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Hunter-


Just wanted to share this NY Times op-ed by General Colin Powell, the
USGLC's National Advisory Council Chair. It just went online and
will be in tomorrow's paper.

http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=40HbRZt4nk7pe3IvsO-OoQ


Please share it with your friends and networks on Twitter and
Facebook, as it's an important statement on what it takes to
strengthen American global leadership. His take: "We can't
do it for free."
http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=k8vRlYcjkembIrqU8U9eJw
http://action.usglc.org/site/R?i=MZPOLBZUq71jIWBNjX4HpA


Best,

Liz
Liz Schrayer, USGLC

American Leadership - We Can't Do It for Free

By COLIN POWELL MAY 24, 2017


At our best, being a great nation has always meant a commitment to
building a better, safer world - not just for ourselves, but for
our children and grandchildren. This has meant leading the world in
advancing the cause of peace, responding when disease and disaster
strike, lifting millions out of poverty and inspiring those yearning
for freedom.

This calling is under threat.


The administration's proposal, announced Tuesday, to slash
approximately 30 percent from the State Department and foreign
assistance budget signals an American retreat, leaving a vacuum that
would make us far less safe and prosperous. While it may sound
penny-wise, it is pound-foolish.


This proposal would bring resources for our civilian forces to a third
of what we spent at the height of Ronald Reagan's "peace
through strength" years, as a percentage of the gross domestic
product. It would be internationally irresponsible, distressing our
friends, encouraging our enemies and undermining our own economic and
national security interests.


The idea that putting Americans "first" requires a
withdrawal from the world is simply wrongheaded, because a retreat
would achieve exactly the opposite for our citizens. I learned that
lesson the hard way when I became secretary of state after a decade of
budget cuts that hollowed out our civilian foreign policy tools.


Many had assumed the Cold War's end would allow us to retreat
from the world, but cuts that may have looked logical at the time came
back to haunt us as tensions rose in the Middle East, Africa, the
Korean Peninsula and elsewhere. Confronting such challenges requires
not just a military that is second to none, but also well-resourced,
effective and empowered diplomats and aid workers.


Indeed, we're strongest when the face of America isn't
only a soldier carrying a gun but also a diplomat negotiating peace, a
Peace Corps volunteer bringing clean water to a village or a relief
worker stepping off a cargo plane as floodwaters rise. While I am all
for reviewing, reforming and strengthening the State Department and
the United States Agency for International Development, proposals to
zero out economic and development assistance in more than 35 countries
would effectively lower our flag at our outposts around the world and
make us far less safe.


Today, the world is witnessing some of the most significant
humanitarian crises in living memory. With more than 65 million people
displaced, there have never been more people fleeing war and
instability since World War II. The famines engulfing families in
South Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria and Somalia put more than 20 million
people at risk of starvation - further destabilizing regions
already under threat from the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and
Al-Shabaab.


Do we really want to slash the State Department and the U.S.A.I.D. at
such a perilous moment? The American answer has always been no. Yet
this budget proposal has forced us to ask what America's role in
the world is and what kind of nation we seek to be. The
president's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, has described these
cuts as "not a reflection of the president's policies
regarding an attitude toward State." But how is a 32 percent cut
to our civilian programs overseas anything but a clear expression of
policy?


True, many in Congress have effectively declared the
administration's budget proposal "dead on arrival,"
but they also acknowledge that it will set the tone for the coming
budget debate. That's the wrong conversation. Our diplomacy and
development budget is not just about reducing spending and finding
efficiencies. We need a frank conversation about what we stand for as
that "shining city on a hill." And that conversation
begins by acknowledging that we can't do it on the cheap.


Diplomacy and aid aren't the only self-defeating cuts in the
administration's proposal. A call to all but eliminate two key
export-promotion agencies - the Overseas Private Investment
Corporation and the Trade and Development Agency - would harm
thousands of American workers and actually add to the deficit. And any
cuts to our economic development investments in Africa and elsewhere
would undermine our ability to build new customer bases in the
world's fastest-growing markets.


With 95 percent of the world's consumers outside our borders,
it's not "America first" to surrender the field to
an ambitious China rapidly expanding its influence, building highways
and railroads across Africa and Asia. China is far from slashing its
development budget. Instead, it's growing - by more than
780 percent in Africa alone since 2003.


Since the release of its initial budget request in March, the
administration has started to demonstrate a more strategic foreign
policy approach. This is welcome, but it will take far more than a
strike against Syria, a harder line on Russia, increased pressure on
North Korea and deeper engagement with China to steer American foreign
policy. It also takes the resources to underwrite it.


America is great when we're the country that the world admires,
a beacon of hope and a principled people who are generous, fair and
caring. That's the American way. If we're still that
nation, then we must continue to devote this small but strategic 1
percent of our federal budget to this mission.


Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield,
but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And
that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars
that we can avoid, so that we fight only the ones we must. For our
service members and citizens, it's an investment we must make.

---

Colin Powell was the secretary of state from 2001 to 2005.


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