Biden Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I come to the floor to discuss the differences between Democrat foreign policy and Republican foreign policy.

There seems to be a pattern where if a Republican President is elected, partisan pundits warn that it will be very bad for our international relations. Now, by contrast, when a Democrat President takes over from a Republican, the same partisan pundits often promise smooth overall international relations. These same left-leaning pundits then breathe a sigh of relief that our alliances will be shored up and everything will be miraculously harmonious, but if you look at the record, it often doesn't work out that way.

President Carter presided over a string of foreign policy disasters, leaving the United States looking weak and humiliated.

Ronald Reagan was portrayed as a dangerous cowboy who might start a nuclear war. On the contrary, Reagan's calculated efforts to push back against Soviet communism resulted in fewer nuclear arms and freed millions of people from repressive regimes.

In 2009, the new Vice President, Joe Biden, went to Munich to deliver the Obama administration's first major foreign policy address. That address was hailed by some in the media as announcing a more cooperative approach with European countries.

Biden's promise to defer more to other countries rather than setting the agenda was a foreshadowing of President Obama's infamous ``leading from behind'' policy, which turned out to be a disastrous policy.

Biden also said:

It's time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.

Then look at what Russia did after that comment. This comment was 6 months after Russia had invaded and occupied territory of the Republic of Georgia, which, if you remember, had sent significant forces to fight alongside the American military in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now, can you believe that in a unilateral effort to show good-- meaning good will--towards Russia, the Obama-Biden reset included abruptly scrapping planned missile defense cooperation with the Czech and Polish allies of America.

To add insult to injury, the Obama administration made the announcement about abandoning our missile defense cooperation with the Czech Republic and Poland on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland--not an ideal time to make that announcement--and, of course, that announcement turned out to be a grave error. Not only did it offend some of our most pro-American allies, but it also sent the very exact wrong message to dictator Vladimir Putin.

Putin's Russia, like the old Soviet Union before, only understands strength. They respect even enemies that have strength. They are not going to take advantage of somebody that shows strength. Unilateral concessions are perceived by Putin as weakness and actually encourage further aggression, just like we saw against Ukraine in 2014.

The Obama response to the 2014 invasion of Ukraine was, again, dangerously weak. Sending such a signal to Putin is the wrong thing to do. This signal amounted to wagging its proverbial finger at Russia while denying Ukraine the defensive weapons needed to repel the Russian invasion.

So what did Obama do? His policy was to send helmets and blankets and then push for negotiations--another show of weakness--doing all this while leaving Ukraine helpless, with a gun to its head.

Obviously, negotiations under such circumstances effectively meant Russia keeping what it gained by force and freezing the conflict until Russia could take more land.

Is there any wonder, then, that Putin felt he could get away with taking the rest of Ukraine in February of 2022? Do you know what he was getting away with at the same time? Killing women, children, grandmothers, grandads, really kidnapping maybe 20,000 children, taking them to Russia.

President Obama's pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran at all costs alienated our closest ally in the Middle East. That close ally we all know is Israel. But the Iran agreement also alarmed Saudi Arabia, which has been a longtime strategic partner of the United States.

Then you will remember the drawing of the infamous redline in Syria at the time Syria was going to gas people to death and this infamous redline, before immediately abandoning it, as Obama did, sending a very dangerous signal about America's weakness to the axis of Iran, Russia, and China, now very much cooperating as an axis like Germany, Italy, and Japan did before World War II and during World War II.

Now, all of this about the redline no doubt played into Vladimir Putin's calculations when he chose to invade Ukraine for the first time a few months later.

So far, I have just talked about Democrat administrations. I want to talk about Republican.

When Trump was elected, he scrapped the nuclear deal. This repaired the trust with our gulf partners, and not only repairing trust but leading and setting the stage for the Abraham Accords, which accords were cooperation that nobody thought could ever happen between Israel and Arab Nations because previous administrations said: We can't expect any sort of close working relationships between Israel and Arab countries if we don't have a Palestinian State. But President Trump didn't wait for a Palestinian State. Yet he had success bringing Israel into economic relationships with a lot of Gulf partners.

This major diplomatic breakthrough went way beyond the long-sought recognition of Israel by Arab and Muslim countries; it also opened the door to economic and people-to-people ties that have the potential to foster a new era of mutual understanding and peace in the Middle East.

President Obama was also overly cautious in dealing with China's aggression in the South China Sea and too overly deferential to China's imperialistic sensitivities toward Taiwan.

Now, do you remember that in 1979, the Taiwan Relations Act passed, and it mandated strong, if unofficial, economic and military ties, including military sales. This has been the basis of U.S. policy with Taiwan for decades.

The more you slow-walk military sales to Taiwan out of deference to China's feelings, the more China feels really empowered to dictate aspects of our bilateral relationships with Taiwan.

President Trump abandoned this weak and this dangerous Obama policy of appeasement.

President Trump imposed sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, which Russia was clearly pursuing to give Russia geopolitical leverage over Europe and Ukraine because supplying energy to other countries brings that leverage.

The Trump administration armed and trained the Ukrainian military and cooperated closely with our frontline allies like the Baltic nations and Poland.

The Trump administration stopped being deferential towards China. Arm sales to Taiwan became a regular occurrence, and U.S. Government officials got the blessing to interact with their Taiwanese counterparts. Can you imagine China feeling it has a right to tell Senators and people in the administration or U.S. House of Representatives Members: You can't go to Taiwan.

Now, this message that Trump sent--China got that message that it couldn't get away with breaking trade rules and pushing around our allies and partners in the region.

Most recently, President Biden's insistence on returning to failed Obama-era policies has resulted in foreign policy setbacks. The cascade of countries joining the Abraham Accords would likely have continued, to include even Saudi Arabia, but the Biden administration's repeated efforts to resurrect the defunct Iran nuclear deal once again damaged the trust of our regional allies and our partners--at the same time, empowering Iran.

President Biden promised to repair relations with our European allies. What he meant became clear when he dropped sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. This was a sign of deference towards Germany at the expense of our Eastern European allies. Germany is indeed a close ally in Europe, but Germany is not all of Europe.

Also, while it is known that there was a personality conflict between President Trump and former Chancellor Merkel of Germany, our alliance with Germany is deep enough to survive both personality conflicts and differences over Nord Stream 2.

In hindsight, everyone, even including the Germans, can see the folly in giving Vladimir Putin the ability to turn the heat on and the lights off throughout all of Europe. And he would be glad to have that power. This gesture of good will towards Germany was certainly not worth bolstering Putin and upsetting several Central and Eastern European allies, who saw clearly what was at stake if you gave Putin that power.

Let's face it: Trump does ruffle feathers. But his policies-- including pushing delinquent NATO members to spend the agreed amount on defense that they are obligated to spend on NATO security--these countries were better for it, and European security was better for it than the Obama and Biden policies that simply sought applause from certain European leaders.

There are those strongly backing Trump and then, as we know, those strongly opposed to Trump--both claiming, though, to know what he would do in a second term. I do not have much time for pontificating and political prognosticating based upon speculation. I prefer to look at the record, and I hope I have reminded people of that record.

We should demand a foreign policy based on American strength. Sometimes we talk about peace through strength, or sometimes we forget to remind people that a strong American military is the best tool to bring about world peace. So we should demand a foreign policy based upon that strength.

And we should also be on guard to not accept a failure of American leadership spun as a more collaborative approach with our allies. Our allies who are closest to the threats from Russia and China really want strong American leadership and need us to push our more reluctant allies to do what it takes to defend the free world.

That is what we saw in the first Trump administration, and it is the kind of leadership we badly, badly need right now.

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