National Endowment for Democracy:
Paying to Make Enemies
of
America
Rep.
Ron Paul (R-TX)
October 11, 2003
The
misnamed National
Endowment for Democracy (NED) is nothing more than a
costly program
that takes US taxpayer funds to promote favored politicians and
political parties abroad. What the NED does in foreign countries,
through its recipient
organizations the National Democratic Institute
(NDI) and the International Republican
Institute (IRI), would be
rightly illegal in the United States. The NED injects "soft money"
into
the domestic elections of foreign countries in favor of one party or
the other. Imagine
what a couple of hundred thousand dollars will do to
assist a politician or political
party in a relatively poor country
abroad. It is particularly Orwellian to call US manipulation
of foreign
elections "promoting democracy." How would Americans feel if the
Chinese
arrived with millions of dollars to support certain candidates
deemed friendly to China?
Would this be viewed as a democratic
development?
In an
excellent study of the
folly of the National Endowment for Democracy,
Barbara Conry notes that:
"NED, which
also has a history of corruption and financial mismanagement, is
superfluous at best and often destructive. Through the endowment, the
American
taxpayer has paid for special-interest groups to harass the
duly elected governments
of friendly countries, interfere in foreign
elections, and foster the corruption of
democratic movements...
"...the
controversy surrounding NED questions the wisdom of giving a
quasi-private
organization the fiat to pursue what is effectively an
independent foreign policy under
the guise of 'promoting democracy.'
Proponents of NED maintain that a private
organization is necessary to
overcome the restraints that limit the activities of a government
agency, yet they insist that the American taxpayer provide full funding
for this initiative.
NED's detractors point to the inherent
contradiction of a publicly funded organization
that is charged with
executing foreign policy (a power expressly given to the federal
government in the Constitution) yet exempt from nearly all political
and administrative controls...
"...In the
final analysis, the endowment embodies the most negative aspects of
both
private aid and official foreign aid – the pitfalls of
decentralized 'loose cannon' foreign
policy efforts combined with the
impression that the United States is trying to 'run
the show' around
the world."
The
National Endowment for
Democracy is dependent on the US taxpayer for funding,
but because NED
is not a government agency, it is not subject to Congressional
oversight. It is indeed a heavily subsidized foreign policy loose
cannon.
Since its
founding in 1983,
the National Endowment for Democracy has been headed
by Carl Gershman,
a member of the neo-Trotskyite Social Democrats/USA.
Perhaps
that is one reason
much of what NED has done in the former Communist Bloc
has ended up
benefiting former communists in those countries. As British Helsinki
Human
Rights Group Director Christine Stone has written:
Both (IRI
and NDI) are largely
funded by the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED)... which, in
turn, receive money from the American taxpayer. Both have favoured the
return to power of former high-ranking Communists which has also meant
co-opting
foot-soldiers from the new left who have extremely liberal
ideas...
Skender
Gjinushi, speaker of
the Albanian parliament, thanks the IRI for its assistance
in drafting
the Albanian constitution in 1998. What the IRI does not say is that
Gjinushi
was a member of the brutal Stalinist Politburo of Enver
Hoxha's Communist Party until
1990 and one of the main organizers of
the unrest that led to the fall of the Democratic
Party government in
1997 and the death of over 2000 people.
President
Stoyanov of Bulgaria
drools: "Without IRI's support we could not have come
so far so fast."
Indeed. Indeed. So far did they come that Ivan Kostov (who supplies
another encomium to IRI) was catapulted from his job teaching
Marxism-Leninism
at Sofia University to being prime minister of
Bulgaria and a leader of "reform."
In
Slovakia, NED funded
several initiatives aimed at defeating the freely-elected
government of
Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, who, interestingly, had been
persecuted
by the previous Communist regime. After the election, an IRI newsletter
boasted that "IRI polls changed the nature of the campaign," adding
that IRI efforts
secured "a victory for reformers in Slovakia." What
the IRI does not say is that
many of these "reformers" had been leading
members of the former Communist
regime of then-Czechoslovakia. Is this
democracy?
More
recently, IRI president
George A. Folsom last year praised a coup against
Venezuela's
democratically-elected president, saying, "Last night, led by every
sector of civil society, the Venezuelan people rose up to defend
democracy in
their country." It was later revealed that the National
Endowment for Democracy
provided funds to those organizations that
initiated the violent revolt in the streets
against Venezuela's legal
leaders. More than a dozen civilians were killed and hundreds
were
injured in this attempted coup. Is this promoting democracy?
The
National Endowment for Democracy, by meddling in the elections and
internal
politics of foreign countries, does more harm to the United
States than good. It creates
resentment and ill-will toward the United
States among millions abroad. It is beyond
time to de-fund this Cold
War relic and return to the foreign policy of our founders,
based on
open relations and trade with all countries and free from meddling and
manipulation in the internal affairs of others.
Ron
Paul is a Republican
Congressman from Texas. He was the 1988
Libertarian Party candidate for
President.