 Good afternoon. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Bill Burns, and I'm the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It's truly a pleasure to welcome Senator Bob Menendez, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Carnegie. The senator's remarks this afternoon could not be time-lear. Just this morning, Secretary of State Pompeo was on Capitol Hill to make the case for the Trump administration's foreign policy and defend historic budget cuts to his own department. Today's speech comes on the heels of a number of controversial policy announcements from cutting off foreign assistance to three Central American states, to formally recognizing Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, to name just a couple. And it comes as the 2020 presidential primaries pick-up steam with at least 18 Democratic candidates competing over how best to renew America's democracy and our place in a changing world. For nearly three decades, Senator Menendez has been a leading voice on these issues. Hard-nosed about our interests, confident about our values, and fiercely independent. That wasn't always terribly convenient to the White House or his own party, but he certainly earned my enduring respect and admiration, and his deeply informed efforts have enriched both our foreign policy and our democracy. Senator Menendez's voice is more important than ever today. Americans are coming to grips with the reality that we're no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical block, and they're asking lots of questions about whether and how America should lead in today's increasingly crowded, chaotic, and contested world. At a moment when democracies are having a crisis of confidence and autocrats feel the wind in their sails, at a moment when our allies are hedging and our enemies are taking advantage, at a moment when the global order we've done so much to build and defend is teetering, and at a moment when Americans are increasingly skeptical about the conventional wisdom of the Washington foreign policy establishment, we ought to ask hard questions and inject new ideas. That's precisely the role of institutions like Carnegie, and that's precisely what we try to do every day across our programs and across our global network. Our aim is to provide independent global and strategic insight and innovative ideas to advance international peace, at the intersections of technology and security, geopolitics and economics, and governance and conflict. And our responsibility, it seems to me, is to use our platform to inject alternative perspectives and to debate them. That is precisely why at this moment of testing for our country and our foreign policy, we are truly honored to welcome Senator Menendez to Carnegie. Please join me in giving a very warm welcome to Senator Bob Menendez. Thank you, Ambassador Burns. Thank you, Ambassador Burns, for that kind introduction, and to Andrew Weiss and your entire Carnegie team here for bringing us together today, and thank you all for joining. A few institutions command as much respect as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Your work embodies a serious policy analysis that's so sorely needed in Washington today, and I can tell you firsthand it's very much appreciated and relied upon every day. I also want to thank you personally, Ambassador, for not just your service, but all of your recently written works about diplomacy as a true craft and indispensable tool for solving challenges at a time that we consistently hear diplomacy dismissed, devalued, and even derided, I think, your spirited defense, both of the practice and the profession have never mattered more. It's no exaggeration to say that the democratic values and institutions that have underpinned our peace, prosperity and stability for the better part of the past century are under assault like never before. We've seen elections disrupted in political discourse manipulated by nation-state actors in ways that just a few years ago were inconceivable, and for those who think the worst is behind us, I beg to differ. In the years ahead, efforts by nation-states like Russia and China, among others, to undermine democracy will only grow in sophistication. We know that China's investments in technology and artificial intelligence have applications far beyond internal repression into the realm of influence abroad. Likewise, we know that the Kremlin's successful investment in our 2016 presidential election and this administration's refusal to hold it accountable for its interference has emboldened it to recycle its playbook. And if there's anything we've learned from Ukraine and Syria is that Russia is ever-willing to use military force to advance its aims. Are these threats new? Of course not. Yet the scale and the reach of our adversaries' efforts to undermine democracy is unparalleled since the end of the Cold War. And indeed, we might take lessons from the Cold War. For that historic struggle was not one to the size of our militaries alone. It was one to the strength of our values, by our belief in democracy, human rights, religious and social freedom, the rule of law, and free and fair competition. We students of history recognize that those democratic values and the international institutions we built in support of them are in large part responsible for the peace, prosperity, and stability the American people have enjoyed for decades. Simply put, democracy prevailed. Democratic values prevailed. Democratic institutions prevailed. We cannot forget this lesson of history. For our adversaries and strategic competitors, namely Russia and China, have also learned it. Even as they exercise greater military power, they see that their path to dominance in the 21st century will not be one on the conventional battlefield. Nor will they win by offering a better alternative to the liberal, rules-based international order. They know their path of victory is not so much the triumph of their own ideals, but rather the defeat of ours. So before we discuss the many ways that democracy is under threat, we must ask ourselves why democracy is under threat in the first place. And I believe it begins with looking inward rather than outward, because while our adversaries may have played a role in the resurgence of white nationalism and populism around the world, in the Brexit vote, in the election of President Trump, the vulnerabilities they exploded remain ours and ours alone. These seismic events are a symptom of a larger disease, a growing dissatisfaction with democracy among citizens of the western world that has festered for years. We can call out political parties and leaders who stoke hatred and division and talk about democracy being humanity's greatest hope until we're blue in the face. But we cannot ignore the very conditions that serve as breeding grounds for divisive politics and authoritarian stronghold. We face no shortage of challenges, displacement from globalization and technological change, the shrinking of wages and the concentration of wealth, climate change and migration, radicalization and extremism. Ask a worker whose real wages haven't risen since the 1990s if democracy is working for them. Ask a millennial drowning in student debt if democracy is working for them. Ask a diabetic who cannot afford insulin if democracy is working for him. Throughout history, autocratic leaders have taken advantage of this anxiety. As democratic leaders, we must address its root causes. We must make democracy deliver again. We must show our faith in our democratic institutions and processes. We must show the American people and people around the world that democracy is capable of solving problems big and small. Because if we cannot make democracy work at home, then we have no hope of selling it abroad. And we will grow ever vulnerable to foreign actors intent on tearing at our social fabric and sowing the failure of democracy itself. The United States and Europe have spent decades working to build a rules-based international order that supports stability, preserves peace and advances economic opportunity for all. Yet these rules of the road are under steady assault by a revanchist Russia and a rising China. Some of the Trump's administration's own strategy documents acknowledge this new era of strategic competition. But diagnosis is only half of the equation. In the face of powerful destabilizing forces, we need real leadership. Unfortunately, this administration's insistence on viewing this new era of competition solely through the lens of power, without any regard to our values, leaves us unable to meet today's challenges. We face serious threats to our democratic institutions, our security, our values, and our economies. Only together will we overcome them by renewing our alliances and leveraging every tool in our diplomatic arsenal to defend good governance and advance our ideals. We need our friends to work with us. We have to be honest that in certain corners of the world, the models put forward by adversaries like China and Russia have growing appeal. Look no further than China's growing influence over the recipient Belt and Road nations, or Russia's steadfast support of Maduro and Venezuela. We in the West must offer a better model, a better example. We must offer a modern-day and appealing version of the rules-based international order. Democracy must be the guiding light of our foreign policy. Every element of our national security strategy, robust diplomacy, strong alliances, strategic economic statecraft, is stronger when we champion democracy as a fundamental governing principle. Consider our competition with China, which continues to play four-dimensional chess across the world, militarily, economically, diplomatically, and culturally. China's island-building campaign in the South China Sea threatens not just regional stability, but long-standing U.S. interests in the world's fastest-growing economic region, from the free flow of commerce to freedom of navigation to the resolution of disputes consistent with international law. Over the past decade, we've seen China bend the rules to suit its economic goals. Through the cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property rights, the manipulation of market access, the force transfer of technology, the underwriting of state-owned enterprises, and so much more. Globally, China's brand of international diplomacy I think is best described as manipulative investment. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, China has used lucrative port contracts and UN votes to go its influence and win friendly trade terms. As China grows its economic reach, we cannot turn a blind eye to its domestic repression. Xi Jinping has overseen the emergence of a neo-Maoist authoritarian and civilian state from the internment of religious minorities in reeducation labor camps to ongoing repression in Tibet to the deployment of surveillance systems that rival the movie Minority Report. The President may wonder why China's repressive tactics are of any concern to us. Well, if China cannot respect the basic human rights of its own people, how can we expect it to respect the human rights of all people? This go-it-along strategy is not sustainable for the long term. The United States is a country of approximately 320 million people. China is a country of nearly 1.4 billion. We are not in a position to count the yuan for yuan in China's state-owned enterprises. But if we leverage our partnerships and lead with our allies, we don't need to be. The combined economies of the United States and our partners are a force to be reckoned with. Together, we must engage recipient-belt-and-road countries and empower them to negotiate Chinese investment on better terms. America and our allies must be present to create, shape, and set standards for the 21st century, or risk seeing the rule of law in these countries washed away in a flood of Chinese cash. Revitalizing the rules-based order means setting strong environmental and labor standards, it means standing up for human rights, it means supporting institutions that arbitrate fairly and justly, and offering technical assistance and diplomatic backing to those who need it. The longer this administration insists that the United States go it alone, the more time we give China to bend the global economy to its will and rewrite the rules of commerce in the 21st century in its repressive image. The EU, Canada, Japan, Australia, even India offer real prospects for partnership, but we spend too much time fighting over tariffs between us rather than working together to create, shape, and set standards that benefit all of us. Our best hope at establishing the rules of the road for the future of global commerce is to work together. For example, the entry of Huawei and other Chinese technologies in the European market is of growing concern because of national security questions. Adopting these technologies is akin to entering into a deal with the Chinese military as your partner, endangering Europe's telecoms infrastructure for years to come. But lecturing our allies about the dangers of relying on Chinese technology is no replacement for the development of viable 5G alternatives. Unfortunately, this administration's ability to appeal to our European friends on that basis is limited. In an environment poisoned by US positions on the Paris climate deal, the JCPOA and trade disputes, this debate on 5G may end up being a casualty of President Trump's America's alone strategy. Likewise, the United States has to work with our allies to counter aggression by the Russian Federation. Putin wants nothing more than to see the transatlantic alliance crumble and the light of our democratic values die out. As we speak, the Kremlin is likely interfering in the second round of the Ukrainian presidential election. Meanwhile, Russia's malign influence operations could destabilize upcoming European Parliament elections in May. Whatever the conclusions of the full Mueller report may be, I hope the report gives us greater insight into why the Trump administration has yet to rally our allies against Russian aggression. The attack in the Kerch Strait was nearly five months ago, yet the international response was indisputably weak. Five months later, 24 Ukrainian sailors remain in a Russian jail with no end in sight. It's unacceptable, and with no real multilateral strategy in place, we remain flat-footed while President Putin charges ahead. This is why last month Senator Lindsey Graham and I introduced the Defending America Security from Kremlin Aggression Act, or DASCA, to improve our ability to meet the Russian challenge. Our bill would invest in democratic institutions and countries most vulnerable to Kremlin aggression, increase transparency when it comes to beneficial ownership and money laundering in real estate deals. The bill increases sanctions pressure on Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine and its malicious influence campaigns, both by targeting the oligarchs complicit in the Kremlin's maligning actions as well as Russia's energy and financial sectors. Now, I know there are different views among our allies as to whether increasing sanctions pressure is the right track, but let's remember the facts of this case. Russian violations of sovereignty and ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine, the use of chemical weapons in the United Kingdom, the assault on the 2016 United States elections, aggression abroad and repression at home, support for nationalist fringe movements abroad that sow division in democratic societies, active support for Bashar al-Assad's war crimes in Syria, the violations of international law on the high seas, and the list goes on and on. I believe Moscow will continue to push until it meets genuine resistance. Our sanctions thus far have failed to change Kremlin behavior because they have not succeeded in changing the Kremlin's calculus. That's why we're proposing a new office at the State Department focused on sanctions diplomacy, something that many European friends have asked us for over the past two years. We need to build an infrastructure for a better dialogue on these issues as we assert more effective pressure on the Kremlin. Countering Russia's malign influence also demands more resources. That's why we seek to bolster the State Department's Global Engagement Center, the NATO-EU hybrid center, and other non-governmental efforts in the U.S. and Europe. Likewise, we need to be more diplomatically present in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Without American diplomats empowered to lead, more and more countries in these regions will succumb to the Russian model. The post-World War II international order will not stand on its own. Generation after generation must renew it and revitalize it. We must strengthen institutions like NATO, the EU, the UN, the OSCE, ASEAN, the OAS, and the Brentwood institutions. We know that Russia and China have directly and indirectly helped undermine the public's faith in these institutions. That's why the first step towards countering these challenges is to renew our alliances. We need our friends with us. Together, we want to make clear to our people exactly what's at stake, nothing short of peace, prosperity, and democracy itself. We've heard some in the administration use multilateralism as if it was a bad word. As if the multilateral institutions, the United States, and our partners spent over half a century building were not born of common values or shared challenges. I fear that this missile of our alliances leaves America with a weaker hand. How much reputational damage have we suffered in pulling out of the Paris climate accord? How do we maintain our influence in the global economy after the Trump administration has announced U.S. withdrawal from four treaties since 2017? And despite positive messaging last week around the 70th anniversary of NATO, how can we restore our partner's trust that a United States under a President Trump will defend Article 5 unequivocally? Secretary General Stoltenberg was addressing the joint session of Congress last week. He remarked that it's good to have friends. Indeed, it is good to have friends. In February, I visited NATO headquarters and saw the memorial to those who lost their lives on September 11th of 2001. It was a sober reminder that the only time that NATO's Article 5 has been invoked was for us. Our allies were there for us in a time of need, and there should be no question that we will be there for them. That's why our legislation also requires Senate consent for any effort by this or any other administration to remove us from NATO. Second, we need to invest in diplomacy to effectively promote American interests. And yet, just this morning, Secretary Pompeo was before the Foreign Relations Committee for nearly three hours regarding the State Department's budget request, which for the third consecutive year proposes slashing international affairs funding. The budgets are a statement of our values. It's clear that this President does not value diplomacy. While we take comfort in knowing that Trump's budget is then unarrivaled because of congressional action, it's beyond frustrating that we must defend what we have instead of building what we need. We cannot counter Russia's aggression or compete with China with one hand tied behind our back. We're talking about America's future. We cannot and should not do this on the cheap. And yet this administration has gutted the State Department and USAID from its targeting of career diplomats to its denigrating the very idea of diplomacy. I don't need to tell this room that morale remains really low at Boggy Bottom. Many of our nation's best diplomats have left the profession. Their knowledge and their relationships around the world will take years to rebuild. On the world stage, we cannot sanction our way out of every challenge. Nor can we bomb or shoot our way out. We must invest in Korea public servants who dedicate their lives to promoting American interests abroad and amassing global expertise. Fortunately, members on both sides of the aisle understand that we need a well-resourced and fully staffed State Department and USAID. And given President Trump's assertion that he would bring on, quote, the very best people, I hope you don't mind if I just take a moment to talk to the matter of personnel. I want to correct the record about some of the administration's recent statements on the Senate confirmation process which casts a blame on the Democratic minority. Here are the facts. Under President Obama, State Department nominees took an average of about 63 days to be confirmed. Under President Trump, the average is about 74. So let's be clear what accounts for this 11-day difference. The additional vetting underway in our committee is a direct result of the administration's negligence, incompetence, or indifference. This president has put forward some of the most poorly vetted, least qualified nominees I have ever seen in 27 years of doing foreign policy in the Congress, between the House and the Senate. To give you just a taste, our committee has received nominees who have had court-issued restraining orders against them, unreported lawsuits, issues of me too, and records of what I can only describe as an unsavory behavior. The bottom line is that we need a fully staffed State Department, but quality matters, expertise matters, conduct matters. If we're not sending our best abroad, we're doing the service to the American people and our allies. Third, democracies around the world need to do a better job of banding together. We need to create and strengthen forums where democracies can address big problems together. And this can't just be about Europe, though that's where our natural and most long-standing allies are. Now, I think we have to do a better job of extending this conversation with those democratic countries across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Countries that for whatever reason may not have played an elevated role in world affairs before. Standing up to those opponents of democracy should require all hands on deck, and we need them. The community of democracies, a forum set up towards the end of the Clinton administration by Madeleine Albright, is an interesting model. And we must be open to other ideas as well. We need engagement not just between heads of state, but also from legislature to legislature, political party to political party, civil society to civil society, business to business, and citizen to citizen. And beyond our constitutional duties to appropriate funds, ratified treaties, and confirmed nominees, Congress has a role to play as a voice of the American people. We must continue to invite world leaders and activists to our end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a world away from the chaos of the White House. And when Democrats and Republicans together engage in dialogue with our foreign friends, we not only widen our worldview, but we remember that we are all on the same American team. Finally, I want to underscore that America's power of example is only as strong as the vibrancy and durability of our own democratic system. I was saddened to see Freedom House recently downgrade the United States in its global survey on political rights and civil liberties. We've seen white power movements on the rise, metastasizing on social media, and fermenting death and mayhem from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh to Christ Church. These malign movements are very real, they're very dangerous, and they're easily exploited by foreign actors. Part of the answer lies in addressing some of the fundamental economic inequalities that have gone ignored. Part lies in our leaders rising above the politics of division and speaking out forcefully for our values. And part relies on implementing reforms to restore faith in our democracy. As I said before, we must make democracy deliver again. There are worthy reforms being proposed in Congress and by leading contenders for the White House. I, for one, am a co-sponsor of the For the People Act, which would dramatically reduce influence of special interests in our politics. We must rebuild democracy's brand. We must create a government that is more responsive to the needs of our people. We must be bold in our actions, whether it's defeating the opioid epidemic or combating climate change. To end on an optimistic note, I have encouraged that in the absence of a president willing to champion our greatest democratic values, we see democratic institutions and everyday citizens stepping up to fill the void. We see our courts raining in executive overreach. We see civil society groups playing the critical role of watchdog. We see a free press taking investigative journalism to a new level. And if our democracy is in the midst of a great test, the American people are refusing to fail. They're standing up for our values like never before. From the renewed activism of our citizens, to the record number of American women just elected to Congress, to the teenagers united in common cause to demand gun safety reforms. The American people continue to be the greatest ambassadors of our nation's character, reminding us of the sheer power of an informed democratic society living in freedom and without fear. We must vigorously champion our values and defend the democratic nodes that have empowered the American people to bend the arc of history towards progress for the past 200 years. When we champion these values, they echo far beyond our borders. That is the story of our democracy. That is the power of our example. And in the absence of a president willing to champion our democratic values, that is why we small D Democrats still have a fighting chance. Thank you very much for joining us and for listening. Thanks so much, Senator, for a really powerful and eloquent case for the power of alliances, of ideas, on a very complicated international landscape. Senator Menendez has been called back to the Hill for a vote, and so we're only going to have time for a question or two at the outset. So let me start off by just picking up on one of the points you made earlier on your mark, Senator, about our own hemisphere, which you've devoted a lot of attention to over the years and which doesn't always get the attention it deserves, administration to administration. How concerned are you by the recent decision to cut off assistance to three central American states and the kind of general arc of our policy in the Western Hemisphere these days? Well, I think it's fundamentally dramatically a huge mistake to cut our assistance to the Northern Triangle countries. Vice President Pence was there only six months ago. He was extolling the virtues of trying to get to the root causes of why people flee in Central America. And so the efforts that we have in terms of institution building, rule of law, systems of justice, police reform, economic development, these are all the core elements that we need to stop the cause versus just treat the symptom. And I just think it is incredibly foolish. If the president wants to stop the migration, why do people leave Central America? They flee because it's either stay or die or flee and have a chance at living. Or if I stay, I see my daughter raped or I see my son forcibly put into a gang. If those are my challenges and my choices, I'm going to flee and take a shot. And so dealing with those issues are so critical. And I think it's so myopic and just part of the president's visceral reactions that has no substance strategically or otherwise in terms of the ultimate goal. And in the broader hemisphere, we were on a march towards democracies and strengthening institutions. We are on a backslide in the hemisphere. Venezuela, of course, is the one that gets the most attention. But we see it as well in Nicaragua and other places. And we see we're under the guise of trying to change constitution, so now you can elect yourself for, you know, ever. And that's happening not only in the hemisphere, many parts of the world. And so we need a more vigorous engagement in the hemisphere because it's in our own national interest, not just as a good neighbor, but whether it's flows of drugs, flows of people, economic opportunities, new markets to be had. This is a critical part of our national engagement. And there's one that's always taken the backseat, really, regardless of this administration or others. It hasn't been the forefront because other things have drawn our time and attention, obviously. But it's critical for us. And so I hope that I'm proud that we're working with Senator Rubio and others to try to invigorate our policy in the hemisphere. One last question, because I know you have to run looking across the Atlantic at transatlantic ties, which you also rightly highlighted. We seem to be having nervous breakdowns on both sides of the Atlantic right now with Brexit and lots of challenges to the European Union, as well as our own political predicament here, too. I know we were both at the Munich Security Conference five or six weeks ago. How concerned are you that lots of our friends in Europe seem to see the growing fissures in the transatlantic relationship as structural? In other words, not just a function of President Trump, but they worry that the kind of broader American attitude toward Europe is beginning to fray a little bit, too. Well, Ambassador, I think that the congressional delegation that was there was the largest ever in the Munich Security Conference history, which I think sent a very strong message, goes to one of the points I made about that the Congress has a role as well in this context. And I think it provided a reassuring element to our European allies. But they're anxious. First of all, whatever institutional structural challenges there are, they are exacerbated by the president's policies. They're exacerbated by language. Words, as you know as a diplomat, have consequences. That means people make calculations or make bad calculations based upon what they hear. And so that and your actions are incredibly important. So it's fine to ask our allies to pay more as part of NATO, as part of their obligations. No one disputes that. But how that is done, in what way it is done, and how you assure that Article 5 is a rock-solid compromise, is incredibly important. How you look at institutions and build them, you know, they were great institutions at the end of the war. And they have served us very well for the better parts of three quarters of a century in peace, stability, and prosperity. But they have to be revised for a new day. So NATO has now different challenges than it ever had. It has a revengeous Russia, but it also has cyber attacks as a possibility, irregular forces as a possibility. How do you deal with those issues? How do you deal with the incredible flow of refugees that has created a rise in Europe by certain elements of the far right as a result of the response to that? So if the World Bank was supposed to be our global development fund, is it structurally the way it needs to be to be the global development entity that can bring us together? Because we can, when we join Europe, the United States, and other countries, we can create a development counter to the Belt and Road Initiative in a way that follows rules-based orders, ensures the greatest use of the rule of law, the sanctity of contracts, the transparency of actions. So do we need a new global fund or do we need to take the World Bank and reconfigure it? Do we need, for example, is there not a way to create an international consortium that creates the 5G technology that we need to compete against China with? Because if you tell everybody, and I agree it is a security challenge, but you have no alternative, then you not only need to confront China, you need to compete with China at the end of the day. And so whether we incentivize that domestically or as part of an international consortium, we should be taking our transatlantic alliance and not in a tariff war, but in joining together at the World Trade Organization with the European Union, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and others. And China should be the outlier for its malign trade practices, its forced technology transfer, its violation of intellectual property rights. We were on the verge of doing that when the administration opted for a policy of tariffs versus on a multilateral effect of challenging China with the WTO. So some of these institutions, yes, need to be brought up so that we can meet our challenges into the 21st century. But some of it is that we need to just internationalize our efforts and we find common ground. And we find common ground generally speaking with those countries that share our values. Those are the deepest, whether they share our values on democracy, whether they share our values on open economies, whether they share our values in general terms of the liberal order. And I think strengthening those so that they can deliver for people, both here at home and across the globe, is a critical way to forge our national security and our interests in the days ahead. Losander, thanks so much again for the clarity and power of your remarks today for reminding all of us of the hugely important role that you and the rest of the Congress can continue to play. And thank you all very much for coming. Please join me in thanking some of you.