Speeches & Testimony

I join my colleagues in condemning what can only be seen as sheer desertion--yes, I used the word ``desertion''--of Ukraine by this President, and I deeply regret, at least to date, by my Republican colleagues in Congress.

The dictator of Russia, as has already been pointed out, has not seen a better day at least since the successful death of Alexei Navalny. Let's be clear. Putin is not the only dictator--and for the third time I use the word ``dictator''--who is dancing today.

Let's just take one example. For the dictators of Iran, this betrayal is a bright light in a dim room. They want nothing more than a stronger and resurgent and unchecked Russia because that brings them renewed hope to their singular focus of the destruction of Israel.

By the way, I say very directly to our friends of Israel, wherever they are--and many of them were in the Capital today--if they do not call out this abandonment of Ukraine now, they have learned nothing from 1939 Czechoslovakia.

There is one dictator in our world who is cheering the loudest of all, and that dictator is the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. This is the world he covets. This is the world that he has worked for. This is the world that turns the lock and opens the door on his ambitions. This is the world of a weakened, isolated America that nobody trusts. This is a world in which this country walks away from proven international rules-based orders that have kept the peace and stability for three generations now. This is a world he hopes for that has forgotten that true peace and prosperity are built on both strength and democratic values.

Yes, the desertion of Ukraine and its sheer ripple effects shows Xi that he finally has the willing partner he has sought, even more than Putin himself. He has a partner equally committed to an ad hoc transactional foreign policy where all that really matters is power, money, and leverage, that alliances, principles, and loyalty are disposable, as if that ever alone would buy lasting peace. There is no example in world history that it does.

Our President says: Don't worry. We have an ocean between us and Ukraine, so what is to worry about?

No doubt, in time, he will assert the same thing about my ocean, the Pacific Ocean, between us and the People's Republic of China. He will say that that ocean offers the same illusion of insulation from the world of reality.

Tell that to Japan or Taiwan or South Korea or the Philippines. Tell them that that ocean protects them. Tell that to the ASEAN countries, Australia and New Zealand, Singapore, India, the island nations of the Pacific. Tell that to the citizens of the American homeland in the Pacific: Hawaii, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.

Just try to tell the rest of our world and country that the outcome in Ukraine has nothing to do with the geopolitical challenge of our time, the threat of the Chinese Communist Party. Tell that to anybody, and you truly live in denial of the world today and the lessons of history.

The PRC knows history, and they already have an edition of the People's Daily, their leading newspaper, already printed up as a gift for the President's trip home when he surely visits shortly. The headline of People's Daily in Mandarin reads: Peace in Our time.

Those are the unavoidable broader stakes of betraying Ukraine today. 

I know my Republican colleagues know this. I know this because I have heard them say it repeatedly over 3 years. I have heard them say it in committee. I have heard them say it on this floor. I have heard them say it in public, but where are they now?

Did something in the world change in the last week or two? Was there some fundamental shift in our understanding of this world, in our alliances, in our commitment to loyalties and principles and values in addition to strength?

I don't think so, and I don't think anybody else thinks anything has changed, other than a President who wants to go in a different direction. That President has no effective check and balance on this tragic mistake, except for the majority in the House and the Senate.

I really hope for my Republican colleagues in this body because I don't hold that hope for the administration of the Presidency. I do hold that hope for my colleagues. I hope they find their way back soon through the fog into reality again before it is too late.