McConnell Urges Increased NATO Spending: Fighting Wars Is 'Vastly More Expensive Than Deterring'

7/10/2024

During remarks on the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) spoke about NATO defense spending.

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00:00Now, on an entirely different matter, as I said yesterday, NATO members have taken some

00:06promising steps toward making the alliance fit for purpose.

00:13But now is not the time to get complacent.

00:16The threats we face are grave and growing.

00:21How we meet them will determine the future of the order that has underpinned the free

00:27world's peace and prosperity for decades.

00:33Our greatest adversaries are not beating around the bush.

00:39PRC officials are stepping up their pressure against Taiwan.

00:46Standing on NATO's soil, China's ambassador to France suggested recently that China's

00:51civil war, quote, has not yet ended, and threatened that the mainland could expel the

01:00rebel regime in Taiwan at any time.

01:06This comes from the same revisionist power that has ceded for too long in infiltrating

01:11our economies, supply chains, and critical infrastructure with the promise of quick investments

01:20and easy profits.

01:24Not long ago, it was America falling prey to this alluring promise.

01:33But it's past time for European allies to learn from our experience, and it's time for

01:40America to correct our lingering mistakes as well.

01:45We cannot continue to stand by as Chinese military modernization outpaces our own.

01:52We cannot abide defense budget requests that fail to even keep pace with inflation.

02:00The cold truth for all of us is this.

02:05Those who fail to take hard power seriously will learn that fighting wars is vastly, vastly

02:11more expensive than deterring them.

02:16Just consider the neo-Soviet imperialists with whom the PRC has struck up an, quote,

02:22unlimited partnership, end quote.

02:26The West's weakness and hesitation didn't just fail to deter Putin's escalation in Ukraine.

02:33It actually invited a longer, costlier, and bloodier conflict.

02:40And Putin's brutal aggression, his reckless nuclear saber-rattling, his militarization

02:49of space, his weaponization of energy, his repression of Christians at home and in occupied

02:57Ukraine, his cold-blooded targeting of civilians, including a missile strike on Ukraine's largest

03:06children's hospital earlier this week, all of this is facilitated by China's support.

03:16Of course, firmly knit into this same web of aggression is Iran, perhaps the most notorious

03:23enabler of terrorist child murder in the world.

03:29The architect of slaughter across the Middle East, the mastermind of Houthi threats to

03:35international trade, and the world's most active sponsor of terrorism, Iran continues

03:43to make determined progress toward a nuclear weapons capability.

03:50As the Biden administration's director of national intelligence acknowledged just yesterday,

03:55the regime is also stoking aggressive and anti-Semitic demonstrations on our soil, U.S.

04:04soil, against Israel's response to the horrific attacks that Tehran enabled.

04:13Our European allies, of course, are reckoning with a persistent strain of anti-Semitism

04:19in their own politics.

04:21Serious allies ought to dispense with any wishful thinking about the prospects of rapprochement

04:28under Iran's newest president.

04:32So make no mistake, the transatlantic alliance is growing stronger, larger, and more committed

04:40to the shared responsibilities of collective defense.

04:45And on the whole, we're staring down those connected threats with clearer eyes.

04:53But the alliance is only as strong as its weakest link.

04:57And today it almost appears that one weak link, and note that NATO's chain, wants to

05:03break it.

McConnell Urges Increased NATO Spending: Fighting Wars Is 'Vastly More Expensive Than Deterring'

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