Good Will Is Not Enough

...the inadequate briefing and/or motivation of ordinary middle-class Americans, hopelessly and rigidly dependent on their imperial standard of living, assigned to countries like Laos or Iraq...

...This is a good idea but, again, it need not—and, in my opinion, probably should not—be separated from the State Department...

...I do not think this is of primary importance, given a Secretary of State with a certain basic sophistication...

...Foreign Aid: Our Tragic Experiment is primarily an impressionistic sketch of how "mutual security" operations have worked out in Jordan, where the author served with the International Cooperation Administration...

...The point here is that the "societies in transition" of the underdeveloped world, societies whose traditional structures are collapsing, demand a new kind of analysis—dealing with their "infra-structures,' their "forward and backward linkages," and their "humps" or "take-off points," in precisely investigated local conditions—that altogether overwhelms the theories and experiences of our European or domestic development initiatives...

...There were several reasons for this: the devastation of Government morale during the McCarthy era and its endless aftermath...

...Anyone who has traveled extensively abroad knows that the official representation of our Republic leaves much to be desired, not only in the Mutual Security Program but also in the Foreign Service and, as the whole.world now knows, in the Central Intelligence Agency...

...It is a life-and-death business for this generation, this nation and this civilization...

...But it also stares right at wider implications that are, alas, very true and very dismal...

...To be against it is to be immature, irresponsible and isolationist...

...Because this distinction was never forthrightly observed, our postMarshall Plan aid programs have long suffered from all kinds of misbegotten schemes, the natural offspring of thoughtless improvisation...

...schools provide training in skills for which there is no employment...

...But Loeber makes clear that the U.S., along with the other advanced nations of the West, must keep trying to find some way of sharing our gigantic and fastgrowing resources with the millions of men who are drowning in a slough of degenerative socio-economic backwardness not of their own making and beyond their powers of changing...

...Farming out as much of the overall development program as is possible to private agencies...

...Here were two entirely different species of socio-economic endeavor, which could never be approached by means of the same administrative philosophy and methodology...

...Developing a "master plan" for the aid program...

...It may be disheartening for Americans to be so often teased and betrayed by their own good intentions...

...The twin delusions that "aid" is either all wrong or all right must be exposed...

...Decentralization in these matters, keeping in closest possible touch with the lowest level, is almost an end in itself...

...Another target for Loeber's criticism is the shabby mediocrity of so many of the American officials who administered the aid programs under the old Administration...

...Establishing a foreign-aid institute...

...has poured into South Korea, Formosa and South Vietnam—peripheral quicksand countries whose emotional allies in Congress are far more potent than their own governments—and the amount of money that goes to India, the pivot of the Western position in Eurasia, or to the whole continent of Africa...

...Foreign aid" has become a commonplace piety in the powerful and entrenched "conventional wisdom" of American liberals...

...To stand in the middle, as Loeber does, by affirming the urgency of channeling the energies of the American system into the pauperized part of the world, yet denying the effectiveness of existing assistance programs, is to risk losing all standing with one's compatriots...

...What is essential is that all aspects and agencies of economic development be knit together by the intellectual discipline that is abysmally lacking in the existing administrations...

...With some obvious caveats, right again...

...Loeber touches the crux of the matter when he points out that our biggest troubles began when the same "aid" techniques which had racked up spectacular results in postwar Europe were more or less casually applied to the underdeveloped areas...

...That is why the institution of an intellectually comprehensive and intelligently administered assistance program is such a serious matter...

...Foreign aid" is, after all, more than a phrase in the liberal litany...

...editor, The Macmillan Company I am confident that Thomas S. Loeber's critique will not be heeded in those quarters that could use it the most...

...In this respect, Loeber's little book is one that everyone ought to ponder...

...His suggestions for revamping our present approach include: • Moving the whole Mutual Security effort out of the State Department...

...For reconstructing the advanced economies of Europe, economies only temporarily stunned by war, was a problem far different from trying to create societies and trying to create economies from the raw hinterlands of the underdeveloped world...

...To be for foreign aid is to be mature, responsible and realistic...

...Loeber does not limit himself to criticizing failures in our foreign aid program...

...Getting more young men into the aid services...

...tractors rust in desert lands where no one knows how to use them...

...Too many of our agents are slack and silly sixth-raters who, at home, would be spending every Friday and Saturday night at the country club whining about their servant problems...

...There is a fantastic discrepancy, too, between the billions in aid that the U.S...

...the backlash effects of inflation at home...

...Dams are built to catch rain that never falls...

...Let our balding Babbitts and frumps stay home and soldier in small town real-estate offices or garages...

...Loeber is certainly right here...

...Send abroad men—young in years or not—who are young enough in heart to do work worthy of the Republic and who are uncompromised by creature comforts...