Pompeo Tells Senate He Needs $41 Billion To Fight ‘Authoritarians’: Iran, Russia and China

July 30, 2020 (EIRNS)—Secretary of State Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this morning that the State Department and its U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) merit receiving a $41 billion budget because they are “securing the American people’s freedoms against authoritarian threats.” Not the “authoritarian threat” of the surveillance state here at home that Bill Binney had warned him three years ago threatens even the U.S. Presidency, but three “enemy” nations: Iran, Russia, and “most importantly,” China.

Pompeo bragged that “we’ve” slashed Iran’s oil revenues by 90% since 2018, leaving its people destitute. He labeled Russia, “a destabilizing authoritarian force—in Ukraine, in Libya, in Syria, and inside of Western democracies,” justifying hundreds of sanctions and selling lethal military materiel to Ukraine.

But for “Messianic Mike,” China is “the central threat of our time.” He claimed that his “vigorous diplomacy has led to an international awakening to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party.... Senators, the tide is turning,” he proclaimed.

The short list of evidence he marshaled to prove that assertion was reminiscent of earlier claims that the “whole world” backs the nonexistent Guaidó presidency in Venezuela. It included such statements as that “thirty-plus countries and territories” have now excluded Huawei and other Chinese technology companies from their 5G plans (there are 193 recognized states on the planet); that the tiny nations of Belize and Haiti

“have denounced Beijing’s national security law targeting Hong Kong. Denmark has rejected the [Communist Party of China] CCP’s attempted censorship of Danish newspapers. Sweden has closed its Confucius Institutes. Lithuanian intelligence services have identified China as a potential threat for the first time. And in the region, in the Indo-Pacific, Australia declared China’s South China Sea claims unlawful and illegitimate, as have we.”

State is requesting a 20% increase in its budget for the Indo-Pacific, he noted.

Under questioning, he promised Republican Senators that they could “rest assured” that further sanctions are coming against China over the Uighurs—sanctions which he tried and failed to get President Donald Trump to impose earlier. He deferred to Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as to whether the administration plans to go for a free-trade agreement with Taiwan, but added that “we’re aware that there is great interest in this.”

He won fulsome support from the one Republican who voted for impeaching President Trump, good old Mitt Romney, who called Pompeo’s rant against China “a welcome departure from the President’s fawning praise of Xi Jinping and celebration of agreements that China hasn’t honored.”