Bush Cites Limits On Aid To Russia
Published: March 12, 1992
WASHINGTON, March 11— Responding to criticism by former President Richard M. Nixon that he has not done enough to support democratic reforms in the former Soviet Union, President Bush said today that his Administration does not have a "blank check" to finance extensive aid programs.
Mr. Bush did say that his Administration was now considering contributing to a multibillion-dollar international fund to stabilize the ruble, a key ingredient for economic reform in Russia. While other Administration officials have said United States support for such a fund was under consideration, this was the first time Mr. Bush himself had expressed his interest.
Bush Response
Nevertheless, when asked about Mr. Nixon's criticism at a White House news conference, Mr. Bush said: "Where we might have a difference, is we're living in a time of constrained resources. There isn't a lot of money around. We are spending too much as it already is. So to do the things I would really like to do, I don't have a blank check for all that. I think the question should be addressed to President Nixon."
Mr. Bush's White House news conference was held in the morning, just a few hours before President Nixon, in an address to a foreign affairs conference across town, repeated his criticism of the American and Western response to the collapse of Communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The 79-year-old Mr. Nixon, for his part, spoke for 30 minutes without notes or a lectern, and appealed to President Bush and Congress to join together in a bipartisan effort to transform the former Soviet republics into democracies. He said they should employ the same vision and energy that President Harry S. Truman used to persuade Mr. Nixon and John F. Kennedy, when they were both young Congressmen, to support the beginnings of the Marshall Plan 45 years ago.
"All of the pollsters are telling their candidates, don't tackle foreign policy, and particularly not foreign aid, because foreign aid is poison as a political issue," Mr. Nixon said. "They're wrong and history proves it. In 1947, I recall vividly as if it were yesterday what Harry Truman did."
In that year, Mr. Nixon said, President Truman's approval rating was 35 percent, and the Congress was overwhelmingly Republican controlled.
"And yet, I remember Harry Truman -- jaunty, some said a little cocky -- coming down before a joint session of the Congress and asking for millions of dollars in aid to Greece and Turkey to prevent Communist subversion and possibly Communist aggression. It was a very tough vote for two very young and both, as history later indicated, rather ambitious young Congressmen." Kennedy and Nixon Together
The liberal Democrats in Mr. Kennedy's Massachusetts district were against military foreign aid, said Mr. Nixon. And the conservative Republicans in his own California district were against all foreign aid.
"Under the circumstances, however, after considering it, we both voted for it," he said, "and a majority in that Republican House and the Senate voted for that program and that was the program which later was developed into the Marshall Plan and later into NATO, which not only contained Communism but bought the time that was essential for Communism to fail."
The next year, recalled Mr. Nixon, Harry Truman won the election for President. What is more important, he added, is that that action by a Democratic President was supported by a Republican Congress.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/12/world/bush-cites-limits-on-aid-to-russia.html