Keeping the Peace-and the UN
SHANOR, DONALD R.
POTENTIAL FOR DEVELOPMENT Keeping the Peace—and the UN By Donald R. Shanor AT the height of the fighting in the Dominican Republic, little knots of diplomats gathered in the corridors outside the...
...As Narasimhan says, "It has been demonstrated that the Mekong Coordination Committee can survive political vicissitudes...
...But neither side has much to boast about at these levels...
...It did not contribute at all to EPTA until 1953, and even now gives less than Norway or the Netherlands— around $3 million a year to both programs...
...POTENTIAL FOR DEVELOPMENT Keeping the Peace—and the UN By Donald R. Shanor AT the height of the fighting in the Dominican Republic, little knots of diplomats gathered in the corridors outside the UN Security Council, bitter and frustrated...
...LIKE the blue helmet of the UN truce team member, the blue UN dollar can go places and do things no national aid program can do...
...It has everything: an impoverished region, great untapped potential, completed UN surveys showing development is feasible, and a group of quarreling nations willing to cooperate on economic measures...
...The meetings now in progress involve a project that in time promises to dwarf Aswan: development of the Lower Mekong basin...
...intentions...
...living standards...
...Expressed as votes in the General Assembly, these numbers give them a majority...
...Britain has increased its Special Fund-EPTA share to nearly $12 million, a rise of 17.5 percent...
...Voluntary contributions finally saved the program, because $9.2 million at that time was a third of the worldwide UN aid budget...
...Now we will see what the West will offer us.' This competition to give and get aid, economic and military, is what worries UN officials who have long been concerned with the complex problems of development...
...Eugene Black, named by the President to head the plan, also stressed that "what President Johnson meant was not an American plan—but an international plan, which the American government was prepared to help.' Still, many at the United Nations are skeptical about U.S...
...If American aid is integrated into the Mekong project, it stands a chance of acceptance by those Asian countries either neutral or hostile to Washington...
...At first glance, the President's Johns Hopkins speech seemed to be offering another billion toward this end...
...The same is true, moreover, in other vital areas of the world...
...Population growth will eat up three per cent of the gain, and the rate of increase means the poorest nations will still be 120 years behind U.S...
...the United States alone spends more than $3 billion...
...But in some countries, that means going from $50 to $100 a year...
...We are asked to keep patient, and see our living standards double in 20 years," an African ambassador said...
...Congress has urged an increase in U.S...
...No less important, it has shown itself to be a link among the states of Southeast Asia which cannot agree politically...
...United Nations development programs have been chronically underfinanced...
...With adequate financing, the United Nations could transform the region...
...As long as the Russians and French continue to impose their financial veto on UN security operations, the only workable peace missions for the present will be those agreed to by the big powers, or financed voluntarily by those who want them...
...Although the United States leads the world in its aid programs, its contributions are painfully small compared to the $2 million a day being spent in Vietnam—in a conflict brought about, in part, by past neglect...
...The ability to play off one bloc against the other is a talent highly prized in the developing world...
...All that is lacking is the money...
...but in the end it was Washington and the Organization of American States that played the principal roles...
...They think aid should go toward building an African or Latin American Common Market, not rival rows of Sabre jets and MIGS...
...The Communist countries have lagged far behind...
...Therein lies the clue to the usefulness of the Mekong as a political force for the future...
...Cambodia's delegate shows up regularly at the meetings of the Mekong Committee, although his government has no diplomatic relations with two of its four members, South Vietnam and Thailand...
...Expansion could contribute as much to peace as have the blue helmets...
...The UN expert can bluntly tell the receiving nations what reforms to make and what projects they cannot expect to have—without bruising an alliance or causing a diplomatic incident...
...Despite occasional Congressional criticism, the United States has always been by far the leading UN contributor...
...This is viewed as critical because a successful Mekong project could point the way for the UN to strengthen its role of keeping the peace by eliminating some of the reasons for war...
...did not force a showdown on Article 19— allowing France, Russia, and other nations two years in arrears to vote in the final hours of the last Assembly session—it was widely interpreted as a disaster that would doom the UN to the same fate as the League of Nations...
...If it turns out to be an American show, with U.S.A...
...Even Laos' three factions are cooperating on the Mekong project...
...It is a job the UN has done for years, but on a relatively small scale...
...Had this been done from the start, some feel, even Peking and Hanoi would not have been able to dismiss the offer so quickly...
...Apparently ECAFE wanted to include it, but the matter was never approved by the Economic and Social Council...
...led the way in starting the Mekong project...
...development aid in sizable quantities into the crisis areas of the world...
...In these meetings, bitter political enemies were ignoring their differences to plan jointly for economic development...
...The poor of the world do not have much, but they do have numbers...
...Meanwhile, though, other United Nations meetings here and abroad have been quietly discussing a subject that may mean more to the future peace-keeping potential of the UN than any number of Council resolutions...
...The U.S...
...That was the amount it cost in 1952 to conduct the surveys needed to back up the favorable initial findings of the United States' waterways expert, Lieutenant General R. A. Wheeler...
...The Council did eventually pass resolutions on the Dominican crisis and did finally dispatch representatives to Santo Domingo...
...More than 100 nations contributed to this project," they are often told...
...The total UN development budget of $350 million this year is about what New York State spends for welfare...
...If they want private enterprise to build a new plant or the government to take over the mines, the country can be sure it is the best way—not an attempt to sell capitalism or socialism...
...But economic aid programs can provide another path to which the tremendous energies and abilities of the United Nations can now be diverted, both to help preserve the peace and to show the world the UN is far from dead...
...Governments agree on the value of the United Nations as a development agency...
...It is a modest aim...
...They represent no one but the country they are assigned to...
...The Mekong project now receives praise and financial support from 21 outside nations, none of them Communist...
...But in too many bilateral arrangements, as Gunnar Myrdal has said, "When international aid becomes unilateral and politics thus enters into its distribution, both moral and economic standards are apt to crumble...
...This case is overdrawn...
...Yet it was almost stillborn for lack of $9.2 million...
...The 12-yearold Lower Mekong project is now being examined with new urgency both because of the expansion of the war in the area, and because of President Johnson's offer of a billion dollars in aid for Southeast Asia...
...The Lower Mekong project is a classroom model of the kind of area where economic aid can solve a threat to peace...
...Its leadership is needed now in similar projects all over the world...
...We made a good beginning...
...There is little doubt that the Mekong can use the President's billion dollars...
...Washington's contributions to the United Nations have totaled $2 billion since its founding, and currently it is estimated to spend about $250 million annually on all international organizations...
...American Marines, not blue-helmeted UN soldiers, had landed, and Pope Paul, not the Secretary General, had arranged the Dominican ceasefire...
...While hundreds were dying in Santo Domingo, the Council was debating the elections in Rhodesia...
...stamped on every crate and the money subject to withdrawal with the stoning of an embassy—as many at the UN fear—it is likely to be limited to the nations in Southeast Asia already safely on the U.S...
...The lower river, nearly the length of the Mississippi, had never known a bridge or power plant until the UN began work on it...
...If the real purpose of the billion is, as Johnson said, "to enrich the hopes and existence of more than a hundred million people," then something must be done to remove the American label, to convince both our friends and Asians who don't like us, to join the project...
...West Germany is the major contributor to one of the Mekong projects...
...Some of them are poorer than you...
...But they have not translated this approval into sufficient support for the tasks at hand...
...Hanoi's industrial complex could be a logical customer for the excess power generated by the Mekong dams...
...Moscow, more than Washington, wants its money to bring immediate political return...
...And there is frequently wasteful competition in financing costly military toys or useless stadiums...
...Many at the UN are concerned about the form the Johnson program will take...
...It originated many of the development projects and urged their expansion...
...This may prove the path to preventive peace-keeping: pouring UN DONALD R. SHANOR, a foreign news analyst for UPI, covered the recent UN General Assembly sessions...
...North Vietnam has no territory in the Mekong Basin, but according to UN Under Secretary C. V. Narasimhan, who used to head the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), Hanoi expressed repeated interest in joining in that agency's development work...
...In the Mekong Basin and elsewhere, the groundwork has been laid...
...When the U.S...
...But even though there is general acceptance of the need for development, the UN program is not growing as it must...
...Most countries still spend most of their money on bilateral programs...
...This diplomat is among those who will give the voluntary aid programs of the United Nations only a few more years to prove themselves...
...It is true that the traditional UN peace missions are going to be tentative and timid for some time to come...
...By this year, it had risen to $145.5 million—little more than half the increase Thant wanted...
...They could show it again in the Assembly if voluntary aid and trade terms do not come up to their expectations...
...By 1968, tributary projects costing $130 million will be underway and preparations will have been made for $750 million worth of dam projects on the main stream, at Tonle Sap and Sambor in Cambodia, and at Pamong, on the Thai- Laotian border...
...It is only natural for the United States to want to control its money, they say...
...Prime Minister Milton Obote returned from Belgrade and Peking this spring with $26 million in loans and gifts, enough to speed up Uganda's five-year plan by half a year...
...For centuries the river, one of the world's 10 largest, provided only mud, floods, and inadequate fisheries to the 20 million people of its basin...
...If it does expand by $25 million annually from now on, it will still fall $30 million short of its goal of $300 million a year by 1970...
...These officials feel that hasty trips to Peking or Washington are not the way to plan the next decades...
...The main aim of the UN program for the decade is to raise national incomes in the developing world by five per cent...
...At that time, the Special Fund-EPTA budget totaled $103 million...
...The losers are the people who need the money, but they do not always think so...
...This is the first time Uganda approached the Eastern countries for money," Obote said...
...Another advantage held by the United Nations is its ability to draw on experts from all over the world, some of them with the special skills and languages needed in the new nations, where much of what is taught at Michigan State does not yet apply...
...Cambodia has not been heard from, but its diplomatic break with Washington makes its acceptance unlikely...
...Secretary General U Thant said in 1962 that the two main development agencies, the Special Fund and the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance (EPTA), must have combined budget increases of $25 million a year if they are to meet the needs of the Development Decade —the '60s...
...To the poor two-thirds of the world, this is welcome, but it seems too little and too slow...
...By year's end, two dams will cross it in Thailand...
...Surveys in progress since 1952 underline its potential economic uses in flood control, navigation, power, and irrigation...
...Country-to-country aid can never be replaced entirely by UN programs...
...Recipient nations learn early in the game that there is no rich uncle...
...They have already demonstrated their power in the Trade and Development Conference...
...Development of the Mekong is also important in itself...
...There are some encouraging signs abroad...
...If there is then no vast increase in funds, they say, it will be time for the have-not majority of the Assembly to start assessing the haves...
...multilateral programs, and there are larger appropriations in view for the low-cost International Development Agency loans...
...The dollar and the ruble could be replaced by the neutral currency of UN aid in areas where poverty and cold war competition are a serious threat to peace, making the Aswan Dams of the future United Nations projects...
...With China's $15 million will come technicians and an enlarged Embassy, as Tanzania and Brazzaville have discovered...
Vol. 48 • June 1965 • No. 12
