Nominations
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. 643, Laura S. H. Holgate, to be Representative of the United States of America to the International Atomic Energy Agency, with the rank of Ambassador; that the nomination be confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nomination; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
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Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, I appreciate the concerns that my friend from Florida has raised. However, I am just struggling to see how the safety and security of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors, in the midst of the largest reoccurrence of warfare on the European Continent since World War II, has any relationship to the issue which he raised.
Russia is blocking International Atomic Energy Agency access into Ukraine. The proper response by the Senate--by the Senator from Florida--is not to block our Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency at a time when Putin, at a time when Lavrov, are talking about nuclear weapons.
We need a representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. That is what the Senator from Florida is blocking right now on the floor--just did it.
All across our country Americans are right now wondering, is a nuclear war once again possible? What if the Russians launch a tactical nuclear weapon into Ukraine against a nonarticle 5 country; what is our response?
They are wondering, does the IAEA have access to the 15 Ukrainian nuclear powerplants that the Russians, with military force, are taking over?
What are the protections that are going to be put in place in order to ensure that we, in fact, have done everything that we can do to avoid a nuclear accident, either a nuclear weapon or a nuclear powerplant accident?
That is where we are right now, and what I hear from the Senator from Florida is a disposition on a subject completely unrelated to those issues, as Americans are all tuned in on a daily basis in a way that they have not since 1962 to the very real potential that there could be a nuclear exchange--nuclear weapons exchange--between Russia and the West.
So, from my perspective, this is a historic moment that we have to come together in a bipartisan way to provide a response--a response to Russia, a response to their allies--that we are deadly serious. Instead, what the Senator from Florida has done is to arrive to object to the confirmation of Laura Holgate so that she can be there.
She is fully qualified. She is an all-star in her knowledge of all of these issues, but she won't be on duty. She won't be there with our allies, with the technical experts on all nuclear issues, because of this objection which we just heard.
From my perspective, we are at a pretty big turning point here. We need to be talking to everyone. We are either going to know each other or we are going to exterminate each other. That is the point in time at which we are at. We are either going to talk to each other or we could potentially slip into an accidental nuclear catastrophe that historians and future generations of young people will look back and say: How did that happen?
Well, one of the reasons why it can happen is we can't even get an American to be confirmed by the Senate at this time of great crisis because of an objection from the Republican Party. I mean, partisanship should stop at the water's edge, but when you are talking about nuclear weapons, there shouldn't even be a discussion about it. We should just let this highly qualified woman get on the job to use her expertise in defense of our country and in defense of everyone on the planet because this could quickly--quickly--trigger accidents that escalate, and then the unimaginable could happen.
So that is where we are right now. We need an ambassador to draw attention to the danger of Russian forces, especially holding Ukraine's nuclear operations at gunpoint. We need an ambassador to demand that Russia accept the IAEA's offer to establish a presence in Ukraine to ensure the continued safe operation of Ukraine's nuclear facilities.
Russia knows from the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the worst in history, that deadly radioactive fallout does not respect borders.
And we need an ambassador at the IAEA to perform a wide array of duties outside of the Ukraine crisis, from keeping nonnuclear weapon countries nonnuclear and making sure that this doesn't trigger attempts by other countries to gain access to nuclear materials and then nuclear weapons. And we have to make sure, ultimately, that we confirm Laura Holgate.
First, she served the same role in the Obama administration. She hits the ground running. She knows these issues. Second, she is a protege of Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar, and like that legendary bipartisan duo, she has devoted her career to dismantling weapons of mass destruction and materials that could be used by terrorists as dirty bombs.
So how is it that we still don't have an ambassador seated at the International Atomic Energy Agency's meetings on Ukraine, given this body unanimously confirmed Ambassador Holgate in December to be our representative to the other U.N. organizations based in Vienna?
That is a good question and it has no good answer and we did not hear that answer on floor of the U.S. Senate just 5 minutes ago, when the Senator from Florida objected. We didn't hear a word about their objections.
I will tell you what, they are creating very risky conditions for all Americans when they deny our country a seat at the table at the International Atomic Energy Agency at this time in history.
I was the same age as the pages on the floor today when the Cuban missile crisis cast a shadow over our Nation. I remember what that was like.
We are slipping day by day into a situation where we could be confronted with similar conditions, and the least that we should be able to say is we tried, we really tried, to avoid that nuclear catastrophe. And the minimum that we should do is have an ambassador who is at the table who is talking to all of our allies and the rest of the world about these issues right now.
Ukraine and the whole of Europe averted disaster when a Russian munition fell just short of Ukraine's nuclear reactors just a couple of weeks ago. We may not be so lucky the next time if Russian forces move on the country's other facilities with the same reckless abandon.
What possible benefit is derived from keeping our ambassadorial post at the IAEA unfilled at a time like this? We make nuclear safety and nuclear security a partisan issue at our own peril and at the peril of every family in our country as well as Europe.
It is just absolutely irresponsible, for unrelated reasons, to deny our country that kind of protection right now.
So we are going to keep coming back with this, and the reason we are is that we can see a continued escalation. We can see, in Putin's own words, reckless intent. And it is not for us to judge whether he is sincere or not in terms of his consideration of the use of nuclear weapons or his lack of full consideration of what the consequences are of having armed attacks on nuclear powerplant facilities all over Ukraine.
We can't get inside of his brain, but the least we can do is have someone go to the table from America, someone who has dedicated her life--Ambassador Holgate--to this work.
That is what happened here on the floor right now. It was a partisan politicization of nuclear proliferation, of nuclear safety, at a time where we are seeing a peril that we have not seen in 50 years in the United States or the planet.
All I can tell you is history will not come back and well receive the partisan objection for the completely unrelated reasons for not allowing us to have that kind of representation at the nuclear table at this particular point in time.
I intend to return on this subject, as many times as it takes, so that we can have someone who is there protecting every family in our country.
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