Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called on the Biden administration to get tough on a slew of foreign adversaries or risk war after an American citizen was killed in an Iranian drone strike in Syria.
"It shows what happens when there’s American weakness," Haley said Friday of the attack on "America’s Newsroom." "Whether it's in Afghanistan, whether you see it in Ukraine, whether you see it on the southern border, you're going to continue to see more of these things happen."
"There is no deterrence," she continued. "There hasn’t been any deterrence for a long time."
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Haley said that while she was glad President Biden responded with retaliatory strikes in Syria, his "weak-in-the-knees mentality" has been taken advantage of for too long by China and Russia.
Last week the Russian government awarded the pilots involved in the harassment and crash of a U.S. drone in international airspace, although they continue to deny responsibility.
"What did Biden do? Nothing," Haley said of the incident. "When you do nothing, when you show weakness in any area, they're going to continue to do more. What we should have done with the drone last week is put two drones back up there, put a fighter jet up there to let them know we're not playing. Put our naval fleet back in the Black Sea because we never should have pulled it out. We have to start showing American strength."
Moscow has grown increasingly friendly with Beijing over the past year as Russia's invasion of Ukraine left the country largely ostracized on the world stage. On Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement to expand their economic ties following a bilateral meeting.
"Russia is doing the dirty work for China," Haley said. "They wanted the world to see that the new axis of evil is China and Russia, their junior partner is Iran, and they’re going to continue going forward."
Haley called on the U.S. to work with allies to give Ukraine the ammunition they need to defeat Russia.
"If Ukraine loses… we’re looking at a world war," she warned. "This is about preventing war."
"We have to wake up," she concluded. "I don’t care what the polls say… we need to be smart, we need to be strategic. We need to prevent further wars coming forward."
