Americans and the World: Resetting Our Course
Former Senator Rick Santorum
National Press Club
Washington, D.C.
April 28, 2011

Remarks as prepared for delivery

Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. I want to speak today about our country and President Obama's foreign policy. Many Americans had invested their hopes and dreams in this administration, looking forward to a new day of respect, a new era of international relationships, and the ushering in of a new peace in the world.

So how we are doing and how is the world doing? Are we closer to a more peaceful world that respects human freedom, protects human rights and promotes human flourishing?

The original title of this talk was "America and the World." I changed it to "Americans and the World" because it has become clear to me that the citizens of the rest of the world look to us: the choices we make, the concerns we elevate, the values and virtues we Americans esteem.

Why? Because of our military or economic might? Our pop culture or star athletes? Because of our social welfare programs?

No, unlike President Obama I believe we were a great country even before the Great Society Programs of the 1960s. They look to us because we were great from our birth the Declaration of Independence "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights." When we founded our country, that proposition itself was not completely novel-it had historic and theological roots in Western Civilization, but no country until America dedicated itself to that proposition.

We cast off the doctrine of the divine rights of kings. We cast off the notion that any man had a right to rule any other man and held, instead, that all people had the right to fulfill their own God-given potential. Americans were not born to be servants of the state, the state existed to keep men free.

What does this have to do with foreign policy? Everything. It took a long time for us to meet the goals and principles we set for ourselves, but, led by people who did not ignore the moral issues of the day, like Abraham Lincoln, we extended those principles to all Americans. Lincoln understood the global and eternal meaning of our founding principles.

It was Lincoln who said our Founders:

This has been our legacy and our mission. It is who we are and for the most part have been - a courageous people who speak truth, seek justice and practice mercy. A people who stood against both the harbingers and realities of tyranny and oppression. A people of, and committed to, the best principles of Western Civilization.

America is all about you and your freedom so you can provide for yourself and serve those you love--your family your God and your neighbors--not provide for the government to do it for you. And that freedom, belongs to each of us equally, because we recognize that we are all equal not in ability, wealth or character, but in the eyes of our Creator. America is truly a moral enterprise.

By establishing ourselves as a nation on this basis, we have inspired and actively aided those around the world who aspire to our ideals and, unfortunately, at times we've had to confront those who not only reject those fundamental rights and freedoms, but threaten ours.

Sometimes we've done this through sacrifice, blood and might, and sometimes we've done this by simply living out our own creed. Tony Blair wrote recently about how our example impacts people the world over: "For those people in that bleak wilderness, America does stand out; it does shine; it may not be a house in their land they can aspire to, but it is a house they can see in the distance, and in seeing, knowing that how they do live is not how they must live."

So what are the unique features of the American experiment -- the "soft power of example" -- the rest of the world has known us for? I would argue there are four fundamentally American contributions to the world that define not only how we have organized our government but how we have organized our lives:

First, free markets which are rooted in excellence, hard work and innovation. I like Bill Gates' language of creative capitalism- entrepreneurship and commerce that creates opportunity, rewards success and tolerates failure. It is not in itself moral, but moral behavior is essential for its efficient operation and, of course it is faith which rightly informs our moral behavior. If we can nurture the combination of the untapped entrepreneurial genius of our age with properly formed consciences, our market economy can become the new frontier of freedom and opportunity.

Which brings me to the second contribution -- religious pluralism. This means that people of faith have the right to pursue their beliefs and not be abused by either the government or the majority. America has staked unique ground between a harsh secular cleansing of the public square and the establishment of the church by the state which has been Europe's history and it appears to be Islam's future. This is the only ground upon which we can truly live in peace with our differences and also advance the moral teachings which are essential for freedom to thrive.

Third, generosity and humanitarianism. America has a uniquely robust civil society, as observed almost 200 years ago by Alexis de Toqueville. This is how we primarily "love our neighbor." We are a generous with our time and our treasure.

And finally, a system of governance that promotes human flourishing, seeks the common good and maximizes personal liberty. Rule of law, checks and balances, separation of church and state, subsidiarity and federalism. Our founders understood that man's nature is inclined toward self and sin, and that no one person or institution should have the opportunity to consolidate power, lest the freedom of others be taken away.

Nevertheless, we all know that sometimes the soft power of example and charity is simply not enough-not against hardened dictators who threaten to blow out all the moral lights around us.

Even though our current leadership may have forgotten, I will never forget the open letter several world leaders, including Spain's Jose Aznar and the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel, wrote in 2003. They wrote, quote: "Thanks in large part to American bravery, generosity and farsightedness, Europe was set free from the two forms of tyranny that devastated our continent in the 20th century: Nazism and communism. Thanks, too, to the continued cooperation between Europe and the U.S. we have managed to guarantee peace and freedom on our continent."

That bravery and generosity has marked us not only in times of peace but also in times of war. When we have gone to war we have done so not for riches or greed or for national expansion; instead, we have done so to defend our freedoms and to make us safer by helping others be freer. Freedom has been our watchword, our anchor and our moral guide for nearly every cause both here and abroad.

But today, we have lost this mission because our president doesn't believe in it. He was asked point blank whether he believed in American exceptionalism and his answer was people of every culture thinks they are exceptional. When he speaks of our greatness as a country he ties it to our modern social welfare programs. And when he confronts other countries on their human rights abuses, which he does only rarely, he does so pointing out we, too, have problems to apologize for, as if on an equal plane with others-like China. A president who doesn't understand the greatness of the American experiment cannot confidently advance her interests. If he will not or cannot lead who around the world will follow?

Americans are worried about our current foreign policy because it was reset in a series of apologies to the world for our past actions. When a president goes to the UN or speaks abroad and apologizes for our country and her immediate past policies, we do not advance our security - we diminish our credibility. Such behavior is also inconsistent with our values and our history.

John Kennedy never apologized to the world for Dwight Eisenhower. Ronald Reagan never apologized to the world for Jimmy Carter, nor George W. Bush for Bill Clinton. Yes, each president set his own agenda, but they each did so based on the view that our power and our greatness was what was most important, not our own domestic political victories and recriminations. Each understood this because each understood the long-term virtue and value of America, both at home and abroad.

But now we have caused two very dangerous things on the world stage: confusion and doubt. We now have a confused foreign policy in the hottest spots in the world: especially in the Middle East. And we have allies and freedom fighters all over the world who doubt our time tested and time honored commitments to them.

Over the past four years I have focused my time and attention on national security matters through the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Program to Protect America's Freedom; a program I founded to write and talk about the great threats that continue to face our country from around the world. My work has been particularly focused on two countries, Iran and Venezuela, and perhaps nothing has illustrated the failure of President Obama's foreign policy more than how we have dealt with Iran-both its leadership and its people.

Iran's mullahcracy has been at war with us for over 30 years. And in 2009 there was a chance to end that. There was a chance for freedom in Iran. I have been a believer and an advocate for that possibility since my service in the Senate. I authored the Iran Freedom Support Act which, among other things, provided millions of dollars for the pro-democracy movement in Iran. At first my bill was opposed by both President Bush and Senator Obama. Both eventually relented, but neither implemented that provision while president.

As a result we were not ready when the spark struck. So, rather than supporting the dissidents there-dissidents asking for our help-the president continued his policy of engaging (and effectively supporting) the mullahcracy. The result? The dissidents were brutally crushed. Now, instead of being able to face a leadership in Iran that would be grateful to us today, we still have the same leadership in Iran that wants to destroy us and our allies in the region.

Let us make no mistake about what happened there: We sided with evil because our president believes our enemies are legitimately aggrieved and thus we have no standing to intervene.

In 2003 I authored and secured passage of the Syrian Accountability Act which was used as leverage to pressure Iran's vassal state, Syria, to get out of Lebanon. Yet Syria's continued destabilizing of Lebanon, open hostility to Israel and support for terrorism has been rewarded by President Obama. After years of withholding diplomatic recognition this administration restored it. And, our Secretary of State publicly broadcast that it was a regime committed to reform while it was cracking down even harder on its own people.

Yet in Egypt this year we chose not to stand by another authoritarian leader, only this leader was not a longtime enemy, by an ally. It seems almost by definition that our allies are seen by this administration as complicit with our past sins. Therefore our policy has been to consistently turn our backs on them. In this case in favor of what now looks like a power vacuum being filled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

As for Libya: it is a morass. If we were going to support the rebel forces we should have acted swiftly in the early days of Benghazi's uprising by recognizing and arming the rebels and immediately enforcing a no-fly zone. Decisive action against Kaddafi would have been the end of him.

Instead, the president delayed any comment for several days, then announced his support for expelling Kaddafi. He then dithered by doing nothing to effectuate that policy and ultimately deferred to the Arab League, the French, and the UN, but with the proviso that our policy was now not to overthrow Kaddafi. And in the meantime, because we have abdicated our leadership, NATO has been put in disarray.

But what we are witnessing in the Middle East is akin to other abdications of our moral authority that have marked the past several years in dealing with the other authoritarian threat - militant socialism. From acquiescence to China's saber rattling in the South China Sea to impotence in the face of Venezuela's use of petro-dollars to expand his Bolivarian revolution in our hemisphere, President Obama has at best refused to defend our interests.

Americans are more than familiar with our country's long conflict with the secular ideologies of National Socialism, Fascism and Marxism. With few exceptions, our leaders from Roosevelt to Reagan were clear in defining them and judging them for the evil they represented. Today our leaders have opted for political correctness, referring to our theologically motivated enemies as simply terrorists. But terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology.

This "new" existential threat to America, Sharia and its violent iteration Jihadism-has yet to be adequately explained by our leaders, except in using the term terror to describe its military profile that it's violent, widespread and fanatical. But it's more including the non-violent efforts to insinuate Sharia law in western countries including our own.

However, according to this administration, our enemy's theology and ideology doesn't matter. The administration has decoupled what fuels the enemy from its behavior. That is why the administration's review of the Ft. Hood massacre inexplicably does not mention the words Muslim, Islam, Sharia or Jihad.

Yet the truth is, the enemy is motivated by an interpretation of Islam - Sharia -that is antithetical to American civilization.

We were taught to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's. To the Jihadist there is one religious and secular law - Sharia and all manmade laws are an affront this perfect god-given code. As Bernard Lewis has pointed out, "The dichotomy of regnum and sacerdotium was crucial to Western Civilization but has no equivalent in political Islam-the Prophet is the State."

Understanding this conflict is crucial to understanding why Jihadists are trying to kill us. They know what we stand for-freedom and equality. They have a worldview that opposes freedom of conscience whereas our worldview is built on it; they oppress women and minorities whereas we view them as equals that we must respect; they abuse and kill Christians, Jews and even other Muslims who affirm that the freedom to believe is as important as belief itself.

Millions of such Muslims, here and abroad, want no more to submit to the barbaric Sharia laws than do the rest of us. They are our natural allies in this fight against our common enemy.

We should have no illusions about the extent of this threat. Radical Islam is extending its tentacles from Africa to America. And at the heart of the threat is Iran, which is aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapon while at the same time it continues to fund Jihadist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas.

In the past two years, has ignoring or appeasing this threat been successful? Have offers of talks and negotiations deterred the threat? Did our willful abandonment of the terms relating Sharia doctrine to violence produce a less virulent and less aggressive enemy? No. No. And absolutely not.

Finally, one other point about state sponsored Jihadism: Prior to their enrichment from oil, many such countries did not have the technology and resources to project power or fund Jihadist cells. Our continued reliance on foreign oil will not only continue to cost us jobs and growth, but it threatens our national security. The best way to starve the state sponsored Jihadists of resources is to produce more liquid fuels here.

As for the other main threat to the world-militant socialism-we see it in many guises and many places. There is the soft economic socialism that is turning much of Europe into a toothless tiger and an economic basket case as it has begun to do here. There is the hard socialism in all its forms that we see in places like China and worse, in North Korea. And then there is our very own hemisphere, Latin America.

I speak of our hemisphere on a propitious day today, the birthday of James Monroe, the man who gave us the Monroe Doctrine-a doctrine that said we would make no colonialist claims abroad but neither would we tolerate the crushing of sovereignty in our own hemisphere. Can we honestly say Latin America is better off now than it was three years ago? A region thriving with prosperity, freedom, sovereignty, and democracy? We cannot.

As I mentioned, at the EPPC, I focused also on Venezuela complaining even under the Bush administration that we were ignoring Hugo Chavez's ambitions and threats.

We have gone from bad to worse. Two years ago, when Honduran democratic institutions were fighting a proxy battle with Hugo Chavez, we sided with the Chavez ally. In South America the president has chosen domestic politics over perhaps our best ally in the continent that knows how to fight drug cartels and stand up to Chavez: Colombia. Without US support Colombia has been isolated to the point where they have recently chosen to appease Chavez and his drug trafficking friends over the interests of the US.

Let's be clear: Venezuela is growing in influence in Latin America, teaming with Iran, China and Russia and supporting drug cartels and Jihadist training camps. We have sat idly by as Chavez has nationalized US company investments, shut down the free press, harassed Jews and Christians and jailed opponents. And our response has been to ignore it.

It was just reported that one of the most wanted Jihadist criminals in the world, Mohsen Rabbani, came to Brazil via Iran's state airline from Tehran to Caracas -- a flight called "Aeroterror" by the intelligence community for most likely transporting terrorist suspects to South America. In fact, the Venezuelan government shields passenger lists from Interpol on that flight. The point is this: Rabbani came to recruit Brazilians to be trained in Iran. For what? To build bridges of understanding to reciprocate President Obama's naïve overtures. If you believe that I have another bridge to sell you.

Immediately to our south, we despair over Mexico. It is not a failed state-but it could be-and by several criteria it is even more violent than Iraq. The violence and drug running is a real threat to our country and critical to our border states. Consider also the growing presence of Jihadism south of our border, and the question must be asked - why hasn't the president secured our border? Here is another case of putting domestic political objectives above the national security of the country.

Let me be very clear: To negotiate with hardened socialist states or to whitewash and ignore their threats and actions, in this hemisphere or elsewhere, is to accommodate its leaders and its aggression-and that is surrender.

I, however, am an optimist about America's potential to again lead the world and I don't mean "leading from behind." By reclaiming our legacy of liberty I know we can make ourselves more secure and help the rest of the world become more stable and free. Let me suggest a 10 point plan to reverse our course, restore our greatness and reestablish America's standing in the world.

First, we need to begin by seeing the world the way it truly is. We need to see evil for what it is, and confront it; and we need to see decency for what it is and nurture it.

Earlier this month the President suggested deep cuts to our military. Wrong signal, wrong effort, and wrong time. Now is the time to not only be increasing our military preparedness but to finish the task of a comprehensive missile defense system. Nothing is so helpful to negotiations toward peace as overwhelming strength and defense. To ignore this lesson in the pursuit of utopian ideas of a nuclear free world is both irresponsible and dangerous.

While we are at it, we should restore our missile defense commitments to Poland and the Czech Republic: another case of turning our back on friends to appease a potential foe. What small country in need of friends will see any advantage to being our ally if we do not reverse such decisions?

Second, we need to understand we are in a war, a hot war as well as a war of ideas. Failing to define our foes lest we be politically incorrect does not dissuade them from seeking our destruction. They know who they are and tell us, and they construe our efforts to obscure reality as signs of weakness and irresolution. Such behavior causes despair among our allies and confusion here at home. We should begin reversing course by defining what animates them, Sharia, and enlisting Muslims who agree with us to help us defeat them.

Third, we need a reinvigorated human intelligence apparatus in the Middle East so we can better understand the enemy and identify opportunities to counteract them.

Fourth, we need to change our information operations abroad to promote our core values of freedom, equality, and democracy-just as we did with the Soviet Empire in the 1980s. We are in a clash of civilizations, and we will ultimately win with ideas and ideals, not words of appeasement and not flimsy Hollywood culture.

Fifth, we must cease our verbal, moral, and diplomatic equivalence as between good and evil. Syria does not deserve an ambassador; its protestors deserve support; Israeli housing starts should not be put on the same moral plane as Hamas terror attacks; and China should be challenged on religious liberty rather than be given a veto on the human rights activists we wish support.

Sixth, having supported popular sovereignty abroad, both this and the previous administration have erred in failing to sufficiently support the conditions of liberty and the institutions necessary for a successful democracy. Too often we have erred in thinking that liberty's first order of business is a vote. Elections should be a consummation and not a commencement to democratic processes. We have reaped nightmares when we get that backward, from 1930s Germany to Hamas in the Gaza Strip to what looks to be the case in Egypt.

Seventh, we need to keep our commitment to humanitarian aid, especially in Africa. China and Islam are competing for the hearts and minds of much of Africa, and we cannot turn our back from the investment and commitments we have made. I helped lead many of our efforts to address third-world debt and the global AIDS crisis, and our investments have paid off.

For example 200,000 babies do not have AIDS today who otherwise would have, and millions of people are alive today due to American provided anti-viral drugs. This is what I call pro-life foreign policy. And it is one of our best international investments, especially considering less than one percent of our budget goes to such foreign aid.

Eighth, we must stand by Israel, especially at a time when it appears increasingly to be standing alone. The recent dislocation of the old order in the Middle East will usher in a new one , and anti-Israeli elements are working overtime to take advantage of the opportunity. The danger will grow exponentially if Iran succeeds in securing nuclear weapons in the near future.

Ninth, the tradition of speaking up and out about prisoners of conscience and dissidents in prison, never mind American hostages, from the Middle East to Asia, needs to be restored. When President Reagan instituted the policy of reminding the world and America that there were others in jails because of their beliefs it not only reminded us of our blessings, it gave dissidents a sense of hope, and the knowledge that someone cared about them, that a great country was on their side.

Finally, we need to have a national effort to restore the teaching of American history in our nation's schools. It is our children's worst subject-they simply do not know their own story and thus when they are told ours is a history of aggression and immorality. They have no counter narrative to refute it. It is worth remembering that Ronald Reagan's final wish in his farewell address was to ask America to instill in our youth a renewed "informed patriotism." Unfortunately, we ignored this lesson, and we are reaping the consequences.

The world will soon consider the life and contribution of a partner of Ronald Reagan's in reshaping the world, Pope John Paul II. He, along with another Polish hero Lech Walesa, helped to bring freedom back to Poland. His faith informed his courageous stand against a totalitarian regime. John Paul II warned of the "death of true freedom" and observed that "freedom itself needs to be set free."

Lech Walesa last visited our nation last year and he offered this observation:

But I have not and my sense from traveling the country is that neither have the American people - they are bursting at the seams to have a leader who believes in them and our country again.

In his farewell address to the nation, President Reagan reminded us of this when he told the story of the USS Midway that was patrolling the South China Sea in the early 1980s. A sailor on the Midway saw a tiny boat, filled with refugees from Indochina, and a rescue launch was sent to them. As the Americans came into view, one of the refugees smiled, stood up, and shouted out: "Hello American Sailor. Hello Freedom Man!"

That is who we are-Freedom Men. And Women. And Children. Let us not forget that privilege nor neglect that legacy. Thank you. I look forward to your questions.