FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Frank LaRose did not learn foreign policy at Yale or Harvard.  He is not part of the global elite responsible for Biden’s shambolic retreat from Afghanistan in 2021 – clearly one of our nation’s worst foreign policy disasters.  Instead, Frank learned the real value of protecting America while guarding our Southern Border, as a special forces operator in Iraq, as a sergeant on a peace-keeping mission in Kosovo, and as a civilian election observer in hotspots around the world.

While America stands for great ideas, it is also a real place with a unique culture, populated by real people who desire to prosper and better themselves and their families.  Americans instinctively desire peaceful relations abroad, robust trade with allies, and to provide help for those facing disaster.

We also have a geography of success, unlike any country.  Productive agricultural regions; rivers to transport goods; ports to send products overseas; abundant oil, natural gas, and coal; plentiful minerals for modern innovations; all of which, paired with free market capitalism have unleashed the greatest human flourishing the world has ever known. Our greatest resource, however, is the American spirit, work-ethic and ingenuity.  Frank has and always will lead America toward “a more perfect union.”

But today our foreign policies reflect, not the greatness of America, but ivory tower elitism, insulated from the views of working-class Ohioans.

Policies pushed by these elites have not been smart, and have not put America First, but have taken us to the brink of global conflict.  Biden’s fatal and cowardly withdrawal from Afghanistan led directly to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, to Iran’s renewed aggression in the Middle East, and to China’s increased hostility toward Taiwan.

In 2007 Yale’s China Center assured the world China’s 2001 accession to the WTO would undeniably lead to a “new culture of openness” with the support of the CCP.  These Yale experts were wrong.  But in 2020, the China Center equipped the incoming Biden administration with strategic recommendations to position the U.S. to build “a sustainable framework for a relationship with China that is thoroughly integrated into the global economy.”  This sage advice did not age well during the pandemic as supply chains disintegrated and the world’s economy teetered due to the cruel dishonesty of the CCP.  Even The Atlantic has said, “The China Model Is Dead.”

Frank will back efforts to end China’s permanent normal trade status and reapply the requirements of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in dealing with non-market economies.  He will also work to ensure agricultural land purchases involving Chinese or CCP entities are thoroughly screened to guarantee national security is a top priority.

The sheer hubris and incompetence of our elites about China’s true intentions is mirrored precisely by the promotion of corrupt “net zero” energy policies by John F. Kerry, Biden’s “climate envoy,” a Yale alumnus along with fellow alum Sherrod Brown.  The goal of these policies is not to benefit the environment but to make the rich richer from government largesse.

Empty slogans like “net zero,” “climate action,” and “decarbonization” all mean the same: inflation, fewer jobs in Ohio, and the dissolution of our oil and gas industry – in short, a weaker and poorer America.  But Kerry and the UN now want to mandate these same egregious and unreasonable policies in developing countries which will invariably lead to human suffering and then the predictable call for America to aid these countries to relieve the very damage these same elites are causing.

It’s estimated a third of the world’s population does not have access to clean fuels for cooking and home heating.  Millions still depend on wood, charcoal, and even dung for home cooking, sources that cause respiratory illnesses. In 2019, an estimated 770 million people did not have access to electricity.  Where the lifting of the crude oil export ban in 2015 is helping millions to get out of poverty, our foreign policy elite would strand them and cut them off from the affordable fossil fuels they need to power their societies and grow their industries.

What American foreign policy should promote overseas is our environmental success.  As we’ve taken the mantle of top oil and gas producers, emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases have plummeted. These are the lessons that should be sent overseas, not climate hysteria.

As Senator, Frank will back efforts to (again) withdraw from the Paris Agreement, close John Kerry’s jet-setting “climate envoy” office, and prohibit the attendance of taxpayer-supported officials from attending international conferences whose goals include reducing the use of fossil fuels.

These international bureaucracies are tremendously wasteful and corrupt and tend to push socialist policies that undermine free markets and take away viable policy options developing countries need to prosper.

America must also advocate for our businesses that export to other markets.  We are a dominant producer of agricultural goods, oil and gas, and many other commodities and manufactured goods. We must leverage our economic strength to ensure trade agreements that build prosperity while protecting our national security by reducing our reliance on hostile foreign nations.

In closing the surrender ceremony on the Battleship Missouri at the end of the Second World War, General Douglas MacArthur warned, “We have had our last chance.  If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.”  America, sovereign still and blessed among nations, must lead now as we did then.  But we should lead from a position of real strength and not bureaucratic inertia, or worse, ideological hysteria.

Congress must guarantee our armed forces are prepared and our President must guarantee our State Department defends American prerogatives instead of those of a global elite.  Together they must firmly articulate America First policies with humility and integrity while remembering that America First does not mean America Alone.  Peace depends on the trustworthiness of our words as well as our deeds.