For Immediate Release
September 6, 2024
Contact: Taylor Haulsee
Johnson travels to Parliamentary G7 Summit in Italy to warn U.S. partners about the consequences of failing to counter China and urge them to meet their minimum defense commitments
WASHINGTON — On Thursday, September 6, Speaker Johnson delivered the remarks at the G7 Speakers Meeting in Verona, Italy on the subject of “Security and Development: New Geopolitical Balances and Access to Strategic Resources.”
Speaker Johnson delivers remarks at the parliamentary G7 summit
“China especially has made its ambitions to be the dominant world power by 2049 very clear. This is a direct threat to our interests and our security and our values. We are going to influence operations around every continent now. It’s up to us to decide whether our children will get a world where China sets the rules, or whether democratic nations would respect the rule of law and set the terms,” Speaker Johnson said.
“While I’m proud of what US Congress has accomplished so far, deterrence only works if we’re all working to expose the dangerous ambitions of our enemies, and we’re all holding our weight,” Speaker Johnson continued. “We know that greater power competition requires great partnerships, and that’s why I’m pleased to be here with all of my friends today. If our partners are not all meeting their minimum defense commitments, and we’re not sharing the burden equally, then all our investments will be called into question. And in the United States, that’s a challenge for us. So as always, we encourage all of our friends to do their part. And throughout the world, we’re seeing the results of appeasement and adequate investments in defense…”
Speaker Johnson concluded: “The G7 serves as a bridge between the East and the West, showing how our shared commitment to democracy and security, crossing the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, serves humanity. Today, I ask you and all the nations here to work with the US to ensure that that historic bridge only welcomes that which promotes security and the prosperity of humanity and rejects the forces of tyranny and communism that destroy humanity. If this bridge does not prioritize our long-term security, if we don’t present a credible deterrence against our enemies, if we tolerate the worst from the East, from Iran, Russia, and China, then we will cease being a great civilization.”
Below is the full transcript of the Speaker’s remarks as delivered:
It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here. A great greeting from the United States Congress and all the state of Louisiana. And as the grandson of Italian immigrants, it’s a particular pleasure for me to be here in Italy and certainly here in Verona, which has a great tradition, both in theater and in history. My friend Lorenzo presented me with an extraordinary gift yesterday, an amazing family tree and some genealogy research that has traced my family history back to Sicily, and will make my mother proud when I read it. So I’m really grateful for that.
At first session of this meeting, we are discussing, as was noted, security and development. And these are two very important issues I hope we can address during our time together. The first, I think, is the greatest threat to our mutual security. That is what we all recognize, the increasing coordination between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
Every day these regimes wake up and plot new ways to undermine our way of life and challenge the freedoms we love and cherish. In Eastern Europe, Iran and North Korea are supplying Russia with drones and missiles that are launched using Chinese-sitting devices with the support of the Chinese industrial base. And Mediterranean territories are using Iranian and Russian weapons to attack Israel, a democracy that of democracy and our close friend, and cut off our trade routes in the Red Sea so China can take diplomatic cover. In the Indo-Pacific, our democratic partners in Japan and India have enforced dialogue and are constantly threatened by Chinese territorial ambitions. In these three theaters, where we’ve all captured aid, security, intelligence, and cultural interests, replacing hostile coordination that, if tolerated, will devastate our economies and threaten our security. China especially has made its ambitions to be the dominant world power by 2049 very clear. This is a direct threat to our interests and our security and our values. We are going to influence operations around every continent now. It’s up to us to decide whether our children will get a world where China sets the rules, or whether democratic nations would respect the rule of law and set the terms.
Of course, these threats facing Europe and Israel, and the Indo-Pacific are, to a smaller degree, within our own borders as well. In Europe and the US, we see a rise in violence, including an assassination just several weeks ago of our former US president, an assassination attempt, and cyber-attacks on a presidential campaign. We’re seeing the use of widespread immigration as an actual weapon of destabilization. We’re seeing espionage from overseas students, and even the possible sabotage of our collective industrial capacity, an activity that looks like it’s straight out of the old world, like, report China and Russia dramatically expanding their industrial bases, even for non-military goods, is a threat. This increasing aggression has changed America’s geopolitical calculus. We no longer buy into the post-Cold War industry mindset. It’s my hope that Europe recalibrates it in the same way. We are in Verona. There’s been lots of talk of Shakespeare already this morning, but you included it as well. Just an example of Shakespeare. We may be tempted to think that the West’s relationship of China is comparable to the plot of Romeo and Juliet.
We all know that as an unnecessary battle between two families who would otherwise be at ease, or a series of miscommunication that would ultimately lead to tragedy. But the dynamic we face with China certainly is very different from the love story set up in this city. The challenges today come from the intentional conflicts, and the much more comfortable plot of Richard III, said Romeo Giuliani. In Beijing, Tehran, and Moscow, tyrants guided by unbridled ambition and driven by paranoia manipulate local institutions. They deceive their people, they murder and jail opponents, and they make plans for a power destruction. If we, as members of the G7, ignore that behavior, excuse it or tolerate it, we will do so at our own peril. I’m sure we all agree on that. That’s why I think that I will add that it helps to test the four-part national security supplemental package that would begin to restore America’s defense capabilities, support our diplomatic partners, and deter our enemies. It is certainly needed to overcome the tired posture of merely sifting money without working to change the underlying dynamics, and our own American defense posture.
For years, the US lived with our friends, but as we all gradually became more complacent, our enemies had brought up. We can’t expect to win by playing their game according to rules that they learned to exploit. The outcome of Russia was better off this year than when the war started. Clearly, we are doing a good thing. And that’s why we added new sanctions on Russia and why we sent better weapons to Ukraine and why we added the REPO Act and put Russia on the fence. We need to do more of that. Our efforts have paid off, as seen in Persia. And as such, the members of the G7, who also have access to weaponry that Ukraine needs, we urge everyone to send those weapons, and Ukraine can get back its territory and preserve its peace. That’s ultimately what everyone desires. With regard to Middle East, we pushed the Biden Administration to the sanction Iran and provide better weapons to Israel, and I’m happy to say we’re once again moving forward after months of delay. It’s never been more important for all of us to stand with Israel, than it is today, as they fight for their existence. Our legislation in Congress also included funding to counter China and bolster deterrence in the region. Since the legislation was signed into law, the United States has been working with our allies to oppose further costs on these regimes, which threaten democratic Western civilization.
I look forward to discussing with members of the G7 how to further curb China’s predatory economic activity and use of international markets in circumvention of sanctions. While I’m proud of what US Congress has accomplished so far, deterrence only works if we’re all working to expose the dangerous ambitions of our enemies, and we’re all holding our weight. We know that greater power competition requires great partnerships, and that’s why I’m pleased to be here with all of my friends today. If our partners are not all meeting their minimum defense commitments, and we’re not sharing the burden equally, then all our investments will be called into question. And in the United States, that’s a challenge for us. So as always, we encourage all of our friends to do their part. And throughout the world, we’re seeing the results of appeasement and adequate investments in defense. It will be our children, like myself, who just entered the United States Naval Academy, who will pay the long-term price of declining American and Western leadership if we do not play our role in that. It’s the long-term cost of appeasement that will be my second point, and that is the need to carefully consider any blind faith to globalism.
When China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, the Western Consensus, was that economic integration would encourage China to adopt democratic and market practices. The collective wisdom was that we would go all in when but in reality, China won, and we, of course, lost. Even just 10 years into the deal, China was refusing to live up to the WTO’s equal national treatment norms and was ignoring the rule of law principles that governed the WTO. China has consistently manipulated its currency and bent the WTO’s rules for its national gain. While the West is naively told our greatest geopolitical adversary would reform if we just kept asking nicely. But today, the West is dependent on a communist adversary for key resources, including rare earth minerals and semi-conductors, and pharmaceuticals. For decades, our predecessors in the West, we funded China’s rise in military wartime. We funded that. It’s our responsibility now to stop it. Likewise, we have funded our collective dependence on foreign adversaries for energy. And that’s been quite counterproductive. To be sure, we all want a sustainable future and want to use our resources responsibly. But many of the current what we call green energy policies, including arbitrary EV mandates, carbon emission stigmas and the list, and the mercy of our adversaries, brought increasing energy costs and risking blackouts in our cities. It’s not unreasonable for our citizens to be skeptical about energy deals across the globe.
We have to manage our own nations and have no accountability measures for our enemies who are the worst polluters, in fact. I’m from the state of Louisiana in the United States, which is one of America’s most important states, where oil refining and liquefied natural gas production, and we’re quite proud of our LNG exports and the demand for that around the world. When we unleash American energy production, both in America and abroad, costs are lower, the energy consumed is cleaner, and we are not dependent on our adversaries. That’s why today, it’s dangerous to pause new permits on natural gas that force this partnership to rely on Russia. And certainly, energy independence is critical when it comes to artificial intelligence. We’ve all discussed that quite a bit already. Given that we’re going to need massive amounts of electricity to make adequate investments in AI and maintain our global edge. I really believe AI will be transformative like nothing we’ve ever seen before, but it has the potential also to be quite dangerous and destructive if it is in the wrong hands. If we fail to connect our economic and technological interests with our security interests, we will make the path for the world to be shaped by Chinese communism rather than Western democracy. And if we all want to live in a world where Xi Jinping says the rules for our traditional intelligence and technological advancement, that means making huge investments in our domestic energy production right away. We can’t wait for energy to be ready in 2030 or 2050, that would be too late. We can’t depend on regimes like Iran and Venezuela or Russia and Afghanistan. Instead, we must use the resources of energy that are at our disposal right now.
Of course, energy and manufacturing are not the only sector negatively impacted by the globalist perspective. It’s too weighted in that regard. In recent years, the West has experienced unbearable levels of immigration, a dramatic decline in our sense of national culture, each of us in our version, to traditional Western values. As we care less about the need for individual nations, our people understandably, I think, now are trusting less our public health institutions, for example. They’re increasingly distrusting of our governments themselves, which have and are still working with global technologies to censor viewpoints about the pandemic, for example, and about immigration. That’s why our people are rightfully upset with politicians who supported mass immigration, identity politics, big tech censorship, and the declining nuclear family. All of us, I think, have to very soberly look at this issue. We have to consider our national interests first, and at the very least, our best interests. It is an obvious thing to say that we must ensure that our own houses are in order if we wish to improve the neighborhood. If we want to continue to enjoy the peace and prosperity that came in the post-Cold War era, we must, of course, correct the path that has led many of our nations to strife and jeopardized our safety and our economic well-being.
I’ll leave you with this thought. Being in Italy is a great reminder of this nation’s historic position as a bridge between the East and West. During the Roman Empire, along the Ancient Silk Road, and in the great universities at Genoa and Venice, this country has bridged the best parts of the West and the East for the good of man. The G7, likewise, serves as a bridge between the East and the West, showing how our shared commitment to democracy and security, crossing the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, serves humanity. Today, I ask you and all the nations here to work with the US to ensure that that historic bridge only welcomes that which promotes security and the prosperity of humanity and rejects the forces of tyranny and communism that destroy humanity. If this bridge does not prioritize our long-term security, if we don’t present a credible deterrence against our enemies, if we tolerate the worst from the East, from Iran, Russia, and China, then we will cease being a great civilization.
I look forward to the work ahead of us and to confronting the challenges that we all face. We work together to take our partnership forward to meet today’s demands and the future. And I want to thank all of you for your friendship, hospitality, and it is a great honor to be with you all. Thank you.
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