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U.S. Department of State Weekly Digest Bulletin Inbox x U.S. Department of State <usstatebpa@public.govdelivery.com> Sun, Mar 24, 1:25 PM (1 day ago)  to me Secretary's Remarks: Aruba National Day 03/18/2019 You are subscribed to Secretary's Remarks for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. Secretary's Remarks: Aruba National Day 03/18/2019 08:13 AM EDT Press Statement Michael R. Pompeo Washington, DC March 18, 2019 On behalf of the Government of the United States, I offer my best wishes to the people of Aruba as you commemorate your National Day on March 18. The United States values the strong ties and exchanges between our nations. We look forward to expanding travel between our two countries and continuing our collaboration in renewable energy and entrepreneurship. We value the close cooperation with Aruban law enforcement agencies in combatting transnational criminal organizations and countering regional instability. These efforts help keep both Aruba and the United States safe. The United States values our longstanding friendship and wishes you a happy National Day celebration. The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. Speeches: Re-learning a Competitive Mindset in Great-Power Competition 03/18/2019 You are subscribed to Speeches, Remarks, Testimony (other than by the Secretary) for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. Speeches: Re-learning a Competitive Mindset in Great-Power Competition 03/18/2019 09:27 AM EDT Remarks Dr. Christopher Ashley Ford Strategic Weapons in the 21st Century: The New Dynamics of Strategic Conflict and Competition Washington, DC March 14, 2019 Good afternoon, everyone. It’s always a pleasure to attend this important conference, so thanks for having me back – and thanks especially to the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories for hosting all of us here today. It’s been more than one year now since the U.S. National Security Strategy called out “the contest for power” as a “central continuity in history,” warning its readers that “the revisionist powers of China and Russia” are “actively competing against the United States and our allies and partners.” It has also been more than a year since the National Defense Strategy made it explicit that “[i]nter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is the primary concern in U.S. national security,” because “[t]he central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security” today is “the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition.” For that reason, it makes good sense that the overall focus for this year’s conference is upon “new dynamics of strategic conflict and competition” vis-à-vis Russia and China – and I’m pleased to have been asked to speak today about the challenges of having an appropriately “competitive mindset” as we try to meet the challenges of this new era. I. Mindset and Strategy That question of “mindset” is, I believe, a critical one. Many of the specific details of national security planning will always vary in response to the changing circumstances one faces in the security environment. As German Field Marshal von Moltke so memorably pointed out, after all, no plan entirely survives first contact with the enemy. For him, strategy was the development of an original leading thought in accordance with ever-changing circumstances. I think this is an important insight. It helps us understand that developing an effective strategy is not about finding some Holy Grail of a detailed plan that will miraculously solve one’s problems. Rather, it involves establishing sets of understandings and objectives that are clear enough to provide “commander’s intent” – a sort of “compass direction” for policy development, coupled with a basic accounting of the policy resources that can be marshalled in its pursuit – while avoiding ossification, and permitting adaptive improvisation within its general parameters. In this endeavor, I would argue, “competitive mindset” is crucial. Mindset is not an end in itself, of course, nor an answer to the problem of strategy – but it is an indispensable first step. Mindset is the spark that catalyzes engagement in the business of competitive strategy development, and it is the fuel that sustains strategy implementation. II. Competition vis-à-vis Russia and China When it comes to the present-day challenges of competition with Russia and China, I think the case of U.S. China policy is the most interesting and demanding one. Americans may have spent a generation after 1991 trying to forget what it feels like to exist in a competitive relationship with Moscow, but there is a long 20th-century history upon which we can draw in rekindling our competitive energies. There is also a great deal of recent, unambiguous evidence that inexorably focuses us upon the problem: Russia’s repeated invasions of and aggressions against its neighbors since 2008; its use of illegal chemical weapons on NATO soil in 2018; its violation and destruction of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty; its development of a dangerously destabilizing new arsenal of nuclear delivery systems; its provocative intervention in Syria and continuing efforts to protect the Assad regime there from accountability for chemical weapons atrocities; its dangerous attacks on democratic institutions and processes; and its ongoing diplomatic campaign to undermine global norms and institutions for accountability and transparency in controlling weapons of mass destruction at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the United Nations. On one level, all of this experience makes rekindling of a competitive mindset vis-à-vis Russia pretty easy. On another level, however, there is arguably not that much real long-term “competition” with Moscow to be had at all. In economic, demographic, and political terms, Russia is clearly a declining power, though it remains enormously dangerous due to its infatuation with rectifying historical grievances associated with that decline, its penchant for aggressive and even exuberant geopolitical risk-taking, and its continued possession of military and technological tools capable of causing hideous mayhem. The Kremlin needs to be deterred from undertaking this dangerous and destabilizing activity, but over the long term it is not clear that Russia will pose a first-order “competitive” challenge to the still-thriving economies and polities of the Western democracies. Not so China. Competition with Beijing presents us with much more interesting and difficult challenges. First, of course, this is a result of its sheer size and economic dynamism. Beijing’s modern dangers to international peace and security result from its increasing interest in converting raw demographic weight and its impressive economic rise into a power-political currency that will allow it to right what it sees as the deep wrong and humiliation inflicted upon it when Western imperialism eclipsed the Middle Kingdom and robbed it of its self-perceived traditional role as the guiding light and geopolitical center of human civilization. China is no declining state, but rather a formidable competitive adversary with far more to draw upon in a competition than the Russians have – as well as much more likely geopolitical staying power. Precisely because the rise of Chinese economic power has been so dramatic, however – and because this rise was driven by export-led growth and occurred in the context of the liberal, open economic order that United States power and policy has sustained in the Indo-Pacific for many decades – competition with China creates additional challenges for us, because the deep economic connections between it and the United States preclude an entirely competitive approach. Indeed, in some ways, our biggest challenge in dealing with China is that our relationship with Beijing has both competitive and cooperative aspects – aspects that we somehow have to manage at the same time, and for which our more purely adversarial Cold War experiences with the Soviet Union do not provide a very useful conceptual template. Our competitive mindset needs to keep us focused upon competing vigorously and effectively, but never without consideration of our two countries’ mutual economic entanglement and the dangers and opportunities that this creates in the Sino-American relationship. Doing this well will be far from easy. III. A Sea Change in America’s Competitive Mindset As someone who has watched and participated in U.S. China policy debates for quite a few years now, however, I would venture to say that the most important hurdle to developing a competitive strategy against China is one that we are already doing well in overcoming. That obstacle was the refusal of our own China policy community to acknowledge the need for a competitive approach at all. As I have been arguing for years, the “competitive” side of the Sino-American relationship is the one which much of our China policy community has traditionally ignored or downplayed, enthralled by the self-flattering assumption – which Richard Madsen once called the “Liberal Myth” of China – that China both wished to be and was likely eventually to become an open democracy like our own. Deng Xiaoping’s opening of China to the world was mistaken as a departure from the Communist Party’s Marxist-Leninist roots, mistaken for abandonment of (Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideology, rather than recognized as a tactical change designed to better achieve the same strategic end of a return to great power status. Though this confidence may have been briefly shaken by the butchery the CCP committed against the Chinese people on Tiananmen Square in June 1989, for the most part a near-consensus in post-Cold War U.S. China policy held for years that we should embrace Beijing’s rise, or even help facilitate it, underpinned by an assumption that China was accepting of, and integrating into, the international system as we had designed it after World War II. Indeed, this long-entrenched view – encouraged, not surprisingly, by the Communist Party’s blandly reassuring global propaganda tropes about “win-win” cooperative outcomes and the inevitably benign benevolence of rising Chinese power – led many U.S. China-watchers to resist any U.S. effort to develop a competitive strategy on the grounds that it would be a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Beijing wasn’t a competitive threat, it was claimed, but it might be transformed into one if our officials had the temerity to start describing it as such. Well, that was then … and this is now. Few serious observers now think that the Chinese regime wishes or is in any way likely to become “like us.” China watchers today also appear increasingly and understandably concerned with the ways in which China’s growing power is giving it opportunities to act with increasingly aggressive self-assertion in the world. This self-assertion is increasingly obvious and problematic not just in terms of territorial self-aggrandizement in the South China Sea, but also in support of an agenda clearly now focused upon undermining and displacing U.S. power and influence in the Indo-Pacific region and on the world stage more broadly – a goal the CCP has held since President Truman intervened in the Taiwan Strait in 1950, foiling Mao’s plans to finish off the KMT and regain control of Taiwan, and indeed one that Chinese nationalists have cherished since the scholar and reformer Liang Qichao visited the United States and reached similar conclusions in 1903. If there remains any clear sense in which the Communist Party wants China to be “like us,” it is merely that Beijing covets the United States’ stature and position at the hub of the global community, and wishes to acquire something like that for itself. Hence, of course, our need for competitive strategy. Indeed, the challenge from China may be even deeper than that, for in some sense it is developing not only at the somewhat prosaic, realpolitik level of power and influence, but also at the more profound level of what one might call socio-political “operating systems.” As observed in the National Defense Strategy, “[i]t is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.” China, in particular, has become notably interested in exporting its state-capitalist, high-technology police state model of government to other countries – what I believe the journalist Nicolas Kristof once called “Market Leninism” – even while ensnaring ever-greater portions of the developing world in manipulated debt dependencies and “neo-neocolonial” economic relationships. The global competition, in other words, is becoming ideological. Increasingly, it seems to be not just about who will dominate the 21st century world, but also about what the operating system of that world will be, and the predominant mode of governance within it. Clearly, this is serious stuff. But this is where competitive mindset comes in. For a long time, our mindset was part of the problem. As I have noted elsewhere, after the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War, our country and its democratic and capitalist “operating system” stood seemingly unchallenged, feeling happily vindicated after decades of struggle against ideologized tyrannies of both the Right and the Left. Concluding that the world’s most important ideological and Great Power conflicts had all just resolved themselves conclusively in our favor, our policy community basically went on a complacent vacation from Great Power competitive strategy – even while China took our post-Cold War ascendancy as a compelling reason to improve its competitive game, and Beijing has spent the last quarter-century implementing a strategy dedicated to challenging and undermining our power and influence in the world. But “mindset” is also now helping show us the way back into the game, for I think the center of gravity in the U.S. policy community – alarmed by aspects of what modern China is unfortunately becoming – has crossed its intellectual Rubicon and, irrespective of which political party holds sway in Washington, will never again return to the fallacies and competitive unpreparedness of our uncritically rise-embracing past. America’s strategic holiday is over, and while I would wager we aren’t going to get all the answers right as we try to devise a competitive strategy appropriate to this new era, we at least finally admit that we need one, and we are now working hard to meet the challenge. That, I believe, represents a sea change in U.S. foreign and national security policy, and “mindset” is leading the way. IV. Crafting Our Responses So what are we doing to get back into the competition business? It’s too early to say too much about the various forms our new approach will take, but you’re already seeing some of them. In my little corner of the U.S. State Department, for instance, we are exploring ways in which to use our existing skills and experience – for example, in sanctions implementation and enforcement, interdiction, technology-transfer controls, and multilateral diplomacy – to support U.S. competitive strategy. We are doing new work, for instance, in drawing attention to and mobilizing diplomatic coalitions against Chinese technology theft and against Beijing’s diversion of foreign-acquired technology to military purposes, and we are developing ways to use civil-nuclear cooperation and related diplomacy more effectively, to boost the competitiveness of key U.S. national security-related sectors against predatory foreign counterparts. This has already helped lead to a major revision in U.S. export control policy with respect to civil-nuclear cooperation with China, which we announced last October. We are exploring further innovations, especially as we work with international partners to develop coordinated approaches to the China-related technology-transfer problems that affect many nations, not just the United States. We are also accelerating work to cut the continuing ties between Chinese suppliers and missile development efforts in places such as Iran – including by stepping up pressure on Beijing to finally shut down the activities of the infamous missile technology broker for Iran and fugitive from justice Li Fangwei (a.k.a. Karl Lee), who has a $5 million price tag on his head from the U.S. Rewards for Justice program. Li continues to shelter in China while serving as the most important overseas supplier of items and materiel for Iran’s missile program. That is entirely unacceptable. With respect to Russia, we are using sanctions tools – most prominently the mandatory arms trade sanctions of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017 (CAATSA) – and our diplomatic skills to undermine the strategically and financially lucrative relationships that the Kremlin seeks to build with foreign clients through arms sales and intelligence ties. And we have been implementing statutory sanctions to punish Russian chemical and biological weapons use – while in our diplomatic engagements, we have been encouraging U.S. arms sales to friends and allies in ways that both help them and preserve the integrity of the nonproliferation regimes upon which international peace and security depend. And that’s only what we’re doing in my own bureau, the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. Beginning at the start of this administration and now picking up speed, analogous efforts to improve U.S. competitive posture vis-à-vis Russia and China are underway across the State Department, and in the interagency more broadly. Congress is not standing idly by either, for it has helped considerably with new legislation empowering the Executive Branch to close loopholes in our foreign investment screening system that Chinese entities had been using to obtain sensitive technologies that we would never permit them to acquire by traditional means. V. Conclusion This reorientation of U.S. foreign and national security policy around the imperatives of competition with China and Russia is far from completed, and we have much still to do if we are to meet the challenges set us in this regard by the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy. But our mindset has indeed now come firmly around – and the ship of state, as it were, is beginning to align itself with these new objectives. To be sure, strategic competition can be grim and taxing work, and this new era of Great Power competition is an unwelcome one. I am sure we would all have preferred to live in the comparatively idyllic world that U.S. leaders for a time thought they had inherited after the Cold War ended. But such a world was never truly available, and our competitors wasted no time in taking advantage of the West’s infatuation with the illusion that we inhabited an enduringly benign strategic environment. Unwelcome as this competition is, therefore, it was for that reason unavoidable – and I am very pleased, at least, that we now recognize things for what they are, and that we are now resolutely committed to meeting the challenge. The topic you have picked for this conference today is thus an extraordinarily important one. I look forward to our discussions. Thank you. The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. Arms Control and International Security: Re-learning a Competitive Mindset in Great-Power Competition 03/18/2019 You are subscribed to Arms Control and International Security for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. Arms Control and International Security: Re-learning a Competitive Mindset in Great-Power Competition 03/18/2019 09:27 AM EDT Remarks Dr. Christopher Ashley Ford Strategic Weapons in the 21st Century: The New Dynamics of Strategic Conflict and Competition Washington, DC March 14, 2019 Good afternoon, everyone. It’s always a pleasure to attend this important conference, so thanks for having me back – and thanks especially to the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories for hosting all of us here today. It’s been more than one year now since the U.S. National Security Strategy called out “the contest for power” as a “central continuity in history,” warning its readers that “the revisionist powers of China and Russia” are “actively competing against the United States and our allies and partners.” It has also been more than a year since the National Defense Strategy made it explicit that “[i]nter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is the primary concern in U.S. national security,” because “[t]he central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security” today is “the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition.” For that reason, it makes good sense that the overall focus for this year’s conference is upon “new dynamics of strategic conflict and competition” vis-à-vis Russia and China – and I’m pleased to have been asked to speak today about the challenges of having an appropriately “competitive mindset” as we try to meet the challenges of this new era. I. Mindset and Strategy That question of “mindset” is, I believe, a critical one. Many of the specific details of national security planning will always vary in response to the changing circumstances one faces in the security environment. As German Field Marshal von Moltke so memorably pointed out, after all, no plan entirely survives first contact with the enemy. For him, strategy was the development of an original leading thought in accordance with ever-changing circumstances. I think this is an important insight. It helps us understand that developing an effective strategy is not about finding some Holy Grail of a detailed plan that will miraculously solve one’s problems. Rather, it involves establishing sets of understandings and objectives that are clear enough to provide “commander’s intent” – a sort of “compass direction” for policy development, coupled with a basic accounting of the policy resources that can be marshalled in its pursuit – while avoiding ossification, and permitting adaptive improvisation within its general parameters. In this endeavor, I would argue, “competitive mindset” is crucial. Mindset is not an end in itself, of course, nor an answer to the problem of strategy – but it is an indispensable first step. Mindset is the spark that catalyzes engagement in the business of competitive strategy development, and it is the fuel that sustains strategy implementation. II. Competition vis-à-vis Russia and China When it comes to the present-day challenges of competition with Russia and China, I think the case of U.S. China policy is the most interesting and demanding one. Americans may have spent a generation after 1991 trying to forget what it feels like to exist in a competitive relationship with Moscow, but there is a long 20th-century history upon which we can draw in rekindling our competitive energies. There is also a great deal of recent, unambiguous evidence that inexorably focuses us upon the problem: Russia’s repeated invasions of and aggressions against its neighbors since 2008; its use of illegal chemical weapons on NATO soil in 2018; its violation and destruction of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty; its development of a dangerously destabilizing new arsenal of nuclear delivery systems; its provocative intervention in Syria and continuing efforts to protect the Assad regime there from accountability for chemical weapons atrocities; its dangerous attacks on democratic institutions and processes; and its ongoing diplomatic campaign to undermine global norms and institutions for accountability and transparency in controlling weapons of mass destruction at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the United Nations. On one level, all of this experience makes rekindling of a competitive mindset vis-à-vis Russia pretty easy. On another level, however, there is arguably not that much real long-term “competition” with Moscow to be had at all. In economic, demographic, and political terms, Russia is clearly a declining power, though it remains enormously dangerous due to its infatuation with rectifying historical grievances associated with that decline, its penchant for aggressive and even exuberant geopolitical risk-taking, and its continued possession of military and technological tools capable of causing hideous mayhem. The Kremlin needs to be deterred from undertaking this dangerous and destabilizing activity, but over the long term it is not clear that Russia will pose a first-order “competitive” challenge to the still-thriving economies and polities of the Western democracies. Not so China. Competition with Beijing presents us with much more interesting and difficult challenges. First, of course, this is a result of its sheer size and economic dynamism. Beijing’s modern dangers to international peace and security result from its increasing interest in converting raw demographic weight and its impressive economic rise into a power-political currency that will allow it to right what it sees as the deep wrong and humiliation inflicted upon it when Western imperialism eclipsed the Middle Kingdom and robbed it of its self-perceived traditional role as the guiding light and geopolitical center of human civilization. China is no declining state, but rather a formidable competitive adversary with far more to draw upon in a competition than the Russians have – as well as much more likely geopolitical staying power. Precisely because the rise of Chinese economic power has been so dramatic, however – and because this rise was driven by export-led growth and occurred in the context of the liberal, open economic order that United States power and policy has sustained in the Indo-Pacific for many decades – competition with China creates additional challenges for us, because the deep economic connections between it and the United States preclude an entirely competitive approach. Indeed, in some ways, our biggest challenge in dealing with China is that our relationship with Beijing has both competitive and cooperative aspects – aspects that we somehow have to manage at the same time, and for which our more purely adversarial Cold War experiences with the Soviet Union do not provide a very useful conceptual template. Our competitive mindset needs to keep us focused upon competing vigorously and effectively, but never without consideration of our two countries’ mutual economic entanglement and the dangers and opportunities that this creates in the Sino-American relationship. Doing this well will be far from easy. III. A Sea Change in America’s Competitive Mindset As someone who has watched and participated in U.S. China policy debates for quite a few years now, however, I would venture to say that the most important hurdle to developing a competitive strategy against China is one that we are already doing well in overcoming. That obstacle was the refusal of our own China policy community to acknowledge the need for a competitive approach at all. As I have been arguing for years, the “competitive” side of the Sino-American relationship is the one which much of our China policy community has traditionally ignored or downplayed, enthralled by the self-flattering assumption – which Richard Madsen once called the “Liberal Myth” of China – that China both wished to be and was likely eventually to become an open democracy like our own. Deng Xiaoping’s opening of China to the world was mistaken as a departure from the Communist Party’s Marxist-Leninist roots, mistaken for abandonment of (Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideology, rather than recognized as a tactical change designed to better achieve the same strategic end of a return to great power status. Though this confidence may have been briefly shaken by the butchery the CCP committed against the Chinese people on Tiananmen Square in June 1989, for the most part a near-consensus in post-Cold War U.S. China policy held for years that we should embrace Beijing’s rise, or even help facilitate it, underpinned by an assumption that China was accepting of, and integrating into, the international system as we had designed it after World War II. Indeed, this long-entrenched view – encouraged, not surprisingly, by the Communist Party’s blandly reassuring global propaganda tropes about “win-win” cooperative outcomes and the inevitably benign benevolence of rising Chinese power – led many U.S. China-watchers to resist any U.S. effort to develop a competitive strategy on the grounds that it would be a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Beijing wasn’t a competitive threat, it was claimed, but it might be transformed into one if our officials had the temerity to start describing it as such. Well, that was then … and this is now. Few serious observers now think that the Chinese regime wishes or is in any way likely to become “like us.” China watchers today also appear increasingly and understandably concerned with the ways in which China’s growing power is giving it opportunities to act with increasingly aggressive self-assertion in the world. This self-assertion is increasingly obvious and problematic not just in terms of territorial self-aggrandizement in the South China Sea, but also in support of an agenda clearly now focused upon undermining and displacing U.S. power and influence in the Indo-Pacific region and on the world stage more broadly – a goal the CCP has held since President Truman intervened in the Taiwan Strait in 1950, foiling Mao’s plans to finish off the KMT and regain control of Taiwan, and indeed one that Chinese nationalists have cherished since the scholar and reformer Liang Qichao visited the United States and reached similar conclusions in 1903. If there remains any clear sense in which the Communist Party wants China to be “like us,” it is merely that Beijing covets the United States’ stature and position at the hub of the global community, and wishes to acquire something like that for itself. Hence, of course, our need for competitive strategy. Indeed, the challenge from China may be even deeper than that, for in some sense it is developing not only at the somewhat prosaic, realpolitik level of power and influence, but also at the more profound level of what one might call socio-political “operating systems.” As observed in the National Defense Strategy, “[i]t is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.” China, in particular, has become notably interested in exporting its state-capitalist, high-technology police state model of government to other countries – what I believe the journalist Nicolas Kristof once called “Market Leninism” – even while ensnaring ever-greater portions of the developing world in manipulated debt dependencies and “neo-neocolonial” economic relationships. The global competition, in other words, is becoming ideological. Increasingly, it seems to be not just about who will dominate the 21st century world, but also about what the operating system of that world will be, and the predominant mode of governance within it. Clearly, this is serious stuff. But this is where competitive mindset comes in. For a long time, our mindset was part of the problem. As I have noted elsewhere, after the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War, our country and its democratic and capitalist “operating system” stood seemingly unchallenged, feeling happily vindicated after decades of struggle against ideologized tyrannies of both the Right and the Left. Concluding that the world’s most important ideological and Great Power conflicts had all just resolved themselves conclusively in our favor, our policy community basically went on a complacent vacation from Great Power competitive strategy – even while China took our post-Cold War ascendancy as a compelling reason to improve its competitive game, and Beijing has spent the last quarter-century implementing a strategy dedicated to challenging and undermining our power and influence in the world. But “mindset” is also now helping show us the way back into the game, for I think the center of gravity in the U.S. policy community – alarmed by aspects of what modern China is unfortunately becoming – has crossed its intellectual Rubicon and, irrespective of which political party holds sway in Washington, will never again return to the fallacies and competitive unpreparedness of our uncritically rise-embracing past. America’s strategic holiday is over, and while I would wager we aren’t going to get all the answers right as we try to devise a competitive strategy appropriate to this new era, we at least finally admit that we need one, and we are now working hard to meet the challenge. That, I believe, represents a sea change in U.S. foreign and national security policy, and “mindset” is leading the way. IV. Crafting Our Responses So what are we doing to get back into the competition business? It’s too early to say too much about the various forms our new approach will take, but you’re already seeing some of them. In my little corner of the U.S. State Department, for instance, we are exploring ways in which to use our existing skills and experience – for example, in sanctions implementation and enforcement, interdiction, technology-transfer controls, and multilateral diplomacy – to support U.S. competitive strategy. We are doing new work, for instance, in drawing attention to and mobilizing diplomatic coalitions against Chinese technology theft and against Beijing’s diversion of foreign-acquired technology to military purposes, and we are developing ways to use civil-nuclear cooperation and related diplomacy more effectively, to boost the competitiveness of key U.S. national security-related sectors against predatory foreign counterparts. This has already helped lead to a major revision in U.S. export control policy with respect to civil-nuclear cooperation with China, which we announced last October. We are exploring further innovations, especially as we work with international partners to develop coordinated approaches to the China-related technology-transfer problems that affect many nations, not just the United States. We are also accelerating work to cut the continuing ties between Chinese suppliers and missile development efforts in places such as Iran – including by stepping up pressure on Beijing to finally shut down the activities of the infamous missile technology broker for Iran and fugitive from justice Li Fangwei (a.k.a. Karl Lee), who has a $5 million price tag on his head from the U.S. Rewards for Justice program. Li continues to shelter in China while serving as the most important overseas supplier of items and materiel for Iran’s missile program. That is entirely unacceptable. With respect to Russia, we are using sanctions tools – most prominently the mandatory arms trade sanctions of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017 (CAATSA) – and our diplomatic skills to undermine the strategically and financially lucrative relationships that the Kremlin seeks to build with foreign clients through arms sales and intelligence ties. And we have been implementing statutory sanctions to punish Russian chemical and biological weapons use – while in our diplomatic engagements, we have been encouraging U.S. arms sales to friends and allies in ways that both help them and preserve the integrity of the nonproliferation regimes upon which international peace and security depend. And that’s only what we’re doing in my own bureau, the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. Beginning at the start of this administration and now picking up speed, analogous efforts to improve U.S. competitive posture vis-à-vis Russia and China are underway across the State Department, and in the interagency more broadly. Congress is not standing idly by either, for it has helped considerably with new legislation empowering the Executive Branch to close loopholes in our foreign investment screening system that Chinese entities had been using to obtain sensitive technologies that we would never permit them to acquire by traditional means. V. Conclusion This reorientation of U.S. foreign and national security policy around the imperatives of competition with China and Russia is far from completed, and we have much still to do if we are to meet the challenges set us in this regard by the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy. But our mindset has indeed now come firmly around – and the ship of state, as it were, is beginning to align itself with these new objectives. To be sure, strategic competition can be grim and taxing work, and this new era of Great Power competition is an unwelcome one. I am sure we would all have preferred to live in the comparatively idyllic world that U.S. leaders for a time thought they had inherited after the Cold War ended. But such a world was never truly available, and our competitors wasted no time in taking advantage of the West’s infatuation with the illusion that we inhabited an enduringly benign strategic environment. Unwelcome as this competition is, therefore, it was for that reason unavoidable – and I am very pleased, at least, that we now recognize things for what they are, and that we are now resolutely committed to meeting the challenge. The topic you have picked for this conference today is thus an extraordinarily important one. I look forward to our discussions. Thank you. The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. Secretary's Remarks: Interview With Nick Vasos and Kim Byrnes of Fox 4 News Mornings 03/18/2019 You are subscribed to Secretary's Remarks for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. Secretary's Remarks: Interview With Nick Vasos and Kim Byrnes of Fox 4 News Mornings 03/18/2019 11:29 AM EDT Interview Michael R. Pompeo Via Teleconference March 18, 2019 QUESTION: Well, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the metro today for a conference on global entrepreneurship. QUESTION: Yeah. You may remember he’s from Kansas, served as a congressman from the Wichita area. Well, Secretary Pompeo joins us now from the InterContinental Hotel in Kansas City. Good morning. Tell us about the conference -- SECRETARY POMPEO: Good to be with you. QUESTION: Tell us about the conference you’re here for and what you’re going to be doing here in Kansas City. SECRETARY POMPEO: This is a State Department effort to engage entrepreneurs here in the United States and I wanted to come to the heartland and spread this message. Our mission set is to grow the American economy by helping folks from this area and, frankly, all around the United States develop their capability to sell their products all around the world. We’ll have leadership from the Netherlands here in town today. We’ll do this again there in a few months. The idea is that the State Department is here to help. You’re an innovator, you’re a creator, you’re starting your own business and you want to attack markets all around the world, State Department’s here to help you. QUESTION: Yeah. You’re encouraging entrepreneurs and investors in the Midwest to think beyond the Midwest. Why is it important that they do that? SECRETARY POMPEO: Big markets, and it’s deeply connected to my mission as America’s Secretary of State as well. We have the mission of keeping America safe and there’s nothing that benefits American security like a robust, growing American economy. It provides important infrastructure for all we do in the national security space. So I want to help folks. If you have a market you want to address, whether that’s in Southeast Asia or in the Middle East or in Europe, the State Department has tools and resources available to assist you in achieving your business objective. QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, you started your own company. You’re an entrepreneur yourself, aren’t you, back in the day? SECRETARY POMPEO: I am. So we sold products all around the world as well. QUESTION: So all of this is leading up to a global conference in the Netherlands. What do you hope entrepreneurs here in Kansas City get out of going to that? SECRETARY POMPEO: We hope they’ll come join. There’ll be thousands of European investors, entrepreneurs, creators, innovators in all sectors – goods, retail services – across a broad spectrum. It’ll be a chance for them to network, to connect, develop relationships, all the things you truly need to sell your product around the world and to, frankly, get investment to come in from these other countries as well. Foreign direct investment here in Kansas and Missouri is really important to the growth of our businesses and I hope I can connect some people up and that our team can do a good job of building America’s economy. QUESTION: All right. We want to change gears just a little bit because in the news cycle this weekend – we know you ruled out a run for office here in the state of Kansas for this go-around, but you said never say never. SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah, I think that’s right. I’ve learned in life one needs to work hard, keep your head down, do your job as well as you can and then the next thing will come to you. QUESTION: Well, Mr. Secretary, you are here in the barbecue capital of the world here. We are wondering what your selection might be this afternoon for lunch. What’s it going to be? SECRETARY POMPEO: So last night we had Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que. Don’t know what’s for lunch today. QUESTION: Don’t know what’s for lunch, all right. Well, we won’t ask you what your favorite is, all right, because that can be a divisive question, all right? (Laughter.) But we’ll just leave it at that. Mr. Secretary, it is great to see you. Welcome back to the Midwest here and I hope you have a good time there at the conference. Thank you. SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you. QUESTION: Appreciate it. SECRETARY POMPEO: It’s great to be back home. Thank you very much. QUESTION: You’re welcome. The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. Secretary's Remarks: Interview With Nick Gosnell of WIBW NewsDay Now 03/18/2019 You are subscribed to Secretary's Remarks for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. Secretary's Remarks: Interview With Nick Gosnell of WIBW NewsDay Now 03/18/2019 11:22 AM EDT Interview Michael R. Pompeo Via Teleconference March 18, 2019 QUESTION: It’s 7:25. On the phone with me this morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Good morning, Mr. Secretary. SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you. QUESTION: Tell us why you’re in Kansas this week. SECRETARY POMPEO: Nick, it’s great to be with you. It’s great to be back home. I’m here today to talk to entrepreneurs all across Kansas and Missouri, to share with them what it is the State Department can do for them to help them build a business, to help them get investment from around the world, to help them attack international markets. Whether they’re doing retail or providing goods or services, the State Department is there to help them achieve their goals if they want to grow their business in places outside of the United States. QUESTION: As someone who started a business in Kansas, how can business leaders here best connect with the rest of the world? SECRETARY POMPEO: So there’s a number of ways. We’ll talk about each of them today. We’ve got a big group that’s going to be with us today. We’ll talk about how the State Department can help, how we connect. Today there’ll be leaders from around the world, business leaders from around the world who will talk about opportunities, and even just the chance to connect and to build a set of relationships there. We’ll help folks figure out how to do it, how to do it cost-effectively, how to compete in these difficult marketplaces. I did, I ran two small businesses back in Kansas. It would have been great for me to have had the opportunity here from leaders like this to help us grow our business. QUESTION: Well, and the thing is that this is sort of a preview to an international event taking place later this year. SECRETARY POMPEO: It is. It’s a global event that the State Department’s engaged in. It’s very important to President Trump to grow our economy. The pillar of American national security is, in fact, a growing, thriving American economy. We’ll get – have a seminar not too terribly different from the one we’re having today in The Hague in just a few months. We’re really looking forward to it. We hope there’ll be a bunch of Kansans travel to the Netherlands to do that. QUESTION: And actually, there will be – a representative from the Netherlands will be a part of what’s going on here in the next couple of days. But while I’ve got you on the phone, obviously got to talk to you about a couple of other things. And the first of those is: It’s been a – you were still a congressman from Kansas the last time we spoke, and you’ve gone a long way since then. So talk about what’s been the most difficult thing for you in becoming Secretary of State. Shoot, you passed all the way through CIA director and we didn’t talk even once. SECRETARY POMPEO: Nick, it’s been an incredible privilege to both represent the people of south central Kansas, then be the director of the CIA, and now serve as America’s most senior diplomat. It’s a big task for sure, but I have a great team at the State Department. The missions, frankly, in each of those three roles were similar. One of the missions as a member of Congress is to work on national security, and that’s certainly what I’ve done in my current role and the one most previous. Achieving security for Kansans, for people all across America is at the center of what we’re working on alongside President Trump. QUESTION: One of the biggest things that this trade fight across the world has been about is that economic prosperity and peaceful coexistence have to go together, don’t they? SECRETARY POMPEO: Nick, you’ve nailed it. For an awfully long time, other countries abused America’s economy. They stole our intellectual property. They refused to let us sell our products. I remember when I was a small businessman, if someone from China wanted to come invest in America, they could. If we wanted to do it there, we couldn’t. That’s not fair. Farmers know that, manufacturers know that, business people know that. President Trump is determined to give American businesses, American farmers, American manufacturers fair and reciprocal opportunities to grow their businesses. QUESTION: The other thing that the State Department obviously does is takes care of big-time security issues, and you’ve probably got more stamps on your passport than anyone else in the world literally over the course of these last few months and years. Of all the places you’ve gone to, where’s the place Kansans might be able to see their goods go next? SECRETARY POMPEO: Goodness, there’s enormous growth all across Asia. So I’ve traveled to Singapore, to Vietnam, I’ve been to China, to South Korea, to Japan. Each of those offers real opportunity for Kansans, and those countries are growing, their people are growing, the middle class with the resources to purchase American goods is growing. There’s real opportunity there, and I hope Kansans who hear this this morning will get excited about it and turn to the State Department to help them achieve their business goals. QUESTION: One other thing is I have some friends – I worked for 10 years in McPherson, Kansas, out in central Kansas, and had some friends that were in McPherson at the same time as I was, and now they work for you. Several levels below you; I think they’re in Frankfurt, Germany now, but the idea is you’d love to see Kansans get – do some work overseas as well. SECRETARY POMPEO: Nick, I have met Kansans. I met a young lady from Newton just last week. I met someone from Dodge City the week before that. Sounds like we’ve got some great folks from McPherson working as American diplomats as well. It is a wonderful blessing to get a chance to represent America all around the world. I don’t just want folks working here who come from Washington or Boston or New York. Anyone from the heartland who wants to have an exciting life, an important life, one where you can make a real difference for American national security ought to take a look at joining the State Department. QUESTION: And they’ll have recruiters there in Overland Park today as part of the conference that’s ongoing. It’s 7:30 at WIBW. More of Newsday Now coming up. The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. Speeches: Press Availability at the Zola Community Health Care Center in Soweto 03/18/2019 You are subscribed to Speeches, Remarks, Testimony (other than by the Secretary) for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. Speeches: Press Availability at the Zola Community Health Care Center in Soweto 03/18/2019 11:51 AM EDT Press Availability John J. Sullivan    Deputy Secretary of State Deborah L. Birx, M.D.    U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator & U.S. Special Representative for Global Health Diplomacy Johannesburg, South Africa March 16, 2019 MODERATOR: Alright, I think that’ll do it. So thank you all for coming out today to the Zola Community Healthcare Center in Soweto. It is our honor to be here to welcome our U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, John J. Sullivan, and our U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Special Representative for Global Health Diplomacy, Deborah L. Birx. We’re happy to have them here to talk about HIV/AIDS response and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. So with that, I will turn it over to Ambassador Birx for some opening comments. AMBASSADOR BIRX: Great. Such a pleasure to be here this morning, now afternoon, in the brilliant South African sun and here in Soweto. I think you know the United States has been a partner in the HIV response in South Africa for the last 16 years, investing over $6 billion in this response, in South Africa, to really generate a different outcome and future for all South Africans. We know what needs to be done. We have every piece of evidence that we need to combat this epidemic. The issue is, are we implementing to serve the public in the best way possible? The young women behind me represent one of those prevention programs, to ensure that every young woman has the information that she needs to be successful in her life, and so that she is aware and understands how HIV is transmitted and she can protect herself. It’s about empowering young women, protecting them, also ensuring young men are protected through our voluntary male circumcision program, and then of course our treatment programs, and that is fundamentally with the government, but with the community, serving others and translating the U.S. taxpayer dollars to a different outcome and impact for the future of South Africa. So I thank you, and it’s my pleasure to introduce my boss, the Deputy Secretary from the U.S. State Department, who is here visiting. He wasn’t specifically here for this, but now is here for all of us and is visiting southern Africa and it’s really such a pleasure, because he has been supportive of the PEPFAR program from the minute he came to the State Department and has met the DREAMS Ambassadors 18 months ago, at World AIDS Day. A woman from KwaZulu-Natal came to visit us, and the Deputy Secretary was there for World AIDS Day, so it was a really important moment for us. Thank you, Deputy Secretary, for supporting us and making sure that PEPFAR is successful. DEPUTY SECRETARY SULLIVAN: Well, thank you, Ambassador Birx. It’s a great honor and privilege for me to be here in Soweto and at this magnificent Zola clinic. We’ve gotten a tour of the facility, much of which is supported financially by PEPFAR, and of course we’ve met these young ladies behind us, who are part of the DREAMS program. As the Ambassador said, we had an event in Washington some time ago—almost a year and a half ago—where I met some of the young women from this area, and it’s a great example of the positive effect of U.S. investment in South Africa. I was serving in government, as was Ambassador Birx, when President George W. Bush established the PEPFAR program in 2004. We’ve invested $6 billion here in South Africa in young people like the young women behind us, and it’s a magnificent use of U.S. taxpayer funds, working with the local community and with the provincial and national governments on such a noble end, on treating and preventing HIV/AIDS, but also educating young women and young men and producing the great ambassadors that you see behind us. So again, on this beautiful day it’s great to be here and I’m very grateful for that. MODERATOR: Thank you, Deputy Secretary Sullivan, Ambassador Birx. Thank you very much. We’re pleased to have our colleagues from Jozi FM here, broadcasting live. They’ve been here all day and they’re here now. I think they had a couple of questions to start off with. QUESTION: I’m here! MODERATOR: Alright, please go ahead. QUESTION: Good afternoon, everyone. How are you? Sanibonani, dumelang. Good afternoon. Alright, my question here is—oh, my name is Prince Tshabalala from Jozi FM—what is PEPFAR and your role in reducing HIV and AIDS in our communities? I’ve got more questions, just one more. I’ve got another one that says, “Why did you choose Soweto?” And maybe you can give me an answer to that one. And, “In what ways are you guys involved in supporting all the community projects that are around?” DEPUTY SECRETARY SULLIVAN: Sure. Well, I will take a stab at an answer and then turn it over to Ambassador Birx. PEPFAR is a program that was established by the U.S. president, President Bush, back in 2004, to address the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, with a particular focus on Africa. Over the 15 years since that program was established, the United States has invested billions in PEPFAR, has changed the lives—saved the lives—of millions of people as a result. We’ve invested here in South Africa $6 billion, and the reason I’m here in Soweto today is to come to this Zola clinic to see the program firsthand, on the ground, in the heart of South Africa, in Soweto. To meet the young people who are benefitting from it and to learn from them about the positive impact that the PEPFAR program has had. Ambassador? AMBASSADOR BIRX: Great. So I think let’s go back to the beginning and how severe the epidemic was in South Africa, and continues to be in South Africa. And that’s why we are still here in partnership with your community and with the government. South Africa is approaching eight million people infected with HIV. Eight million people. We’re beginning to see a complacency. At a time when one in 15 adults may already be positive, one in 10 in many communities, one in five in many communities, around Durban, around Johannesburg, we believe that there’s not enough awareness about how significant this issue was. When President Bush announced this program, he announced the program because he believed that the very fabric and communities of sub-Saharan Africa were at risk, because we were losing 20-30% of all the adults on the continent. We thought this was a critical emergency for the world, and that’s why the U.S. government has now invested $75 billion over the last 16 years, just in sub-Saharan Africa, where the problem is. But with South Africa and Mozambique, its neighbor: 10 million people that are HIV-positive. This is a crisis; we need to treat it as a crisis, we need to treat it as an emergency. We need to make sure every young woman knows that it’s an emergency and has the skills and the ability to thrive without HIV, and we want to make sure that every single person, including every male that is out there on your radio station understands that he is at risk. Most of them will not have symptoms; by the time you have symptoms, by the time you have TB, we can’t restore you to full health. If we can find you early—this is why many of these young women have already been tested, because they know that if they’re found early and put on treatment early, they can live to be as old as their grannies and their grandpas and be in their eighties. But if you don’t find it soon, you not only transmit the virus but it threatens your own health. The problem with HIV isit’s asymptomatic. You don’t know you have it; you can’t tell who has it. The only way to tell is to come into a clinic like this clinic and get tested. And people are ready to receive you and move you to the right prevention information or the right treatment information. South Africans need to rise up and get tested. Everyone out there in your listening area knows that they’re at risk. If they’re having sex, and unprotected sex, they’re at risk and they need to be tested, because we have a solution. 20 years ago we didn’t have a solution; we have a solution. And that’s why we’re here. We’re here to raise awareness that South Africa, at the community level and at the government level, need to understand the crisis that HIV and TB is. QUESTION: Thank you very much. MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you both very much. We also have Katharine Child from the Sunday Times, who had a question for you. QUESTION: Thanks. Welcome, ambassador. My question for you was if you read the country letter to South Africa, it says here, “We celebrate successes but we know it’s a fundamental problem in PEPFAR’s program in South Africa.” It carries on. “There’s a significant infusion of resources by the U.S. government over the last three years; progress has been grossly sub-optimal and insufficient to reach epidemic control.” And then it speaks about poor performance. This letter is scathing; what are you specifically unhappy with, with the government, in order to write such a strongly-worded letter? AMBASSADOR BIRX: Well, South Africa wasn’t the only one who got a strongly-worded letter, because this is an issue for all of us. We are serious, and we use data to guide us, because it’s impartial. It sees through our perceptions of how we think we’re doing, to the reality of how we are truly doing. And the reality of how we’re truly doing, despite our current investment in South Africa, where we increased our funding by $250 million. So $750 million is on the ground here in South Africa right now for these 12 months, and we see incredibly poor retention rates. Retention rates that illustrate that although people have come into the clinics, and worked hard to stand in line and get their drugs and get on medication, the barriers that they have to return to the clinic, and to be successful with treatment have not been addressed; barriers in waiting lines, barriers in times that the clinics are open, barriers in respecting and treating young people with respect. And so we’ve worked very closely with the community—we start with the community. We understand what the community needs, and then we work with government to ensure that the facilities, the public facilities, the outreach facilities, are embracing the clients to meet them where they need to be. So it’s a client-centered approach, it’s listening to others, it’s trusting our clients, but critically, it’s ensuring that we’ve created environments without barriers, so that 17-year-olds and 77-year-olds can be received and have the treatment and respect that they deserve in order to get treatment. MODERATOR: Okay, I think the schedule will allow for one last question, and I think Jozi FM has a follow-up. QUESTION: Okay, so alright. I understand that you work in many different developing countries now. Are our challenges similar or probably different? AMBASSADOR BIRX: Challenges are similar; it’s interesting, because sometimes the countries that have the least find the most creative solutions, because they’ve had to. So our countries that sometimes have the weakest health system—the least number of doctors, the least number of nurses—figure out how to make it work for the communities that they serve. And sometimes when you have more, or you believe you have more, you’re more complacent about the structures and the outreach and what you really need to make a successful program. And so we see all different kinds. And it’s a privilege, I have to say. I’ve been able to work on this continent since the 90’s, long before Global Fund and PEPFAR, where many of you—I see a few faces in the audience—James Mcintyre, who understands what it was like before we had treatment. And to say that today we have treatment for everyone, and we’re not serving them like everyone, there’s a problem. And it doesn’t matter where you are on the continent; that’s a problem. That’s why seven countries got these letters. We put out about 60; there were seven with a problem, because in the end, our taxpayers—people like your parents—are giving us their trusted funds to use outside of the United States. And when the United States had its serious recession, almost for a decade long, we did not falter in our commitment to addressing HIV/AIDS around the globe. So independent of what’s happening economically in every country, there should be that same commitment to address the epidemic the best they can with every resource and with every human capacity: every nurse, every doctor, every receptionist, every pharmacist. This should be their priority, and that’s what we’re here to say and give voice to. MODERATOR: Thank you both very much. If you can indulge us in one more selfie photo before you leave, we’d welcome that. Thank you all for coming out, and thank you to our DREAMS Ambassadors for being here as well. The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. Secretary's Remarks: Interview With Lukas & Careth in the Morning, B98 FM 03/18/2019 You are subscribed to Secretary's Remarks for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. Secretary's Remarks: Interview With Lukas & Careth in the Morning, B98 FM 03/18/2019 12:01 PM EDT Interview Michael R. Pompeo Via Teleconference March 18, 2019 QUESTION: 97.9 B98, Lukas and Careth in the Morning. It’s 7:44. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on with us. Good morning, Secretary – or Mr. Secretary, I should say. I’m being very proper now. SECRETARY POMPEO: Good morning. Thanks for being so formal. It’s great to be back home. It’s great to be with you on the show this morning. QUESTION: Good. Okay, so Mr. Secretary, you are actually in Kansas today, right? SECRETARY POMPEO: I am. I’ll be in Overland Park today doing something that people don’t think about when it comes to the State Department, but that’s using the tools and resources that we have at the Department of State to help Kansas entrepreneurs be successful. QUESTION: Oh, cool. So this is about entrepreneurs. Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing. SECRETARY POMPEO: So small companies – I ran two there in Wichita for years. Small companies who want to grow their business around the world, to participate in a market around the international space, or who want investors or partners from those places need ways to connect, need to understand all the regulatory hurdles, the State Department can help. We can provide information, share best practices, help business leaders grow their businesses in markets that they’re seeking. Whether they’re selling farm products or manufactured goods, the State Department has an important role there, and we want to share what – that with the people of Kansas and Missouri here today. QUESTION: Oh, that’s great. I was watching Shark Tank last night, and we love entrepreneurs here in Wichita. SECRETARY POMPEO: There you go. QUESTION: And – but you think about being an entrepreneur, and like all the paperwork that is necessary for that. Is that what you’re talking about? SECRETARY POMPEO: It’s paperwork, it’s relationships, it’s interacting with the taxing authorities in these countries. We’ve got big teams stationed in 180-plus countries around the world that can facilitate, assist, provide information, and reduce the burden, reduce the cost, make it a little bit easier so that the business leader can focus on what he or she knows how to do best – that is, make and sell their product. QUESTION: I think that’s so awesome, because right now here in Wichita is such an exciting time with the downtown exploding, with the new baseball team coming in. And so if you are somebody who has an idea or has a product and you want to start your own business, it’s fantastic to know that you offer resources to help people get their footing, especially right now here in Wichita. A fantastic time to start that. SECRETARY POMPEO: That’s great. You’re making me jealous, talking about all the good things going on in Wichita. I miss home. But I hope I’m doing a little bit of good keeping the American people safe, keeping Kansas safe too in my current role. QUESTION: Yeah, you are. You’re doing a fantastic job by the way. We’re so proud of you doing what you’re doing. I’m a little jealous that you’re in Overland Park instead of Wichita, but that’s okay. You’ve got to spread the love places, right? SECRETARY POMPEO: We missed by a couple hours on the road. QUESTION: That’s it. That’s all it is. By the way, I know you’re friends with Gregg Marshall and the Wichita Shockers. The last time you were on the show with us was like three months ago, and Wichita State was in like a weird place with their basketball team. And now they made the NIT. Does Coach Marshall ask you to like give them inspirational speeches or anything like that, Mike? SECRETARY POMPEO: I think Gregg can do all the inspiring that needs to be done. QUESTION: (Laughter.) He does do it good, though. SECRETARY POMPEO: And I think he’s done it. We’ve got a chance to see a handful of the games. We’ve watched the team really grow and improve, and excited to see them play in Furman on Wednesday of this week, and hope they’ll have a good run in the NIT. QUESTION: That’s awesome. Okay, so the other thing: What about Iowa? Somebody was telling me something about – with this entrepreneurship, something happened in Iowa, or something to do with Iowa. SECRETARY POMPEO: So I traveled to Iowa now a couple weeks back to talk about a little bit different piece of what the State Department does. This is assistance on trade issues. We’re engaged in sharing, in this case, we were talking mostly to the agricultural community, ag manufacturers, seed producers, farmers themselves, cattle, pig folks, all the people who make America such a special place, talked to them about how the Trump administration’s working to grow their businesses, to help gain access for markets for them. We’ve seen that China hasn’t treated the American farmer fair for an awfully long time, and President Trump is determined to fix that. QUESTION: That’s awesome. I know we only have a couple more minutes left, but – so the whole thing that you went back to North Korea before anybody else, and you have a relationship with Kim Jong-un, and now is he kind of like going back on that, or is – he doesn’t want people coming to check out the nuclear sites there, or what’s the – what can you tell us about that? SECRETARY POMPEO: We believe we’re still moving forward. It’s certainly difficult – we knew it would be. QUESTION: Yeah. SECRETARY POMPEO: It’s been a decades-long challenge. But we have the toughest economic sanctions in history, but the most promising diplomatic engagement in history as well. And so we made a little bit more progress in Hanoi, now three weeks back, when President Trump traveled there to meet with Chairman Kim. We’ll re-engage with him. It’s incredibly important that we take down the threat not only for America and for Kansas, but for the entire world. QUESTION: I totally agree. And you’re doing such a great job by doing all that. We love that. SECRETARY POMPEO: That’s very kind. QUESTION: Well, listen, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. We miss you. And I know you’re doing great work. I mean, I only got three hours of sleep last night; I can’t imagine you being Secretary of State only getting three hours of sleep one night and how you function. SECRETARY POMPEO: Busy days. Busy days. Susan and I miss Kansas, we miss you all as well. Thanks for giving me a few minutes on the show this morning. QUESTION: Thank you. QUESTION: Love it. All right, thank you, Secretary. SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you. So long. The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. Secretary's Remarks: Interview With Andy Hooser of The Voice of Reason, KQAM 03/18/2019 You are subscribed to Secretary's Remarks for U.S. Department of State. This information has recently been updated, and is now available. Secretary's Remarks: Interview With Andy Hooser of The Voice of Reason, KQAM 03/18/2019 12:16 PM EDT Interview Michael R. Pompeo Via Teleconference March 18, 2019 QUESTION: Thirty-five minutes past the hour. Welcome in to the Voice of Reason here on a Monday. It’s a beautiful day. I want to get right into it as we have limited time with our next guest, but I’m so excited to have him back on the program as he’s actually back in Kansas for a couple of days here. Secretary of State for the United States, Mr. Mike Pompeo, on the line with us here. Mr. Secretary, how are you, sir? SECRETARY POMPEO: I’m great, Andy. It’s great to be back on with you and it’s great to be back home in Kansas. QUESTION: Ah, it’s great to have you back here and always great to have you on the show, my friend. You’ve been a busy guy – I know you’re in town – but I want to talk about your entrepreneurial event that you’re speaking at today up in Kansas City, but big stuff going on with the Secretary, the State Department. We’ve got to ask – I know the big news, of course, has been lately with all the issues going on with North Korea, and then backing out of stuff. What’s going on over there? Do we see any chance of negotiations still going on out there? SECRETARY POMPEO: So we’ve been at this now for – goodness, a little over a year. We’ve made real progress. We’ve got missile tests stopped, we’ve got nuclear testing stopped, we got some of our hostages home, which was a blessing. But we still haven’t made the progress we need to make on denuclearization. The conversations certainly continue. I hope we can achieve that. Chairman Kim made a commitment to President Trump and, frankly, to the world back in June of last year in Singapore. He promised he would denuclearize, and the world is demanding that. American safety depends on it, and we’re determined to achieve it. QUESTION: Well, good. And I think he would look pretty foolish if he starts backing out on stuff now for no apparent reason, so hopefully we do see that. Coming up today, you are speaking in Kansas City for an entrepreneurial event. Talk a little bit about that. What’s bringing you back to Kansas? SECRETARY POMPEO: So you know the State Department’s first client is, of course, the American people and keeping the American people safe. Among the things that is most important to have a robust American national security apparatus is a growing economy, and the State Department helps with that. We wanted to come here today to talk to that – talk to folks here in the heartland about that. If you’ve got a small business like I did back in south central Kansas and you want to sell your products, your goods, your services across the world in international markets, the State Department can help. If you’re looking for investors from across the world or partners, or others to help you innovate, we can help you with that too. We have a number of programs that are aimed squarely at growing the American economy, growing American businesses. And today we’ll talk to entrepreneurs here in Kansas City and both sides of the state border, and share with them what it is the State Department can help deliver on their behalf so they can grow their company. QUESTION: We are really seeing economic growth. I mean, the GDP’s been growing more so under President Trump than it was under President Barack Obama. Are we still seeing the onset down the road here of continued economic growth all over the country? SECRETARY POMPEO: We’re confident that we can, whether that’s the reduced regulatory environment that we’re in today or the pro-growth policies of President Trump. We’re convinced the ec ... [Message clipped]  View entire message ReplyForward