[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 17 (Tuesday, February 11, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E207-E208]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        OPPORTUNITIES BEING LOST

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BILL RICHARDSON

                             of new mexico

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 11, 1997

  Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I want to bring to my colleagues' 
attention the following editorial by my good friend Charles William 
Maynes. Charles is retiring from his position as editor of Foreign 
Policy, the magazine of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
  I laud Charles for his thoughts in this editorial. He clearly 
outlines the need for the political will to aid the developing world, 
both overseas and here in the United States. He makes the case for aid 
in international development as a tool to achieve our national interest 
of peacefully coexisting constitutional democracies.
  Charles is not unaware of the challenges facing the disbursement of 
international aid. He presents several concrete ideas for reforming the 
way in which aid reaches developing economies. The international 
economic system that is the rubic under which aid is now being 
administered demands changes in the way development aid is collected 
and distributed.
  As the Congress debates the level of international aid the United 
States should contribute, I hope my colleagues will familiarize 
themselves with the following article, and the rest of Charles William 
Maynes' work.

               [From the Washington Times, Jan. 20, 1997]

                        Opportunities Being Lost

                      (By Charles William Maynes)

       Charles Williams Maynes is retiring as editor of Foreign 
     Policy, the magazine published by the Carnegie Endowment for 
     International Peace. Its editor since 1980, he delivered a 
     farewell address in Washington to a closing session Jan. 15 
     of the International Development Conference, which is 
     attended annually by more than 1,000 analysts, diplomats, 
     businessmen and politicians involved with development work in 
     the Third World. The following are excerpts from his address, 
     which sets out his view of the world in the years head:
       We are in one of the most plastic periods in modern 
     history. It is rate in history for all of the great powers to 
     be essentially at peace with one another and for all of them 
     to accept one another's international legitimacy. In this 
     remarkable moment, we have such a consensus, yet we are 
     failing to exploit it, and opportunities are being lost every 
     day.
       Anti-immigrant feeling has never been higher in the postwar 
     period. The vicious political infighting has already resumed 
     on Capitol Hill. Concern for others is down. The publishing 
     sensation of the country in recent years has been a study of 
     white and black education performance, with the subliminal 
     message one of resignation. Why continue efforts to lift 
     others out of their current state if those you want to help 
     are predisposed to remain there? Why try to help others catch 
     up, when studies show that they never will?
       The country is increasingly skeptical and cynical. Few 
     believe that government can work. And if it can't work at 
     home, how can it possibly work abroad in cultures we scarcely 
     comprehend? If we cannot construct sensible development 
     programs for south-central Los Angeles, how can we possibly 
     expect to develop them for Haiti?


                     Americans are growing fearful

       We are facing, in other words, a new pessimism that 
     threatens all sound programs for change and reform. Much of 
     this new pessimism toward the developing world rests on a 
     dark vision of the future . . .
       [But] the World Bank forecasts that over the next 10 years, 
     developing countries, including the former Soviet bloc, will 
     grow by nearly 5 percent a year, compared with a rate of 2.7 
     percent in the rich industrial North. In other words, the 
     Third World is going to be the growth engine of the world 
     economy in the coming decade.
       In addition, the share of the developing countries of the 
     world economy is already much greater than common discourse 
     allows. If output is measured on the basis of purchasing-
     power parities, then the developing countries and the former 
     Soviet bloc already account for 44 percent of the world's 
     output. If the World Bank's estimates turn out to be right, 
     by the year 2020, these countries will have 60 percent of the 
     world's global output.
       What is the explanation for this deep pessimism that 
     pervades American thinking?
       We have to look for the answer not in facts, but in 
     politics. What we are witnessing is the collapse of a 
     powerful governmental paradigm, which governed our affairs 
     for much of the post-World War Two period. After the great 
     war, in part because of the genuine and heroic 
     accomplishments of that struggle, in which everyone played a 
     role from the president to the private to Rosie the Riveter, 
     there was a widespread belief that government could work. Men 
     and women could band together to accomplish high and noble 
     goals. After all, they had already done it.


                      loss of faith in government

       In all of our political cultures, the dominant ideology 
     became a disguised form of social democracy, which rested on 
     the belief that governments, if well-organized and properly 
     funded, could change societies for the better.
       Even conservatives, with the evidence of the war effort so 
     near, were hard pressed to reject this vision. And if the war 
     memory did not persuade them, then they were converted 
     because they feared that unless their society had answers for 
     searing social and economic problems, the masses might be 
     drawn to communism, which did promise answers.
       Much of the international development effort rested on that 
     ideology of social democracy, which has now collapsed. It was 
     believed that if the New Deal could work at home, it could 
     work abroad. The problem was simply to find the money.
       Now communism has gone as an ideological challenge. But 
     more important, also gone is our belief that we know what 
     works. The result is a collapse in American leadership in the 
     development field.

[[Page E208]]

                    u.s. development effort falters

       American aid levels have plummeted. In the 1950s and 1960s, 
     America pioneered the concept of development assistance. Its 
     contributions led all others. Today, America ranks at the 
     bottom of the [Organization for Economic Cooperation and 
     Development] countries in terms of [aid].
       A growing percentage of our aid is concentrated in the 
     Middle East and southern Africa, both regions that enjoy high 
     aid levels, for political reasons. . . .
       The Overseas Development Council estimates that no more 
     than 17 percent of U.S. bilateral aid now goes for 
     development. And multilateral aid has also been infected with 
     the political virus. The United States and other donors have 
     pressed the World Bank to make loans to the former communist 
     countries that, under former criteria, would never have been 
     allowed.
       The cause of human rights has also suffered severe setbacks 
     as a result of the new cynicism. When President Clinton 
     announced a bold, new China policy, he said that ``the core 
     of this policy will be a resolute insistence upon significant 
     progress on human rights in China.'' He received widespread 
     applause. A few months later, he was the subject of mounting 
     criticism as commentators claimed that he was sacrificing 
     American commercial interests on the altar of a utopian 
     concept of human rights. He decided to abandon the policy 
     completely.


                        ideals take a back seat

       In Russia, most commentators applauded the administration 
     for approving as a Russian president bombarded a parliament 
     into submission, even though the essence of a democratic 
     system is respect for laws, not respect for powerful 
     individuals.
       In Rwanda, the first case of documented genocide since the 
     Second World War, virtually no one objected as the 
     administration resisted U.N. involvement until spurred by a 
     secretary-general who said that he was ashamed by the 
     inaction of the Security Council.
       To general silence, our State Department attempted to talk 
     of ``acts of genocide'' rather than ``genocide'' because use 
     of the latter word might trigger commitments under the 
     Genocide Convention that no one wanted to honor. It has been 
     estimated that as little as 2,000 troops could have prevented 
     hundreds of thousands of deaths.
       In the development field, we need to shift our focus from 
     countries to problems. With the Cold War over, our people 
     find it difficult to understand why we continue to support 
     foreign countries.
       Perhaps the American people could understand our desire to 
     work with others on common problems. In an age of massive 
     international travel, the United States is necessarily 
     concerned about international health problems. It could work 
     with others on those common problems. People at home would 
     understand such an expenditure.
       The administration has talked in these terms, but not 
     boldly from the White House.


                          joint efforts needed

       Our citizens would understand common efforts to deal with 
     international environmental problems. We are helping Mexico 
     to clean up rivers that borders both countries. We can work 
     with other states to protect fisheries. We can attempt to 
     develop a bold development effort for states that generate 
     economic immigrants for the United States.
       We must understand that people in those countries will only 
     remain when they believe that there is hope for their 
     children, even if there may not be much for them in their own 
     lifetime.
       In the field of democracy, we also need a new approach. At 
     least at the governmental level, we have adopted a cookie-
     cutter approach to democratic development. There has been too 
     much emphasis on elections and not enough on institutions. 
     Yet, the essence of democracy is the web of institutions that 
     together bring us the role of law, rather than the whim of 
     leaders.
       In the case of Russia, the U.S. made a serious mistake in 
     backing [President Boris Yeltsin] so unconditionally in his 
     struggle with the Duma. We should have pressed him to reach a 
     compromise with its members, who now look moderate compared 
     to those who replaced them. Democracy is not attained through 
     sudden conversion, but through patient development efforts 
     taking years.
       We must also understand that in many ethnically divided 
     societies, the American form of democracy poses a great 
     threat to civil peace.


                   majority rule requires safeguards

       ``One man, one vote'' in a winner-take-all election is too 
     brutal a form of leader-selection for such countries. It will 
     shatter consensus and can bring on civil war. For what we 
     want is not majoritarian democracy, but constitutional 
     democracy. The former can be established overnight, with a 
     single election; the later takes years.
       We say that we favor democracy worldwide. But until the 
     mediating institutions of a constitutional democracy have 
     evolved, won't democracy in the Arab world bring to power 
     forces that will be profoundly anti-Western and maybe even 
     authoritarian, although seemingly ``democratic''?
       With its elections and vigorous parliament, Iran is 
     probably more democratic than most states in the Muslim 
     world. But it has established a form of majoritarian 
     democracy that must disturb us. There is no protection for 
     vulnerable minorities or the dissident voice.
       What we want immediately in the Arab world is decent 
     governments that respect the fundamental human rights of 
     their citizens. The building of real democracy is going to 
     take decades.
       We need a new approach to our campaign both for human 
     rights and democracy. It should now be clear that the U.S. 
     cannot impose its standards on the rest of the world. As 
     strong as we are, we are not that strong.
       We should work harder to multilateralize our human rights 
     program. Human rights organizations contend that this 
     administration, like its predecessors, is uncomfortable 
     working with others in the human rights field. We must 
     reverse this.
       We need to begin to work harder to live up ourselves to 
     international standards in the field of economic and social 
     rights so that we can develop a common language with others. 
     It is a disgrace that the infant-mortality rate in 
     Washington, D.C., is higher than in many extremely poor Third 
     World countries.
       What is more disgraceful is that Washington policy-makers 
     at times seemed more concerned with the rate in foreign 
     countries than in their own capital. We have to recognize 
     that the U.S. no longer has the power or enjoys the deference 
     internationally simply to command others to behave as we 
     wish.


                    needed: a new rationale for aid

       Critical to the success of the humanitarian tradition in 
     American foreign policy is funds.
       We no longer have the Cold War to provide the excuse for 
     large aid levels. We have to recognize that we are unlikely 
     to be able to reverse such attitudes in the near future. 
     There is little hope in trying to increase the aid budget 
     under current conditions. We need a new paradigm.
       We should begin to explore ways of asking those who benefit 
     from the management of the global commons to help pay for its 
     upkeep. This is probably going to involve some taxation on 
     international activities, but for reasons of accountability, 
     if such taxes are established, their management must be 
     subject to the control of national legislatures.
       We must begin to wean some of the countries that view U.S. 
     aid as an entitlement. The Middle East countries should be 
     given a period over which U.S. aid to them would be 
     significantly reduced and would be channeled into programs 
     for regional development and global problems.
       We need gun control abroad just as much as we need gun 
     control at home. The position of the major supplier countries 
     is an intellectual and policy scandal. The U.S. and its 
     allies are the most culpable. The U.S. alone supplies over 70 
     percent of the international arms trade.


                    discourage overspending on arms

       We need to limit the ability of states that spend beyond a 
     certain portion of the [gross national product] on defense to 
     have access to the international financial institutions. We 
     may have to offer a special exemption to states that face a 
     unique security situation. But the ability to get such a 
     waiver would be limited.
       We need to convert the development effort from a 
     responsibility of the rich toward the poor into a common 
     responsibility. Every state above a certain level should be 
     required to contribute to global-development funds. 
     Membership in key global institutions might be keyed to such 
     a requirement.
       We should stress more South-South cooperation. We should 
     limit the number of experts from the North, in order to 
     reflect the success we have had in creating an enormous pool 
     of trained expertise within the South itself.
       We should insist that aid recipients agree to enter into 
     regional projects as a condition of their aid.


                   trade, communications unify globe

       Today, an international system is developing that is more 
     inclusive economically and politically. Trade is pulling 
     people together and communications are enabling them to form 
     common views, which are a prerequisite to subsequent 
     participation in the determination of their political fate.
       But the U.S. is unable to exploit this moment because we 
     are incapable of bold thinking. Today, we are like a 
     musclebound giant that can't tie his shoes. We have a defense 
     budget that is larger than all of the major countries in the 
     world combined, but we can't reallocate the money where it 
     would do the most good. We plan for wars that will not happen 
     in our lifetime, and we are unable to participate in security 
     operations that are needed today.
       Meanwhile, we are largely absent in the countries whose 
     future will determine the fate of whole regions.
       In conclusion, in the current era, we must not allow 
     inertia to define our policy. If we wish to seize the moment, 
     all of us are going to have to think boldly. And we cannot 
     wait for leadership from the administration or the Congress.
       The more bold ordinary citizens are outside the offices of 
     officials, the bolder they are likely to be inside. For in 
     today's poll-driven politics, leadership lies as much with 
     the people as with the officials. Power can lie in hands like 
     yours. I urge you to use it.
     
                               ____________________