This morning on Fox News Channel’s America's Newsroom, Chairman Ed Royce discussed the future of U.S.-Russia relations and the critical NATO alliance.
Key excerpts below:
It’s time to deal with Russia from a position of strength: “I’d like to see better relations with Russia, but to do it you’ve got to be dealing with Russia from a position of strength. I think what we’ve seen from the Obama administration was weakness."
...The U.S. needs leverage: “What we saw for example with the [Russian] invasion of Ukraine, Congress passes legislation overwhelmingly to direct the administration to give weaponry to the Ukrainians to help defend themselves, anti-tank weapons, [President Obama] blocks that… [and the incoming Secretary of State rightly says that was a mistake.] What’s missing is leverage. Putting anti-tank weapons into Eastern Ukraine would have given us leverage.”
We can’t continue to lose the information war: “I was in Eastern Germany on an exchange program and I saw the effectiveness of [U.S.] broadcasts. Today you only have Putin broadcasting… You do not have an effective counter to that into Russia in which we give people the truth about Putin or facts about what is really going on. We don’t have…free radio or social media effectively countering Putin today. That would give us leverage, what’s missing is leverage.”
NATO is critical: “NATO is critical to the defense and security of the United States. But NATO is in need of being reconstructed in a way. I think the President-elect is trying to get [our European allies] to commit so the lion’s share of the cost isn’t always on the backs of the United States.”
