‘WELCOME TO WASHINGTON’ (PART I): TIPS FOR SURVIVING THE SOVIET AID CONFERENCE
(Washington, D.C.): The Center for
Security Policy today initiated a public
service on behalf of Western taxpayers,
deep-pocketed prospective Gulf State
benefactors and deserving would-be
foreign aid recipients by beginning a
series of Decision Briefs on the
January international conference on
assistance flows to the former Soviet
Union.
This ‘Welcome to Washington’
series will highlight what the
participants will not hear from
conference organizers in the Bush
Administration — and techniques for
discerning the true meaning and
implications of what they do
hear. It will also feature helpful
phrases and a glossary of terms likely to
be frequently employed in the course of
the conference and its closing
communique.
What Will Not Be
Emphasized
- Where the Money Will Come
From: As the former
Soviet Union has officially
defaulted on its debt obligations
to both Western governments and
commercial banks (by its
unilateral moratorium on
principal payments of 4
December), the U.S. government —
as the conference host — will
probably try to minimize the fact
that essentially all private
sector trade and credit flows to
the former USSR have been
obliterated. - The Continued Soviet
Threat: In sharp
contrast to the prominence likely
to be accorded the threat of a
“nuclear Yugoslavia”
(see below), the menace posed to
Western interests from nuclear
arms still at on alert — and
still aimed at U.S. and other
targets — and from the
continuing production of
prodigious quantities of
offensive arms by the Soviet
military-industrial complex will
probably go unaddressed if the
organizers have their way. The
Bush Administration will
undertake to mute discussion of
that fact lest the inevitable
conclusion be reached that any
further U.S. aid financial (at
the very least) must be
conditioned on the prompt
termination of that military
posture. - Whose Oxen are Going to
be Gored: Similarly,
Central and East European
participants — to say nothing of
the scores of other nations whose
foreign aid equities will be
dramatically affected should the
conferees decide to move the
former Soviet Union to the head
of the developed world’s
assistance que — are expected to
be good sports about the
fact that new aid flows to the
old USSR will be coming out of
their hide. - Waiver of Rigorous
Political and Economic
Conditionality: The
organizers clearly hope to
prevent emergency aid to the USSR
from being strictly conditioned
upon structural political or
economic changes that some (for
example, Gorbachev and his clique
in Moscow center and their
remaining comrades in republican
capitals) are determined to
resist. After all, such
conditions would have the
eminently desirable effect of
preventing, or at least
retarding, the swift
dissemination of new aid so long
as the institutions and
arrangements required to make
effective use of it are not in
place.
This means that virtually any
future Western aid flows to be
coordinated (read, syndicated)
during the conference will be
directly from the wallets of
Western taxpayers and Gulf State
development budgets.
What Will Be
Emphasized
- The Famine/Humanitarian
Gambit: The picture of
imminent starvation — with all
that might portend for social
unrest, upheaval and violence —
will probably feature prominently
in the Bush Administration’s
campaign for a new, multi-billion
dollar infusion of aid into the
former USSR. (See CIA Director
Robert Gates’ congressional
testimony of 10 December 1991.) - Imminence of Global
Cataclysm if Aid is Insufficient:
The corollary to the
famine/humanitarian gambit is the
argument that the world is poised
on the threshold of disaster if
Soviet aid requirements are not
promptly satisfied. To the extent
that Central European states are
especially concerned about the
possibility that waves of
emigrants from the former Soviet
empire will be descending upon
their nations, expect this
hyperbolic claim to feature
prominently throughout the
conference. - The Indispensability of
this “Investment” to
Future World Tranquility:
The Bush Administration has
apparently decided to embrace the
rhetoric — and the undisciplined
approach — of the proponents of
the “Grand Bargain.”
These U.S. academics and their
Soviet collaborators, it will be
remembered, argued before the
August coup that giving tens
of billions of dollars to
Gorbachev’s regime was a sound
and necessary investment. At the
time, the Administration declined
to do so, ostensibly on the
grounds that it could not justify
such an expenditure of taxpayer
resources on an unreformed Soviet
Union. - “Cheap at Twice the
Price”: Conferees
will doubtless be told ad
nauseam that there should be
no quibbling over the price
demanded of them in aid for the
former USSR; whatever the cost,
it’s worth it. This argument
should be viewed with special
skepticism in view of the real
uncertainty whether the sort of
undisciplined assistance
evidently being contemplated will
actually produce measurable
results and justify the domestic
and other foreign shortfalls
which will result. - “Trust Us” on
Soviet Threat Reduction:
As noted above, the fearmongering
about a nuclear Yugoslavia will
probably be accompanied,
ironically, by U.S. assurances
that the residual Soviet military
threat is judged to be
“under control.” The
United States seemingly is
prepared to assert that
meaningful and long-overdue
changes in the magnitude of this
threat can await the beneficial
effects of aid infusions. - Defining Soviet Aid as a
Defense Budget Line Item:
The new-found enthusiasm of the
Bush Administration — most
recently manifested by Secretary
of State James Baker in his
Princeton University address
yesterday — for diverting U.S.
defense dollars into Soviet
assistance programs will almost
certainly be much in evidence at
the Washington conference. Other
democratic states facing intense
pressure to cut defense spending
would be well advised to resist
this siren’s song.
This portrait stands in stark
contrast with a statement
released recently by InterAction,
an umbrella association of
private voluntary organizations,
published in the Journal of
Commerce on 2 December 1991:
“Among disaster
relief professionals, it
is generally acknowledged
that the food situation
in the Soviet Union is
not of an emergency
nature. Any consideration
on the part of an
individual agency to
become active in the
Soviet Union requires a
careful look at needs in
other parts of the world,
especially as resources
are limited.”
While worrisome consequences from
a collapse of Soviet power cannot
be precluded, they do not justify
any further effort aimed at
propping up Moscow center. By the
same token, it is far from clear
that the sort of crash aid
programs untied to structural
reform that are apparently now
being contemplated by the Bush
Administration will actually
preclude such eventualities.
It would appear, however, that
the Administration now
contemplates an aid program
scarcely less ambitious — and no
more contingent than was the
earlier plan on specific,
monitorable steps being taken by
individual republics in the areas
of democratic and free market
institution-building.
Unless a more disciplined aid
strategy is adopted than appears
likely at the moment, they like
the United States could wind up
with the worst of both worlds:
inadequate defenses and precious
funds squandered indiscriminately
in the Soviet black hole.
A Glossary of Terms Used by
the Bush Administration
The
Soviet Union and the Republics =
A term used to describe a non-entity;
this euphemism reflects an acute case of cognitive
dissonance — an inability to
disengage from the profound emotional
attachment to Mikhail Gorbachev and the
forces of Soviet totalitarianism with
which he was associated; also symptomatic
of the determination to deny Western
recognition to the Commonwealth of
Independent States or the sovereignty of
its member nations.
Famine = Inadequate
quantities of meat in the diets of most
citizens of the former Soviet empire,
leaner livestock and widespread
shortages. (Not, of course, to be
confused with the starvation deaths of
millions — a fate reliably forecast for
the people of Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia
and Mozambique during the next year.)
Humanitarian Aid =
Catch-all term used to justify anything
from accelerated decontrol of militarily
relevant high technology to massive
energy-related assistance at taxpayer
expense to waiving conditionality
requiring the immediate dismantling of
the Soviet military-industrial complex.
(Not to be confused with the disciplined
and transparent targeting of Western food
and medical supplies to the truly needy
at republic and local levels.)
Loans or Credits =
Taxpayer grants. (Not to be confused with
the traditional definition of a
“loan” made to a creditworthy
sovereign borrower, i.e., a financial
obligation with a reasonable assurance of
full repayment of principal and
interest.)
A Nuclear Yugoslavia
= The newest addition to the
fearmongering lexicon of G-7 allies; used
to justify a policy of providing generous
aid to the former Soviet Union in the
absence of rigorous conditions and
transparency on the grounds that doing so
is necessary in order to avoid provoking
the restive military or to stimulate
ethnic strife among nuclear-armed
republics. (Ironically, Yugoslavia
represents a glaring policy failure for
the G-7, borne of Western tolerance for
unbridled Serbian aggression against
democratically minded Croatia and
Slovenia.)
A Coordinating Conference
= A thinly disguised effort to
allay the legitimate concerns of
prospective conference participants that
“new money” in multibillion
dollar increments will be solicited by
the G-7 for the former USSR in a
heavy-handed “pledging
session.” In fact, such an
arm-twisting — indeed, arm-breaking
— session is precisely what the
prospective contributors among the
participants will be walking into.
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