As the threats to America from around the world grow, the United States is losing ground because of a cloudy foreign policy, said State Sen. Joe Newhouse, R-Tulsa.
Newhouse, a Navy Reserve Commander, recently returned from a four-month deployment overseas in Germany and East Africa.
“I was asked by Special Operations Command Africa to head out overseas to help them out … and I said absolutely,” N ewhouse said in an interview on Tulsa Beacon Weekend on KCFO AM970.
Newhouse, who represents District 25, left four days after the Oklahoma Legislature adjourned in May. He was headquartered in Germany but he did down-range operations in Eastern Africa.
“I was basically overseeing all of operations for U.S. Special Forces in East Africa,” Newhouse said. “I was working with Navy Seals, Green Beret, about 90% in Somalia but I did extend over into Kenya and Ethiopia during their civil war.
“There is still quite a bit of action going on overseas. There’s a lot of tension over Afghanistan, of course. But we have a fight in East Africa that is full, alive and well. And we are having great successes out there. There are a lot of ways we are helping our partner allies.”
The successes of the U.S. military are almost ignored by the liberal mainstream media.
“Even though we are not seeing that in the news so much, thanks to our military heroes over there who are keeping us safe,” Newhouse said. “I can personally vouch for that having worked with our Navy Seals, Green Beret, and the heroic actions they are doing.
“This doesn’t get reported a lot of times in the news for several different reasons … a lot of times our military gets a little bit underplayed.”
Newhouse saw firsthand the ever-increasing influence of the Chinese Communist Government in Africa.
“The Chinese have taken on Africa as a new venture for them,” Newhouse said. “When you go through Africa, and I’ve been all over Africa, you will see new bridges being built, new ports being built and established, and what you will see is Chinese workers out there.”
The Chinese want to undermine the locals and take over.
“And the way that they do business, the Chinese are very unscrupulous,” Newhouse said. “They go there and flex their money and then bring in their own workers. They don’t trust anybody else and they are very clandestine in how they are doing that. They have very subversive motives and they want to undermine the rest of the world.
“They are building alliances in Africa using their money and we want to stop that. China is our greatest threat across the globe. A few years ago that was international terrorism – which is still a threat – but nowadays it’s China, followed by Russia. And we are fighting proxy wars in Africa against both those nations.”
Proof of that is the Chinese expansion of their space program, including missiles that could target American satellites.
“They are being very aggressive in their space program,” Newhouse said of the Chinese. “We need to get up with the program. The Chinese don’t play well. They are not part of the International Space Station. They will build their own. They want to do their own space frontier.
“We still have the technological advantages but we need to keep that and push that much further. They are pursuing all different kinds of weaponry and other technological advances in space.”
While the threats accelerate, confidence in the Biden Administration is waning among allies while enemies see opportunities to undermine America.
How is the world viewing America and the policies of the Biden Administration?
“It’s leading to a lot of confusion out there,” Newhouse said. “I can speak for having been in East Africa. We yielded a lot of our assets, our aviation assets and even some of our ships. We sent that material over to Afghanistan to aid in this withdrawal. It was ‘all hands on deck.’ The military did a phenomenal job – there are some things that are classified that I can’t talk about in the background on our logistical runs. It was amazing what our military was trying to do.”
The nations that had a healthy respect for former President Donald Trump but don’t fear Biden.
“As far as the foreign policy area, when Donald Trump would speak, even with his controversy, the entire world listened. They respect him,” Newhouse said. “The Europeans respect him. Look at the countries in NATO who started to increase their contributions to the NATO finances. For years, there were only two countries who actually lived up to their contractual agreement.
“Yet, if they were to be attacked, they would all say, ‘you need to come to our aid, which is Article Four in the NATO agreements. But they didn’t want to pay for it. Under Trump, those countries started making those payments. He was forcing that and they all started living up to that.”
Trump’s improved relationships with NATO didn’t set well with Russia.
“That put pressure on the Russians, too, to know that we were being serious,” Newhouse said. “Now, with the new administration coming in, nobody knows where he stands. I don’t know what his policy is.”
Newhouse was part of a team that created proposals for the president on Somalia. Those reports are on Biden’s desk but there has been no response.
“It’s sitting on the desk collecting dust,” Newhouse said. “There’s no strong foreign policy. It’s like a weathervane – we don’t know where he stands.”
People in Europe and Africa have great fear about the Chinese coronavirus, Newhouse said.
“It is way out of proportion,” Newhouse said. “This is about control. This is not about the science. This is not about a virus. We’ve had viruses for years. They come and go. The way you beat a virus is you strengthen your own immunity, your own systems and defeat a virus.
“I don’t want to downplay some of the successes but at the same time, let’s keep this in perspective. Let’s don’t lose control of this. That magic word ‘control’ is what the media and the leftist agenda is trying to do – to try to control the population with this.”
Newhouse said NATO members should be thanking America because as we shoulder the expense for their defense, they are able to expand their social programs from the savings on the military.
Newhouse was surprised and disappointed when Germany made a deal to buy energy from Russia.
“You cannot trust the Russians,” Newhouse said. “In history, they will back stab you and eventually they will get you hooked (on energy dependence), like a drug dealer. Then they will cut your supply and intimidate you through this. They have done the same thing with Ukraine years ago. They turned off their energy supply in the middle of winter and let lots of people perish because of the cold.
“For Germany to shift their alliances to Russia, which is NATO’s biggest threat, undermines the whole peace alliance that we’ve got with Germany and the rest of our NATO countries.”