Ben Cardin

A durable peace agreement will only come from direct negotiations.

I am also going to ask you a question for the record dealing with Senator Menendez' point on the financial sanction issues.

I think we have to get the best advice we can as to how the military can, in fact, deal with violent extremism.

Regardless of what hat you wear, Mr. Chairman, in the next Congress, we need to pass a State Department authorization bill.

I want to compliment the Chairman because we did get a lot of our input into the National Defense Authorization Act.

I think this is disastrous for our national interests.

We need a deeper engagement in terms of the partnerships that we build.

We need to redouble and redouble again our capacity building efforts.

American leadership is still critical.

If you look at our development assistance, most of those funds go into health programs or food programs, which are very important.

If you do not have a comprehensive government that all communities respect, you are not going to be able to maintain peace.

We really play into making our country more vulnerable when we use that type of rhetoric that estranges Muslims around the world.

If that trust does not exist because there is a view that by helping government you are hurting your own people, then that really jeopardizes everyone's safety.

We should expect that danger to grow if the tone and the approach of the new administration resemble in any way the tone and the approach of the campaign.

Our language should reinforce our alliances, strengthen our messages and ideals, and certainly undercut the appeal of our enemy's vision of the world.

I think words and lexicon matter quite a bit.

Military action is very important, especially our Special Forces.

Terrorist groups are rather flexible, and they figure out different ways to cause mischief.

ISIL itself has said its days of the caliphate are limited.

We need to build on the success that we have seen in combatting ISIL.

I think history does teach us a lot. I think basing your foreign policy on not doing what the last person did leads us to a place that is very negative for U.S. national interests.

I share Senator Markey's concerns that in practice we do not see the ethnic reprisals that we have seen happen so often when territory has been reclaimed from ISIS's grips.

We do risk a lost generation of children from these conflicts if they are not able to go to school.

I would hope that we would see some aggressive U.S. leadership to make it clear that that conduct does not get a free pass because of the JCPOA.

I am encouraged, Secretary Blinken, by your comments that there will be very significant consequences for Russia's actions.