House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and congressional leaders introduced a sweeping initiative to improve America’s foreign policy and national security on Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Ed Royce (R-CA), Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Devin Nunes (R-CA), Mac Thornberry (R-TX) and Jeff Miller (R-FL) joined Ryan in introducing the second plank of the “A Better Way” policy agenda at an event moderated by NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell.
The policy agenda’s second plank includes 67 recommendations for Congress and the president to protect the homeland, defeat terrorists and confront new threats.
“We know that this new Obama foreign policy concept, leading from behind, can now be declared an unambiguous failure,” Ryan said. “It is making us unprepared. It is reducing our military capability and strength. It is confusing our allies and incentivizing our adversaries. And all that does is tempt fate. So we are saying we’ve got to reset our system. We’ve got to restructure and reaffirm our foreign policy, in particular our military policy if we want to prevent these problems on the horizon from getting out of control.”
Ryan said that better security cooperation with the new Indian government would make them “a great ally of ours.” Ryan also addressed preventing cyber attacks, a U.S. partnership with Egypt, failed foreign policies that have made Libya an “ISIS nest,” Russian aggression and Syria’s civil war.
The “A Better Way” policy agenda resulted from the Task Force on National Security that Ryan formed earlier this year to draft national security recommendations.
In an op-ed, McCaul, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote that America is no longer trusted by allies, and that foes no longer fear it.
“We will not be apologetic about our nation’s might nor our actions to protect our people,” McCaul wrote. “Indeed, we have learned all-too-well in the last eight years that a policy of apologies leads to a world of catastrophes. In the long run, the United States must ensure the global balance of power favors free countries like our own, which is why we are committed to promoting prosperity through open markets and strategic investments. We also know from experience that regions of lawlessness and tyranny are breeding grounds for extremists, so we believe America must continue its longstanding drive to expand the community of free societies.”
Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that the policy agenda was called “A Better Way” because House Republicans feel that there are “a lot of things that are not being done by this administration that should be done by a new president who would sign into law bills that we’ve been working on in Congress for the last few years.”
When asked about the escalation of China’s military in the South China Seas by Mitchell on Thursday, Thornberry said that it has been escalating and that America should be concerned.
“Despite what the Chinese have said in the past, they are clearly building military bases out of the ocean in the South China Sea,” Thornberry said. “And part of their objectives is to control key shipping lanes and to push us out, so that they essentially have dominance in that region.”
Nunes added that it was “almost a fool’s errand” to believe that the Syrian civil war could end quickly.
“The Russians are on the offensive,” Nunes said. “They have very few rules of engagement, so they’re killing people most likely into the thousands. Just yesterday there was even more attacks on Aleppo, and it looks like almost indiscriminate attacks. And so I think it’s almost — the administration’s kidding themselves — if we’re going to continue with the rules of engagements that we have now in Syria and Iraq and we’re continue to downplay the growth of ISIS and al-Qaida — leads you to bad decision-making.”
Royce, meanwhile, was asked about the possibility of Iran having more of an influence in Iraq than the United Sates. He said that it goes to the “original blunder” of the administration to not “tilt toward the people in Iran.”
“Instead, the administration made the decision to engage with the ayatollah, made the decision to go forward and negotiate and, in so doing, empowered, enabled that revolutionary regime in many ways and subsequently has become so — has bought into this idea now that they can’t offend the Iranian regime,” Royce said. “And we’ve seen this in a whole slew of decision-making—you know, giving them access to the dollar, the attempt to do that, the heavy water subsidy and so forth. But you also see it in the policy decisions of allowing Iran to exert ever-more influence in Baghdad. When we pulled out the U.S. presence in Baghdad, the Iranians moved in terms of their influence.”