Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XXXVIII, International Economic Development; International Debt; Foreign Assistance

264. Memorandum Prepared in the Department of State¹

Washington, undated

FY 83 FOREIGN ASSISTANCE REQUESTS

A. GOALS

This memorandum outlines in Part C a set of more specific foreign policy criteria to be applied in coordinating final preparation of a consolidated FY 83 foreign assistance budget, and in considering requests for reprogramming or new funding requests that arise during the budget year. As I indicated in my June 13 memo on the budget process,² I intend that this budget review will move substantially in the direction of better coordination of all U.S. assistance program, by measuring competing requests against a common standard.

The priorities identified reflect the major objectives of the Administration. While many of these are cast in strategic terms, the common element in most of our foreign assistance programs will be encouraging a process leading to greater political and economic self-confidence and a greater willingness and ability to address domestic and international problems in ways consistent with U.S. interests.

Our assistance should complement countries’ own efforts to address their basic economic and security problems and to provide a better life for their people. Allowing U.S. assistance to substitute for sound domestic policy, economic or political, would be counter-productive to the countries and to our interests.

Political and economic self-confidence are long-term objectives. Absorption problems in many developing countries and our own limited resources will force severe constraints on the level and mix of our assistance. We will heed to consider trade-offs between what is desirable economically, e.g., to reinforce critical economic reforms, and what is desirable from the security viewpoint, e.g., to meet a given proximate threat.

I recognize that it will be difficult to meet our objectives without increased resources. An important part of our budget process will be to compare competing programs against our global objectives and to decide whether and/or at what levels to propose FY 83 programs. Our challenge—in a period of budget austerity—will be to show that any increases we propose in overall assistance levels are critical to the achievement of vital national interests. In this regard, assistance programs that do not clearly help us to pursue our most important foreign and security policy objectives must be phased down or terminated.

[Omitted here are Part B, “Process,” and Part C, “Priority Objectives,” of the memorandum.]

1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Files of the Office of Under Secretary for Security Assistance, Science and Technology, James L. Buckley, Lot 82D352: Buckley Chron August 1981. Secret. Buckley forwarded the memorandum to Crocker, Enders, Holdridge, Eagleburger, and Veliotes under an August 7 covering memorandum.
2. Not found.