257. Letter From Secretary of State Haig to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (Stockman)1
I understand that the OMB review of the Carter Administration’s FY 82 budget proposal could affect the status of many of our foreign affairs programs. Some of these programs—security and development assistance in particular—are as important to U.S. national security as many items in the defense budget.
It may well be that there is room for reductions in certain programs; indeed, I expect this to be the case. However, I know you agree that policy must drive these resource decisions, and we are only just beginning the Reagan Administration’s review of U.S. national security policy.
In general, I believe that critical State Department and foreign assistance programs which relate to our national security policy should be treated in the same way as defense programs. These programs fall into three principal categories:
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- Properly tailored security assistance, which enables our friends and Allies to take on defense tasks which otherwise we would have to assume ourselves;
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- Economic assistance programs, which are one of the key tools available to us to promote regional stability, particularly for some of our principal recipients such as Egypt and Israel;
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- Functions carried out by State Department personnel overseas—intelligence, negotiations for base access and overflight rights, arranging military exercises, etc.—which are of direct value to our defense posture.
Pending a more thorough review, I believe such matters should be treated as defense items in any OMB budget review, particularly since we are already starting with levels of security assistance that were cut badly by the Carter Administration.
Sincerely,