2.
peanutsts" Well, those peanuts make up about eighty per cent of what the U.S. provides to some fifty countries in foreign assistance. So the U.S. doesn't give very much. As a matter of fact, eighty per cent of the U.S. military assistance goes to two countries, Israel and Egypt, and forty-two per cent of American economic assistance goes to the same two countries. So, the U.S. hasn't been terribly generous, and in real terms, American foreign assistance to Africa is less, adjusted for infl ation, than it was in 1962. So, in real terms the economic assistance has dropped. It's nothing more than a pittance.
Now, the question is, what, on this score, have the Reagan people done. I think the Reagan people probably have been judged a little unfairly inasmuch as they have not slashed aid in the way that has been commonly described. What they did was to slash the Carter request. As a matter of fact, over the last two Congresses, we'v 'e been operating under a continuing resolution. We haven't gotten a foreign assistance bill through. And so they cut that, and as a matter of fact, the request from Reagan this time is a little more than what actually was provided in economic assistance under the continuing resolution. Some countries have been cut out altogether. This is the major criticism with the Reagan administration as a point of departure from the Carter program. The assistance always has been too little. I think the Carter people deserve criticism for that as well. Consider that the arms bill in the world this year will be about $450,000,000,000, with the U.S. as the major suppliers, followed then by the Soviets. This is less than five per cent of that amount spent on official development by the industrialized nations in the world. Also that the U.S. is thirteenth on a list of sixteen aid-giving industrialized nations. The U.S. contribution is something less than three-tenths of one per cent of GNP, when in the decade of development we've made a committment to get up to seven-tenths of one per cent. Countries like Nigeria give better than one per cent of their GNP, and some of the Arab countries give in excess of that. So we can see the U.S. record hasn't been good. Carter needs to be criticized for that, and all of his predecessors.
But what is the real difference with the Reagan people? The difference is that they have married to this sort of stinginess an element of rewarding your friends and brutalizing your enemies. We've seen a country like Benin, that only got $4,000,000 last year, cut out of the request altogether because Benin in international forums has described the United States as the running dog, capitalist-lackey structure of the world. The folk in Washington didn't take kindly to that and cut them out altogether. The same thing has happened with Mozambique. Because of the recent difficulties in the relationship with Mozambique, the United States has taken the unfortunate course of cutting out food assistance. It is the first time in my memory that PL 480 assistance has been used as a political weapon. Of course, we have never given Nigeria a cent. It strikes me as extraordinary that we give to Israel $1,000,000,000 a year to three million people in economic assistance, and a country like
Nigeria where one out of every four Subsaharan Africans lives, we give nothing in economic assistance. A little technical program, but nothing of any consequence, when Nigeria remains a very, very poor country. Reagan has not disturbed that. The major change in policy is the increase in military assistance. Again, you reward your friends and you punish your enemies. The U.S. is going to provide the Sudan with $100,000,000 in military assistance, Kenya