123. Memorandum for the Record0
SUBJECT
- Why Such Reluctance to See a MAP Turnaround?
The more I get into the MAP business the more I see that a key obstacle to a MAP turnaround and to frank appraisal of where the US ought to be putting the emphasis in its aid effort is the real fear on the part of ambassadors, country teams, and Washington officials that they will be giving up something for nothing.
They argue that if it were really possible to look at the aid to a given country as a total package and to tailor its components for optimum impact, they would happily opt for more economic and less military aid. But they fear that this would not be the case. They claim that if they recommend a cut in MAP over the next five years they will simply be denying themselves at least one sort of country leverage without any assurance whatsoever that this will be compensated for in other fields. This is one of the most serious impedimenta to a rational “new look” at the MAP.
One ambassador said frankly “If I play ball with you and tell you that I feel MAP ought to be cut because our chief problems here are internal and not external, but my colleagues in other countries don’t play ball and continue making a big case for both economic and military aid, the result will be that my country takes a cut whereas they continue to get military baksheesh.”
A DCM opined that he had for years written justifications for MAP with tongue in cheek because he was fully aware that the military threat was secondary to the internal. But he feared that if he did not, MAP would simply be reduced and the country team would lose one form of valuable leverage, without gaining another.
A State official complained that if his bureau recommended a cut in MAP and a switch of the funds saved into economic aid, the Budget Bureau [Page 272] would accept the MAP cut but would argue that an increase in economic aid was more than previous experience showed to be necessary and deny it.
I realize all the problems involved in shifting substantial funds from MAP to other aid programs. A prolonged educational process will be involved, not least on the Hill. However, unless we can convince all concerned that the objective is not just a reduction of the total aid burden but a redirection of our total effort into areas of real payoff, we’re going to keep running into this powerful bureaucratic defense mechanism.
The remedy is obvious. We must shoot for greater fungibility between aid accounts and make it stick. Making Fowler Hamilton aid coordinator is an excellent first step, because he will have a vested interest in seeing this done. We should help him by seeking greater transferability between aid accounts, larger contingency funds, etc. We should not let MAP get put into DOD budget. And, in the six country MAP review we should not simply recommend a cut of so much in MAP over a six year period. Instead we should recommend a shift of comparable magnitude into forms of aid more directly attuned to the chief threats we face.
- Source: Washington National Records Center, RG 286, AID Administrator Files: FRC 65 A 481, White House, FY 1962. Secret. Drafted by Komer. Copies were sent to McGeorge Bundy, Rostow, Bell, Dungan, and Kenneth Hansen. Attached to the source text is an October 24 memorandum from McGeorge Bundy to Hamilton, which indicates that Komer was conducting a White House review of major MAP programs and that he would be available if Hamilton “should want to talk with him about it.” Bundy added that, although Jeffrey Kitchen was the formal chairman of the review, most of the energy for it came from Komer and Kenneth Hansen of the Bureau of the Budget. Also attached to the source text is a copy of an October 25 memorandum from Don Easum (AID) to Battle (S/S), indicating that AID was taking no action on Komer’s memorandum and was giving a copy only to Frank Coffin, but that a copy could be given to G/PM at Battle’s discretion.↩