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Floor Speech

First is a question of competence. This is an ambassador--Ambassador Sullivan--who went to Ghana and said on local television that she was proud of the fact that she had failed her Foreign Service exam twice.

It is hard to imagine a Chinese leader going to a country where they were trying to develop diplomatic relationships and bragging about failing any type of Foreign Service exam.

I don't know where this idea that we should celebrate failing the Foreign Service exam amongst our diplomatic corps comes from, but it doesn't make us look good, and it doesn't help Ambassador Sullivan in her duties.

Now, a second problem, the last time we sent Ambassador Sullivan to a senior job in Africa, her successor spent the following couple of months apologizing for and cleaning up for the job that she had done. In particular, she did so much to push a very, very divisive set of ideas in an American political context on a foreign country that had nothing to do with our national interests.

In particular, she seems particularly fond of the most leftwing versions of transgender ideology. Now, let me just address this particular issue.

I have my views on the transgender ideology question. In particular, I really worry that we are going too far, too fast not in support of the evidence, prescribing treatments and surgeries and hormonal therapies that could damage children for years. I think we need to be patient with this, and we need to follow the science.

This is why, by the way, most of our European allies--Sweden, for example, a country hailed as a great example of good healthcare, 10 years ago, by many Democrats in this Chamber, is going in the opposite direction of where we are going on the transgender ideology question.

Now, that said, I can accept that many people disagree with me. But that disagreement in an American political context has no place for the diplomatic corps of our country. We should not be taking something that a majority of Americans disagree on and try to force it down the throat of another country. And the fact that we engage in this cultural imperialism is one of the biggest threats to American national security in the world today.

Now, let's talk about this cultural imperialism, the fact that it is unsupported and the fact that it is not good for our country.

We haven't had a real debate in this body. We have not had a sufficient conversation about whether we want to support certain ideological preferences in our diplomatic corps.

Why, for example, do we have a liberal White woman going to Africa and telling them that they are not civilized enough when it comes to issues of transgender ideology?

Why do we have a diplomatic corps that is taking a hotly contested issue in an American political context and demanding that African nations follow the lead of the far left instead of doing what they think that they should do?

Now, there are going to be people who say that there are all manner of atrocities that happen in Africa when it comes to sexual issues, when it comes to gender minorities, and so forth, and, of course, we think that is terrible, and we don't want that to happen. But she has gone so much further than that in placing a very particular set of ideas at the forefront of our diplomacy.

Let me just leave this body with one final thought. Look at the demographics of the people who have fought and died in American wars over the last generation. Many Democrats, of course, have done so, and we honor their service and we honor the sacrifice of themselves and their families. But a disproportionate share, especially of the enlisted troops, who are at the forefront of American power--the threat of military action and, sometimes, the reality of military action is what gives the State Department so much power in the first place--the knowledge that, if you don't follow America's lead, you can sometimes have military and security consequences because of it.

Do we think that the thousands of Americans who have died in America's wars in the last 20 or so years died so that the trans flag would fly over the nation of Ghana or any other African nation?

And why is it the policy of this government, again, to take a controversial topic in the context of an American political debate and force it down the throats of somebody else?

This is damaging our national security. Larry Summers, an Obama administration economist, a guy well respected on the left side of the aisle, said, talking to some of his friends who work in development in Africa, that when the Chinese come, they bring--let me get the exact quote here because I don't want to mess it up:

What we get from China is an airport. What we get from the United States is a lecture.

That is Larry Summers quoting somebody who does economic development in troubled regions of the world. Why----

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Mr. VANCE. Can I finish the point, Senator Coons?

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Mr. VANCE. Here is what I would say here. The final point that I will make is, we have built a foreign policy of hectoring and moralizing and lecturing countries that don't want anything to do with this.

The Chinese have a foreign policy of building roads and bridges and feeding poor people, and I think that we should pursue a foreign policy, a diplomacy, of respect and a foreign policy that is not rooted in moralizing; it is rooted in the national interests of this country.

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