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US foreign aid budget takes on Cold War
cast
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
If the "war on terror" is beginning to look increasingly
like the Cold War, then US President George W Bush's
fiscal year (FY) 2005 foreign-aid request will not
change that impression.
While Bush is proposing
to increase funding for his two key anti-poverty
initiatives, the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA),
which funds initiatives to improve the economies and
standards of living in developing countries, and
anti-AIDS money for African and Caribbean countries, he
is also cutting funds for other key humanitarian and
development accounts.
At the same time, the
president is asking Congress to increase by more than
US$1 billion military and security assistance,
particularly to key "front-line" states in the "war on
terror". Those two categories, which include anti-drug
aid and proliferation categories, would make up nearly
one-third of all US foreign aid under Bush's request,
roughly the same percentage of total foreign aid when
the Cold War reached its height during the 1980s.
Under Bush's proposal, credits for foreign
militaries allowing them to buy US weapons and equipment
would increase by some $700 million to nearly $5
billion, the highest total in well over a decade. But
even including the military credits, the total
foreign-aid proposal, which is included in a record
federal budget request of some $2.4 trillion, amounts to
a mere 5 percent of what Bush is requesting for the
Pentagon next year.
Under his plan, US military
spending - which already constitutes roughly one-half of
the world's total military expenditures - would rise by
some 7 percent, to $402 billion in FY 2005, which begins
October 1. That figure does not include an anticipated
$50 billion more that the administration is expected to
request to fund military and related operations in Iraq
and Afghanistan later in the year.
The total
budget request now goes to Congress, where even members
of Bush's own Republican Party say he is unlikely to get
everything he wants in view of the record budget
deficits being forecast well into the future - a result
of the president's tax cuts and military spending hikes.
The overall projected deficit for FY 2005 now
stands at some $521 billion, an amount that makes even
the free-spending Ronald Reagan look like Charles
Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge. So great is the deficit - and
the accumulating debt - that even the normally
deferential International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently
warned that the United States is approaching a fiscal
crisis that threatens global financial stability.
To accommodate the big increases in defense and
homeland security, the overall budget proposes
significant cuts to agriculture, transportation and
environmental protection, among other
non-security-related items.
Bush's foreign-aid
plan actually marks an increase over 2004 levels,
although much of the additional money is explained by
greater spending on security for US embassies and
personnel overseas.
And as in previous years,
Israel and Egypt are the biggest bilateral recipients
under the request, accounting for nearly $5 billion in
aid between them. Of the nearly $3 billion earmarked for
Israel, most is for military credits.
But other
countries, particularly those such as Turkey, Jordan,
Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines that are
considered critical in the "war on terror", will also
see significant increases in credits and aid, some of it
from the Economic Support Fund (ESF) - a category of
security assistance aimed at promoting economic and
political stability and used during the Cold War to give
support to key geopolitical allies.
ESF, which
fell sharply in the 1990s, will increase by some $400
million over last year's level, or more than 20 percent,
to more than $2.5 billion if Bush's proposal is
approved. Pakistan will get nearly $700 million under
the plan, while Jordan will get $459 million. Aid to
Afghanistan, which is scheduled to hold elections for
the first time in June despite a year-long resurgence of
the former Taliban regime, is slated at $1.2 billion.
Non-proliferation and counter-terror assistance
is due to rise $50 million to more than $400 million in
FY 2005, while international narcotics-control programs
- some of which will no doubt be directed at curbing
Afghanistan's skyrocketing growth in opium production -
would receive nearly $360 million, a whopping increase
of $120 million over FY 2004. Andean counter-drug
programs will remain constant at about $731 million,
while Colombia, whose counter-insurgency drive has
Bush's strong support, is slated for $459 million.
The budget also provides for a sharp increase in
UN and other multilateral peacekeeping operations.
Similarly, Washington will provide substantially more to
the United Nations and its affiliated agencies,
consistent with increases in their budgets.
The
increases in military and ESF funding will come largely
at the expense of humanitarian and development
assistance, whose core programs, such as education and
child and maternal health, will be reduced by about $400
million in 2005, according to a budget analysis by
InterAction, a coalition of 160 US relief and
development groups.
However, Bush is proposing
to increase spending on two of his signature
initiatives: the Millennium Challenge Account and the
global AIDS initiative. The MCA is supposed to reward
countries with per capita annual incomes of less than
$1,445 that have implemented far-reaching economic
reform, shown respect for human rights and compiled
strong records in fighting corruption.
Designed
specifically to increase US development aid by as much
as $5 billion a year by 2006, the MCA was formally
launched on Monday when its initial board of directors -
an inter-agency group - met for the first time. It
already has $1 billion at its disposal, and Bush is
asking for another $2.5 billion in FY 2005, $800 million
less than what he called for two years ago.
But
the agency, which will be administered by a relatively
small staff independent of the US Agency for
International Development (USAID), has yet to compile a
comprehensive list of eligible countries under the
prescribed criteria, and precisely how the criteria will
be applied remains uncertain.
As for the global
AIDS initiative, Bush is asking for $2.8 million for FY
2005, $800 million below the amount authorized by
Congress last year, but still $400 million more than FY
2004.
In light of the urgent nature of the
threat posed by AIDS - which killed an estimated 3
million people last year, about 75 percent of them in
Africa - AIDS activists have strongly urged the
president to provide $3 billion a year over the life of
the five-year program.
But the new request also
proposes only $200 million in FY 2005 for the Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the
multilateral facility designed to disburse assistance
quickly to deserving projects at the local and national
level. Last year Congress approved $550 million to the
fund despite the administration's objections.
However, at a time when the administration's
focus is centered on the "war on terror", it remains
clear that humanitarian programs such as these will fall
by the wayside when it comes to military and security
spending.
(Inter Press Service)
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