National Defense Authorization Bill

Floor Speech

Mr. President, on another matter before the Senate this afternoon, I was glad to see the Senate come together yesterday to advance the bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act. This bipartisan Defense bill will support our men and women in uniform in many, many ways.

The bill attacks bureaucratic waste, authorizes pay raises, and improves quality-of-life programs for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. It will strengthen sexual assault prevention and response. It will help wounded warriors and heroes who struggle with mental health challenges. Most importantly, it will equip the men and women who serve with what they need to defend our Nation.

The chairman of the Committee on Armed Services was unrelenting in his work across the aisle to craft a serious defense bill with input from both parties. Senator McCain can and should take pride in yesterday's 73-to-26 vote to advance this bill. He should take heart in today's vote to send it to the President as well.

That is where this legislative process should end--with the President's signature, with a win for our forces, and with a win for our country at a time of seemingly incalculable global crises. But the White House has issued threats that the President might actually veto this bipartisan bill for unrelated partisan reasons. That would be more than outrageous--truly outrageous, Mr. President. It would be yet another grave foreign policy miscalculation from this administration, something our country can no longer afford.

Just a year ago, the President announced a strategy to degrade and destroy ISIL. Today, the threat remains as versatile and resilient as ever. ISIL has consolidated its gains within Iraq and within Syria. Russia is now deploying troops and attacking the moderate opposition forces in Syria. Iran is reportedly sending additional forces to the battlefield. Civilians are dying and refugees are fleeing.

John Kerry calls the situation ``a catastrophe, a human catastrophe really unparalleled in modern times.'' He is right.

According to news reports, this is all forcing the President to reconsider his strategy in that region and craft a new one. Regardless of what he decides, it is going to be a protracted area of struggle. It has been profoundly challenging already. That is to say nothing of the countless other mounting global threats, from Chinese expansion in the south China Sea to Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.

Many Americans would say this is the worst possible time for an American President to be threatening to veto their national defense bill, and especially to do so for arbitrary partisan reasons. I wish I could say it surprises me that President Obama might, for the sake of unrelated partisan games, actually contemplate vetoing a bipartisan defense bill that contains the level of funding authorization that he actually asked for. Let me say that again. This bill contains the funding authorization the President asked for. So I am calling on him not to, especially in times like these, but if he does, it will be the latest sorry chapter in a failed foreign policy based on campaign promises rather than realistically meeting the threat before us.

The President's approach to foreign policy has been nothing if not consistent over the past 7 years. I have described this in detail many times before. From repeatedly seeking to declare some arbitrary end to the war on terror, to discarding the tools we have to wage it, to placing unhealthy levels of trust in unaccountable international organizations, the President's foreign policy has been as predictable as it has been ineffectual.

Take, for instance, his heavy reliance on economy-of-force train-and-assist missions. This has been the primary tool of the President to cover our drawdown of conventional forces. The train-and-equip concept is to train indigenous forces to battle insurgencies in places such as Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These forces ideally partner with U.S. capabilities, but under the President's policy, they have been left to fight alone as we continue to draw down our conventional forces.

The essence of this was captured in a speech he delivered at West Point just last May. In that speech the President described a network of partnerships from South Asia to Sahel to be funded by $5 billion in counter terrorism funds. By deploying Special Operations Forces for train-and-equip missions, the President hoped to manage the diffuse threats posed by terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Boko Haram, the al-Nusrah Front, the Taliban, Libyan terrorist networks that threaten Egypt, and, of course, ISIL.

The President never explained the strategy--beyond direct action such as unmanned vehicle aerial strikes--for those cases when indigenous forces proved insufficient, as we have seen in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Nevertheless, this concept of operations suited the President because it allowed him to continue with force structure cuts to our conventional operational units. It allowed him to continue refusing to accept that leaving behind residual forces in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan might represent a means by which this Nation could preserve the strategic gains made through sacrifice. It also allowed him to continue refusing to rebuild our conventional and nuclear forces.

This was never, never an approach designed for success. Today it is clear this is now an approach that has also reached its limits.

The New York Times is hardly an adversary of this administration, but it recently ran a story titled ``Billions From U.S. Fail to Sustain Foreign Forces.'' Once again, this is the New York Times. Here is what it said:

With alarming frequency in recent years, thousands of American-trained security forces in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia have collapsed, stalled or defected, calling into question the effectiveness of the tens of billions of dollars spent by the U.S. on foreign military training programs, as well as a central tenet of the Obama administration's approach to combating insurgencies.

Without rebuilding the force, we cannot deter China's efforts to extend its conventional reach in the South China Sea. Without rebuilding the force, we cannot deter Russian adventurism in places such as Crimea.

Without rebuilding and deploying the force, we cannot hope to deter Russia's gambit to increase its Middle East presence or its air campaign in Syria. And under this strategy, when the host nation militaries we trained and equipped proved inadequate to defeat the insurgency in question, the strategy allowed for a persistent, enduring terrorist threat in those countries. That is just what we have seen with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, with the Taliban, and now with ISIL.

I thought the growth, advance, and evolution of ISIL last year would have presented a turning point for the President. I thought the fall of Anbar Province and the threat posed to allies such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey would have provoked a reconsideration of his entire national security policy, but it didn't. If the latest stories of White House efforts to revise its ISIL strategy are to be believed, then perhaps the President now finally realizes the threat from terrorist groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda have outpaced his economy-of-force concept. He may even be accepting the reality that withdrawing arbitrarily from Afghanistan is neither consequence-free nor is it a good idea.

One year after the President's ISIL speech, it is time to reverse the withdrawal of our military from its forward presence. It is time to lay the groundwork for the next President to rebuild America's credibility with friend and foe alike. That is true of ISIL and it is true of dissatisfied powers such as Russia, China, and Iran, who are all looking to exploit American withdrawal in pursuit of regional hegemony and dreams of empire.

To paraphrase the President: Russia is calling, and it wants its empire back. Russia wants its empire back. China is calling, too, and so is Iran. They have watched as both our economy-of-force efforts to mask American withdrawal and as other U.S. commitments have proven quite hollow--like the announcement of a strategic pivot to Asia, without the investments to make it meaningful. The next President, regardless of party, will need to craft plans, policies, and programs to balance against expansion. Signing the bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act we pass today--and of course matching the authorization with its corresponding funding--would represent a good first step along that path. If the President is serious in his just-restated commitment to taking all steps necessary to combat ISIL, then he will know that signing this bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act is anything but the waste of time some of his allies might pretend it to be. In fact, this bill is essential.

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