To reagan, one of his watchwords was, peace through strength. He presided over an enormous buildup in defense spending. The current trajectory of defense spending is down to below 3 of gdp. Which is going to be as low as it was back in before 1941. Would you support a significant increase from current levels in the Defense Budget and do away with the sequester . I absolutely support the concept of peace through strength. I think the most important thing the federal government spends money on is National Defense. You cant rely on state governments. You cant rely on corporations. You have to have a National Defense. Priorities,at National Defense is the number one priority. Looking at dollars spent, i always say a priority. With regards to the sequester, the last budget we produced, we have a fiveyear budget that balances, eliminates the military sequester, and spends money above the military sequester. But we do eliminate five departments of government. If you want a strong defense, fine. 18if you run up an trillion deficit, then i think you may the country weaker. I will spend as much money as i can get out of congress, however i wont run up another 10 trillion in deficit. If youou are saying that cant politically succeed in cutting five departments of government, which has not succeeded during my lifetime, you would not be in favor of an increase. I think that twists my words. I am in favor of a strong National Defense. Im not trying to twist your words. I think it is a mistake to acknowledge that you are going to admit defeat. This is the reason you cant. There are people on our side. Are, are conservatives who ill spend anything and i dont care if it bankrupts the world. We have got to have it. That is wrong. You will be a weaker country. The number one threat to our National Security is our debt. We are borrowing a Million Dollars a minute. I am not all in no matter what. We spend what we can from what comes in. We bring in 3 trillion every year, we spend 3 trillion. That is very simple. Everybody understands that. Nothing rational in washington. It is bankrupting the country. I think it threatens us and makes us weaker. I want to be clear you think the current levels are adequate, for do we need to increase at some point . I think it is a mistake to going to spend 4 of gdp or we are weak. If you are going to protect the country, you have a strategic vision. If tomahawk missiles are important, we need to have a discussion with our military folks, how many do we need for next year . We dont breed aside that we are five to spend pre that we are going to spend 3 of gdp on this. What i have done in the past is, my fiveyear balanced budget eliminated the sequester from the military, of our military spending to grow out of the sequester and did so while balancing the budget. That is my preferred vision. If we want every song again, we should balance the budget and spent on military defense. A topical issue that you addressed earlier, isis and the president considering a proposal to put a safe haven for the Syrian Rebels in syria with the help of turkey, and u. S. Bombing to enforce it. Good idea . The Syrian Rebels . I read a good description. I dont mean to be flippant but that is the best description ive read. A former cia agent said the only thing moderate about rebels is their ability to fight. Been a conduit for giving weapons to isis. I voted against arming these people because the ultimate irony is, we will be back here fighting against our own weapons within a year. I was found to be correct. We are going back to the middle east, which i support begrudgingly. I think it is a mess there. But we are going back in and we are fighting against our own weapons. Of weapons went into syria in 2013 alone. Many found their ways into the hands of isis. I dont think there are any moderates there. 2 million christians are on the other side of the war. We shouldnt be involved in it. The only reason i am forgetting , is becausethere we have an embassy and a consulate which should be defended. How do you defeat isis if you allow them to have a safe haven inside syria . Isis will never be defeated until the people who live there decide to rise up and say this is a barbaric form of islam. That would be the turks rising up, the iraqis rising up. The thing is, we have to question if there is one overwhelming truth that cannot be disputed by the facts, it is this every time we have toppled a secular dictator, it has been replaced by chaos and the rise of radical islam. Look at hillarys war in libya. What has happened . It is chaotic. Was the biggest promoter of getting involved in the syrian civil war. Libya is an absolute disaster. You had qadhafi, but you had some stability in libya. Now that hes gone, our ambassador is assassinated. Our embassy has fled into tunisia. Libya is now chaotic. There are jihadist groups running amok. Republicans who love a republican intervention, iraq is worse off now. Do you think we are better or worse off with hussein gone . There was more stability under hussein. And iraq was able walk against iran a bullwark against iran. You had a geopolitical stalemate. Iraq istopple hussein, a huge mess. A year ago, many on the side of intervention wanted to bomb assad. Had wet do it bombed a side a year ago, who do you think would be in damascus now . Isis. Because become stronger of our involvement in the syrian civil war. Intervention has unintended consequences and we have to be careful and think about what we are doing. I want to open this up we and our allies gave 600 tons of weapons. Qatar and our allies and the saudis together put 600 tons of weapons into syria. Most of it wound up in the wrong hands. R think we are worse off fo it. Do i see any questions out there for senator paul on anything regarding Foreign Policy . We have one right here. [inaudible] the question is regarding iran. I guess we now have the second extension. Your colleague will be on later. He has great concern over that second extension. So do i. One of the interesting things that has come out in recent weeks has been netanyahus response to this. He thinks extension is a good thing. That will may be some of the debate. I think we need to and should do everything we can to prevent iran from having a Nuclear Weapon. That includes the threat of force. Andink the sanctions i voted for every sanction that has come forward in the senate the sanctions have brought them to the table. I think it would be a mistake to push them away from the table. If you Institute Sanctions again right now, there is a very good chance the International Coalition will collapse. I think also that there is a certain bit of irony for the group that believes in virtually imited power for the president but they want to circumscribe the president s capacity for diplomacy. I think sanctions do have to come before congress but i think it is a mistake to pass new sanctions in the middle of ifotiations, particularly they start out with something that is a nonstarter position for aniran. If you start out with no enrichment, there will be no negotiations. Anybody else . Right here. In europe, the russianukraine crisis seems to be more important than here in the u. S. How important do you think this is for the u. S. , and what went wrong, and what could be a solution . I thought we said no hard questions. [laughter] im not sure there is an easy answer to your questions. I agree that because of proximity, europe sees this in a heightened way over the way it is seen here. I dont think it would be correct to say that we dont see it as important. If you are talking about International Order and trying to look at an international civilized and stable world, allowing one country to invade the integrity of another is an step that words and a real problem. That being said, it is difficult to understand. Even when the most hawkish members of Political Parties here are not advocating sending military troops, i think there are ways of talking about and introducing either defensive money intons, and or ukraine, that could bring russia to negotiating on this. I think also trade is an important part of this. I think trying to get independence or having other alternative sources of gas would have less dependency. People fail to understand that dependency goes both ways. Russia requires foreign capital and continuous trade. While europe could be heard by cutting off natural gas, so will russia. I think there are limitations to it. Im not sure what the easy answer is. I think part of it, when you have an analysis of the current president , when the current president sets redlines and doesnt adhere to them, that may encourage other people to step through. I think there has been a certain fecklessness in this president s Foreign Policy that may have encouraged these transgressions. I want to ask you a practical political question. There have been some rumors that you may be considering a run for the white house. I assume that you will probably announce sometime next year if you are going to do that. I asked a lot of republicans about your candidacy. Here is what they tell me, they say, fascinating person saying interesting things about the buty needing to reach out, i dont think he will ever make it out of the primaries because of his Foreign Policy positions and security positions. A super pac will take your positions and hit them one after another and you wont survive. That,hink the thing is that fails to understand the people in the country. It also fails to understand who i am and what i support. I grew up as a reagan republican. Peace through strength is something that i believe viscerally. Do i believe defense is the number one thing . Absolutely. Anyone who wants to say otherwise will have to argue with the facts. I have budget plans to get rid of the military sequester. People have to argue with the facts. People want to call names or say this or that. In iowa, they ask ordinary republicans who live where i live in middle america. They ask them, they put it in general terms, they said, do you agree more with john mccain and more intervention, or do you agree more with rand paul and less intervention . I think that is a great way to put it. Im not talking about all or none. I think we do have to intervene with isis. But i do believe less. We have been everywhere all the time and we are about the bankrupt our country. I want less. Mccain wants more. He wants 15 wars more. There is a more and a less argument. Iowa, 41 agreed with me. This is not a small movement, nor is it easy to say that people like myself who believe in less intervention can be characterized as people who dont believe in strong National Defense. That is a caricature. We will see what happens. You think the republican landscape has changed enough politically we have always been there. 9 11, iwere attacked on would have voted to go to war with those who attacked us and annihilate them and let the that,f the world know you do this, this is the result. This is a warning to the rest of the world that we will never tolerate being attacked. Im right there with most of america and most of the party. Im not right there when you tell me we need roots on the ground in 15 different countries. Say,lso not there when you we need 6 of gdp for military spending. How about 4 . If you set a number, i think there is a problem. If you tell me we are going to run a trillion dollar deficit, im not for that unless you are going to pass a budget and eliminate everything else. It cant be one or the other. There has to be fiscal sanity. Thank you so much for being here. [applause] senator Robert Menendez now joins us. Senator menendez is the chairman of the Senate ForeignRelations Committee. Then he will be Ranking Member of the Foreign Relations committee. Senator from new jersey appointed in 2006, i believe. City, of cubank emigrants who arrived here i think the year before you were born. Classic american story. You heard senator paul. I wonder, do you feel sometimes that you have switched Political Parties when you listen to the senator . No. [laughter] a great deal of respect for senator paul. He has interesting perspectives. I think part of your line of questioning with senator paul came to the question of, when is strength appropriate . After 22 years serving in congress between the house and senate, ive come to the clearview that weakness, not strength, invokes provocation. That is a global message. It is a global message whether you are dealing with the russian invasion in ukraine, when you are dealing with china in the south china sea, in conflicts with japan and south korea, and it is true in so many other parts of the world. My own perspective is that we always seek to use diplomacy. We always seek to use economic inducements, whether positive or negative, to get a country to act in a certain way. Crediblebility to have strength is important in order to back up those actions, economic or diplomacy. I truly believe that weakness invites provocation and russia is a great example of that. For me, president putins kgb. His orientation, he is an admirer of peter the great because he extended the russian empire. As you look at president putins evolved ine has accordance with his speeches. When it comes to ukraine, which is very significant for the ukrainian people, and i would say very significant for europe, but even has a more significant consequence globally, if the International Order can be upended without consequence, then other actors will look and say, what did the United States and the west do to russia in terms of invading a sovereign country without provocation, annexing parts of this country . Much, youwer is not will see other global actors thinking that strength will allow them to do what they wish to do. That is consequential for the United States. Since we are on russia, has the response from the west been adequate to meet the challenge that you put to the global order in ukraine . I would hope that what we ,egan to do with the europeans which is important in terms of keeping multilateralism in this respect, can be handsome can be enhanced beyond. Some people dont call it an invasion, but when you see thousands of russian troops, tanks, surface to surface missiles, and a host of armored vehicles, cross from one country to another, where i come from that is an invasion. You have an invasion taking place, then you have the ceasefire, now you have a second invasion. You see the annexation of crimea, now you see the part of Eastern Ukraine being pursued by russia, which is critically important. They probably want to create that land bridge to make the totality of their crimea investment a total success. For me, what we have done in sanctions has been important. 180 on committee voted a bipartisan basis in the midst of a sea of partisanship. The Senate ForeignRelations Committee has passed just about every major piece of legislation, and almost never a almost every nominee in strong bipartisan votes. Policy,lates to foreign bipartisanship is incredibly important to send a global message. Votedk as the committee under my legislation that we should get defensive weapons to the ukrainians to fight for themselves. It is part of the calculation that putin will have to make. How many russian soldiers go back to their families if the ukrainians can defend themselves . And sanctions, russia is an extraction country. It relies on its extraction particularly of oil. With oil so low, the ruble has been falling dramatically. Today, their announcement that they will go into recession, this is a critical moment. Either russia will continue its second invasion and extension, or we will have an opportunity to have them change their calculus. If we dont, what stops china from saying, im going to take those territories in the south china sea, what stops north korea, what stops the iranians in their march towards Nuclear Weapons . There is a global consequence to what we do. President obamas response to , anybill in the senate was lethal aid to the ukrainians beyond the minimum would make things worse because it would escalate the situation, make putin even more engaged, more inclined to act faster. What is your response to that . My response ishat we havent done anything, nor has ukraine, to provoke russia. Russia has already taken the most aggressive actions. Calculate,putin will what will be my potential losses if i go further . If they believe they can continue on the course they are on, they will follow that course. Commentaryis a sad that we would not give a sovereign country who is looking to the west the ability to defend themselves. This is not about u. S. Forces going in. This is about the ability to defend themselves. You cannot fight tanks with night vision goggles. At the end of the day, you have to have the ability to have i respectfully this agree with the president as does every member of the Senate ForeignRelations Committee. Is that going to move in the senate, do you think . I hope that in the closing , that is one of the two most passed bills. I think it would be robustly supported by congress. At the same time, there is an effort to extend ukrainian loan guarantees. I think they need the wherewithal to defend themselves. There may be an opportunity and i look forward for that to happen. Lets turn to isis and the syrian campaign. Who votedne of those against going to war with iraq in 2003, if im correct. Many in your party were highly critical of bush and his conduct in the war, and now we have a democratic president taking the country back to war, not in the same way, but conflict in iraq. You heard senator paul talk about the need for congressional authorization. Do you agree with that . Is it likely to pass . Let me just take the premise of your question and characterize it a little bit differently. Were of all, when we , in whichseptember 11 i lost hundreds of citizens of new jersey, i supported president bush. It was the right engagement.