Speech by Senator Claiborne Pell, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, March 12, 1992

Mr. President, in the great sweep of history there are only rare times to make truly revolutionary changes: 1815, 1919, and 1945 were such times. Then leaders truly had the opportunity to remake the world. However, such opportunities lasted only a short period of time. Having been shaken up by war or revolution, international affairs soon settled into new patterns. The patterns set in 1815 lasted 99 years, ending in the First World War. The architects of the peace at Versailles were less successful, largely because the United States opted out of the ambitious peace we ourselves proposed, and the world dissolved into a Second World War just 20 years later. The patterns set in 1945--patterns which evolved into a Cold War between adversarial superpowers and which either by luck or the grace of God avoided mutual destruction--lasted 44 years.

We are now blessed by another opportunity to remake the world, an opportunity few of us thought we would have in our lifetimes. Extraordinary circumstances have brought down the Berlin Wall, ended the division of Europe, freed the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltics, terminated the Warsaw Pact, abolished communism in Europe, and dissolved the Soviet Union itself. Most extraordinary, these events were the product of almost entirely peaceful change. Unlike our predecessors in 1815, 1919, and 1945, we are not remaking a world destroyed by years of total war.

In 1919 the failure of American leadership helped produce a Second World War in just 20 years. We should not delude ourselves about the consequences of a similar failure to lead.

Importance of a Democratic Russia

Russia, a country that still commands the military resources to destroy the world, has transformed itself from a totalitarian dictatorship to a fledgling democracy. For the first time in its thousand year history, Russia has a firmly established leader democratically chosen by the Russian people. And that President has told us that his country does not merely want to be a partner of the United States but instead would like to be thought of as an ally. He has gone so far as to propose Russian membership in NATO, and with luck we may in a few years be able to speak not of the three permanent Western powers on the United Nations Security Council, but of four such powers.

But we cannot assume that democracy will succeed in Russia and that Russia will be our ally with no effort whatsoever on our part. As the experience of Weimar Germany in the 1930s so graphically demonstrated, democracy cannot thrive and indeed may not survive in the face of economic ruination. Communism has devastated Russia and the other countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. Helping people long oppressed by communism is not merely an act of altruism; it is an act of fundamental national self-interest.

It is a widely remarked fact that in modern history there has never been a war between two democratic nations. Democratic Russia can be our ally; a dictatorial Russia can never be a partner or even a friend. The success of democracy in Russia will vastly reduce the security threat, including the nuclear threat to the United States. With democratic Russia as an ally, we can develop a strategy for other potential threats to our national security such as the situation that existed last year in the Persian Gulf.

If democracy in Russia fails, we might well again be vulnerable to a military threat and a nuclear threat from Russia. With democratic Russia as a friend, nasty regional adversaries such as Iraq, Iran, and Libya can be dealt with effectively. With authoritarian Russia as an adversary even tiny Grenada is considered a threat to the United States worthy of the sacrifice of the lives of our young service people.

The Marshall Plan and Aid to Russia

In 1948 the United States recognized that an infusion of cash could make an enormous difference in the political evolution of Western Europe. In the four years of the Marshall Plan we spent $80 billion, in 1990 dollars, to set those war-ravaged countries on their feet. The money we gave Western Europe was without doubt the best investment we made in our national security in the whole Cold War period. Imagine how different the world would be if we had adopted the isolationist course of 1919 after World War II, if we had insisted only on looking after our own people and forgotten the people of Western Europe. Without the Marshall Plan it is likely that much, if not all, of Western Europe would have gone Communist. The military burden of defending the United States would have been even greater than it was in the divided Europe of the Cold War. And we would have been a far less prosperous nation, for the economic success of Europe directly contributed to economic growth in our own country.

As we contemplate the extraordinary opportunity that exists in Russia, we must choose between the policy of 1919 and the policy of 1948. We can do nothing and hope for the best. But if so, we had better prepare for the worst, and preparing for the worst will cost us a lot more than an aggressive policy of assisting democratic Russia.

Let us not delude ourselves. Assisting Russia is a major undertaking. Russia is an enormous land with some 150 million people. So far our much publicized humanitarian airlift has provided enough to feed Moscow for one day. The President has proposed $320 million a year to vanquish communism in Russia; just three-fifths of the amount the Reagan Administration spent in 1985 to fight communism in the tiny country of El Salvador. And Russia, if I may remind my colleagues, is closer to our shores than El Salvador.

On the other hand, the benefits of aiding Russia are vast. We will be able to make large savings on our military budget, savings that will far exceed, even on an annual basis, the amount of assistance we need to provide Russia. Further, as Russia recovers from seventy years of communism it will become an important trading partner and its economic growth will contribute to our own prosperity much as the earlier recoveries in Western Europe benefitted us in the 1950s.

Aiding Russia will not be as expensive as the Marshall Plan. When the United States put up $20 billion a year to Western Europe we were the only country in the world capable of putting up such money. With the end of World War II we were, at least economically speaking, the only power left standing. Today, there are other nations able to assist Russia, and indeed, the countries of the European Community and Japan are probably financially better able to provide assistance. U.S. cash is needed but perhaps at only 10-20 percent of our Marshall Plan commitments, that is to say between $2 and $4 billion a year. Europe, Japan, and the wealthy Arab OPEC States, who really owe us after the Gulf War, can certainly come up with most of the cash. But such assistance will not be forthcoming without U.S. leadership. Leadership is the burden of being the world's last superpower, and so far such leadership has been woefully lacking.

The Administration has shown a stunning lack of vision in its approach to aid to Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. President Nixon has rightly described President Bush's proposals as "pathetically inadequate." But the Congress, too, has shown a decided lack of leadership and vision in responding to the new world order.

Funding U.N. Peacekeeping

The new cooperative relationship between the United States and Russia has enabled us to resolve an astonishing array of regional conflicts. Working under the umbrella of the United Nations, settlements have been reached to such longstanding and divisive conflicts as those in Namibia, Angola, El Salvador, Western Sahara, Cambodia, Iran-Iraq, as well as the more recent wars between Iraq and Kuwait and within the former Yugoslavia.

During the Cold War the United States was engaged at various levels of cost and commitment in these conflicts. For example, we gave some $15 million a year to the non-Communist resistance in Cambodia, we gave much larger sums to Jonas Savimbi's fight against the Marxist regime in Angola, and we spent billions fighting the Communists in El Salvador. Now these conflicts are being resolved entirely on American terms. In each of the above cases free elections are being arranged by the United Nations, and in no case did the Marxist forces gain even one iota of what they sought.

Now, however, having won our battles with the Marxists at great expense, the Congress appears unwilling to spend the relatively small sums required to win the war. I am dismayed at the apparent unwillingness of many in Congress to pay the relatively modest sums required for the peacekeeping forces needed to consolidate our victories. I read in the press of complaints at the skyrocketing cost of U.N. peacekeeping. Of course the costs have gone up. It is entirely a function of how many of the world's conflicts have been resolved and of how many victories America has won. And may I remind my colleagues that, however costly U.N. peacekeeping is, it is far less costly to the United States than the price we paid for our earlier involvements in these regional conflicts. And, of course, the success of peacekeeping promises to save hundreds of thousands of lives around the world as well as reorient billions of dollars from the destruction of war to the promise of peace.

Both the Bush Administration and the Congress have been counting the pennies while missing the prize. The Bush Administration risks letting slip by an historic opportunity to remake the world by helping Russia remake itself. The Congress, by its reticence to fund the Administration's request for peacekeeping, risks jeopardizing the extraordinary gains freedom has made in all corners of the globe.

I accept that we have enormous problems at home. Many of these problems are the direct result of the enormous financial burden carried by the American people in the defense of freedom during the Cold War. But let us not delude ourselves; many of our problems are also due to our self-indulgent behavior during the 1980s when we borrowed from our children to avoid paying our own bills. Sure, the Cold War was expensive, but a lot of our problems are the product of a decade of borrow, borrow; spend, spend and have nothing to do with the need to protect against the Soviet Union. And, therefore, it is a tired and pathetic excuse to say that our past burdens exempt us from meeting our current obligations either with regard to the opportunities in Russia or the legally owed dues for peacekeeping.

("The New World Order: A Time for Action Not Whining," Congressional Record, March 12, 1992.)