Committing the Uncommitted

...In fact, both sermons and presents have their place in a continuing struggle for power...

...Perhaps the Western powers, just setting out to coordinate their own aid programs, should have another look at that idea...

...What emerges from these warnings— voiced by both Khrushchev and Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan on their recent travels and in Soviet books on the problems published in the last few years—-is that the Kremlin regards its own aid not merely as a means to court popularity but as likely to commit the uncommitted countries to a specific path of development...

...This Communist argument obscures the most vital problems now facing many underdeveloped countries by mixing it up with an issue of the dead past...

...During his journey through Asia, Khrushchev everywhere enlisted sympathy for his plan, never failing to point out that, apart from its service to peace, it would free billions of dollars for help to underdeveloped countries...

...It is in the interest of both the receiving countries and of the West that the total amount of aid from all sources should be as large as possible...

...the journalists count the crowds and the applause...

...But if massive foreign capital aid is accepted for these specific prospects, it may also tie down a large share of indigenous resources—labor, raw materials, transport—to enterprises which will not bear consumable fruit for a long time...

...Khrushchev's plan RICHARD LOWENTHAL often writes on Soviet affairs in these pages...

...The more long-term, but probably more vital, part concerns the effect of different types of economic aid on the pattern of development of the receiving country...

...Failing that, he has attempted to align the Soviet bloc with their interests wherever they happened to have national conflicts with any Western or pro-Western country—as Indonesia over its claim to Dutch New Guinea, and Afghanistan over its claim to "Pushtunistan" at Pakistan's expense...

...The immediately obvious part of these world-wide hustings is concerned with winning the backing of "world opinion," and of votes in the United Nations Assembly, for some of the issues to be discussed at the summit, particularly in the field of disarmament...

...The visitors speak their sermons and hand over their presents...

...It is an idyllic picture, but a misleading one...

...The traditional colonial pattern of private capital investment did indeed concentrate on extractive industries and export crops as the most immediately profitable fields, and thus tended to preserve a lopsided colonial economy in a lopsided international division of labor...

...Despite outward appearances, Soviet aid is subtly designed to draw neutral nations into the Communist orbit Committing the Uncommitted By Richard Lowenthal WATCHING President Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev on their pre-summit travels, a newspaper reader might be forgiven for believing that, under this form of "competitive coexistence," the East-West struggle has been reduced to a combination of popularity contest and giveaway competition...

...He himself cheerfully ignored the UN Assembly's recommendation of the Western disarmament plan in 1957, and even refused further negotiation in the framework favored by the UN at that time, but he knows that at least American and British domestic opinion is highly sensitive to "world opinion" as expressed in the UN...

...Apart from this immediate issue, the Soviet Premier, while carefully respecting the military non-alignment of his Asian hosts (he went out of his way to express his approval for it in every communique), has sought to align them politically with the Soviet bloc where possible...

...But postwar development aid has from the start been agreed upon with these newly sovereign governments and has been channelled through their planning boards, with the express purpose of overcoming the traditional lopsided character of underdeveloped economies...

...This article is published by agreement with the London Observer, for which he is a roving correspondent...

...Today, the West can no longer obtain the two-thirds majority required for an Assembly recommendation (or for the election of a non-permanent member to the Security Council) without the support of the hard core of uncommitted nations not predictably on one side on most issues...

...Such aid has invisible strings -—committing a country to a pattern of economic development which, as the Soviets know, has its own political logic...

...Any scheme for disarmament will be judged by its effect on the world balance of power...

...That Khrushchev is setting out to achieve just that is suggested by his angry rejections of the idea of pooling a major part of all foreign aid in the hands of some impartial United Nations agency...

...This could be overcome only by some form of publicly planned investment, and that is why all the newly sovereign nations have introduced such planning and talk of a "socialist" economy...

...Hence, any diplomatic approach that enlists the sympathy of this hard core is likely to limit the freedom of maneuver of the Western negotiators...

...This purpose, once assured by keeping them as colonies under political tutelage, is now allegedly pursued by limiting economic aid to such fields as agricultural improvement or at best local consumer goods industries...

...The planners in the underdeveloped nations are, of course, conscious of this choice...

...and the fact that the Soviets are now contributing substantially along with the traditional exporters of capital is in itself a cause for satisfaction rather than concern...

...He thus hopes to make it difficult for his summit opponents to reject his plan without isolating themselves in the United Nations...

...and those who care to preserve free institutions do not wish to give too high a priority to long-term investments in heavy industries...

...Take the summit issue first...

...They are now increasingly accompanied by Soviet warnings against the alleged harmful effects of Western aid...

...the uncommitted countries pocket the cash— and stay as uncommitted as before...

...Briefly, the Communists charge that the "imperialists" wish to prevent the independent industrial development of young nations, in order to keep them in their traditional role as exploited suppliers of food-stuffs and raw materials...

...But the most serious and substantial effort to "commit the uncommitted" is being currently made by the Soviets in the economic field, and on a more long-term basis...

...Moreover, as Soviet aid is always given in the form of long-term loans and often specific export crops are earmarked in advance for repayment, the commitment to the steep Soviet road of development may be reinforced in such cases by a long-term dependence on the Soviet market...

...But it is also in the interest of both the receiving and the Western nations that such aid should not be given on terms which tend to "commit the uncommitted"—to distort their road of development into the Soviet pattern, making it needlessly hard and painful, or to create a one-sided long-term dependency on Soviet markets...

...for the eventual abolition of armed forces aims, above all, at creating obstacles to any increase of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's conventional forces, which are still inferior to Soviet forces in Europe and hence in a poor position to withstand political blackmail...

...The last is, of course, the Communist pattern, as practiced in Russia and China and made possible by totalitarian dictatorship...

...Only the Soviets, it is claimed, are willing to help the underdeveloped nations in building up their own heavy industry, power resources, etc.—that is, in ceasing to be "economic colonies...

...This is remarkably similar to the old type of colonial dependency, or to the type which Nazi Germany established before World War II by its barter contracts in the Balkans...

...All these dangers are involved in the present rush to bring aid to the underdeveloped nations...

...In the last few months, Soviet pledges of development aid to non-Communist countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have been more concentrated and massive than at any time since the policy was first introduced in 1954...

...It is at this stage that the planners, in allocating indigenous and foreign investment, have been faced with the choice whether to aim at a balanced, all-around development, raising the low agricultural productivity and living standards of their people parallel with the building up of industry, or whether to rush ahead with a one-sided concentration of heavy industry at the price of long-term severe sacrifices by the people...