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Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to address some of my concerns about the qualifications of the President's nominee to lead the Department of Defense, Mr. Pete Hegseth.

Like many of my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, I left Mr. Hegseth's hearing, last week, with a number of unanswered questions and some real concerns about his qualifications and abilities to serve in the role of Secretary of Defense. Now, every single nominee for Secretary of Defense, from both Democrat and Republican administrations, has met with me and other members on both sides of the aisle on the committee before their confirmation hearings, and I voted for every one of those nominees, from both Democrat and Republican administrations--Secretaries Panetta, Hagel, Carter, Mattis, Esper, and Austin. I didn't always agree with their views or their policies, but I thought they all had the qualifications and the temperament to be the Secretary of Defense. So I supported their nominations.

But Mr. Hegseth chose not to meet with me or with any other Senate Democrat except the ranking member, Jack Reed, and he broke with strong, longstanding tradition to ensure that our work on national security remains free from partisanship. And I think that is the important point. We are stronger as Senators, as a Congress, and as a nation if we are acting together. The committee, unfortunately, was not afforded the opportunity to ask a number of rounds of questions. So there were a number of questions about his views, particularly regarding foreign policy and military policy, that we did not get an answer to.

I have become the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee. So I am very concerned about the role of the United States in the world. I think the American people expect transparency regarding Mr. Hegseth's ability to stand by our allies and partners, to uphold international agreements, to abide by rules of engagement, and--the bottom line--to support the men and women in the military in a way that not only keeps us safe but that protects them as well. The almost 3 million men and women who serve our Nation in uniform deserve a Secretary of Defense who will not needlessly throw them in harm's way or seek to divide them with partisan politics.

So I would like to address a few issues now that we were not able to get to at the hearing because we were not able to ask more than one round of questions. I want to start with the role that our alliances and that our allies and partners play in our own national security.

I believe--and we have seen it many times from the start of this Nation--that we are stronger and safer when we lead together with our allies, and we are fortunate because we have strong allies and partners. We don't see that coming from Vladimir Putin or from Xi in China, and we don't see it from the North Koreans or the Iranians. But the United States has strong allies who can stand with us.

The most important security agreement we have had, I think, any time in our Nation's history has been with NATO. NATO is a critical, indispensable part of our national security. Yet the President's nominee for Secretary of Defense wrote in his book ``American Crusade'' that NATO is a ``relic'' and that it ``should be scrapped.'' Since his nomination, Mr. Hegseth has tried to walk back his opposition to one of our key international alliances, to NATO, and in advance policy questions from the committee, he calls NATO a ``vital U.S. interest in defending Europe and American interests from Russia and Vladimir Putin.'' This sudden reversal is welcomed because I think it is very important that our Secretary of Defense understands how critical NATO is and that it is stronger now than it has been at any time since it was formed, probably.

We now have 32 members of NATO, but Mr. Hegseth's eleventh hour conversion to understanding the importance of our allies and partners raises questions about what he really believes. We asked in our questions for the record about NATO, and we didn't get much of a response.

Now, if I had had the opportunity, I would have also brought up Ukraine and Mr. Hegseth's head-spinning contradictions on this matter. Just as America's national security interests are not to be trifled with, neither should be our commitment to defending democracy and the international world order. Any inconsistency in that commitment--let me start that again because this is really important. Any inconsistency in our commitment to support our allies and partners, to support democracy around the world, to support the international world order is going to be seen and exploited by our adversaries.

So, again, I am puzzled as to how I should think about Mr. Hegseth's contradictory positions on a variety of national security and foreign policy issues.

For example, he was critical of the Biden administration, as have many of us been on both sides of the aisle in this Chamber, for not moving fast enough to aid Ukraine, but then he questioned the wisdom of sending any U.S. assistance to Ukraine at all.

In 2022, Mr. Hegseth called Vladimir Putin a ``war criminal'' and called for faster U.S. aid to Ukraine. Now he says the idea of Russia's launching a nuclear war is ``overinflated'' and plays down the severity of the conflict as merely being Putin's `` `give me my shit back' war.'' Well, I don't think that our NATO allies--those in the Baltics and Poland and Eastern Europe--think about Vladimir Putin's nuclear ambitions as overinflated. They know the threat he poses to their countries and the world. To be flippant about the threat of nuclear war, I think, is beneath the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which will have to engage with our partners on a regular basis.

Now, I agree with President Trump that the American people want to see a resolution to this yearslong war, and I am sure that is true of the Ukrainians as well. But Mr. Hegseth has not, either in his hearing or in response to the questions that we submitted to him for the record, expanded on what the Department of Defense's role should be with respect to Ukraine, even though we have already invested $66 billion in military assistance.

Again, I think it is very important that we stand by our ally Ukraine because of the message it sends not just to the Russians and Vladimir Putin but because of the message it sends to Xi in China, to the Iranians, to the North Koreans, and to anyone who is an adversary of the United States. If they think we are going to walk away from our allies, they are going to do everything they can to divide us.

On Afghanistan, Mr. Hegseth has also been inconsistent in his views of the President's foreign policy. Actually, he has been inconsistent in general on the President's foreign policies.

In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Mr. Hegseth was highly critical of then-Candidate Trump's foreign policy stances, particularly on Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Hegseth called Mr. Trump, who was a candidate at the time, ``all bluster, very little substance'' and an ``armchair tough guy.'' He criticized then-Candidate Trump in 2015 for advocating for the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, but then he took the criticism back. He sharply criticized the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal as did I, but he has failed to publicly comment on President Trump's 2020 deal with the Taliban, which is what set the date certain for withdrawal in 2021 that then the Biden administration was actually tied to.

Now, I agree. I agree that that withdrawal was not what I wanted to see--I didn't support it--but they were terms that President Trump, in his first term, set with the Taliban--terms that I thought gave away the store to the Taliban because there were no concessions from them on what we were to get for the United States. The Government of Afghanistan was not at the table when the terms were negotiated, and now we are seeing the fallout from that.

I know that no one is watching for gaps in U.S. national security policy more closely than President Xi and the People's Republic of China. Mr. Hegseth identifies China as our peer competitor--something that I think all of us on the Armed Services Committee and probably everyone in this Chamber agrees with. But if Mr. Hegseth is so concerned about China, then he should realize that nothing will encourage President Xi's aggression more than seeing America abandon our allies and partners. Mr. Hegseth sees China's ambitions as a ``fait accompli.'' Yet he doesn't seem to recognize that his own inconsistencies on all of these foreign policy positions could contribute to this.

A question I would like Mr. Hegseth to attempt to answer is, What message would it send to our adversaries if the United States ceases its support not just for Ukraine but for the international rules and norms that underpin the global order?

I am also concerned about that with respect to the conduct of conflict. In his book ``The War on Warriors,'' Mr. Hegseth argued:

Our boys should not fight by rules written by dignified men in mahogany rooms 80 years ago. America should fight by its own rules.

Well, the rules that he is talking about are the Geneva Conventions, which established bare minimum protections against violence, torture, and inhumane treatment. They don't just protect those people who are fighting on the battlefield. They protect American soldiers.

During his hearing, Mr. Hegseth doubled down to say ``restrictive rules of engagement have made it more difficult to defeat our enemies'' and that it would be his priority that ``lawyers aren't getting in the way.''

Well, unfortunately and dangerously, this appears to be one of the few issues that Mr. Hegseth is consistent on. He has a documented history of supporting individuals who have violated military and international law by committing war crimes. These are individuals who were turned in not by our enemies but by members of their own units. They were convicted of crimes by our own military juries--individuals for whom Mr. Hegseth lobbied to get pardons.

I don't think we can afford to entrust the safety and success of our men and women in uniform to a man who would himself disregard the laws of armed conflict and leave American credibility and moral authority in tatters on the world stage.

While embracing officers convicted of war crimes, Mr. Hegseth has stated it is his intent to review all general officers currently serving in the Department of Defense. When asked if he would remove the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Hegseth responded on the record that ``all senior officers will be reviewed.''

Let's just think about what that means. Subjecting our general officers and our military that is not politicized to a political litmus test is not only unprecedented; it is dangerous. It will convey to the American public that their leadership is political.

One of the most important roles of the Secretary of Defense is to seek out and consider open, honest, and direct military advice from the senior officers in charge of our forces. I don't know how Mr. Hegseth expects to receive open and honest advice from his commanders when he is advocating for a purge of anyone who disagrees with him.

I am also deeply troubled by the idea that Mr. Hegseth would act as a yes-man himself, putting his own personal political interests above the well-being of our military men and women.

At Mr. Hegseth's confirmation hearing, when asked what he would do if he received orders from President Trump that he knew to be illegal or unconstitutional, Mr. Hegseth wouldn't give a straight answer. All he could do was deny that President Trump was capable of giving an illegal order. And just for the record, to be clear, in his first term, President Trump did give an illegal order that then-Secretary Esper refused to follow, and for that, Secretary Esper was fired by the President.

So I am very concerned that Mr. Hegseth lacks the consistency and the moral clarity to lead the most combat-credible military in the world, and I am very disappointed that this body would put a nominee on the floor without the due process of advice and consent that the position of the Secretary of Defense deserves. Our men and women in uniform deserve better. Therefore, for the first time since I was elected to represent the people of New Hampshire in the U.S. Senate, I plan to vote against this nominee for Secretary of Defense.

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