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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, Vladimir Putin and Xi often call for what they call a multipolar world. By ``multipolar world,'' these Presidents of Russia and China mean to criticize the post-Cold War situation with the United States as the preeminent superpower.

Even some American commentators and politicians seem to agree with Putin and Xi.

In some corners of American foreign policy thought, there is an implicit acceptance of the premise that large, powerful countries are entitled to a certain sphere of influence and where they can, at the same time, dominate their neighbors against the will of the people who live in those countries.

The Soviet Union previously had an ideology of exporting communist revolution to other countries. The Soviet Union sought to dominate much of the Eurasian continent and to export its economic and political system to countries around the globe, either by cunning or by force.

When the Berlin Wall fell and the then-Soviet Union collapsed, many previously captive nations became free to chart their own course. As a result, many of them chose free market democracy.

Those countries also naturally chose to develop good relationships with the United States and what we call the West--countries of the West.

Putin clearly sees this as a humiliation. And he famously called the collapse of the Soviet empire as ``the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.''

By contrast to the Soviet Union, the United States is what we might call a reluctant superpower--I think sometimes too reluctant.

We never set out to have the most powerful military. The instinct of the American people was to stay out of World War I and World War II. We then learned that our failure to nip aggression in the bud and do it early comes at a tremendous cost.

Still, our instinctual reluctance to get involved in foreign wars is to our credit. I am not saying that we have never deviated from our general nature or made mistakes. But I believe that imperialism is contrary to the American character.

During the Cold War, Margaret Thatcher had this to say--and bear with me because it is a fairly long quote. Margaret Thatcher said this:

It is fashionable for some commentators to speak of the two super powers--United States and the Soviet Union--as though they were somehow of equal worth and equal significance. Mr. Speaker, that is a travesty of the truth! The Soviet Union has never concealed its real aim. In the words of Mr. Brezhnev, ``the total triumph of all Socialism all over the world is inevitable-- for this triumph we shall struggle with no lack of effort.'' Indeed, there has been no lack of effort.

Contrast this with the record of the West. We do not aim at domination, at hegemony, in any part of the world. Even against those who oppose and who would destroy our ideas, we plot no aggression. Of course, we are ready to fight the battle of ideas with all the vigour at our command, but we do not try to impose our system on others. We do not believe that force should be the final arbiter in human affairs. We threaten no-one.

I will further quote her in just a minute.

Now, listen to this point that Thatcher makes, because I think Putin still thinks like a Soviet.

I continue quoting Thatcher:

In talking to the Soviet Union, we find great difficulty in getting this message across. They judge us by their ambitions. They cannot conceive of a powerful nation not using its power for expansion or subversion, and yet they should remember that when, after the last War, the United States had a monopoly of nuclear weapons, she never once exploited her superiority. No country ever used such great power more responsibly or with such restraint.

Where she says ``no country ever used such great power more responsibly and with such restraint,'' she was referring to and complimenting the United States.

Putin and Xi talk about the United States as some sort of hegemony, pushing our values on others. The fact is, whatever they think, America's principles and systems of government have spread across the world primarily through example, not by force.

To understand the American view, let's look back on a speech made by John Quincy Adams on the Fourth of July, 1821. There are a lot of lessons that you can draw from a speech 200 years ago.

A small excerpt of this speech is often quoted in arguing for more isolationist foreign policy. I will get to that point later.

First, I want to mention about the broader point of Adams's speech, which was to celebrate the Declaration of Independence as an articulation of America's founding principles.

John Quincy Adams goes on at length extolling the American founding based on natural rights, rejecting monarchy, as we all know.

America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.

At the time, revolutions had broken out in Europe and Latin America, threatening monarchies and empires of that day.

Adams--meaning John Quincy Adams--castigates empires that seek to nominate people by force.

He then ends the speech with a call for the spirit of liberty--that spirit of liberty that is talked about in the Declaration--and he asks that to descend upon Britain and all monarchies.

In fact, the diplomat in attendance from the Russian Empire was appalled at the statement that John Quincy Adams was making.

He reported to St. Petersburg that the speech was ``an appeal to the nations of Europe to rise against their governments.''

This was provocative stuff for monarchists.

In the excerpt of the speech that is most often quoted, Adams makes a digression to clarify that he is not suggesting the United States intervene directly to support every anti-monarchy revolution.

Adams explains that the United States has respected the independence of other nations and has not intervened even when ``conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.''

In this case, he is referring to the anti-colonial revolutions taking place at that time in Latin America or Greece.

The most famous quote from that speech comes in the following passage about the role of the United States. So quoting from John Quincy Adams again:

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

People have argued how Adams' words apply to specific foreign policy debates today, but what is beyond question is that John Quincy Adams said Americans ought to at least root for freedom and independence. It is in our American DNA to take the side of the underdog, fighting for liberty against an empire.

As Margaret Thatcher explained, dictatorships and democracies aren't morally equal.

However they feel about the prudence of any particular foreign policy decision, Americans should reject the Putin-Xi vision of a multipolar war.

Let's look at some examples and consider the alternative values of the multipolar war Putin and Xi are offering to 8 billion people.

On Sunday, September 11, 2022, Grace Evangelical Church in Melitopol, Ukraine, was full of worshipers. Worship leaders with guitars stood in front of a giant, colorful screen displaying the lyrics of a praise song. It looked like any evangelical church here in the United States. As the congregation was singing praises to Jesus, armed Russian soldiers in camouflage barged in and stopped the service. I encourage every American to watch that video, and it is on video. The soldiers took the names of all the worshipers and detained the minister.

In the same Ukrainian city, the largest church was the Melitopol Christian Church, and that happens to be a charismatic Protestant church. Russian soldiers broke into the church with sledgehammers. They arrested the pastors in the middle of the night, waking one pastor's 9- year-old son with a gun in his face. The large cross in the front of the church was removed--the building confiscated by the Russian occupiers not for religious reasons but for secular use.

Before the Russian invasion, there were more Protestant churches in that city than orthodox churches. Now, as you see how the Russians invade, there are no Protestant churches in that community. Evangelical churches are considered undesirable by Russians for being too Western, even being accused of being too American.

Religious freedom, as we know, is a core natural right. In fact, it is the first right mentioned in our own Bill of Rights. The degree to which a country respects this right of religious freedom is a good barometer of the degree to which it respects individual rights in general. You cannot call yourself a free country if you suppress the freedom of religion.

Both Russia and China are among a handful of countries designated by the State Department as being what we call Countries of Particular Concern because of their severe violations of religious freedom.

China has been holding up to 2 million Uighurs and other Muslims in detention camps. The State Department has now officially labeled what China is doing to the Uighurs and other Muslims in detention camps as a ``genocide.'' They have been beaten with batons while being strapped to chairs; interrogated while water is being poured in their faces; placed in prolonged solitary confinement, constantly surveilled; deprived of sleep and food; forbidden from speaking their own language or practicing their own religion; and forced to sing patriotic songs that only Xi would approve of.

The Chinese Communist Party says that these camps are for vocational education to fight ``extremism.'' Here are some examples of what the Chinese Communist Party calls extremism: having too many children, being an unsafe person, being born in certain years, wearing a veil or having a beard.

My staff met with a former internee from one of these camps-- obviously, because that person was able to get free. She described widespread torture and rape. Since this started to result in children, the Chinese Communist Party has subjected Uighur women to forced birth control and sterilization. Uighurs in other countries, including in the United States, have been subjected to harassment and intimidation, including threats against family members for speaking out about the genocide of their people.

The Chinese Communist Party sees a threat from any belief system that provides an alternative to the Chinese Communist Party's ideology. So it has co-opted religious institutions that it can control while suppressing independent religious groups. This includes Tibetan Buddhists. Chinese officials have demolished a number of Tibetan monastery buildings and placed atheist Communist Party officials in important administrative positions.

Tibetan Buddhists are very peaceful so they pose no threat to the government except in their moral authority and their credibility in undercutting the government's legitimacy in that region. In Tibet, there have been reports of forced disappearances, arrests, torture, physical abuse, and prolonged detentions without trial of monks, nuns, and other individuals due to their religious practices.

Authorities arrest individuals for possessing photographs of or writings by the Dalai Lama.

Also, practitioners of Falun Gong, which traces its roots to the traditional Chinese religion, have been labeled ``members of a cult.''

Freedom House independently verified 933 cases of Falun Gong adherents sentenced to prison terms of up to 12 years in just a 3\1/2\- year period, often just for exercising their rights to freedom of expression in addition to freedom of religion. Thousands more are believed to be held at various prisons and extralegal detention centers. There are reports of cases of torture, disappearance, brainwashing, rape, and death of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese Communist Party.

When a person dies while imprisoned, their families are told that their loved ones committed suicide or died of a disease, but the bodies are cremated before evidence can be gathered.

In recent years, there have been credible reports of Falun Gong practitioners and other political prisoners having been victims of forced organ harvesting.

Christianity also has had a deep historical and cultural impact on modern China, but in the mid-20th century, the Communist Party suppressed the religion. The growth of Protestantism in China in recent decades has led to the emergence of what we call house churches. These are independent and not part of one of the state-sanctioned, Chinese Communist Party-controlled churches.

The Chinese Communist Party has clamped down on Christian activities outside of registered venues, banned unauthorized evangelization online, and intensified its crackdown on unauthorized Protestant meeting points and underground Catholic churches. Christians seeking to practice their faith free of government control have to fear their identities being discovered and facing punishment or imprisonment.

By contrast, Taiwan has complete religious freedom. Note that the new Taiwanese President, Mr. Lai, is part of a vibrant Protestant minority. I met him a few years ago when he was Vice President-elect, and he came to Washington for the National Prayer Breakfast.

Aside from geopolitics, it is only natural that Americans would sympathize with Taiwan over communist China because of religious freedom in Taiwan versus no religious freedom in communist China.

To repeat the words of John Quincy Adams, ``Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.''

So I have laid out for my colleagues the multipolar world that Xi and Putin want versus the freedom that is declared in our Declaration of Independence and practiced here, and by practicing it here, we hope we are an example for other countries that prefer democracy and religious freedom.

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