[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 173 (Friday, November 3, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S16679]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    HEAD-IN-THE-SAND FOREIGN POLICY

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the Washington Post on Monday, 
October 16, 1995, ran a column by Jessica Mathews that is absolutely on 
target.
  My colleagues have heard me speak before about the need for a more 
responsible foreign policy.
  I thought it was particularly fascinating to note the quotation in 
the Jessica Mathews column that it costs $600 million less to run the 
United Nations than it does the New York City police department.
  How foolish we are to fail to do what we should in support of a more 
enlightened and responsible international policy.
  I ask that the Jessica Mathews column be printed in the Record at 
this point, and I urge my colleagues to read it.
  The column follows:

                    Head-in-the-Sand Foreign Policy

                          (By Jessica Mathews)

       A dispassionate foreign observer of Congress's budget 
     choices would have to conclude that Americans' only 
     international aspiration is to be global policemen. Or, to be 
     scrupulously fair, policeman with a handout for refugees and 
     the most wretched victims of disaster.
       That isn't what Americans want, but its' what--unless 
     drastic adjustments are made in the next few weeks of 
     bargaining--they're going to get. In both the House and 
     Senate versions of next year's budget every means of keeping 
     the peace short of military action and every other cost of 
     international leadership or national self-interest--
     political, economic, environmental, humanitarian--is stripped 
     to near or below the minimum while more money than the 
     Pentagon thinks it can usefully spend is crammed down it 
     throat.
       In round numbers, Congress has added $7 billion to a $220 
     billion military total that already dwarfs what all of the 
     rest of the world outside NATO spends on defense. Meanwhile, 
     in the name of deficit reduction, it is planning to cut $3 
     billion to $4 billion from all other international spending. 
     That may not sound like much but it amounts to 15 percent to 
     20 percent of the $20 billion total in international affairs 
     spending and includes reductions for most international 
     agencies of 25 percent to 60 percent.
       The cuts mean that U.S. embassies and consulates will close 
     when a globalizing economy and more independent countries 
     mean that more should be opening. They translate into fewer 
     foreign service officers, hamstrung diplomacy and less of the 
     most cost-efficient means of intelligence gathering. They 
     mean long lines and poor services for Americans at home and 
     abroad. All of that is tolerable, if neither sensible nor 
     necessary, given defense increases.
       What will really hurt American interests--indeed already 
     has--are the cuts to the United Nations, the World Bank's 
     fund for the poorest countries and the host of small 
     international agencies that provide hundreds of services 
     Americans need and value and underpin agreements that both 
     parties have spent years of tough negotiating to achieve.
       Where the cuts are in dues for which the United States is 
     legally committed, as are its U.N. dues, the cost will be 
     measured in an unraveling of international law not limited to 
     finances. If the United States can renege on its funding 
     obligations why can't X on Y (fill in the country and topic 
     of your choice)?
       Even where the cuts are in voluntary contributions, the 
     result of a U.S. pull back from the international community 
     along a front that reaches from peacekeeping to environmental 
     protection will be a declining interest on the part of other 
     countries in supporting U.S. initiatives. That will fuel 
     further disenchantment in the United States etc., with 
     results that no one wants.
       The cycle has already begun. The United States owes the 
     U.N. $1.5 billion, a debt that threatens to tip that 
     institution into insolvency. The U.N. is limping along by not 
     paying what it owes to contractors and to countries that 
     supply its peacekeeping troops. In effect, the likes of 
     Pakistan and Bangladesh are covering our bad check.
       Congress wants to see organizational reforms at the U.N. 
     before it will consider even a partial payment. But for the 
     rest of the world, the No. 1 item on the agenda is that a 
     country that can afford to do so does not pay its dues year 
     after year. As Britain's foreign secretary remarked to an 
     appreciative audience, the United States seems to want 
     ``representation without taxation.''
       Part of what has brought us to this sorry pass is too many 
     years of cheap shot--and now almost obligatory--political 
     rhetoric that has inflated the self-evident need for U.N. 
     reform into a problem of unrecognizable dimensions in the 
     minds of most Americans. Even while defending the U.N., U.S. 
     Ambassador Madeline Albright called it ``elephantine.'' It 
     took Australia's Gareth Evans to provide some perspective by 
     pointing out that the U.N.'s secretariat and core functions 
     (in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Nairobi and the Hague) cost 
     $600 million less than the New York City Police Department. 
     Adding the development, environment and population agencies, 
     the huge refugee operation, UNICEF and others, the total is 
     still less than Congress's defense add-on.
       Having launched a last-minute effort to reduce U.N. funds 
     and the rest of the international affairs budget, the 
     administration is battling a sentiment it helped create by 
     blaming the United Nations for its own mistakes in Somalia 
     and Bosnia, and an attitude on the part of congressional 
     freshmen for which the politest description is a profound and 
     willful ignorance of America's role in the world, its 
     obligations, its interests and what it takes to meet them.
       However long it takes, this struggle deserves attention and 
     public support. No American doubts the need for a superlative 
     military. But it should be obvious by now that the best-armed 
     force in the world cannot meet more than a fraction of the 
     threats of the post-Cold War world nor help seize most of its 
     opportunities. An America served by a rich military budget 
     and impoverished funding for every other international 
     function will be a country both poorer and less secure than 
     it should be.

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