Gov. Ron DeSantis—a GOP presidential aspirant—laid out his foreign policy plans on Friday, saying his top goal would be to restrain Iran and China if elected president of the United States.
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington D.C. think tank, DeSantis, a Navy veteran with three terms in Congress, gave a thirty-minute speech before he sat down for a Q&A. If he was in charge right now, DeSantis was asked, how would he handle the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Middle East?
“Our goal should be the destruction of the Iranian economy,” he said. “And if you do that, they are not going to be able to fund Hezbollah [or] Hamas. They’re not going to be able to fund Russia. We will put them in a box if we do that successfully.”
But DeSantis raised the most concerns Friday about China. He said that the U.S. failed decades ago when Congress allowed China to join the World Trade Organization and grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations, which he said allowed China to build up their “very powerful military.”
But DeSantis also said that one of the great weaknesses of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was that they’re “trying to export around the world ultimately something that is going to suffocate human freedom.”
“Their vision is a dystopian vision,” he said. “If they dominate the Indo-Pacific and they dominate global commerce, they are going to be conditioning behavior for access to the markets that they control. And there’s going to be a lot of Americans that are going to grovel on Wall Street and in Hollywood—they already grovel, but it will get much worse. And you will feel this in your daily life if it gets to that point in the next decade, two decades, three decades.”
Like a growing number of Republicans, DeSantis is not an enthusiastic supporter of the U.S. aiding Ukraine in their battle against Russia. While he has walked back his comment that it was simply a “territorial dispute” from earlier this year, he has said it would be ‘in everybody’s interest to get to a place where you can have a cease-fire,” something that Ukraine is adamantly against.
At the Heritage Foundation, DeSantis said he feared continued U.S. involvement in aiding Ukraine will hurt U.S. military readiness—and boost China.
“I think China looks at that [conflict], and they say, you know what? If this can go on for another four, five, six years like some people are saying it will, and the U.S. keeps plowing money—because at this rate you know, you’re talking half a trillion dollars, you likely wouldn’t see a decisive outcome either way, it’d likely be kind of a stalemate,” he said. “Not only does it take our eye off the ball—we don’t have the defense industrial base capacity right now to be able to also do what we need to do to have a strategy denial in the Indo-Pacific vis a vis China with Taiwan and also even beyond that—so yes, China, I think they like the Hamas Israel conflict—and I’m not saying, Israel needs to defend itself, and they’re a great ally of ours and we’ll support them of that, but these things clearly the way the world has gone the last two years, benefits China. There’s no question.”
In response to DeSantis’ appearance at the Heritage Foundation, the Democratic National Committee released a statement later on Friday, calling his foreign policy agenda “extreme.”
“Ron DeSantis’s foreign policy agenda would endanger the United States and undermine our allies—it’s clear he’s out of his depth,” said DNC spokesperson Sarafina Chitika. “DeSantis cheered Senator [Tommy] Tuberville’s monthslong military blockade that continues to undermine our national security and disrespect our military leaders and parroted Vladimir Putin’s talking points on Ukraine. The U.S. needs strong, steady leadership, not DeSantis’s extreme foreign policy agenda that would leave America and our allies vulnerable.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of State announced on Friday that it was imposing sanctions on Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officials involved in financing and training Hamas. The IRGC is the Iranian state’s armed force, according to the U.S. Department of National Intelligence.
Here’s the press statement Friday from U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken:
Today, the United States is imposing sanctions on eight key individuals for supporting Hamas, as well as Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officials involved in financing and training Hamas. A number of the individuals and entities designated today have played key roles in facilitating sanctions evasion by Hamas-affiliated companies.
Additionally, the United States is designating four entities for ties to Specially Designated Global Terrorists, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iranian Bonyad Shahid, also known as the Martyrs Foundation. The Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program is offering millions in rewards for information on certain activities and leaders of Hamas.
The United States is committed to dismantling networks that support funding for Hamas and countering Iran’s support for terrorism in the region and around the world. We will continue to work with our partners to deny Hamas access to the international financial system as part of our broader effort to prevent and deter its terrorist activity.
Florida Phoenix
The Phoenix is a nonprofit news site that’s free of advertising and free to readers. We cover state government and politics with a staff of five journalists located at the Florida Press Center in downtown Tallahassee.
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