Part 2 of Phillips Interview on Foreign Policy Constitution Party National Website Phillips 2000 Campaign Website Article: Investing In America's Strategic Defe

Question: How do you feel about America's military readiness?
Submitted from Hector of Atlantic City, New Jersey through MSNBC.com (10/05/00)

 

Answer from Howard Phillips:

Foreign Policy And American Independence - Part 1 Of 2
Below is an except from an interview with Mr. Phillips on Foreign Policy

Mr. Phillips's campaign logistics did not allow a personal response to this question today. However, we hope you will find this substantial interview to be a great snapshot into what makes Howard Phillips the most qualified candidate running for president on the foreign policy front.

Best Regards,
The Constitution Party Internet Technologies Team

Question: Recently the Associated Press reported on how the Clinton administration was wrangling with the Republicans in Congress over varied proposals pertaining to the International Monetary Fund for overhaul of that system. What would your approach be to such a thing and would it be very different from the Republican Congress plan or the Clinton Administration plan?

Phillips: One of the reasons why Christians and conservatives have been losing public policy debates, is that they are trapped into arguing in the wrong context. The question is not how we can improve the International Monetary Fund, but how we can mostly promptly and effectively, with minimum damage, extricate ourselves from the International Monetary Fund.

The United States has somewhere between 17 and 19 percent of the votes in the IMF, and that means that we don't control 100 percent of the money that we turn over to it. This past year Republicans and Democrats in Congress worked together to extend another $17.9 billion in resources to the IMF. The use of those funds are determined by the decision makers in that entity to assign as they deemed appropriate, with our having less than one fifth voice.

It is comprehensively unconstitutional for a variety of reasons for the United States to be sending money to the IMF and to be participating in it.

First of all it is beyond those enumerated powers that are delegated to the Federal government. Secondly, it violates the core premise of accountability that Congress shall control all legislative policy, that all decisions about policy and resources shall be vested in Congress and that Congress may not turn those legislative weapons over.

The Constitution says, "all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States...." The reason for that is Senators are to be accountable to the States and the House is accountable to the people. In one way or another, both the members of the House and Senate have to stand for election. However, I have never seen even one of the governors of the International Monetary Fund forced to defend to the American people the manner in which their funds have been dispersed.

The Constitution also makes clear that Congress can really only tax us for three reasons. One is to pay the country's debts, two is to provide for common defense and three is to promote the general welfare. And the range of those purposes is fully delineated in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. Even using Bill Clinton's dictionary, that constitutional language can't be stretched to encompass the IMF.

Question: The United Nations also takes money and redistributes it around the globe in varied amounts either via programs or just outright funding of things. What is your position regarding U.S. participation in the United Nations?

Phillips: For all the same reasons that apply themselves against IMF membership, we should also promptly be out of the United Nations, but there are additional reasons to consider, with respect to the U.N.

The preservation of the American nation-state is essential to the defense of our liberty, not least of all our religious liberty. The charter of the United Nations, unlike the United States Constitution, was written not by folks like Patrick Henry, James Madison and George Mason. I am not saying that these were all in the constitutional convention, but it was the ideas of those men and men like them that informed the crafting of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Whereas a Soviet spy drafted the Charter of the United Nations, by the name of Alger Hiss.

The premises of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution are Biblical. We lived in a Christian republic and each of the colonies that formed the union was in one way or another a Christian republic. The law system was based on the Bible. It was based on our British common law heritage. To the degree that we assign resources and policy control to the UN, we are accepting the humanistic law premises of the UN in preference to the Christian law premises of the American Republic.

Moreover as we strengthen the role of the United Nations militarily and their so called "peace keeping" operations, we do so while diminishing the military capabilities of the United States. We use up our military equipment. We use up the time and cost of personnel wearing the United States uniform, having them carry out missions that are unrelated to the constitutional functions of the United States Armed Forces.

One of the concerns with each passing year there is more and more political pressure in effect to unilaterally disarm the United States even as the military and police capabilities of the United Nations grow stronger. The preservation of the independent American nation-state is essential to the preservation of liberty. The United Nations is a daily threat to it, its policy objectives are antithetical to the principles of Christian liberty, and its long past time for us to have withdrawn from the United Nations.

Question: Just recently, the members of the U.N. security council agreed to developing a plan for total disarmament of nuclear weapons, would you be against entering into such agreements through the U.N.?

Phillips: I think the United States must act in its own self-interest and we should never enter into an agreement with those who are hostile to us to limit our capacity for self-defense. International gun control is as dangerous as domestic gun control.

Question: The U.S. military is still deployed in Kosovo and Bosnia, and we have an ongoing active military campaign in Iraq. What are your comments regarding foreign military intervention?

Phillips: We have military presence in a great many countries around the world supposedly for "peace keeping purposes." This is extremely unwise and does not relate to the defense of our own country but rather to the promotion of other ideological objectives, which are in conflict with our national interests in many cases. Example in southern Africa, under a program called IMET we have been providing training to the military of the Angolan communist government, to the detriment of anti-Communist forces in that country. At the same time, domestically, the rule of the military has been transformed to an excessive degree. There's a danger that the military will be used for purposes other than defense and the defense of the United States.

Another danger is the fact that we now have some 80 thousand federal militia, not the people's militia but the President's militia - the President's "praetorian guard," retained by some 45 federal agencies. Everything from the efficient Wildlife Service to the Environmental Protection Agency now have their own SWAT teams engaged in activities similar to, or prepared to engage in activities similar to those which we observed in Miami when the private home of law abiding American citizens was invaded by INS camouflaged assault forces in order to capture Elian Gonzales.

Each year some 25 thousand federal personnel are being trained in the techniques that we saw carried out in the capture of young Elian. This is extremely dangerous. It goes against the intentions of America's framers to avoid the creation of a standing army. In effect, we have given the President of the United States and the Executive Branch, a standing army that can be used against the liberties of the American people.

Members of Congress from both political parties have been complicit in permitting this growth of unconstitutional domestic military power, even as overseas they have permitted our armed forces to be used in ways that are unconstitutional. For example, overseas we now see NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, operating out of area. It was supposed to be a defensive alliance, but now it is an aggressive alliance carrying forward purposes which may be of interest to the member nations in Europe, but which do not relate to the proximate vital interests of the United States of America. It used to be said the Socialist International was like the Communist International without weapons. But now the Socialist International has weapons, the weapons of the United States of America. U.S military personnel have become mercenaries for the Socialist International, and so far, the Socialist International now dominates NATO. The Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana is a former leader with Felipe Gonzalez, of the Socialist Workers Party of Spain. Gerhard Schroeder the Chancellor of Germany, is a Socialist International member, as is Tony Blair of the United Kingdom, Lionel Jospin the Prime Minister of France and others. In effect, Bill Clinton, who is at least a fellow traveler of the Socialist International, has turned over our military personnel, in Kosovo and elsewhere. This was done to advance not the interest of the United States, but the policy objectives of the Socialist International under the cover of what used to be an anti-Soviet alliance, NATO.

Question: So, your position is that the U.S. should no longer participate in NATO?

Phillips: There is no wise rationale for our continued membership in NATO. In the days when there was an immediate Soviet threat to the United States, some argued on pragmatic grounds, that participation in NATO did serve our military interests. However, the situation is different today and one can well argue that NATO does disservice to those interests and that we are in effect providing cannon fodder in terms of human personnel and depleting our weapons resources through NATO.

The countries of Europe are capable of defending themselves. They're not about to be attacked by Communist China. They have the ability to defend themselves against the former Soviet Union, if that were to become a problem. But NATO membership requires that every member of NATO be prepared to go to war when any member of NATO comes under attack. Well, I don't want to see American lives lost if Romania and Hungary go to war over a territorial dispute. We should not be meddling in business that is not our own and it makes sense for us to promptly withdraw from NATO.

This is not a radical idea. Dwight Eisenhower when he was president operated under the assumption that NATO was a temporary alliance. Certainly no one would have contemplated that 55 years after the end of World War II, we would still have American troops on the ground in Europe and still be devoting much of our defense spending to activities that do not relate to our defense. We do need to spend more money on defense for military pay. We do need to spend more money for Military equipment. We do need to rebuild our navy, it's been cut from some 600 ships in the 1980's down to just about 300 ships today. We do need to spend money on things like strategic defense, various aircraft, and ground equipment. We need to replenish our supply of cruise missiles. But we don't need to spend our money keeping U.S. troops in Kosovo, Bosnia or any other places where they serve under UN or NATO auspices, under auspices that are irrelevant to our national defense.

Click here to view the Constitution Party candidate profile for Howard Phillips

Click here for a printable version of the Constitution Party platform
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)