Exceptional (30 page)

To preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the United States and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant
threat to our security.

President Obama's policies have enabled the rise of such a threat in three critical regions simultaneously: Iran in the Middle East, China in Asia, and Russia in Europe. Efforts to rebuild America's military will have a positive impact in each of these regions as a warning to potential adversaries that the United States no longer intends to retreat from the world. A revitalized American military will also serve as
assurance to our allies that we have the forces necessary to defend our interests. In addition, the next president should take specific steps, detailed below, in each region to preserve and protect the interests of the United States.

THE NEXT PRESIDENT MUST ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. This task has been made exponentially more difficult by the concessions President Obama granted the Iranians in the nuclear agreement announced in July 2015. The agreement allows Iran to preserve every element of its nuclear infrastructure, including thousands of centrifuges and its uranium enrichment program. It lifts sanctions on an array of terrorist-supporting entities, including the IRGC, IRGC-Quds Force, and IRGC Air Force. The agreement provides billions in cash payments to Iran, lifts restrictions on the Iranian ballistic missile program, commits to ending the conventional weapons arms embargo, and includes a wholly inadequate verification regime. It is the most dangerous arms control agreement ever entered into by an American president.

President Obama has argued that his agreement is the only alternative to war, when in fact the Obama nuclear deal makes war more—not less—likely. Neither Congress nor America's next president should accept President Obama's false choice. To undo the tremendous damage of this agreement and prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, the U.S. Congress should:

• Reject the agreement entered into by the Obama administration and recognize that, contrary to President Obama's claims, there is a better deal possible.
We know that sanctions and the credible threat of force have worked effectively in the past to affect Iran's behavior. The sanctions regime the president opposed, and now claims credit for,
was working. Rather than maintain the sanctions, President Obama eased them just as they began to have an impact. Instead of maintaining a credible threat of force, the president
took force off the table. Instead of negotiating from a position of strength, and, in the words of the
Wall Street Journal
, “showing determination so an adversary under pressure concludes that it must
make more concessions,” the president showed desperation for a deal and conceded nearly every key point. The Iranians got the better of him.

America's next president should:

• Affirm that the following non-negotiable elements must be part of any agreement with Iran concerning its nuclear program
:

1. Iran must halt all enrichment and reprocessing activities.

2. Iran must halt all ballistic missile activities.

3. Iran must provide a full and complete accounting of all its nuclear activities, past and present, military and civilian. Without such an accounting, verification of any agreement is impossible.

4. Iran must provide complete go-anywhere-anytime access to international inspectors, including at its military sites.

5. The U.S. should not support any effort to repeal sanctions until such time as Iran has fulfilled these obligations.

• Immediately re-impose all U.S. sanctions, with a particular focus on the IRGC, IRGC Quds Force, and IRGC Air Force.
The IRGC has American blood on its hands, provides direct support for terrorist groups around the world
and is working for the destruction of Israel. The next president should make it a top priority to once again impose serious restrictions on their ability to operate.

• Withdraw American support for lifting restrictions on Iran's ballistic missile program and for ending the conventional weapons embargo on Iran.
Iran's ballistic missiles, which have no purpose other than to transport nuclear warheads, can reach the United States, as well as our friends and allies in Europe and the Middle East. Without the conventional arms embargo in place, Iran will be able to import deadly weapons from Russia and China, and further destabilize the Middle East by supplying weapons to terrorists bent on the destruction of Israel and the United States.

• Stop all cash payments under way or planned to Iran. Instruct the Treasury Department to issue new designations, if necessary, to freeze Iranian assets and prevent the transfer of further cash from the United States to the regime in Tehran.
Transferring cash to Tehran, while the regime kills American soldiers in Afghanistan, sponsors terror across the region, and seeks the destruction of Israel is indefensible.

• Reinvigorate the Treasury Department program to work directly with private entities around the world to block Iran's use of the international financial system for illicit purposes.
This program, begun in earnest in 2006 by undersecretary of Treasury Stuart Levey, successfully limited Iran's access to international financial and commercial markets and increased the impact of the multilateral sanctions regime. The next president should direct the Treasury Department to re-launch this effort.

• Develop a strategy in consultation with our allies in the Middle East to address Iran's state sponsorship of terror and use of the IRGC to undermine other governments in the region.
Iran or its proxies now largely control capitals in four Arab countries: Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Iranian domination of the Middle East and unfettered IRGC terror are clearly inconsistent with American interests and security. America must work with its allies to develop a strategy to deny Iran's objectives and roll back the regional gains it has made under President Obama.

• Ensure that our allies and the Iranians recognize that all options are on the table if Iran refuses to halt its nuclear program through a diplomatic process.
The president should instruct the U.S. military to prepare plans for military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and other key military and economic targets. The United States should undertake visible exercises and publicized tests of specific capabilities, such as the precision-guided Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which could be used in a strike on Iran's facilities.

OUR POLICY TOWARD CHINA must reflect the fact that they are simultaneously a significant strategic threat and a major economic partner. America's next president must counter China's increasingly hostile actions, impose costs for their cyberattacks on the United States, deny their ambitions for conquest, and ensure America builds the technology and capabilities necessary to prevent China from overtaking our most important defensive capabilities. At the same time, America must recognize that China will be an enduring power for many years to come and that the complexity of the relationship between the United States and China requires consistent, serious diplomatic
engagement at the highest levels. The next American president should:

• Aggressively counter Chinese cyberattacks on U.S. government and industrial systems.
We must harden our own targets and ensure we have the capability to counter their attacks. We must impose significant costs on China for engaging in cyberespionage and other forms of cyberattack. The sophistication of the Chinese attacks and the sensitive content they have stolen from the United States for military and industrial purposes represent a very real threat to our security. In addition, their potential ability to access systems that control America's infrastructure, such as the power grid, communications networks, and military command-and-control systems, is a clear and present danger that we must strengthen our defenses against.

• Expand our military presence in Asia to counter China's efforts at regional domination.
We should engage in increased military exercises, reinvigorate security dialogues, and provide military assistance and arms sales to our key allies in the region. These efforts will aid our allies in building their own capacity to counter the Chinese threat and send the clear signal that China's increasingly provocative and threatening actions will not go unanswered.

• Increase investments in military technologies and capabilities necessary to counter advances the Chinese are making in areas such as hypersonic weapons and antiship missiles.
Ensure that our investments in technology and weapons systems are sufficient to guarantee we do not cede superiority in any sector to the Chinese.

• Recognize that China is upgrading, modernizing, and expanding its nuclear arsenal.
Our next president should ensure that we are making investments in our own nuclear arsenal sufficient to maintain superiority and provide a credible deterrent against any contemplated nuclear use by the Chinese. We must build up missile defense systems capable of defending against the Chinese missile threat. In addition to conventional anti-ballistic-missile defenses, the United States should be investing in directed-energy weapons that can defend against China's new hypersonic weapons.

• Task the Department of Defense with developing a new regional defense strategy for Asia.
We must ensure that the United States is taking all actions necessary to protect our interests and our allies, to prevent China from fulfilling its hegemonic ambitions, and to ensure that we maintain supremacy in military capability.

• Reassess economic cooperation policies.
Economic cooperation continues to be an important area in the U.S.-China relationship. However, the assumption that increasing China's economic opportunities and openness would lead to similar progress in the area of political reform has not proven accurate. The United States should assess the benefit and effectiveness of existing economic cooperation programs, particularly in light of aggressive Chinese theft of American intellectual property from U.S. businesses.

• Impose tighter restrictions on China's access to American technology.
The Chinese are exploiting technology cooperation exercises. They have, for example, illegally converted civilian nuclear technology for military use. The United States should work with its allies to impose tighter restrictions
on Chinese access to Western technology, including dual-use technology.

• Continue to raise publicly and in meetings with Chinese leadership China's human rights violations and repressions of freedom.

• While undertaking necessary efforts to defend ourselves and our allies, the United States must also engage in expanded, serious, consistent diplomatic engagement with the Chinese government.
Recognizing that Chinese power will be a long-term feature of events in the Pacific and recognizing also that America is a Pacific power, it is crucial that our two nations participate in the kind of high-level engagement across the range of issues that comprise our relationship. The false promises of the Obama administration's “pivot to Asia” should be replaced with a genuine effort to deepen the dialogue between our two nations.

THE NEXT AMERICAN PRESIDENT should take steps to defend America's interests in Europe and the sovereignty of our NATO allies against the regional ambitions of Vladimir Putin. Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Union “one of the greatest geopolitical catastrophes of the twentieth century.” He is attempting to recover some of what was lost when the Cold War ended. He clearly wants to undermine NATO and demonstrate its ineffectiveness. He would like to force states in Eastern Europe and the Baltics to withdraw from NATO. The next American president should:

• Restore and reinvigorate the NATO alliance.
NATO has been the most successful military alliance in history, but it has suffered in recent years from reduced defense expenditures
and weak American leadership. The next president must make clear that America's commitment to the transatlantic security alliance is unwavering and is backed by our leadership and military might.

• Ensure that NATO sends a clear signal to Moscow that Article 5 applies to all members of NATO.
Russia should have no doubt that any military action against a NATO member, including the Baltics and those states that were once members of the Warsaw Pact, will be considered a move against all, triggering Article 5.

• Signal American determination to stand by our NATO allies through periodic deployment of forces to the territory of NATO members bordering Russia.

• Task NATO with reviewing its existing strategies, commitments, and obligations in light of the aggressive policies of Vladimir Putin. Call for NATO members to meet their financial obligations to the alliance.
Recognize that the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) failed to take into account the reality of the threat posed by Putin's Russia, identifying Europe as a “net producer of security.” Direct the Department of Defense to undertake a special review of the QDR and recommend necessary adjustments in this area.

• Restore the missile defense systems President Obama canceled in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Provide expanded coverage across Europe for shorter-range missiles with a system similar to Israel's Iron Dome.

• Recommit the United States to abiding by its obligations under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994,
in which the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia committed
to upholding Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine's agreement to send its nuclear arsenal to Moscow. Recognize that failure to uphold this agreement diminishes the value of guarantees the United States gives in the future to encourage nuclear weapons states to give up their weapons.