{"id":99661,"date":"2018-05-19T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-19T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-senator-goes-from-farming-to-foreign-policy-adviser\/"},"modified":"2018-05-19T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-19T11:00:00","slug":"colorado-senator-goes-from-farming-to-foreign-policy-adviser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-senator-goes-from-farming-to-foreign-policy-adviser\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado senator goes from farming to foreign policy adviser"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., waits backstage as a crowd files in at a town hall meeting in August 2017 at the University School\u2019s auditorium in Greeley. Gardner has become a become a foreign policy leader in the Senate, consulting President Donald Trump and Cabinet members on strategies for dealing with China and North Korea.<\/span>Joshua Polson\/The Greeley Tribune via AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

WASHINGTON \u2013 U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner\u2019s cellphone service begins to cut out about 20 miles south of his family farm in Yuma, a small town of about 3,500 residents on the far eastern plains of Colorado. Once inside his home, the cell service gets worse.<\/p>\n

For many Americans living in rural areas, poor cell reception is a fact of life. But with Gardner now finding himself on the receiving end of calls from Air Force One or the secretary of state, adequate service is necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m inside the house, my phone does not come in,\u201d Gardner said a in sit-down interview with The Durango Herald in his Senate office. \u201cI\u2019ve spent more time in the backyard wandering around in circles talking with the president or secretary of state. My neighbors probably think I\u2019m absolutely bonkers because they just see me walking around on the phone talking to Air Force One because it won\u2019t come in anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner talks with Durango Herald intern Andrew Eversden at the Republican politician\u2019s office on April 19 in Washington, D.C.<\/span>Courtesy of Sen. Cory Gardner<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Combine the poor cell coverage at the farm with the day-to-day tasks of fatherhood, and Gardner\u2019s new role as a foreign policy leader in the Senate becomes more difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other hard thing (is) when you\u2019ve got the kids in the car,\u201d Gardner said. \u201c(We\u2019ve) gone to the grocery store, they\u2019re screaming in the background and the State Department switchboard comes through and says \u2018Senator Gardner, the secretary of state is on the phone for you.\u2019 You take it, and it\u2019s on Bluetooth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gardner, a Republican who is four years into his first term, has positioned himself center stage in the Trump administration\u2019s foreign policy decisions during a consequential era of American diplomacy. As chairman of the subcommittee on East Asia, Gardner oversees a range of issues from military to trade, all during a nuclear security crisis on the Korean Peninsula and the proliferation of Chinese economic and military power.<\/p>\n

On North Korea, Gardner serves as the Senate\u2019s point man on one of the most pressing security threats of the last decade and has laid out a \u201cmaximum pressure campaign\u201d of severe economic sanctions for a president who has threatened North Korea with \u201cfire and fury.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gardner\u2019s oversight also includes trade with Asian nations \u2013 a pro-trade Republican senator himself representing a pro-trade state and operating with a president deeply skeptical of foreign trade deals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talk to the president regularly about Asia,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cI\u2019ve had engagements not only with the president but also (former National Security Adviser) H.R. McMaster and now (new National Security Adviser) John Bolton, the secretary of state (then Rex Tillerson), his national security council and team. So we have worked closely with them on my concerns and how we approach North Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crash course in trade policy on the farm<\/div>\n

Growing up on the farm in Yuma, Gardner first learned lessons in foreign affairs from overhearing area farmers discuss overseas markets. Yuma is a farming community in a county that abuts Nebraska.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a kid, I\u2019d hear farmers talk about the Russia wheat embargo,\u201d Gardner said, referring to the U.S. sanctions in 1980 in response to the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan. \u201cI\u2019d hear them talk about what conditions were like in China or Ukraine and what it meant to corn prices or wheat prices or soybean prices. So trade was sort of a natural fit (and) that became the embedding of foreign policy that I had growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner talks with a farmer on the eastern plains of Colorado. The Republican senator is from Yuma, a small agriculture community.<\/span>Courtesy of Sen. Cory Gardner\u2019s office<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Gardner served on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce when he first came to Washington in 2011 and had a minimal focus on foreign relations. But the committee\u2019s work extended beyond U.S. borders, quickly transforming the hearing room into a classroom for Gardner\u2019s more formal lessons in foreign policy.<\/p>\n

\u201c(I) got more and more involved in trade issues from an energy perspective,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cAnd diplomacy actually, from an energy perspective, because we were approached more and more by particularly Asian and Eastern European nations about the soft diplomacy tool that energy represented.\u201d<\/p>\n

He distinctly remembers listening to testimony from U.S. officials in Eastern Europe about the difficulties European countries faced in relying on Russia for energy imports like natural gas. This experience stuck with him as he moved to the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was sort of an entr\u00e9e into diplomacy,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cWhat it taught me, of course, was if you look at the hard power Russia was using \u2013 of cutting off energy \u2013 it made a significant impact on those countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being seen matters in Asia<\/div>\n

After defeating Sen. Mark Udall in 2014, Gardner was appointed to the Senate foreign relations committee and landed the chairmanship on the Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy shortly thereafter. Gardner said he spent his first few months meeting with Asia experts, numerous ambassadors and heads of state from the region. Gardner said he quickly learned one outstanding diplomatic maxim in operating in Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all talked about how (they) need to know that the United States is there,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cIn Asia, face matters a lot. What I\u2019ve come to understand about what that means is: It\u2019s presence. It\u2019s face. It\u2019s you\u2019re there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner meets with South Korean delegates in September 2017.<\/span>Courtesy of Sen. Cory Gardner\u2019s office<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Gardner has gone to Asia every year since his election to the Senate, always stopping in South Korea. He has also traveled to Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Myanmar and the Philippines.<\/p>\n

In December 2015, discontent with the Obama administration\u2019s approach to North Korea, Gardner sounded the alarm in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal<\/a> and argued that the U.S. needed to recalibrate its international priorities on the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody was talking about Middle East,\u201d Gardner said in his interview with the Herald. \u201cWhile we\u2019re paying attention every day to the Middle East, and rightfully so, the real future challenge is Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not even one year into his first term, Gardner called for a complete overhaul of the U.S. approach on the Korean Peninsula. He urged for a switch from \u201cstrategic patience\u201d under Obama to a \u201cmaximum pressure campaign,\u201d a combination of tougher sanctions and better enforcement. Gardner\u2019s maximum pressure campaign seeks to facilitate a \u201ccomplete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization\u201d of North Korea, a goal that has eluded the U.S. for years.<\/p>\n

A sanctions bill with teeth<\/div>\n

A few months after the op-ed was published, Gardner introduced mandatory sanctions that passed unanimously through the Senate and was signed by Obama in 2016. The sanctions package moved North Korea up to the fourth-most sanctioned country by the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have started to hear significant problems in North Korea as a result of our sanctions,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cIt\u2019s been in open source reports that our sanctions \u2013 my sanctions \u2013 are effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

His sanctions made it mandatory that the Treasury Department sanction entities that engaged in activities that aided North Korea\u2019s nuclear or missile programs and ultimately doubled the number of companies sanctioned by the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201c(His sanction bill) was trying to push the U.S. executive branch to do more, and it was also a way of trying to close loopholes, increase authority, pushing on the U.S. to do more,\u201d said Bruce Klingner, a former CIA deputy division chief for Korea and current fellow at the Heritage Foundation<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen Senator Gardner as being one of the major proponents of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of these businesses engaging with North Korea are Chinese. Gardner recognizes that China must be pressured to aid the U.S. more in its attempts to denuclearize the North Korean regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to make China recognize that there\u2019s a penalty for dealing with a bad actor. North Korea\u2019s economy is several billion dollars,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cOur economy is several trillion dollars. I think the choice of doing business with the largest economy in the world versus North Korea will be pretty clear to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coercing China to cooperate economically with the U.S. during a security crisis on the Korean Peninsula provides just one area of the expansive economic battles the U.S. fights with China, ranging from intellectual property theft to investment in developing countries. The U.S., Gardner said, is missing a long-term plan in Asia as China invests hundreds of billions of dollars across the globe through its \u201cone-belt, one road\u201d economic initiative.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Senator Gardner has rightly pointed out is we have a tendency to focus on today\u2019s crisis,\u201d said Greg Poling, a Southeast Asia Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies<\/a> in Washington, D.C. \u201cWhen there are crises burning in the Ukraine or the Middle East, it\u2019s hard to convince people to spend the attention that\u2019s needed for a long-term but slow-moving challenge in Asia, and China\u2019s rise has been a slow moving challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two superpowers compete for supremacy<\/div>\n

To address the challenges, the U.S. needs a \u201cgenerational\u201d Asia policy, Gardner said. When asked if the U.S. currently had a strategy for addressing Asia, Gardner replied, \u201cI don\u2019t believe we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the most consequential region for America\u2019s future,\u201d Gardner said during Mike Pompeo\u2019s confirmation hearing. \u201c(This is) the region where two superpowers will compete to determine which world order will prevail.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Gardner wants to helm the formulation of a long-term policy in a region that by 2050 will make up over 50 percent of the global population and gross domestic product, according to an Asian Development Bank report.<\/p>\n

Three weeks ago, he introduced the \u201cAsia Reassurance Initiative Act<\/a>\u201d with three other senators to facilitate the creation of a U.S. plan in a region with gaping policy holes.<\/p>\n

The act provides three components of a potential long-term strategy in Asia. The bill, which Gardner has discussed publicly since last summer, carves out money for security interests, economic engagement and the promotion of democratic values in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to have something that is actually a long-term vision for a region that will mean so much to the future of the world,\u201d Gardner said in an interview before the bill was released. \u201cARIA will create that long-term generational Asia policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poling said that ARIA is a good starting point, but the bill has a heavy military focus and doesn\u2019t offer enough \u201cconcrete action on economics.\u201d However, the administration\u2019s outlook on trade hampers the robust economic initiatives Gardner would like to see in Asia. The administration prefers bilateral trade deals to multilateral deals. Bilateral trade deals are between two countries, while multilateral would be three or more. Poling said bilateral deals are \u201cdead on arrival\u201d in Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not a ton that the Hill can do right now unless the administration decides they really want to engage in economic rulemaking in Asia,\u201d Poling said.<\/p>\n

But Asian markets are crucial for the Colorado economy. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Colorado exported $7.6 billion of goods<\/a> to foreign markets in 2016. Canada and Mexico are the top two trade partners, but China, Japan and South Korea round out the top five, combining to account for more than $1.4 billion in Colorado exports.<\/p>\n

The rate of economic expansion in the emerging Asian market will have great economic benefits for Colorado, which Gardner said encouraged him to address Asia policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really was an opportunity to focus on trade,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cWe can focus on expanding markets for Colorado. Asia became a particular interest \u2026 because we\u2019re a Western state so our markets tend to be more Pacific than they are Atlantic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Championing NAFTA<\/div>\n

Convincing President Donald Trump to engage with these emerging markets can be a tough task for a pro-trade politician like Gardner. Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership early in his presidency, a multilateral trade deal meant to strengthen U.S. economic standing in the region and counter the rapidly growing Chinese market.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration also has the current U.S. trade representative renegotiating NAFTA, a cardinal trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. that serves as the bedrock of $2.5 billion in exports for Colorado and more than 202,500 jobs, according to a 2016 Business Roundtable report<\/a>. Gardner has spoken with the president about the necessities of these trade deals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been leading groups of members to the White House for months talking about the importance of trade and the importance of NAFTA, encouraging him to join TPP,\u201d Gardner said.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s positions on foreign agreements \u2013 from trade deals to NATO \u2013 foster concerns about the U.S. receding from the world stage and ceding power to China.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, that has been something that we\u2019ve talked about a lot,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cAs it relates to trade, I am concerned about the trade position the administration has taken.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Gardner engages on both a long-term Asia strategy and addresses the North Korean nuclear threat, he has attempted to balance the multiple long- and short-term challenges the U.S. faces in Asia in pursuing a long-term Asia strategy. The administration struggles with this balance, Poling said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate the administration\u2019s willingness to confront China in ways maybe that other administrations wouldn\u2019t,\u201d Poling said. \u201cBut that has come at the cost of a big vision, a long-term view of U.S. interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a summit between the North Korean leader and President Trump scheduled for June 12, Gardner has an opportunity to play a role in achieving a goal that has evaded administrations for decades: denuclearizing the North Korean peninsula.<\/p>\n

Gardner\u2019s economic sanctions have certainly played a role in pushing North Korea to the table. He recognizes the pressure is working and has repeatedly told Trump that the only acceptable outcome is \u201ccomplete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t have a \u2018hey, we had a nice talk, we had a nice hamburger\u2019 and that was it,\u201d Gardner said.<\/p>\n

No American president has met directly with the North Korean leader to negotiate an end to the country\u2019s nuclear program, raising the stakes of a face-to-face negotiation in a region looking for strong U.S. leadership as Chinese influence dawns.<\/p>\n

More uncertainty shrouds the conversations after a statement by a North Korean government official saying it isn\u2019t interested in discussions \u201cif the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy worry is this: We have no greater diplomatic tool than the president of the United States. That is our chief diplomat,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cWhere do we go should this fail?\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Eversden is an intern for The Durango Herald and a student at American University in Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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