State of Ohio Archives: on Foreign Policy

Bernie Moreno: China unleashed coronavirus, socialist/fascist ideology

We should spend more time and energy making America great than worrying about what other nations think of us. A strong American military, the best in the world, is the only way to ensure peace.

Jane Timken: Stand up for Israel, Iran is a threat to Israel and US

Jane Timken: BDS movement antisemitic, would push back with legislation

Jane Timken: Abraham Accords have been a significant development

Mike Gibbons: Support American Exceptionalism

A: Strongly support

Ted Strickland: Support Iran nuke treaty; opposes ground troops against ISIS

Portman: No

Strickland: Yes

Q: On Iraq: How should the US combat the success of ISIS?

Portman: Special operations and building coalitions. No to major US ground troops.

Strickland: Increased special forces, air strikes, and cyber warfare, but no major ground troop additions.

Lee Fisher: Deploy all tools: diplomacy, strength, intel, & military

Al Gore: Nation-building: preferable to WWIII, and a stunning success

A. I think that phrase taps into a legitimate concern about how far we should go and how long we should be involved. But it’s not a new mission. The Marshall Plan was about nation-building. And the generation that won World War II, having seen the catastrophe of the interwar period in the 20’s and 30’s, wisely decided that nation-building was a preferable alternative to World War III. And it was a stunning success.

Al Gore: Cuba: Hard-liner on Castro; keep sanctions

A. No, I’m a hardliner on Castro. I still find it incomprehensible that he would release mentally ill criminals, prone to violence, onto an innocent population here in the US. I find his whole penchant for repression and his whole style abhorrent. We have been asking Castro to have elections for a long time [with no response]. Cuba has been moving headlong in the wrong direction. I do not favor any openings to the Castro government.

Al Gore: North Korea: Continue exploring rapprochement

A. Incredibly enough, we have seen a positive response to initiatives there. The strategy for getting North Korea off its nuclear bent has yielded some tentative positive results. Of course, the jury is still out. We have seen a very emotional beginning of rapprochement on the peninsula. There is clearly a desire to explore the changes that would make it possible for them to have a more normal relationship with the rest of the world.

Al Gore: Russia: US’s abiding interest, but troubled by Putin

A. I am very troubled by his apparent backtracking on press freedom for Russia in the postcommunist era. I am very troubled obviously by their conduct in Chechnya. We have to put first things first, and recognize that the US has an abiding interest in continuing to manage the nuclear threat, and we should not ever forget that Russia has thousands of nuclear warheads and the delivery systems capable of targeting them on the US.

[But we have] all kinds of leverage. We are very deeply involved in helping them construct the institutions of a free society, helping them write their basic contract law, helping them put in place basic accounting standards. We just completed an effort on disaster assistance. The space station, of course, is one of the flagship cooperative efforts. So we certainly have leverage with them, there’s no question about that. And they do listen. They do listen to us. There are limits to the use of leverage.