Tin cup diplomacy.

• Author: Binnendijk, Hans
• Position: Federal budget as a political bargaining chip in the post cold-war era

Fifty years ago the United States entered a new international system armed with resources to meet the new challenge of communism. At the height of the Marshall Plan, for example, some 16 percent of the U.S. federal budget was dedicated to supporting Europe alone. Today we are again in the early stages of a new international system, but without a unifying challenge to raise foreign affairs resources much above 1 percent of the federal budget. Remarkably, with tin cup diplomacy and some triage, the United States has been able to deal fairly successfully with post-Cold War complexity. Our capabilities are now fraying, however, and international leadership cannot be sustained unless the resource slide is reversed.

Reductions in the international affairs budget have been deep, with constant dollar cuts of about 34 percent over the past decade, including a 14 percent cut in just the last two years. Defense expenditures have also fallen 34 percent since 1986. Expressed as a percentage of GNP, defense and international affairs spending together has dropped from 6.9 percent to 3.7 percent during this period. International affairs cuts have also been targeted at specific accounts. For example, the drop in international security assistance has been 74 percent over the decade, so deep that if aid to Israel, Egypt, and Turkey is excluded, the United States has basically given up security assistance as an instrument of foreign policy. Other areas particularly hard hit are the United Nations, information and exchange programs, and multilateral development aid.

Analysts disagree about the impact of the international affairs cuts. The Georgetown University Institute for the Study of Diplomacy concluded last year that resource problems are already harming the capacity of the United States to lead and that the national security capital built up during the Cold War is being depleted. The Heritage Foundation, on the other hand, has argued that some key accounts have increased and that no real harm has been done.

There is some truth to both sides of these apparently contradictory conclusions. Innovative U.S. approaches have masked the impact of reductions, especially in vital areas of the world. Passing the tin cup and designing ad hoc solutions have worked so far. In Central Europe, for example, the Partnership for Peace is a bargain at $100 million, while the United States intends to pay for less than 10 percent of the NATO enlargement bill. In Korea, U.S. creation of the Korean...