danc@orca.UUCP (Daniel Cobb) (08/04/83)
Hi Brad. Why not put it the net? It seems to me that the kind of aid that we send to third-world countries depends on the economic and political status of the given country. For the most part, all third-world countries are in need of economic aid, and it is in our interest to promote their economic health so as to stabilize the country and make it an unlikely candidate for revolution (whether the revolution is instigated from outside or from within). But if a country is in the throes of war, where the "liberators" are heavily funded from the outside and the RELATIVE freedom of the population is a stake, obviously the most pressing concern is national security. If that means that we have to increase, proportionately, the amount in military aid in order to sustain the leadership, then so be it, because it is very hard to modernize the country economically, revive its industrial base feed the population while terrorists are poisoning the water supply, blowing up industrial targets and killing the farmers as they plant their crops. The object is to bring the country out its third-world status. How successful have the Soviets been? Or the Sandinistas? Or Vietnam ? Or Cambodia?