A Plan to Streamline

Richard Nixon's oft-stated goals for his presidency are to leave his mark on foreign affairs and to introduce the best management techniques of the flow chart and the board room to the workings of Government. Last week he sent Congress an 8,000-word program aimed at achieving the best of both goals. It proposes an ambitious reorganization of foreign aid that would create a military aid setup to underwrite the Nixon Doctrine while turning economic development funds over to a new International Development Corporation. Closely tailored to the recommendations of a presidential commission headed by Rudolph Peterson, the plan could result in a more streamlined, utilitarian foreign aid program that would strengthen allies--militarily and economically--with limited American involvement. The reorganization would:

GIVE THE ADMINISTRATION greater flexibility in dispensing arms and military grants abroad. Nixon's proposed International Security Assistance Act would loosen the credit requirements for some favored nations seeking U.S. arms through sales, surplus grants and direct money aid. The $1.99 billion program--part of a foreign aid package totaling $3.2 billion --would be administered by a single coordinator at the State Department, although the White House would exercise supervision through the National Security Council and the Council on International Economic Policy. The new proposal emphasizes hardware instead of supporting troops, and would, the White House hopes, lead to reduced American commitments overseas under the Nixon Doctrine.

CREATE AN INTERNATIONAL Development

Corporation to direct--in cooperation with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Inter-American Social Development Institute--all U.S. economic development programs abroad. Certain to meet opposition in Congress, the plan would abolish the Agency for International Development, eventually close its foreign missions and bring home more than 4,000 AID employees now overseas. The corporation would work, instead, through international development bodies like the World Bank. Funneling aid through multinational organizations would free the United States from carrying the full burden of development aid and ease the client-patron hostilities that have crippled some aid projects. A technical-assistance institute would fill the vacuum m technical assistance left by the dismantling of AID missions.

One innovation calls for three-year funding of economic and technical assistance programs. Congress has rejected long-term appropriations proposals in the past on the grounds that they would vest the Executive Branch with too much backdoor, discretionary power in doling out aid. This argument is likely to be heard again from a Congress determinedly asserting its foreign prerogatives. Even so, Nixon's proposal offers smoother organization and some long-needed overhauls in the kind and tone of American foreign aid.

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