The Fletcher School

SEN. RICHARD LUGAR HITS “CAVALIER” FOREIGN POLICY
IN APPEARANCE AT FLETCHER SCHOOL

Medford, Mass.—Charging that foreign affairs has become “the neglected sibling of national security policy,” Richard G. Lugar [R-Ind.], Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today sent a clear message to the White House [and, to a lesser extent, the Republican-controlled Congress], that he is increasingly dissatisfied by its handling of the crisis in Iraq and the war on terrorism.

Speaking to about 300 graduating seniors at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, the nation’s oldest school of international affairs, he suggested there has been too heavy a reliance on military as opposed to diplomatic solutions, too much bypassing of the United Nations and belittling of our Allies, and too much scoffing at international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Meeting with reporters prior to his speech, Sen. Lugar described himself as “a friend of the president” and maintained, in response to a reporter’s question, he was not about to break with the administration. But in the next breath, he criticized “the cavalier way we’re approaching foreign policy.”

A low-key, moderate Republican, the senator mostly avoided referring directly to President Bush or his administration by name. Instead he couched his comments with references to “we” or “the United States.” But to those gathered for his speech, there was no mistaking the main target of his remarks.

In one important passage Sen. Lugar said: “Unless the United States commits itself to a sustained program of repairing and building alliances, expanding trade, pursuing resolutions to regional conflicts, supporting democracy and development worldwide, and controlling weapons of mass destruction, we are likely to experience acts of catastrophic terrorism that would undermine our economy, damage our society, and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.”

Then he added: “The United States, as a nation, has not made this commitment.”

Sen. Lugar then addressed the go-it-alone tendencies of the Bush Administration, which have at times alienated our alliances abroad. “We have relied heavily on military options and unilateral approaches that weakened our alliances. We have engaged in self-flagellation over the Sept. 11 tragedy rather than executing affirmative global strategies aimed at addressing the root causes of terrorism,” he said.

Later he added: “National security decision-making can rarely be separated from the constraints of the international community, if only because our resources and influence are finite. Our security depends not on clever decision-making about when to go it alone, but on careful maintenance of our relations with other countries that ensures the international community will be with us in a crisis.”

Nor was Congress spared the senator’s criticism. Noting that the defense budget is more than 13 times larger than the foreign affairs budget, he said: “We have yet to alter the status of foreign affairs as the neglected sibling of national security policy.”

For the complete text of Sen. Lugar’s speech, go to http://fletcher.tufts.edu/news/2004/05/lugar.shtml