When the Alliance for Progress was started in 1961, the Kennedy Administration decided that one way to help Latin America economically would be to sell it fewer costly weapons. As Lyndon Johnson later said, to sell supersonic jets to Brazilian and Argentinian generals would be to "take clothes off the backs and food from the stomachs and education away from the minds of [Latin American] children."
Almost unnoticed, the Nixon Administration has reversed that policy. In a move recently announced, the President waived the U.S.'s self-imposed $75 million-a-year limit on arms sales to Latin America and asked Congress to raise...
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