Chapter 4. 1982

Mutual defense pacts are a tricky business and can be very dangerous. When Britain and Argentina faced off, we actually had defense commitments with both sides.

April 27, 1982
THE FALKLAND CRISIS: NOT OUR BUSINESS
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Speaker, in the Falkland Islands, America’s foreign policy has once again gotten tangled in its own conflicting commitments. The NATO alliance commits us to the defense of Great Britain, and the Rio Treaty commits us to defending Argentina. These treaty commitments demonstrate so clearly how entangling alliances work to the detriment of the people of the United States. Fulfilling treaty obligations becomes impossible and the prime responsibility of defending our people becomes secondary to foreign involvements.

Thanks to NATO, we spend well over $100 billion per year subsidizing the defenses of wealthy Europeans. Our relations with Argentina have been more restrained, but we have still managed to help them finance the purchase of $200 million in military hardware over the last 30 years. The Argentine submarine disabled off South Georgia is American, and their only aircraft carrier is also American.

I have spoken to the people in my district. They say: “Stay out of this conflict, it’s none of our business.” But there are those in the State Department who have suggested setting up a Sinai-type U.S. peacekeeping force. This would be sheer folly! Putting American boys between two warring factions, both using our weapons, is a sure-fire way of getting some of them killed, and of guaranteeing an ongoing, costly foreign commitment.

It is time we scrapped the foreign policy of treaties and interventionism, and began concentrating on the sorry state of our own defenses.

Our foreign policy should be that of nonintervention and armed neutrality. Grover Cleveland understood this when he said:

It is the policy of peace suitable to our interests. It is the policy of neutrality, rejecting any share in foreign brawls and ambitions on other continents, and repelling their intrusion here. It is the policy of Monroe and of Washington and Jefferson: Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

To this day, NATO is a reminder that entangling alliances take on their own lives. With the Soviets now long gone, we still “protect” Europe. This stands as an example that “short term” troop commitments often become blank checks, with the tab paid by American taxpayers. The next two pieces consider this fact.

June 9, 1982
NATO RESOLUTION
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Madam Speaker, today I am introducing a resolution for the planned withdrawal of American troops from Europe and Japan. It is humiliating for American presidents to continue begging our allies to ante-up and spend more on their own national defense. An effort to influence foreign governments’ defense appropriations and to alter their economic relationship with Russia is a fruitless task. Subsidizing the defense budgets of rich European and Asian allies so they can use the funds saved on domestic social programs and pipelines to Russia is not in our best interest. If the American taxpayer was not forced to indirectly pay for the cheap loans to Russia by our European friends, it would then be their own business as to how they deal with their Soviet neighbors. But that is not the case. And since Europe’s and Japan’s response for decades has been benign neglect to our request and public criticism for our policies, the time has come for a reassessment of our entire foreign policy. The 20th Century notion that America has been chosen to police the world and pay all the bills, to make the world “safe for democracy” is no longer viable. Economically, we no longer can afford it; militarily, it is of no value to us. In the past 65 years, this interventionist policy has given us four major military conflicts. The more we scatter our troops and the more dollars we spend, the more likely we are to have war and the worse our economic problems become.

The Falklands crisis demonstrates so well the failure and inconsistency of an interventionist foreign policy. Our commitment to the Rio Treaty and to NATO is impossible to fulfill. The recent UN vote and our attempt to change it after it was cast (seems like Jimmy Carter and Andy Young did something like that also) are symbolic of an overall policy that is contradictory and lacks direction and meaning. This comes about when American interests are confused with demands and manipulation by other nations. A vivid example of this confusion is given in a wire service story about Secretary of State Haig’s remarks concerning the latest conflict in the Mideast. According to the official transcript of the briefing, Secretary Haig, speaking to reporters about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, said, “We not only lost an aircraft and a helicopter yesterday, there’s been a claim a second aircraft has been shot down, a second helicopter, and a number of army vehicles.” It seems that the Secretary has so confused Israeli and American interests that he speaks broadly as “we.”

It is ironic that we support Britain in the Falklands, while Israel, as recipient of billions of dollars of U.S. aid, continues selling weapons to Argentina and Iran. The American taxpayer remains the sacrificial lamb. What is wrong with a foreign policy based on American self-interest? Could it be that a policy like this just might also be a policy of humanitarianism and peace?

At the present time, 60 percent of our entire military budget is being spent on the defense of other nations. Nations we have, for all practical purposes, unilateral commitments to. The commitments, rather than reducing tension, increase it and aggravate the arms race. If Europe and Japan are unwilling to spend whatever is necessary to defend themselves, our exorbitant sacrifice will not preserve their liberty. If we stop our financial and military commitments to allies, their decisions in dealing with the Soviets will suddenly become more objective and realistic. They would become stronger militarily, as we will also. We then would no longer have to plead with them to hold back easy credits to the Communists—which, of course, is an inconsistent request, since we ourselves continue to extend many credits to the Soviet bloc nations.

The military subsidies to our allies do not serve the cause of freedom; we frequently see the funds saved used in social programs that are less than free-market oriented. Since we practice the same kind of economic and political nonsense, it’s difficult to be critical. If the funds saved by our allies on defense are not spent on trade assistance with the Soviets or aid to domestic socialistic programs, they can be used to subsidize car and steel companies by low taxes and export subsidies, cutting into our faltering market. And tragically, the worse the problem becomes, the more outcries we hear for tariff protection and more export subsidies—programs that contradict the notion of a free society and, in the past several decades, have contributed significantly to our weak economy, high interest rates, inflation, and unemployment.

NATO was strongly opposed by Mr. Republican himself, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. At the time of its passage, he said:

It is clear that the pact is a military alliance, a treaty by which one nation undertakes to arm half the world against the other half, and in which all the pact members agree to go to war if one is attacked.

No matter how defensive an alliance may be, if it carries the obligation to arm, it means the building up of competitive offensive armaments. This treaty, therefore means inevitably an armaments race and armaments races in the past have led to war…It would strain the American economy; Europeans would be encouraged to depend upon Americans rather than themselves for their defense; the U.S.S.R. would be unnecessarily provoked; and Truman had no constitutional right to send American troops abroad in peacetime without prior congressional approval.

More recently, Dan Smoot restated clearly this belief in the Review of the News: “On the other hand, if the Soviets hit the United States, the European nations will not come to our defense, and the building up of European nation as nuclear threats to Russia will be stalemated and neutralized.”

But the Soviets are stupid to believe NATO ever has or ever will be a threat to Russia. The United States has squandered something like a quarter of a trillion dollars on NATO, which has never provided a dime’s worth of deterrence against Soviet imperialistic aggression, or a penny’s worth of defense for the American homeland. It follows, therefore, that NATO has been a mighty boon to the Soviets in that it has drained off immense sums of money that could have been spent on weaponry to defend Americans against a Soviet surprise attack. I agree with the Soviet conclusion that none of our NATO allies will come to our aid if the Soviets attack us.

When Eisenhower was Commander of NATO forces, he said: “The large-scale permanent commitments of American troops to relatively fixed positions outside the continental limits would be costly beyond military returns.”

These quotes are hardly from left-wing liberals.

What will it ever take for us to learn the lessons of history? When will we come to realize that a free nation—unhampered by government intervention, personally, economically, and internationally—is far superior to a coercive state? And if the people of the world are to eat, be housed and be clothed, we must recognize the value of productive effort, sound money, and a free market, and a foreign policy dedicated to strength with determination to defend our freedom while minding our own business. One thing I am convinced of is that more and more American people are coming to this conclusion—that it is time we let our rich alhes take care of themselves, and that the lives of our young people and the dollars of our American taxpayers be used for the preservation of our security.

America has tried walking a dangerous tightrope in the Middle East, funding Israel then denouncing its actions, while angering Arab nations who also benefit from our largess. This has been going on for decades but safety and stability require we come down from the high wire.

July 14, 1982
THE MIDEAST CONFLICT
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Speaker, our involvement in the Palestinian-Israel conflict poses a moral and political dilemma for all Americans. I have met no one eager to send troops to Lebanon or willing to assume the financial burden it is bound to create. If true peace could be bought with money or foreign commitments, many Americans, as they have in the past, would go along with continuing financial and military aid to the Mideast.

Many Americans, however, reject the entire notion of overseas adventurism and giveaways for both moral and constitutional reasons. This group is now joined by the growing number of those disillusioned with the rare success, and frequent harm, that comes from our interventionist foreign policy and masochistic foreign aid programs. They will no longer stand idly by and watch our young people get bamboozled into another no-win war by being put between two warring factions with the false hope that peace will be miraculously achieved. The only thing holding the Camp David accords together are billions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money, and for this reason they are built on a shaky foundation, bound to crumble whenever the storm winds of conflict blow.

I find it inappropriate to criticize Israel for wanting to secure its borders. Yet if this means more military action than seems reasonable and it is financed entirely with American tax dollars, the U.S. Congress and the people of the United States who elect the Members of Congress bear a responsibility for what is happening.

Interventionism in the internal affairs of other nations and policing the world to “make it safe for democracy” do exactly the same thing as domestic economic intervention. They create many more problems than they solve. The Vietnam war is a good example of what is likely to result when intervention is pursued and our national security is not our only concern. Obviously our loss in Vietnam did not precipitate a war in Hawaii or California. It has been frequently argued that the reason why we stay in Europe, the Mideast, and the Far East is to prevent the battles from occurring on our own shores. In an age of ICBMs and space technology, this argument seems ludicrous. Yet the policies never change.

The absurdity of interventionism was clearly demonstrated by our participation in the Rio Treaty and in NATO. Obviously we could not perform both commitments except by making war against both Argentina and Britain. In the long run, it is anyone’s guess what this will do to our relationship with our neighbors to the south. Neutrality obviously would have served our national interest to a much greater extent.

Now we witness again this same absurd policy in the Mideast—we supply all the weapons and tacitly endorse the invasion of Lebanon, at a significant dollar cost to all Americans. Because innocent Lebanese civilians have been injured and killed, we cannot stand idly by. A proposed $20 million grant to Lebanon is quickly increased to $50 million for “humanitarian” reasons. To refuse would mean that America and the U.S. Congress are heartless and enjoy seeing the innocent suffer.

Because of the war we helped create, we offer to risk not only more dollars but now American boys to rescue the PLO, an organization we have never recognized and have as a policy tried for decades to destroy. When will this ever end? Economically we are teetering on the brink of collapse, and militarily we remain weak, weak and defenseless from a Soviet missile attack. All this interventionist activity designed to make us look strong serves only to weaken and demoralize our people. The American people are tired of sacrificing themselves for the world. It never seems to help and the cost is now prohibitive. On top of it all, we are not respected, and generally condemned for our meddling.

The foreign policy debate that has existed for the past 45 years must be changed from a discussion of whom we should support—the Arab countries or Israel, Argentina or Britain, Greece or Turkey, North or South Vietnam—to a debate about interventionism or armed neutrality.

It is interventionism, inflation and trade wars that inevitably lead to economic isolationism and finally to war. The pattern of the 1930s is a typical pattern of interventionism and trade wars leading to war. A sound money, free trade, and “keep your guns at home” program can give us peace and prosperity. The inflation that has permitted a massive international debt to accumulate is clearly intertwined with all the military activities of recent years. Martial law was declared in Poland on the day many loans were due to be paid to the international bankers.

It appears that Argentina’s $34 billion debt to Western banks and governments will never be paid. The massive debt of Brazil and Mexico, plus that of all the other Third-World nations, is indeed, a ticking time bomb. Subtle Arab threats not to renew their billions of dollars of short-term deposits in New York banks could easily influence our policy in the Mideast. Only through neutrality with strength can we hope once again to have a foreign policy of sense and direction.

But it is not the administration that is solely to blame; the Congress is equally culpable. It is so easy for Members of Congress to be critical of what the president is doing in the Mideast yet they themselves are as much to blame as he is. Why does Congress have a right to criticize the president for his daily decisions?

Last year the Congress encouraged the president to pursue a course he deemed necessary to stabilize the Mideast. By resolution the House—overwhelmingly 391 to 1—encouraged “the president to pursue a comprehensive and coordinated policy in Lebanon, including the development of an effective cease-fire, resolution of the issue of Syrian missiles, and promotion of the independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Lebanon.” Although the resolution does not have the force of law, it implies that Congress endorses virtually whatever action the president deems necessary and encourages further involvement in the Mideast.

Although it is clear the president has acted in accordance with congressional intent, the bigger question remains: Are the Congress and the president acting in accordance with the intent of the American people? I am convinced the American people no longer endorse foreign adventurism and believe that our best interests are secured by a policy of armed neutrality.

This was the policy of our government from its founding until 1917. It is only in the 20th Century that interventionism has been accepted as a foreign policy, with the obvious consequences of unprecedented world wars and the loss of enormous numbers of American lives on foreign soil. Our experiment with foreign policy interventionism has failed, just as our experience with domestic economic interventionism has failed.

Let us learn from that experience and revive the polices of free trade, neutrality, and a strong defense that took this country from an underdeveloped agrarian economy to the world’s major economic force. Only such policies will extricate us from absurd situations such as that which now prevails in the Mideast.

To this day we still prop up Communist China through the Export-Import Bank, thus subsidizing oppression while harming our own competitiveness.

September 14, 1982
EXPORT-IMPORT BANK LOAN
TO COMMUNIST CHINA IS A DISGRACE
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Speaker, recently, the administration extended a $68,425,000 credit to the Communist dictator of Red China through the Export-Import Bank.

It is outrageous that the American taxpayers are being forced to subsidize Communist China while domestic programs like Social Security are in jeopardy. Though the administration claims this loan credit is “in the national interest,” common sense alone tells us that is not true.

Our own economy is in recession. Over 10 million Americans are unemployed. American small businesses are failing in record numbers. The American steel industry is in a depression, and tens of thousands of steelworkers have been laid off. Yet the administration contends that it is in our “national interest” to make a $68 million subsidized loan to help Communist China build steel plants that will then unfairly compete with our own steel industry. This kind of action is an insult to the American people. The Communist Chinese will receive these loans at below-market interest rates, yet our struggling American businesses must pay market rates.

Communist China is not one of our friends. Their repressive and tyrannical regime is the very opposite of everything America stands for. It is against our best interests, in every way, to use our tax dollars to help prop up Communist dictatorships. This $68 million Export-Import loan guarantee is a tragedy and a disgrace.

As I pointed out previously, it is often non-binding resolutions that start us down the road to unwise foreign entanglements. A favored trick of the interventionists is to slip in open-ended commitments on resolutions regarding humanitarian crises.

September 28, 1982
HON. RON PAUL of TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Speaker, I oppose House Concurrent Resolution 409, which concerns the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps. It is said that a “yes” vote on the resolution is a vote against massacres. I disagree. Hardly anyone, surely, would accuse another of being in favor of such a massive disregard for human life. There are sound reasons, though for not passing a resolution of this kind without careful consideration of its entire meaning. The first section of the resolution—that condemns the immorality of ruthless killing—is a clear statement with which we all agree. However, section 5—which encourages the president to continue our involvement in the chaos in the Middle East in “every possible way”—just opens the door for more hostility, not less.

Urging the president to pursue peace by any means is an open-ended sanction to continue U.S. involvement in the problems that brought about the violence in the first place. This sanctioning of presidential power to pursue open-ended commitments reminds me of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution—at least in its thrust. It entrenches a foreign policy that we have followed for decades, one that led to the disastrous events of the Korea-Vietnam era. Endorsing international intervention is very different from just condemning massacres.

It is this very policy of interventionism that encouraged and permitted the invasion of Beirut and the massacre of civilians in Beirut and other Lebanese towns. Through our endorsement, financing and providing of weapons to the government of Israel, we literally subsidized the invasion that set the stage for the weekend massacre. And although our Pentagon did not plan the invasion, the fact that American dollars and American weapons were used means that we bear some responsibility for it.

And even as the bombs were falling on Beirut, we tripled our economic aid to Lebanon to rebuild the towns blown up by our weapons. To confuse matters even more, as the PLO—a declared enemy of the United States—appeared to be on the ropes, we risked life, limb and diplomacy to rescue them. For all of this the Arabs remain frustrated with us, and the Israeli-American relations worsen. The inevitable bad results of trying to be everything to everybody should surely persuade us to reassess our policy ofintervention.

In June of 1981, we the Congress passed a resolution (House Resolution 159) praising Philip Habib for his efforts in the Middle East. At that time, we felt compelled to endorse our past involvement in the Mideast and to encourage even greater involvement by urging the president to “pursue a comprehensive and coordinated policy in Lebanon, including the development of an effective cease-fire, resolution of the issue of the Syrian missiles, and promotion of the independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Lebanon.” These are good words prompted by good intentions, but they are hollow in substance and only encourage further fruitless involvement on our part. Nothing favorable has happened since June 1981; in fact, the problems have grown worse. Yet our financial and military commitment has also grown, while our relationships with Arabs and Jews continue to deteriorate

Condemning the killing is fine. But the fact that our policies can lead to and even promote the killing is a more crucial issue than any public pronouncement of this kind. Congressional denunciation of ruthless barbarism can certainly be justified, but if it is used as a stamp of approval for continuing a several-decades-old foreign policy that has helped produce this crisis, then it serves no useful purpose and can actually bring harm.

Congressional resolutions—House Concurrent Resolution 409 and House Resolution 159—are actually congressional stamps of approval for extensive presidential decisions to intervene with the use of troops, the use of dollars, the use of weapons. And once we are bogged down in a crisis like this one, it is difficult to withdraw gracefully. It seems we would have learned that lesson by now.

If the president decided next week to send in 50,000 troops from the Rapid Deployment Force—on a mission to maintain the peace—there would be little we in Congress could say. He would merely need to inform our congressional leaders of his decision, as required under the War Powers Act.

Yes, it is difficult to vote against a resolution that seems on the surface to be a simple condemnation of a massacre. But I am convinced that my position is consistent with a policy that would preclude our participation in setting the stage for the massacre in the first place.