicized key diplomatic and national security agencies. The Special Representative for North Korea Policy, Ambassador Joseph Yun--the lead American negotiator with North Korea--has stepped down. One wonders whether he felt his advice was being heeded. 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 no longer have a sanctions coordinator.

Going into talks at the senior-most level with a hollowed-out State Department is no way to peacefully resolve a crisis. To the contrary, it exposes us to greater risk, and as if these vacancies were not enough, it gets worse.

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

We deserve an answer as to why the administration believes the State Department deserves fewer resources while trying to execute a wide- ranging strategy of diplomatic engagement and pressure. All the while, the White House is subjecting our allies and partners to contradictory statements that cause confusion and dampen the prospects of a peaceful solution.

We hear different thoughts on different days. Before firing him, President Trump routinely undercut Secretary 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 cannot afford to fail. I am concerned that if these talks do not go well, President Trump will be able to claim he tried both economic pressure and diplomacy, with neither path having solved the problem. He will be left with the conclusion that the only approach remaining will be military force. We must be clear. There is no military solution to the North Korea crisis.

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Although the current situation we face with North Korea is not identical to the one we faced in the runup to the Iraq war in 2003, the North Korea situation is, in fact, worse, and the consequences are even more severe. Unlike Iraq, North Korea has nearly completed the development of long-range nuclear-armed missiles that will be capable of creating nuclear mushroom clouds in our cities.

We all agree we need to act to ensure that this never happens. The only responsible course of action is for the administration to use all tools of American statecraft to reduce the threats from North Korea. We have an obligation to American families, servicemembers, and our allies to say, unequivocally, that we did everything in our power without resorting to armed conflict.

Let's return the United States of America to the forefront of statecraft and allow for our diplomats to advance our interests without having to risk a frivolous loss of life. That is what is at stake as the President moves further away from using the kinds of tools which are available that can try to peacefully resolve this conflict with North Korea.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source