The Case for Long-Range Foreign Aid
SEGER, GERHART H.
The Case for Long-Range Foreign Aid A Proposal: Key to an Effective Foreign Policy. By Max F. Millikan and W. W. Rostow. Harper. 170 pp. $2.75. Reviewed by Gerhart H. Seger Author, "A Nation...
...Max Franklin Millikan, Director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Walt Whitman Rostow, a staff member of the Center and professor of economic history at MIT, have written a convincing little book which should be read by all who want to know what foreign aid can do and how it should be handled...
...And, indeed, it is the most profound study yet made of the subject of foreign aid, its greatest value lying in the fact that it is less concerned with criticizing what was done in the past than with presenting a comprehensive program for the future...
...This is a book which packs a wealth of ideas and information into a relatively few pages...
...On the basis of this reasonable approach, the authors present in great detail a long-range foreign-aid program...
...The authors believe strongly in respecting the economic and political views of the people we wish to help...
...Our foreign-aid program also places us in a quandary: On the one hand, we are presumably entitled to see that our money is spent wisely...
...in behalf of underdeveloped areas...
...in fact, as one witty Congressman said the other day: "The boys are in such a mood that if someone introduced the Ten Commandments they would cut them down to eight...
...Congress is about to cut foreign aid...
...The authors suggest that, instead of piecemeal, disorganized shelling out of money here and there, the material and intellectual resources of this country should be carefully mobilized for a worldwide program, to be carried out over a number of years...
...An appendix with statistical tables rounds out the picture...
...But they also believe "that we shall ultimately promote reliance on private incentives more effectively by not insisting on any particular economic philosophy as a condition of aid than by attaching private-enterprise strings...
...The authors also warn against a "crude materialist conception" that places all the stress on immediate physical improvement: "The conviction is already widespread in Asia that we value only physical consumption and have little or no understanding of things of the mind and spirit...
...Foreign aid should not be cut, but changed and extended...
...They agree with those "who hold a private-market system with opportunity and incentive for individual enterprise will in the long run promote self-sustaining growth better than a highly bureaucratized system dominated by central government...
...on the other hand, as a democratic country we are committed to the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries...
...it should be made an integral part of a long-range, rational foreign policy...
...When this report was first released to the public, it made frontpage news...
...Nobody loves a rich uncle, even when he is generous—anti-American sentiment abroad shows that...
...Reviewed by Gerhart H. Seger Author, "A Nation Terrorized "Germany—To Be or Not to Be...
Vol. 40 • May 1957 • No. 18
