WASHINGTON – Deep Republican cuts to foreign aid would be ‘detrimental’ to national security, top US diplomat Hillary Clinton warned Monday, saying Washington cannot afford to ‘recede’ from its global presence.
She had told House Speaker John Boehner that the cuts would cause the State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID) to scale back their critical roles in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Clinton said. The secretary of state also cited political upheaval in Egypt, the linchpin of US peacemaking in the Middle East, as a key reason for keeping a strong diplomatic presence to help defuse crises.
“Massive cuts proposed by Republicans in the House of Representatives will be detrimental to America’s national security,” Clinton told reporters after talks with Boehner, the most powerful Republican. “We need the resources to do the job, otherwise we will pay a higher price later in crises that are allowed to simmer and boil over into conflicts.”
She said the State Department and USAID were on the frontlines of US national security challenges and promoting American jobs as well. If the cuts go forward, the US diplomatic apparatus would have to ‘significantly’ scale back its work in hotspots like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as critical health, food security, climate change, border security and trade promotion efforts abroad, Clinton noted. She proposed reaching reasonable bipartisan consensus to resolve the standoff.
