Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Nations— and to international relations more generally— helped to feed
this criticism, creating an even larger backlash against the United Nations
and against U.S. foreign economic aid in particular.
26
Even well into the
1980s, however, the Cold War tempered this opposition. Both the United
Nations and broader U.S. foreign aid were important tools in the larger
effort to construct and maintain a robust global capitalist system that could
withstand the affronts of Soviet-style socialism and its Eastern European
and Latin American facsimiles.
Between 1988 and 1992, as the Cold War lurched into irrelevance amid
a U.S.-led war in the Persian Gulf and an economic recession at home,
domestic calls for a reduction in U.S. foreign aid found new credence
among policymakers and the public. New funding for international envi-
ronmental programs— programs that conservatives argued would slow
domestic economic growth— provided grist for the mill. As Michigan con-
gressman William Broomfield lamented, the UNCED was coming “at what
I think most of us would agree is a bad time. The U.S. economy remains in
recession, and worldwide economic conditions are weak. . . . We are being
asked for more foreign aid at a time when the public clearly favors focusing
on domestic issues.”
27
Thus, when Bohlen addressed Congress with his plan for implement-
ing sustainable development through the UNCED, he stressed that “this
is not another foreign aid concept.”
28
In rhetoric that reflected Ronald Rea-
gan's insistence on “trade, not aid” and consistent with the Bush party line
on domestic welfare issues, Bohlen claimed that sustainable development
presented a way to help the Bangladeshis feed themselves, “not through
handouts, but by earning their own way.”
29
This domestic resistance to anything that looked like new foreign aid
put the Bush administration in an awkward position internationally. Bush
had aggressively and effectively mobilized Europe's liberal democracies as
allies in the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, and many of these allies— especially
Germany and the United Kingdom— now looked to the United States to
play a leadership role in environmental affairs. Japan and a number of
European nations indicated that they were ready to make major financial
commitments to sustainable development at the Rio Conference— the
European Community proposed national targets of 0.7 percent of GDP
for foreign aid— and that they would match these with deep cuts in emis-
sions at home.
30
The Bush administration was unwilling to match these
