To start off, if even haven’t read it, make sure to catch Daniel’s Ukraine roundup over at Bloggledygook.

Now, there are two things regarding the situation in Ukraine that has made me crack a scowl lately, except it doesn’t have anything to do with what Ukraine is doing. It has to do with Washington. Tim Russo from Democracy Guy points me to an article in the Washington Post, while biased sounding as it is, throws out some numbers that just irritate me to no end.

In the weeks after a popular uprising toppled a corrupt government in Ukraine, President Bush hailed the so-called Orange Revolution as proof that democracy was on the march and promised $60 million to help secure it in Kiev. But Republican congressional allies balked and slashed it this week to $33.7 million.

The shrinking financial commitment to Ukrainian democracy highlights a broader gap between rhetoric and resources among budget writers in the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill as the president vows to devote his second term to “ending tyranny in our world,” according to budget documents, congressional critics and democracy advocates.

The administration has pumped substantial new funds into promoting democracy in Muslim countries but virtually nowhere else in the world. The administration has cut budgets for groups struggling to build civil society and democratic institutions in Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia, even as Moscow has pulled back from democracy and governments in China, Burma, Uzbekistan and elsewhere remain among the most repressive in the world.

Funding for the National Endowment for Democracy has remained flat for the past two years except in the Middle East, while separate democracy-building programs have been slashed by 38 percent in Eastern Europe and 46 percent in the former Soviet Union during Bush’s presidency. The venerable beacons of American-style democracy, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, are receiving no sizable increases.
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Among groups that will lose out is the Asia Foundation, which works to reform legal codes, foster civil society and promote women’s rights in places such as Indonesia, where it is credited with helping the transition from decades of dictatorship. The Bush budget for the 2006 fiscal year cuts the foundation’s grant from $13 million to $10 million. “Any cut at that level would be very difficult for our program,” said Nancy Yuan, a foundation vice president.

Also facing cuts is the Eurasia Foundation, which has been told that the final installment of a $25 million grant to set up a U.S.-European-Russian democracy program in Russia may be delayed despite President Vladimir Putin’s moves to clamp down on political opposition. “We can’t give up,” said Charles William Maynes, president of the Eurasia Foundation. “It would be disastrous if we do.”

The International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the main U.S. agencies that teach political activists how to conduct fair elections, devote about half of their budgets to Iraq and the Middle East, according Craner, who is now IRI president.

Measuring how much Washington spends on democracy promotion is difficult because the money is scattered among programs and much of it is embedded in grants by the U.S. Agency for International Development. But recent trends have been clear. USAID spending on democracy and governance programs alone shot up from $671 million in 2002 to $1.2 billion in 2004, but almost all of that increase was devoted to Iraq and Afghanistan. Without those two countries, the USAID democracy spending in 2004 was $685 million, virtually unchanged from two years earlier.
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The National Endowment for Democracy, which funds the IRI, the NDI and other programs, received $80 million, twice its budget of two years ago, but the entire $40 million increase went to Bush’s Middle East democracy initiative, leaving everything else flat. Voice of America received an extra $10 million, but it was devoted to expanding programs in Persian, Dari, Urdu and Pashtu aimed at non-Arabic Muslim listeners. The only other broadcasts to get major funding increases were those aimed at Cuba, which went from $27 million to $37.9 million.

At the same time, funding for the Support for East European Democracy Act was sliced by an additional $14 million, to $382 million. The largest part of this program is aimed at Serbia, still in transition from the era of Slobodan Milosevic. And funding for the Freedom Support Act focusing on Russia and 11 other former Soviet republics was slashed by $78 million, to $482 million, down from $894 million in 2002.

I am obviously glad that so much work is going into the Middle East. But I am extremely irritated that zero increased effort is being put into Eastern Europe despite the resounding victories that have been secured over the past few years. Want to see the rundown? Here’s a graph.

Tim notes something that the story forgot about: results over security.

What the story failed to note is that the majority of the money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan is spent not on substantive democracy work but security. Before you can even hire an expert trainer to go into Iraq or Afghanistan, you have to hire 4 security officers, arm them, and equip them with armored vehicles. No democracy trainer goes anywhere in Iraq without an armed lead vehicle, an armed following vehicle, and an armored car for themselves. That’s if they are able to move at all…almost every democracy trainer in Iraq is under lock down at some point. There are periods of weeks at a time when a trainer doesn’t actually meet an Iraqi because of security concerns.

Then there are the times when security is so bad the trainers are not even in the country. Amman, Jordan is the headquarters for many democracy programs in Iraq. That’s right…it’s not even in Iraq. When I was in Palestine in December & January training election observers, it was amazing how many “Iraq program directors” I met in Jerusalem, spending their per diem on holiday from their “program” in…Jordan. During such periods, the Hilton in Amman certainly benefits from the increase in democracy funding. Not clear that many Iraqis do.

The bottom line is that for every $1 spent on democracy in Iraq, perhaps 10 cents of it reaches Iraqis…perhaps even less. That money is getting increased by Bush. For every $1 spent on democracy anywhere else, (say, Ukraine), perhaps 50 cents of it reaches its target. There’s more democracy bang for the buck in places just as important as Iraq, but that money is being reduced. It doesn’t make any sense.

This is where I could go into a rant on government bureaucracy and accountability, but I will restrain myself. Iraq is beyond crucial to the democracy dominoes toppling over the corrupt regimes of the Middle East. But Eastern Europe is important too, and the opportunity has been out there for nearly 15 years to do something about it. The money being cut and not provided are to some of my favorite foundations and news sources that really get out the word. Our Congressmen need to stop increasing unsustainable Medicare pensions and put some money where American interests will be served for generations to come. Aussiegirl puts it in a way that both humors me and makes the point I’m not humorous enough to make at the moment.

Sure, it’s up to Yushchenko and his administration, but is there something wrong with being a little encouraging? Or will other countries take a lesson from this attitude before deciding which side to seek out? Now that we encouraged you, you can sink or swim seems to be Washington’s message. Recently the White House’s request for 60 million in aid to Ukraine was cut to 30 million by Congress. They probably spent more on a chicken feeding demonstration museum in Podunk, Arkansas. Chicken Kiev, anyone?

We all know that Congress is absolutely inept. Their interests, for the most part, certainly haven’t caught up with the times. This leads me to the second thing that bothers me, which is another matter of Congressional unreliability. They have not yet extended an invitation for Yushchenko to speak to Congress during his visit to America.

President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko still did not receive an invitation to address a joint session of both chambers of the US Congress. It is possible that such an invitation will not come at all, Radio Liberty was told in the office of Dennis Hasterd, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

According to an official, the organizing of such an address is a difficult procedure, which requires a co-ordination of many officials and and institutions. At the same time, both chambers of the Congress have already left for their Easter vacations until April 5.
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An example of the White House’s more reserved stance towards the new Ukrainian government is an emphasis on calling the first visit of Yushchenko to the US a “working” visit, instead of a more prestigious “state” visit.

Though the Americans explain this by lack of time, Washington was able to organize a state visit of the Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in only several weeks. Saakashvili came to the US a month after his inauguration.

This is ridiculous. From the Action Ukraine Report (which you need to sign up for):

As one of the most astute and knowledgeable long-time observers in Washington of U.S. policies towards Ukraine said today, “……based upon the most elementary political and diplomatic considerations an invitation should have been issued weeks ago, this sadly is not the case.”

“An invitation has not yet been extended and over the last week to ten days we have all heard an array of excuses, fumbling deflections, misstatements and other foolishness. The cause to get the invitation issued must continue and accelerate.

“For President Yushchenko to arrive in Washington without having received such an invitation would be an outrage and an embarrassment to the United States, Congress and common sense.

“……..someone in the Speaker’s office has today suggested there is insufficient interest in Yushchenko appearing before Congress by saying that only one written request has been received.

“As you continue the effort know that the reference to one letter is not true and simply beyond any realm of credibility.

“We know that Chairman Lugar sent a letter, the Congressional Ukraine Caucus sent a letter, as did Chairman Hyde (co-signed I believe by Ranking Member Congressman Lantos).

Other congressional offices have said they have sent letters and, of course, we have been told repeatedly that the White House has made it clear to the Speaker (though in my conversations they have said “Speaker’s office”) that the Administration favors an invitation being extended to President Yushchenko.

Daniel says something that needs to be repeated a few times:

Will our government risk tweaking Putin and give Yushchenko a proper welcome?

Let me run that through the Altavista translator for those of you speaking Russian:

???????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????? Putin ???????????? ????????????????? ??????????????????????? ????????????????? Yushchenko ????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Well, Congress? Will you make a mockery of us? Congress says it has received only one letter; let’s send them a thousand. You can contact House Speaker Dennis Hastert here. Please, write a letter, and if you can’t do that, at least transcribe an email through the online form.