Text: House Majority Whip DeLay Speech on U.S. Foreign Policy
(Urges tough policy toward Beijing/support for Taiwan)Representative Tom DeLay (Republican of Texas) criticized current U.S. policy toward China in a March 16 speech Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Instead of following in the footsteps of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. Presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan who waged a crusade for freedom, the current U.S. administration seems more concerned that it not offend China, the leading Republican lawmaker said in a speech entitled "Returning to a Principled Foreign Policy," in which he asked his audience of foreign policy experts to imagine an Asia that was completely democratic.
"America today," he lamented, "has no coherent foreign policy. We seem, more than ever, to be without a direction or a purpose, without a course or a mission."
DeLay is the House Majority Whip, the third highest ranking Republican in the House of Representatives. While critical of U.S. policy toward China, and that nation's rulers, DeLay said he would support permanent Normal Trade Relations status for China.
"How we handle the emerging empire ruled from Beijing is the leading national security issue of our time," DeLay told his CSIS audience.
For the past decade, the Texas Republican said, "China has been engaged in a massive build-up of modern nuclear and conventional forces. Their aim," he claimed, "gaining unmatched military power in the region."
DeLay cited a Hong Kong newspaper's quote from China's Minister of Defense, "'We cannot avoid [war]. The issue is that the Chinese armed forces must control the initiative in this war.... We must be prepared to fight for one year, two years, three years or even longer.'"
China's territory, Delay stressed, "is not truly threatened, the Chinese Communist Party, on the other hand, has formidable enemies, beginning with the Chinese people themselves."
For fifty years, he said, "the Communist Party has denied the Chinese people the basic elements of democracy and human rights: a free ballot; honest judges and the rule of law; freedom in belief, thought, speech and the press."
China's military modernization, he said, is backed by "an increasingly sophisticated espionage and political influence effort aimed at the United States and its allies."
America, he said, "must make clear that threats to a free, democratic people will be met with the force required to deter and, if necessary, confront aggression."
The United States, DeLay emphasized, cannot "under any circumstances allow the People's Republic of China to impose a communist future on Taiwan."
DeLay criticized what he termed "our government's growing reluctance to speak the truth for fear of placing our values in conflict with the values of communist China."
Clearly, he said, "we have lost our way at a moment in history when the stakes are incredibly high.
"Imagine, for a moment, what democracy across Asia would mean," DeLay told his audience.
"The nuclear threat would be considerably reduced; terrorist nations would have to look elsewhere for their supplies of missiles, biological weapons, and the like; no one on China's borders would feel threatened; Tibetans could begin to rebuild their ancient culture in peace and harmony; the Burmese military junta and the North Korean communist regime would collapse; and of course, the Chinese people would join us in freedom," he said.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, DeLay said, freed "500 million people from the Soviet system, three times that many, a billion-and-a-half, remain the captives of communist parties."
Beijing, he said, is the hub of an "empire (that) gathers strength daily."
China's Communist Party, DeLay said, "rules the people of the mainland with the authority of the bayonet, not the ballot box."
Tibet, he charged, "is a nation under military occupation, no more, no less."
Beijing, Delay said, sustains "military rulers in Burma and North Korea to keep democracy away from its own borders."
Counterpoised to this "empire," DeLay said, "is a great arc of mostly democracies, anchored by Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei in the East and New Delhi in the West."
If the people of mainland China, DeLay said, "could freely choose their leaders, the way Taiwan does, there would be no issue at all."
The Texas Republican scored China's record of religious persecution, but added that communist governments have "always viewed religious faith as a threat."
"Looking at it from afar, it is hard for us to imagine how a 60-year-old woman doing breathing exercises in the park could be a threat to the all-powerful communist state. But, that is certainly the way Beijing sees it," DeLay said.
Beijing's rulers, he said, "know the role that the Catholic Church in Poland played in the ultimate end of the Soviet system. A rise in individual worship led to demands for freedom in the workplace and ultimately pressure for a democratic state."
Taiwan, he said, "is a democratic and capitalist nation that shares many of our beliefs and priorities. Within 48 hours the people of Taiwan will begin the process of voting for a new President."
DeLay pointed to how this "demonstration of genuine democracy has thrown Beijing into something akin to panic. Threats of invasion seem to pour out of Communist Party Headquarters daily," he said.
In the face of this belligerence, DeLay said, the Clinton Administration "has treated Taiwan with a thinly veiled disdain once reserved for states on the edge of the community of civilized nations."
The Taiwanese, he said, "who have nurtured liberty in the shadow of tyranny have been all but abandoned by a democratic superpower of unrivaled strength."
Just as American presidents during the Cold War aligned the United States with "those fighting for freedom against communism, we should now support those who fight for democracy and human rights against post-Soviet tyrants," DeLay said.
Following is the text of DeLay's remarks, as prepared for delivery:
(begin text)
Returning to a Principled Foreign Policy
The Honorable Tom DeLay (R-TX)
House Majority WhipCenter for Strategic and International Studies
Washington, DC
Thursday, March 16, 2000America today has no coherent foreign policy. We seem, more than ever, to be without a direction or a purpose, without a course or a mission.
Many of us in this room, and many of our fellow citizens, sense this wandering. And we are compelled to ask if our aimlessness stems from an absence of global challenges, or an absence of courageous leadership. Are we exercising the patience of a confident world power, or is our passive posture simply the drift that occurs when those steering the ship of state are uncertain about the destination?
I believe that the world cries out for courageous leadership; that America's failure to act decisively reflects the indecision not of the American people, but of those entrusted with wielding the arsenal of democracy. And I believe this confusion has much more to do with a conflict of values at home than it does with any conflict of interests abroad.
At the beginning of this year, I appeared before another distinguished public policy institute to talk about the future of our nation. During that address, I asserted the following:
The rediscovery of our core American values represents the central challenge confronting our nation at the dawn of a new century and a new millennium. These values are the timeless ideals of faith in God, the sanctity of human life, the existence of moral absolutes, and the certainty of ultimate accountability. And these convictions are the sole source of America's greatness.
For our country to be prosperous and deserving of prosperity, these principles must guide our individual actions.
They have to shape the character of our communities. And, yes, they have to inform a principled foreign policy designed to protect our nation's vital interests through the triumph of democracy around the globe.
Unfortunately, over the past few years we've lost our way.
Moral authority at the top has evaporated. Our military strength has declined rapidly: lost army divisions, lost air wings, lost carrier battle groups. Instead of a principled approach to national security, we now serve up an inedible foreign policy stew of appeasement and social work.
Political power without moral principle is incomplete. We are now experiencing the disturbing results of separating our nation's policies from our nation's guiding ideals. This represents a radical departure from the best traditions of U.S. foreign policy. And in the same way that America's domestic politics require the "rediscovery of values" I have described, we must reconstruct our means of international relations according to our system of beliefs. And these are the beliefs that made us a good people before we were a great power.
Today, I will suggest a broad foreign policy model designed to achieve our objectives by once again enlisting America's founding principles. I won't attempt to solve every crisis and answer every question, and as a result, some critical topics will go unmentioned.
It's my intention only to provide a framework for action and, in doing so, reference a few of the most prominent international challenges confronting the American people.
But before we move to current events, let's begin exploring the roots of America's value-based foreign policy by returning to the fall of 1938.
Operating under the guise of ethnic reunion, Adolph Hitler threatened the military conquest of Czechoslovakia, a small peaceful, democratic state. The major democratic powers, which could have mounted an effective resistance, did not. These states argued that they had only "interests," not principles. "Appeasement," as this policy was known, means submission to the demands of another, whether the demands are valid or not.
The obvious lesson of this tragic mistake teaches that we should never reward aggression. Another lesson is this: You betray your own principles at your own peril.
Britain and France abandoned their own fundamental values in a misguided effort to avoid conflict with Hitler's twisted ideology. As a result, an entire continent came to ruin.
Seared by the experience of World War II, Winston Churchill, as well as Presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, sought to remind each succeeding generation that respect for core values is critical to national security.
The first leader identified those fundamental values; the second pledged unwavering support for them; and the third asserted their universal nature.
Addressing an American audience in 1946, Churchill called democracy and human rights "the title deeds of freedom." Fifteen years later President Kennedy warned "friend and foe alike" that the United States is "unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed." In 1982 President Reagan announced a deliberate policy to foster democracy abroad, a program that led directly to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of Soviet tyranny.
And in this soil, fertile with the resolve and wisdom of these intrepid leaders, democracy has taken root among peoples with very different cultures and experiences. Of course, representative government is practiced a little differently in Poland than it is in Japan. But the fundamentals are the same: Free press. Free speech. Free and fair elections. Rule of law. The right to petition the government. And ultimately, the right to change the government by peaceful means.
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, the old capitals of Central and Eastern Europe are indeed free of the Soviet system. That does not mean, however, that tyranny has been totally vanquished from this world.
The reality is that the world remains divided, the democratic alliance on one side and the tyrannies on the other.
In some cases, the democratic alliance is formalized by agreement. NATO and the US-Japan Mutual Defense Agreement are of this type. In others, the alliance is de facto, such as the relationship between the United States and Israel. As a practical matter, simply being a genuine democracy qualifies a country as a member of this alliance.
Such support for democracy and human rights around the globe corresponds to our fundamental values. But is it also in our interests? The answer, in my view, is an emphatic, "Yes."
If we have learned anything from the experience of the past 100 years, it is that modern democratic states do not launch wars of international aggression. Peace and democracy are linked. Governments that must answer to the people also do not inflict heinous crimes against their own citizens. Streams of suffering refugees leave state-sponsored terror behind; they do not march into the arms of their oppressors.
Recognizing our core values and applying the hard lessons of recent history, the past principles of American foreign policy should be the foundation for a new approach for a new century:
Just as the presidents of the Cold War in different ways aligned the United States with those fighting for freedom against communism, we should now support those who fight for democracy and human rights against post-Soviet tyrants.
To be effective, this approach must be accompanied by a renewed American military and restored international alliances.
With this foreign policy, a foreign policy built on our core values and reinforced by powerful armed forces and international friendships, America will be able to assess individual conflicts and crises in the context of an overall strategic goal. This is the essence of peace through strength. It is a philosophy that we must, once again, place at the center of American diplomacy.
Of course, we have to judge carefully each particular instance of potential U.S. action against a strict set of criteria that measures the appropriateness and utility of such involvement. Specifically, I believe we should ask these fundamental questions:
Does this operation conform to our democratic and human rights values? Is there an identifiable aggressor? What is the outcome we desire? What action is necessary to meet our objectives? Are we willing to take this action? Is there an American interest at stake?
Using this decision making model, I would like to address two current foreign policy questions. For different reasons, these two situations may have the greatest impact on our nation's role in the world over the next decade. The first is the ongoing conflict in the Balkans, and the second is the growing crisis across the Taiwan Straits.
The Clinton Administration's policy in Kosovo is not only unwise, but it is also dangerous.
Neither the Kosovo Liberation Army nor the Serbs share America's respect for human life or individual freedom. In fact, the Kosovo Liberation Army embraces the ideals and accepts the assistance of movements and states that are opposed to many of our most cherished values. It is very doubtful we could accomplish any long-term objectives where there is no righteous party to support.
In short, the United States should not become a party to mindless communal strife where ethnic hatred is shared by both sides. The President has never properly explained to the American people the vital national interests at stake. The outcome he desires is muddled at best.
And most noteworthy, even President Clinton, the most vocal advocate of our involvement, is unwilling to take the kind of action required to alter the situation in any meaningful way.
The result is a foreign policy that does not reflect our values, and for this reason, it is a foreign policy that doesn't serve our interests.
If you doubt that our Kosovo policy follows no coherent doctrine, consider for a moment the manner in which those responsible for our Balkans policy are dealing with communist China and democratic Taiwan.
I believe how we handle the emerging empire ruled from Beijing is the leading national security issue of our time.
If the fall of the Berlin Wall freed 500 million people from the Soviet system, three times that many, a billion-and-a-half, remain the captives of communist parties.
Inside a line from Lhasa in the Himalayas, down to Rangoon on the Andaman Sea, and up to Pyongyang on Korea Bay, another empire gathers strength daily. At the center, the Communist Party rules the people of the mainland with the authority of the bayonet, not the ballot box.
Tibet is a nation under military occupation, no more, no less. It suits Beijing's pleasure to sustain military rulers in Burma and North Korea to keep democracy away from its own borders. Facing this empire is a great arc of mostly democracies, anchored by Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei in the East and New Delhi in the West.
If the Chinese people on the mainland could freely choose their leaders, the way Taiwan does, there would be no issue at all. But the fact of Communist Party rule changes the equation completely. We should never forget that, at Tiananmen Square, Chinese patriots paid with their blood for simply seeking liberty.
Even today more Chinese patriots are disappearing into the labor camp system. Their crimes? Attempting to register a democratic party and protesting against corrupt Party officials.
According to the latest State Department report on human rights, "almost all the key leaders of the China Democratic Party were serving long prison terms."
Nowhere is the current crackdown more obvious than on the question of religious believers. An 80 year-old Catholic bishop has been jailed yet again. And Christian congregations meeting in house churches are raided and their pastors thrown into prison.
Looking at it from afar, it is hard for us to imagine how a 60-year-old woman doing breathing exercises in the park could be a threat to the all-powerful communist state. But, that is certainly the way Beijing sees it, because communist oppressors have always viewed religious faith as a threat. And in a sense, they are right.
Certainly, they know the role that the Catholic Church in Poland played in the ultimate end of the Soviet system. A rise in individual worship led to demands for freedom in the workplace and ultimately pressure for a democratic state.
In order to counter this perceived threat to its power, Beijing has developed and implemented a two-part plan of attack: merciless repression against domestic opponents; and a conscious exaggeration of threats abroad to distract the people's attention from misrule at home.
It is the second part of their program that poses such a threat to everyone in Asia and, possibly, to us.
For the foreseeable future, the People's Republic of China faces no external threats that an adequate border patrol and coast guard could not handle. Who would attack China? Nobody. And yet, for the past decade China has been engaged in a massive build-up of modern nuclear and conventional forces. Their aim: gaining unmatched military power in the region.
A short survey of the PRC military build-up must include the following:
Mass production and development of ballistic and cruise missiles, including two nuclear strike missiles, the DF-31 and the DF-41; Delivery last month of the first of a series of nuclear-capable surface ships from Russia; Agreement to purchase billions of dollars in modern strike aircraft from Russia; and Development of a world-class cyber-warfare capability.
These are all offensive weapons designed to strike targets in Asia or the United States.
Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, Singapore India, even parts of California and the West, are already within range.
The new naval vessels were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: To kill American sailors and marines aboard our aircraft carriers and Aegis cruisers. Each of the missiles they carry has a nuclear explosive power twenty times the size of the Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
To make all this new hardware perform as it was intended, the Chinese have poured billions of dollars into modern command and control systems. Every year, the PLA's joint-service exercises get a little bigger and a little better, and the identification of this activity as a genuine threat is not just a matter of perception.
In fact, a Hong Kong newspaper printed the following quotation from China's defense minister: "We cannot avoid [war]. The issue is that the Chinese armed forces must control the initiative in this war.... We must be prepared to fight for one year, two years, three years or even longer."
And as we all now know, China's military modernization is backed by an increasingly sophisticated espionage and political influence effort aimed at the United States and its allies.
While the territory that is China is not truly threatened, the Chinese Communist Party, on the other hand, has formidable enemies, beginning with the Chinese people themselves. For fifty years, the Communist Party has denied the Chinese people the basic elements of democracy and human rights: a free ballot; honest judges and the rule of law; freedom in belief, thought, speech and the press.
Now, just offshore are another ethnic Chinese people. They enjoy precisely those fundamental values that are also the foundation of American liberty. On Taiwan, officials are elected by the people or appointed by someone who was so elected. On the mainland, none of the rulers is there by the choice or consent of the people. As a result, there can be no question of legitimacy in Taipei, but all of our issues with Beijing are traceable to this defect.
Taiwan is a democratic and capitalist nation that shares many of our beliefs and priorities. Within 48 hours the people of Taiwan will begin the process of voting for a new President. This demonstration of genuine democracy has thrown Beijing into something akin to panic. Threats of invasion seem to pour out of Communist Party Headquarters daily.
Yet, this Administration has treated Taiwan with a thinly veiled disdain once reserved for states on the edge of the community of civilized nations. This proud people who have nurtured liberty in the shadow of tyranny have been all but abandoned by a democratic superpower of unrivaled strength.
Sixty-two years after Czechoslovakia, ethnic re-union has returned as an excuse for aggression. Having learned nothing from the folly of Munich, the Clinton Administration has embraced a level of appeasement that would have embarrassed Neville Chamberlain: A communist dictatorship becomes our "strategic partner"; a small, peaceful democratic country becomes an irritant.
How can an Administration ready to risk American lives to defend a very elusive - perhaps non-existent - freedom in Kosovo now argue that Taiwan deserves anything less than our full support? Clearly, we have lost our way at a moment in history when the stakes are incredibly high. Imagine, for a moment, what democracy across Asia would mean:
The nuclear threat would be considerably reduced; Terrorist nations would have to look elsewhere for their supplies of missiles, biological weapons, and the like; No one on China's borders would feel threatened; Tibetans could begin to rebuild their ancient culture in peace and harmony; The Burmese military junta and the North Korean communist regime would collapse; and of course, The Chinese people would join us in freedom.
Achieving these goals requires that we consistently act according to our values, and I would recommend that a new approach to this growing conflict include the following three specific steps:
First, we must rethink our view of "engagement" and trade as tools for managing the U.S.-Sino relationship.
Once a process, engagement has been perverted into a comprehensive policy that is its own objective. And because communist China holds ultimate power over our ability to interact with them, they alone can determine the success or failure of engagement. This fact makes exerting real pressure on a competing nation almost impossible, and Beijing has wasted no time mastering the art of exploiting our current view of engagement as an end rather than as a means.
We also must rethink how trade serves our interests. Trade is central to both our continued economic growth and the success of American values around the globe. I strongly support expanded trade as a basic component of American economic freedom. But trade is not a moral imperative superior to all other considerations. Trade cannot come at any price to our nation and to our freedom.
At this moment, I believe our trade with Communist China still provides an overall benefit to our domestic prosperity and the forces of reform battling the communist government in Beijing. I support and will vote in favor of Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. Trade can be a very positive force to help promote our democratic ideals, and it is in our interests to approve PNTR.
But should the day arrive when our trade with the People's Republic of China serves more to fuel communist expansion than nurture democracy, more to support oppression than to export American values, we will be compelled to subordinate our desire to access markets to the cold, hard realities of national defense.
We should never be fooled into cheering higher profits while communist China harnesses that prosperity to construct an arsenal of tyranny.
Second, we must enhance America's military posture in Asia and support our friends in the area. At this moment, the United States doesn't have the ability to deal decisively with a regional crisis.
We must provide a short-term solution by moving additional assets to the theater. And we have to pursue a long-term answer by developing and deploying a missile defense system with our key allies, including, at their request, Taiwan.
The Congress, I believe, has a clear vision. We know who shares our democratic value system, and who is an enemy of democracy. We made important progress this year when the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed that Taiwan Security Enhancement Act. I was proud to sponsor that legislation, and I believe Congress will continue to insist that America uphold our obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act by ensuring that Taiwan has the weapons it needs to defend itself.
I again urge the President to join our effort.
Third and finally, we must discard old policies that no longer have credibility because they are no longer true. In my view, whatever utility the "One China" diplomatic fiction might have had twenty-five years ago has been erased by the new reality. There are, in fact, two Chinese states. One, the Republic of China on Taiwan, is free, democratic and a welcome member of the family of nations. The other, the People's Republic of China, is not free, not democratic and a threat to the security of us all.
The people of China and the people of Taiwan will make their own decisions, and as they do, they will no doubt carefully account for the views of their friends and their foes. The United States cannot, however, under any circumstances allow the People's Republic of China to impose a communist future on Taiwan.
And yes, this means America must make clear that threats to a free, democratic people will be met with the force required to deter and, if necessary, confront aggression.
Some observers will no doubt attack my words of support for Taiwan as reckless. Many of these individuals will insist that the United States should continue to avoid upsetting communist China at all costs. That we should continue to subordinate truth to expediency.
Well, we have tried this brand of delicate diplomacy for some time. It is a failure. And the best evidence of that failure is our government's growing reluctance to speak the truth for fear of placing our values in conflict with the values of communist China.
We must replace fear with fearlessness when our basic values are threatened. Of course, not every situation poses such a direct challenge to our principles. But on Russia and Africa, on the Middle East and Latin America, we need to lead with our convictions in all matters of foreign policy.
What I have described today is the application of a particular worldview to the realm of foreign policy. It is a worldview that found greatest political expression in the words and deeds of the men who launched our democracy. These men understood that America's greatness is neither our material wealth nor the size of our territory. It is not to be found in the size of our population or our location on the map.
Our greatness is the product of what we believe. America's ideals have always determined America's destiny. The United States is not simply another nation in another era along the timeline of history. No, we have a unique burden, a special mission. We are a people with a purpose, and that purpose is to serve as the sword and shield of the freedom grounded in eternal values.
Whatever our disagreements over particular policies, I know two things for certain: first, Americans will always remember that our great power is built on good beliefs; and second, this allegiance to core convictions will ensure that American values triumph over every form of tyranny on this Earth.
For the future of our nation and for the cause of freedom, we must have a foreign policy worthy of the American people. Let us begin by rediscovering our values.
Thank you very much.
(end text)
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