14. Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Harriman)1
I can well understand our mounting disillusionment over Algeria. Ben Bella has been hard to swallow in the past, but his antics in the Congo will be the last straw for a lot of people. The Nuncie expropriation case may force us to suspend aid anyway. But if we get over that hurdle, we’ll still have a choice.
The real issue is not so much whether we can get more for our money in terms of political leverage (I’m pessimistic here though we ought to try); it is essentially whether things wouldn’t get a lot worse if we cut Algeria off. I’d hate to see us abandon the field to the French, Soviets, and Chicoms. We wouldn’t save much since most of our aid is PL 480 (around $25 million per annum); dollar aid has run only $1–2 million annually. [Page 33] More important, cutting off aid punitively would only magnify the damage BB could do us in spite. He could send more aid to the Congo, Cuba, Guiana; he could start trouble with Morocco again. He could nationalize our oil. Even the oil companies are now worrying about getting caught in the fall-out.
So to keep our hand in at modest cost still makes sense, even though public and congressional criticism will be painful. What we ought to do is figure out how to get some leverage from what we give. We don’t have much now (even though we feed 1/3 of BB’s people), because BB has never faced up to what loss of our food would cost him. He doesn’t rate it highly because he thinks we’re happy to dump our surplus, and he doesn’t grasp the real economic (and indirect political) contribution it makes.
I’d argue we should try to realize the potential leverage our present program gives us by two possible approaches:
- 1.
- Try to make BB face up to what losing our food would mean to him by (a) cutting back slightly (without fanfare which would give BB a moral issue) until the shoe pinches; (b) letting him come to us for renewal of the program in 1965. Then bargain hard for restoring cuts. If we’re right in assuming our food staves off starvation for 3 million Algerians, a food scarcity should drive them to the streets. If we’re wrong, we’ve already started phasing out anyway.
- 2.
- A longer range corollary might be to insinuate ourselves further into school milk and other feeding programs, increase the numbers employed in our food-for-work projects and move into training in important areas to increase BB’s dependence.
We can’t stop BB from bucking us in the Congo, though we might be able to calm him down a bit. But rather than throwing up our hands and making matters worse, the long view would be to keep trying to build some Algerian stake in rational relations with us.