Plan Colombia and Beyond

Here are a few interesting things about the Bush administration’s proposal for U.S. aid to Latin America and the Caribbean next year. These are the result of moving all the information from the official request into one big spreadsheet. (Feel free to download a copy of that spreadsheet, but be warned it’s not very user-friendly.)

All numbers below are in thousands of dollars. Also, keep in mind that additional military assistance comes through the defense budget, particularly its counter-drug funding. While amounts of defense-budget aid are not made available right now, the amount of military aid the hemisphere receives could be significantly larger (as much as $200-$300 million more region-wide).

1. Aid to Latin America and the Caribbean would decline by 6 percent from 2007 to 2008, but the cut would come entirely from military – not economic – aid.

2. Despite talk of a "Plan Colombia 2," there is no sigificant change in the amount of aid to Colombia, or the proportions between military and economic aid. This was the subject of yesterday’s post. Here, again, is the Colombia aid table.

3. Military and police aid to countries other than Colombia would drop by 38 percent.

4. The Foreign Military Financing program is drying up. This is the principal non-drug military aid program in the foreign aid budget. It fell into disuse in Latin America during the 1990s, but was revived after the September 11 attacks. In Colombia, it has paid for non-drug military-aid efforts like oil-pipeline protection and the "Plan Patriota" military offensive, among others. The FMF revival of the past few years appears to be over, however, as aid everywhere but Colombia and El Salvador is to be zeroed out.

Twelve countries in the region still cannot receive Foreign Military Financing because they do not exempt U.S. personnel on their soil from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. They do not even appear in the table below.

5. Several countries viewed as important to the "war on drugs" would see a significant drop in aid. Their presidents’ ideology appears to make little difference in the size of the cut. These countries are Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru.

Bolivia is to see a drop in counter-drug military and police aid, though economic aid will only be reduced slightly. Of the four Andean countries listed here, Bolivia in fact will see the smallest overall cut in aid, measured as a percentage.

Ecuador would see a remarkably sharp drop in both categories.

Do not assume that Ecuador’s proposed aid cut is a signal of Washington’s attitude toward newly elected President Rafael Correa, a leftist who frequently criticizes the U.S. government. Aid to Mexico, which just elected pro-U.S., right-of-center President Enrique [Correction: Felipe] Calderón, would be cut by a similar proportion.

The picture is similar for Alán García’s Peru.

6. Traditional economic aid programs are being sliced very deeply. The Development Assistance and Child Survival and Health programs would undergo painful cuts in the 2008 budget proposal.

The economic aid programs being increased are new initiatives that benefit only a few countries: Millennium Challenge (El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua), the Global HIV-AIDS Initiative (Guyana and Haiti), and Economic Support Funds (Cuba plus countries that currently – but would no longer – get economic aid through the Andean Counterdrug Initiative).

7. While these programs suffer, economic aid to Cuba’s opposition would increase by more than $30 million. This despite concerns about the Cuba aid’s management and oversight, and the extent to which it is reaching and benefiting Cuban civil society.

8. The largest increases, in dollars, would go to El Salvador, Cuba and Haiti.

El Salvador’s Millennium Challenge compact calls for a big increase in 2008, the third year of its grant. Other economic aid to El Salvador, however, is being cut deeply. Nonetheless, the Bush administration proposes to give El Salvador more economic aid in 2008 than it would give Colombia.

(See number 7 above for the Cuba table.)

Haiti would get a badly needed increase in funding from the Global HIV-AIDS Initiative.

9. The largest cuts, in dollars, would come from Honduras, Peru and Bolivia.

Honduras will see less Millennium Challenge money in 2008, the fourth year of its five-year MCC grant. But other economic aid programs will not fill the gap. They would be cut here as elsewhere.

(See number 5 above for the Bolivia and Peru tables.)

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