Sen. Bob Menendez on US Relations with Russia and China

SEN. ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ): Well, Christiane, first of all, thank you for having me with you. Look, I look at China, as well as most of us in the Senate, and pretty much in a bipartisan way, yes, as a strategic competitor, a nation that we need to confront in some cases, for example, on the case of the human rights violations with Uyghurs, and that we need to compete. So, it’s that combination of confronting and competing that we have to keep in focus. And we are stronger when we bring the economies of the United States, the E.U., Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and others to deal with China’s unfair trade practices, to deal with the economic competition that we have to have with China, its undue influence and corrosive influence with countries that need assistance. And China uses that in a corrosive way. So, bringing our coalitions back together is one of the strategic elements I’m glad to see the Biden administration is pursuing. And we have legislation that’s called the America LEADS Act. And, basically, it is a whole-of-government approach to meeting the challenge of China.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I’m going to get into the human rights issue a little bit in a moment, a little bit more deeply with you in a moment. But, first, on these similar issues regarding Russia, the president was quite clear. He was actually very strong on the jailed dissident Alexei Navalny, over and again repeating his name, which we all know President Putin never likes to say. So, he’s really pushing that in Putin’s face. And this is what he said about Navalny:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people. The politically motivated jailing of Alexei Navalny and the Russian efforts to suppress freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are a matter of deep concern to us and the international community.

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AMANPOUR: So, you have heard the Kremlin has called the Russia part of the speech last night as unconstructive or — unconstructive, aggressive, and the like. They don’t like it at all. Again, President Biden says America will not roll over on all sorts of strategic issues there. The track record hasn’t been great from the U.S. Neither the Obama administration’s reset, nor before that and ever since the Iraq War, really, things have been going pretty — pretty badly between the U.S. and Russia. How do you see a change in this direction happening?

MENENDEZ: Well, I’m sure that President Putin felt it was aggressive, because, for the last four years, he’s heard absolutely nothing from the United States as it relates to Russia’s nefarious actions and violations of the international order, from the annexation of Crimea, the invasion into parts of Ukraine, what they did in Syria.