Pompeo Assesses Last Four Years of U.S. Foreign Policy and the Challenges Facing America Around the World
WASHINGTON, DC —In remarks this past Thursday at a “fireside chat” hosted by The Ripon Society, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assessed the last four years of U.S. foreign policy under the Biden Administration, and some of the pressing challenges facing the incoming Trump Administration around the world.
The discussion was moderated by U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood (IL-16), who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. LaHood also serves as a member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and he kicked off the discussion by asking Pompeo about China and the threat it poses to U.S. economic and military interests.
“Xi Jinping truly wants to change the way the world operates” Pompeo stated, “without human dignity, basic fundamental human rights, without property rights, without contracts, and with a set of trade rules that are not reciprocal. His goal is truly global hegemony for a Chinese model for the world. He’s got a big nuclear arsenal and a big military and a lot of capacity to do that. So how should we respond to this challenge? We have to win.”
According to Pompeo, the key to victory is to take on China economically and make sure everyone is playing by the same set of rules.
“We need to confront their economic aggression,” he said, “with the central thesis being reciprocity — that is, we’re going to operate under the same set of rules. If you have that as your guiding principle, you can begin to think about legislation, export controls, and the tools that will be needed to get the right economic outcome. They are not 10 feet tall. Their economy has challenges. Our model is better. The innovation and technology in the world must come from the West. We can get there with a good set of policies, not just from the United States, but from India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Europe, and our friends in the Middle East. That’s about 70 percent of the global GDP. We need to get that number to 80 or 90 percent. When we do, we’ll get it right.”
The former Secretary of State also pointed to another area where the U.S. needed to defend itself against Chinese aggression — information warfare.
“Today, they can talk to your kids and grandkids without your intermediation,” he stated, referring to TikTok and other social media platforms that China controls and operates on. “The Chinese can promote a message that the Founders had it wrong and that America stinks and that we fight these wars for global superiority, but the Chinese model is a better model. We have to figure out a way to make sure our children and grandchildren grow up understanding that’s not right. And that information fight is real, and serious, and hard.”
LaHood also asked Pompeo about the role of America around the world, and how he thought our nation has been perceived globally over the past four years.
“We were often accused of walking away from the global stage,” Pompeo observed, referring to the Trump Administration. “There’s no need to respond to that other than to say we did manage to achieve deterrence. And what has been lost is the perception that America is a badass. That’s like a little vulgar, but it’s a tough, evil world out there … And our adversaries have to be convinced that when America says these are the things that matter to us, that we’re actually going to defend them.”
“When you call an ally a ‘pariah’ in the Middle East; when you say ‘a minor incursion into Europe’ might be okay; when they fly a balloon over your country and you do almost nothing; independently, each of these may have just been a missed opportunity, perhaps. Cumulatively, they messaged the bad guys that they could take risks, that they could push, that they could challenge, that they could confront and see what the response would be. We have to get on the front foot again … You can’t go fight every battle. You can’t send the 82nd Airborne everywhere. But you can use the American economy and the enormous power that comes with our place in the world to convince the bad guys that you shouldn’t mess with this sheriff.
Referring again to U.S. foreign policy during the first Trump Administration, Pompeo continued:
“The reality is that we were either sufficiently unpredictable or sufficiently prepared to draw fewer red lines and then enforce them,” he stated. “I think our adversaries were very cautious in being aggressive. They didn’t invade Ukraine on our watch. You didn’t see what happened on October 7th in Israel on our watch. President Trump would say those things wouldn’t have happened if we were still there. I don’t say that, because I can’t prove it.
“But here’s what I can prove — it didn’t happen on our watch. That is undeniable. That’s factually true. We had no new wars. We didn’t have the Middle East rolled through by Iran. And we didn’t have Europe rolled through by Putin. You can either say God was smiling on us, which I believe, that we were lucky, or you can say there was deterrence. And I think that was it. That’s what the next administration will have to find a way to get back. And that’s what the Biden administration, sadly for America, lost.”
LaHood also asked the former Secretary of State about President Biden’s recent decision to allow Ukraine to use powerful long-range U.S. weapons inside Russia and how he thought that decision would impact the conflict in the weeks and months ahead.
“I don’t know what the next 60 days look like,” he said matter-of-factly. “Because everyone’s messaging the Trump administration, right? They’re not really thinking about dealing with Secretary Blinken and Jake Sullivan. They’re thinking about dealing with Mike Waltz and Secretary Rubio and President Trump. So I don’t know how the Russians will play this.”
“I have been arguing since, frankly, the fall of 2021, when we knew that this invasion was going to take place, that this required a deep, robust response. Not to send our kids — nobody’s asked for an American soldier or sailor or airman. But we should send our stuff and help these folks. We didn’t. And now, oddly, President Biden chooses after the election to do this. I can speculate why — I have no theory of the case. But he did do what I would say is the right thing. But it’s two years too late. It’s going to be a very rugged couple months.”
Following Pompeo’s discussion with LaHood, the former Secretary of State also took a number of other questions, including one about the 119th Congress and the policies that he believes should top the legislative agenda next year.
“You have to get these tax provisions done,” stated Pompeo, who represented the 4th District of Kansas in the U.S. House of Representatives for six years before his appointment as America’s top diplomat in 2018. “As much as I love tanks and missiles, my most important tool as Secretary of State wasn’t the American military. It was the American economy … So if those tax provisions blow up. Katie bar the door, not just for the American economy, but for the global economy, too. You’ll see global GDP shrink. So I would start there.
“The second thing that you stare at is, you watch what Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy are going to try and do, you can’t get at any of that done without fixing the healthcare system. You can get rid of all the foreign aid you want, you can shrink the Department of Education, and the fiscal problem isn’t remotely addressed, nor is the competitive problem. You have to get markets reintroduced into the healthcare system. And if the tax problem is hard, this is three twists on that.
“We got to lean into this, and one of the things that Vice President Harris campaigned on was price controls. We have them today in that particular market. We should be driving all the folks in that space who are trying to put competition back in the model, and I think it’s possible to do. There are lots of think tanks, there are lots of scholars – conservative scholars – who have done this, who can begin to build around the edges to tackle this challenge that we’re all going to face.
“So if you said, what’s the other thing that there should be? I know this is really hard, and it’s generic, but man, you can begin to chip away at the – it’s not even the total cost – it’s the value driving inside the healthcare system – to get both pharmaceuticals priced properly. We saw what Mark Cuban’s talking about — that’s a tragic idea. Certainly for a conservative it’s a tragic idea. And we’ve seen the price control model. They’re going to make it really hard. I was the 70th Secretary of State. They’re going to make it really hard for the 75th Secretary of State if we don’t figure out how to get those pieces right. So those are the two.”
To view Pompeo’s remarks to The Ripon Society this past Thursday, please click the link below:
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.