U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Are we in some way participating, through the taxes that we pay, in the violence centered on Gaza that is now beginning in Israel. Yes, in a way. In the current fiscal year we gave Israel $3.1 billion in military aid; it accounted for 99.4 percent of all aid we gave that country. That’s a fair amount of money, indeed a fifth of Israel’s 2012 expenditures on the military ($15.2 billion), that number from to Wikipedia (link).

I show here a graphic tracking U.S. military aid to Israel for FY 1997 to FY 2013 (the last is proposed) along with bars showing what percentage that aid is of total U.S. aid to Israel. My source is a Congressional Research Service paper dated March 12, 2012 (link).

Two out of every ten bullets or missiles or bombs are ours, you might say. We don’t participate in targeting.

Colonialism Lite

The sometimes odd behavior of foreign governments vis-à-vis the United States, occasionally describable by that memorable phrase “at your feet or at your throat,” may be due to colonialism lite: indirect influence purchased by massive doses of foreign and military aid. Of late this has been most clearly visible in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. That behavior is a little more one-sided in the case of Israel. It is mostly at our throat—because it has its own constituency within our political structure. Herewith some data for 2009 on military aid. It totaled $11 billion that year, 24.5 percent of total foreign assistance, that year, worth $45 billion.

Fifty-one countries received military aid, and the top ten show that we cover the globe. Conspicuous by absence in the longer list is China, surprising that Russia is present. India, based on population the second largest collective in the world, barely makes the list, but does so, receiving $1 million in 2009. The data come from the 2012 (and last) Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table 1299.

The logic of colonialism lite is that military funding is virtually irresistible for collectives—even when they don’t resonate at all with the American Way (or what it has come to mean). This produces in their societies contradictory impulses that lack coherence—and our attempts at buying power create the same problems at home.

Curious Alliances: Pakistan

Yet another uproar concerning events in Pakistan made me look up numbers. A drone attack killed 40 Pakistani civilians. Coinciding with this event a Pakistani court released a CIA official charged with shooting down two men at an intersection. He was released by the court after blood money had been paid to relatives of the two victims. The payment of blood money is legal in Pakistan—legal, yes, but the Pakistani street has a more, shall we say nuanced, understanding of such things and hence erupted.

These are very curious alliances. Consider for instance that in the period 2001 through 2008, $5.9 billion in U.S. tax dollars went to Pakistan as foreign and military aid. In the 2003-2008 period an additional $2.9 billion found their way to Pakistan in the form of grants and credits. Just looking at the years for which I have data for both categories, our support of Pakistan totaled $7.6 billion, thus in the 2003-2008 period.

Here is a graphic of this aid/grant support from the Statistical Abstract (here) year by year. Note here that my source did not show grants and credits for the years 2001 and 2002.

The $1.655 in aid and grants for 2008 is equal to almost one percent of Pakistan’s GDP. If they had given us aid and grants also proportional to our GDP, they would have had to send us $136 billion.† That would be worth approximately 25 percent of our Pentagon’s basic budget in 2010. The upper levels of Pakistan’s ruling elite need our aid to keep themselves in power—or it certainly helps.

But let’s try to see this from the perspective of the ordinary Pakistani. Supposing that China was giving us $136 billion in aid and grants. And their military had killed 40 people on the outskirts of Springfield, Illinois, and one of their agents had gunned down two people at an intersection in Lawrence, Kansas—and was then released scot free except for paying a fine—how would we view all this? Wouldn’t we be ready for an American Spring?
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†Here the arithmetic. Pakistan’s GDP: $177.902 billion; U.S. aid and grants: $1.655 billion. As percent of Pakistan’s GDP: 0.93 percent. U.S. GDP $14,624 billion times 0.0093 equals $136 billion. U.S. 2010 Pentagon base budget: $533.8 billion. $136 divided by $533.8 equals 0.255 times 100 equals 25.5 percent.