Cosmic but not critical:
Hehir, J Bryan
Church/world watch Cosmic, but not critical J. Bryan Hehir RAYMOND aron once wrote that twentieth-century international relations were a scholar's dream and a statesman's nightmare. The scholar...
...contribution is then matched on a pro-rated basis by other industrialized nations...
...IDA is the more straightforward case...
...During the 1970s, when some of the transnational economic questions were under scrutiny, IDA had some close calls in the Congress but escaped without serious damage...
...contributions usually respond by saying that IDA has no public support...
...the substance of the issues tests thejimits of moral reasoning...
...Both have been called to account for policies which affect our survival...
...The Congress regularly holds IDA hostage to other issues...
...The $750 million is substantially below what others expected the United States to propose...
...allies, who have taken on added funding responsibilities in the 1980s, hoped for a U.S...
...The chronic issues have some common characteristics: they are transnational in scope, political-economic in nature, and have greatest impact on the poor of the world...
...Because they affect the poor most decisively, there are often no powerful voices calling attention to the crisis proportion of these chronic issues...
...The U.S...
...The cosmic question of nuclear war has life-and-death consequences which a recently aroused public has effectively grasped...
...IDA has neither public visibility nor consistent constituency in part because the public knows about "cosmic questions" and "crisis questions" but rarely about "chronic questions...
...This is not a plea to divert attention from the nuclear question, but to use our experience of it to address chronic questions with cosmic consequences...
...The result has been felt in both the administration and the Congress...
...but the common reality is that vast numbers of their people are desperately poor...
...contribution to IDA, using the device of extending the number of years in which our payments would be made...
...The IDA is the World Bank's "soft-loan" agency...
...At the recent annual meeting of the World Bank in Washington, the Reagan administration proposed a U.S...
...Lebanon and Central America embody the meaning of crisis questions...
...The 1980s have been less beneficent...
...The charge is both true, tragic, and unfairly tilted against the American public...
...Because they are transnational these issues have a particular complexity they require major coordinated action...
...The $ 16 billion figure is needed to sustain IDA funding at current levels over the next four years...
...The reason why such an effort is drastically needed at this time is the miniscule amount of attention these chronic issues now receive in the United States...
...Periodically, the chronic issues take on proportions which force consideration of them...
...Congressional committees confronted with proposals to increase U.S...
...funding will produce an IDA pool of $9 billion...
...The difference between $9 billion and $16 billion is calculated in life-and-death terms for people throughout the world...
...Such is the case this autumn with the foreign debt of developing countries and the funding of both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Development Association (IDA...
...but it takes a major effort of analysis and imagination for us to grasp the dimensions of the human problem these nations face...
...Because they are political-economic they sometimes lack the stark, alarming character of war-and-peace questions...
...the stakes of the issues produce a sense of tragedy and terror...
...it makes long-term, low interest loans to the "least developed nations" of the world...
...Poverty in these nations is really "back to basics": the need is for potable water, minimal sanitation, and the bare essentials of nutrition...
...The consequences of IDA's status as an orphan in the United States are staggering...
...Moral analysis of foreign policy tends to fuse the dream and the nightmare...
...The responsibility rests with the administration, the Congress, and the general public...
...contribution of $750 million for the next replenishment...
...Behind such code words lies the stuff of human suffering...
...Presently, no sustained constituency exists in the United States to ask how our action on IDA affects the survival (Continued on page 575) (Continued from page 554) of others...
...This level of U.S...
...J. BRYAN HEHIR...
...Part of the problem is the array of issues which clamor for attention...
...Reading any major newspaper, one finds three categories...
...the statesman no relief from frustration...
...proposal that would have produced an IDA pool of $12-16 billion...
...The IDA-IMF issues, though quite different in nature, exemplify the fate and features of chronic questions...
...The scholar had endless territory for analysis...
...There are people in the United States more than most of us know about who also suffer in this way...
...First, "cosmic questions" which are so visible, so dangerous and so connected to survival that they impose themselves on us...
...their plight is due to a mix of causes, some natural, some human, some internal, some international...
...The Reagan administration first called for reductions in the U.S...
...Third, "chronic questions" which permeate world politics, have consequences which can be as catastrophic as the other issues, but which are at the margin of the public consciousness and the edge of the policy debate...
...Second, "crisis questions" which are more contained in scope but more decisive in their daily toll of human life...
...These countries differ in geography, culture, and circumstances...
...in the least developed nations GNP per capita is less than one dollar a day...
...the prime example is the nuclear question...
...indeed the administration, rather than exercising leadership, tells the world the Congress is the problem...
Vol. 110 • October 1983 • No. 18
