The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2018 19 they are eating our candy. There is something that we have to do, and it’s going to entail a fiscal commitment to the region as well as re-establishing our strong presence there. —Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the FY 2019 State Department budget, May 23. Cuts—A Signal that We’re Out I want to talk to you about the consequences of some of these cuts. We regularly read reports of Russian money and influence flowing into the Balkans at rates that, frankly, we did not see before the Trump administra- tion. They see an opportunity as we withdraw from the Balkans to essen- tially set up a new front ... They’re buying up media companies, they’re scoring contracts for oil and gas, brib- ing government officials and funding biker gangs, martial arts clubs, all sorts of pseudo militaries. It really looks a lot like the leadup to what happened in eastern Ukraine. But this budget that you’re presenting to us calls for gover- nance funding cuts of 91 percent in Albania, 75 percent cuts in Macedo- nia, 69 percent in Serbia, 67 percent in Bosnia. These are catastrophic withdrawals of funding. And another very clear signal to the Russians that we’re out. And you should fill the void. —Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the FY19 State Department budget, May 24.