re: "House panel votes to defund the OAS"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside The Foreign Policy Machine") covers a possibly momentous development.

Money quote(s):

"The House Foreign Affairs Committee began its Wednesday markup of the State Department authorization bill by voting to end funding for the Organization of American States (OAS), with Republicans lambasting the organization as an enemy of freedom and democracy.

The one-hour debate over the GOP proposal to cut the entire $48.5 million annual U.S contribution to the OAS is only the beginning of what looks to be a long and contentious debate over the fiscal 2012 State Department and foreign operations authorization bill written by chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Democrats accused the Republicans of isolationism and retreat for their proposal, while the Republicans accused the OAS of being an ally of anti-U.S. regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. The OAS Charter was signed in 1948 at a conference led by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall."

By their fruits shall you know them. Or something like that.

Despite the fine pedigree and charter, lots of international organizations have, to put it gently, not lived up to expectations. The OAS in recent years has acted more like a club of presidents rather than the umbrella group of Western Hemisphere democracies that it's billed as being.

This will, I expect, amount to nothing much. At least not this time. But it puts the OAS (and other international organizations who exist substantially on the U.S. dime) on notice. Personally, I'm rather fond of the OAS's Washington establishment. They do good work. Some of their principals' political wrangling, especially lately, had some pretty bad optics nonetheless.

When it comes to international fora and organizations in general, let's just say that CAA is a fan of the idea. As for the reality: they haven't come close to matching the vision, to say the least. It remains to be seen, in some cases, whether things would be better, in their individual areas of action/inaction, whether their absence would in fact be an improvement.

Be sure to read the whole article for the partisan play-by-play.