[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 146 (Wednesday, October 14, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Page S12577]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         DARE NOT SPURN RUSSIA

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the news from Russia remains grim. The 
Times reported on Saturday:

       Rocked by its worst harvest in 45 years and a plummeting 
     ruble, Russia appealed today for relief aid from the European 
     Union. It has also approached the United States and Canada 
     for help.

  Clearly Russia is in a perilous--one could say dangerous--state. The 
grain harvest is down almost 40 percent primarily because of a summer 
drought in the Volga River and Ural regions. And the financial crisis 
in Russia has only added to the problems. For example the Times also 
reports that because payment has not been made ``15 ships full of 
American frozen poultry have delayed unloading their cargo.''
  What to do? For starters let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. 
Following the defeat of Germany in World War I, we failed to provide 
aid to the Weimar Republic as it attempted to sustain a democratic 
government. The resulting Nazi reign of terror was both devastating and 
unspeakable.
  By contrast, following the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, we 
adopted the Marshall Plan to rebuild a democratic Germany. From 1948 to 
1952, the United States gave almost $3 billion a year to fund the 
Marshall Plan. A comparable contribution in round numbers, given the 
current size of the United States economy, would be about $100 billion 
a year for five years.
  Recognize that Russia, no less than Nazi Germany, is a defeated 
nation--the latter on the military battlefield, the former on the 
economic battlefield. To keep Russia on the road to democracy and 
economic reform will require economic aid perhaps on the scale of the 
Marshall Plan. When you consider what we have been through, a post cold 
war Marshall Plan does not seem excessive. Particularly since we were 
able to fund the Marshall Plan at the same time we were threatened by 
an empire that subscribed to the view that eventually the entire world 
would succumb to communism.
  The singular truth is that we were utterly unprepared for the 
collapse of the Soviet Union. During the 1980s we began a defense build 
up which resulted in the largest debt the United States has ever known. 
When the Soviet Union did collapse, we felt broke and unable to launch 
the kind of economic assistance that we were able to do after World War 
II.
  While we have provided some assistance, it falls far short of 
Russia's needs and lacks a coherent plan. Such a plan would include 
technical assistance on tax collections, operations of banks and stock 
exchanges, protection of property and individual rights to name just a 
few areas that a country with little or no experience with democracy 
and free markets might find helpful. Let me emphasize: without real 
short- and long-term financial assistance none of this technical 
assistance will be effective or, indeed, welcome.
  But the United States cannot do it alone. What would make the 
countries of Central and Eastern Europe more secure than any military 
alliance would be membership in the European Union. Unfortunately, our 
Western European allies have not embraced their eastern neighbors in 
this way.
  Ambassador Richard Holbrooke has explained that to a certain extent, 
expanding NATO served as a surrogate for EU enlargement. Roger Cohen 
reports Ambassador Holbrooke's remark in the International Herald 
Tribune:

       Almost a decade has gone by since the Berlin Wall fell and, 
     instead of reaching out to Central Europe, the European Union 
     turned toward a bizarre search for a common currency. So NATO 
     enlargement had to fill the void.

  We seem to have stumbled into a reflexive anti-Russian mode. The 
United States continues to act as though the Cold War is still the 
central reality of foreign policy, withal there has been a turnover and 
we now have the ball and it is time to move downfield. For instance, in 
a Times story on Sunday about the selection of a trans-Caucus oil 
pipeline, it was reported:

       The Administration favored the Baku-Ceyhan route because it 
     would pass through only relatively friendly countries--
     Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey--and would bind them closer to 
     the West; because it would pull Azerbaijan and Georgia out of 
     the Russian shadow; and because it would not pass through 
     either Russia or Iran, both of which have offered routes of 
     their own.

  Is ``binding'' Azerbaijan and Georgia closer to the West part of a 
flawed strategy of isolating Russia? We seem clearly headed in that 
direction with the expansion of NATO. And ignoring George F. Kennan, 
who lamented the Senate vote on NATO expansion in an interview with 
Thomas L. Friedman. Commenting on the Senate debate, Ambassador Kennan 
stated:

       I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as 
     a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people 
     understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the 
     Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on 
     the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution 
     in history to remove the Soviet Regime.

  We would do well to remember these words.

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