154. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson 1
SUBJECT
- Food for the Hungry, the Hill, and the Indians
The best way of meeting your objectives has been studied by Komer, Bator, Schultze, AID, Agriculture, and State (Freeman is away, but Schnittker has signed on).
The basic problem is to steer a course that will endorse food for India, and open the way for a broad new food program next year, without undermining or attempting to replace your existing PL 480 authority this year. (To seek small changes in the present law would merely open Pandora’s box for the Committees, and to put a whole [Page 310] new program forward for legislation this year is just not practicable, according to Budget and Agriculture.)
The best arrangement we can think of is as follows:
First, to give turn-around time, authorize an interim food program for India, redesigned to meet as many as possible of the new criteria. This is purely a standby operation and we recommend four months instead of two simply to avoid useless nervousness both in the bureaucracy and in India. We also believe it may be better not to use a short-fuse deadline on the Congress, but you will have a better judgment on this point.
Four Months
Two Months
Speak to me2
Second, send up a message asking for a joint Congressional resolution with the following components:3
- 1.
- An endorsement of this brief extension of the PL 480 agreement with India.
- 2.
- A further endorsement of other interim programs that will be necessary in the months between now and the new legislative proposal.
- 3.
- A broader endorsement (after the manner of the Vandenberg
Resolution of 1948) of your intent to develop a basic new
program to provide food for the hungry in cooperation with the
governments of the hungry nations and the other food-producing
countries—a new world-wide war against hunger. The components of
the resolution would be framed to match the following position,
which would be set out in an accompanying message:
- a.
- Stress your concern over the dangerous food problem facing the world and particularly Asia in the coming years.
- b.
- State your conviction that our Food for Peace program will require major redirection if we are to help the developing nations cope with this problem.
- c.
- Announce that you are now studying ways of redirecting
these programs so that US food aid will: [Page 311]
- —be contingent upon effective self-help efforts by the recipient nation, particularly those aimed at securing an expansion in agricultural output.
- —maximize the contribution of food aid to overall economic development goals.
- —meet the nutritional needs and prevent famine among the peoples of the recipient countries.
- —encourage the cooperative participation of other food exporting countries in this whole effort.
- d.
- Emphasize the connection between the food problem and the population problem and reiterate your willingness to work with LDC’s on programs to moderate the population explosion.
- e.
- State your intention to submit major changes in PL 480 legislation at the next session, once your intensive study has been completed.
The attached outline message shows the skeleton of what could be done. There are plenty of statistics and lots of eloquence which can be supplied in support of this basic argument.
What we need to know now is whether this basic approach meets your requirements. If it does, we can produce a fleshed-out resolution and a draft message over the weekend with help from Goodwin and Galbraith, both of whom are in town.
Yes
No
Speak to me
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, India, Vol. V, Memos and Miscellaneous, 6/65–9/65. Confidential.↩
- There is no indication on the memorandum that Johnson responded to any of the options.↩
- Komer prepared a draft of such a message on July 15. (Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, India, Vol. V, Memos and Miscellaneous, 6/65–9/65)↩