Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 31, 1993 TAG: 9309290296
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ADRIAN KARATNYCKY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In Congress, the mood is one of retreat. This summer, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to defund the National Endowment for Democracy, supported deep reductions in U.S. international broadcasting and voted to pare down funding for United Nations' blue helmets. In the House and Senate, ``deficit hawks'' have put in question the capacity of the United States to constructively influence international progress toward democracy and market economies. America's private foundations, too, are turning inward. The Journal of Philanthropy reports foundation support for international affairs has plummeted by 50 percent in the past year.
With the disappearance of the Soviet threat, the glue that held together the postwar foreign-policy consensus is gone. Congressional leaders are deeply worried by open hostility to foreign aid, particularly among new members of Congress. Public confidence in traditional foreign-policy institutions and leaders is in acute decline. A public-opinion poll conducted last year showed that two-thirds of Americans believe the country cannot afford to fund foreign aid.
The public mood is given impetus by the failure of leadership. Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff has suggested U.S. engagement in the world is constrained by declining economic power. At the State Department, a mood of pessimism reigns as officials ponder a shrinking foreign-aid budget that means declining U.S. influence abroad. The U.S. Agency for International Development will soon announce a consolidation of its missions, resulting in a reduced U.S. aid and development presence abroad. Increasingly, U.S. foreign aid is focused on three countries - Russia, Israel and Egypt.
While development aid, international radio broadcasting and the National Endowment for Democracy all face deep cuts, the budget of the Central Intelligence Agency has avoided the budget ax and stands at $27.5 billion, more than three times what is spent on development aid and democracy. Apparently, America's capacity to monitor political events remains intact, even as our capacity to favorably influence development falls victim to budget cutting.
Congressional hostility to foreign aid has ripened on the fertile soil of public resentment at past follies, including theft by corrupt Third World dictators. Ironically, the collapse of the 1991 coup in the Soviet Union means the United States is less beholden to such tyrants and can allocate assistance on merit and without reference to the Cold War power balance.
Yet instead of embracing opportunities offered by Soviet collapse, Congress has cut worthy, cost-effective programs that help strengthen democratic movements and groups in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the former Soviet Union.
The new mood in Congress and among the foreign-policy elite cannot be characterized as isolationism. Objectionable and dangerous as isolationism was, it represented a coherent set of ideas about America and the world. In an earlier age, isolationism declared that America was strong enough, remote enough and large enough to withstand the tumult and conflict that was sweeping the world.
The new disengagement lacks even such a coherent - if flawed - framework. The proponents of reduced foreign aid and pro-democracy efforts do not say it is time for America to come home. Rather they see their assault on U.S. engagement overseas as a means to cut the deficit.
Despite the fact that U.S. peacekeepers in Somalia have cost hundreds of millions of dollars and that the raid on Baghdad cost a half-billion more, Congress believes it economically sound to cut a few tens of millions of dollars that could help democrats in their struggle against dictators like Saddam Hussein and Somalia's warlord Gen. Farah Aideed.
Ironically, U.S. retreat from the world will in the long run prove profoundly dangerous and expensive. From Sarajevo in Eastern Europe to Sukhumi in the Caucasus; from the Sudan to the Tajik-Afghan border, violence and warfare are on the ascent, while democracy and rule of law are under siege. In a number of former Soviet republics - including Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan - ex-communists are once again firmly in control. And if democracy fails in Russia and Ukraine, we may once again confront a powerful military adversary.
China, Cuba, Syria, Indonesia and other dictatorships have taken notice of Western passivity to mount a cohesive and wide-ranging effort to erode international human-rights standards at the recently concluded U.N. Human Rights Conference in Vienna.
Recently, one Washington foreign-policy hand observed that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, ``we have gone from a two-superpower world to a no-superpower world.'' In our still dangerous and conflict-ridden world, America cannot afford to surrender its status as the last superpower. It must reassume the mantle of leadership in the struggle to promote democracy and freedom.
Otherwise, we and the world will pay a price that dwarfs the calculations of the accountants who now dominate our foreign policy debate.
\ Adrian Karatnycky is executive director of Freedom House in Washington, D.C.
The Washington Post
by CNB