Politics and the Peace Corps
CREESY, CHARLES
WILL BINATIONALISM BE ENOUGH? Politics and the Peace Corps BY CHARLES CREESY The recruiting advertisement shows a clean-cut young American standing with a group of raggedly dressed,...
...The director for Latin America...
...In the process Peace Corps' international magazine, Volunteer, was moved from the Office of Volunteer Support to the Office of Public Affairs...
...To Blatchford's credit, he has accepted only the cream of the crop of gop patronage-seekers referred to him by the White House, but the cream had already been pretty well skimmed off by other agencies...
...As Blatchford began announcing the changes he had in mind for Peace Corps--ways to make it a more businesslike and Middle-American technical assistance program—many old-timers saw the writing on the wall and resigned...
...When mechanization comes, larger numbers of agricultural workers and small farmers will be thrown out of work...
...And, as the Nixon Administration has sought to remold the program in its own image, it has shattered the old myth of Peace Corps' independence from politics...
...We are accused often of being CIA spies, and this has intensified since the Cambodia invasion...
...As Charles Ryan, a volunteer in India, notes: "The work that volunteers are doing actually is widening the disparity between the haves and have-nots in rural India...
...Huge capital investments are necessary for its productive growth...
...Not all volunteers would agree...
...Sometimes, the special skill an experienced technician has to offer more than compensates for these disadvantages...
...Yet the sad truth learned over the years by development workers is that the poorest results come from the poorest people, who lack risk capital and other resources to experiment with change, more progress can be made with those who are better off...
...Some Peace Corps staff members in Micronesia were fired or quit in protest...
...Staffers complain that some department heads have changed so often, no one has been able to gain a firm command over their operations...
...This has deflected attention from the people who need it the most...
...Not only had the young Director accepted the invitation at the personal bidding of the President, but--by a "clerical error"--the text had been distributed to 442 Peace Corps staff members around the world, including 15 in California, as an agency press release...
...After one year under the new policies...
...This is the basis for the Committee of Returned Volunteers' argument that Peace Corps supports the status quo in the Third World and thus works as a "counterrevolutionary" force...
...Government, though, the only hope for its credibility--if not, ultimately, for its very survival--is that the other branches of that government learn to respect its independence from politics...
...This set off a staff revolt, and a memo delivered to Blatchford declared: "By suggesting, as we believe you have, that only those volunteers who support Administration policies are qualified to serve abroad, we feel you have undermined one of the basic principles on which the Peace Corps was founded: that 'no political test shall be required or taken into consideration.' " Confronted with a meeting of 250 of his Washington employes, Blatchford explained that he was under tremendous pressure from the White House...
...Previous Administrations have demonstrated that they understood the Peace Corps to be a vehicle by which a'l qualified Americans are supported by their government in serving their country and the world in a personal and apolitical way...
...More than 200 overseas volunteers participated in Moratorium Day activities...
...But the chances for cross-cultural misunderstandings are much increased...
...They are skilled tradesmen, very idealistic, and support the Administration's policies...
...As long as Peace Corps remains an agency of the U.S...
...Mr...
...Blatchford has also encountered partisan conflicts outside Peace Corps...
...Both Vice President Agnew and Secretary of State Rogers have been exposed to expressions of volunteer dissent during junkets abroad...
...Peace Corps Deupty Director Tom Houser confides, "I can only think of one or two issues which have the potential to kill Peace Corps...
...More highly structured programming generally has cost the majority of volunteers a large measure of the freedom they once enjoyed (and sometimes abused) overseas...
...They will have better screening, training and guidance...
...It has been a long fall for Peace Corps, which--nearly a decade ago--began as one of the most popular programs of President Kennedy's New Frontier...
...To help accomplish what one Washington columnist has dubbed the "Nixonization" of Peace Corps, the so-called "five-year flush" (a hitherto unobserved provision that no one may work for the agency more than five years) was invoked...
...In spite of this, the Peace Corps offers the Administration great potential if the correct steps are taken...
...Blatchford's new push for binationalism may put the issue to a test...
...The Committee overstates its case by assuming that all governments of developing nations are repressive and exploitative, and by overrating the effectiveness and influence of Peace Corps in supporting such regimes...
...We can't have that...
...The headline reads: "If you told these people the Peace Corps is the hypocritical extension of an imperialistic establishment's military-industrial complex, they would think you were crazy...
...The Peace...
...I believe we are well on the way toward eliminating public protests and changing the type of volunteers who go overseas...
...Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the spring, he was thoroughly chewed out by Senator J. William Ful-bright (D.-Ark...
...But his political allegiances and ambitions made him vulnerable to pressure from the White House, and this soon caused friction with the Kennedy-era liberals he inherited at the core of his experienced staff...
...Few are allowed to merely live in a village and see what they can do...
...At the same time the Rogers cable was being telegraphed overseas, word was coming back that Peace Corps had decided to "phase out" its legal-aid program in Micronesia because of pressure from the Department of Defense...
...As John Osborn, the new editor of Volunteer magazine, observes, "Most [of the demonstrations] have been planned with great sensitivity to the feelings of the countries in which they have been staged...
...Then he commented acidly: "If they are furnished with political speeches by the director, I can well imagine why all Peace Corps volunteers would assume that it is perfectly proper for them to engage in whatever political activity they see fit in whatever country they may be in...
...Politics and the Peace Corps BY CHARLES CREESY The recruiting advertisement shows a clean-cut young American standing with a group of raggedly dressed, dark-skinned children in front of a mud and straw hut...
...Economics of scale come into play and large agro-business plantations are more efficient than small plots...
...Blatchford's credentials looked good: He had founded ACCiON, a sort of private Peace Corps in Latin America sponsored by U. S. business interests...
...Some did little more than wear black arm bands or send letters to Congressmen, but others--most notably in the Dominican Republic--placed advertisements in local newspapers, and many held vigils at U. S. embassies...
...Fulbright, who has grilled Blatchford about his political intentions ever since he was appointed director, noted that "It's not a very appropriate matter for a young man to use the Peace Corps as a stepping stone to run for office...
...Blatchford denies this, but the possibility was discussed in congressional hearings last spring, shortly after the Peterson Report on foreign aid came out...
...Blatchford has defended the right of volunteers to criticize U. S. foreign policy within the American community--he has even encouraged them to present petitions to their Ambassadors and Congressmen--but he has steadfastly insisted that they cannot "publicly embarrass the United States or the local country or inject any foreign policy issues into [their] work locally...
...In some Latin American countries, volunteers report that relations with many segments of the local population improved markedly as word spread of their protests against the war...
...When the U. S. becomes feared and disrespected, trust and respect in me as a volunteer suffer as well...
...Bob White, recently quit in protest when asked to fire five of his key personnel...
...Half of the last issue was devoted to a long interview with Blatchford...
...This family will cost Peace Corps as much as it costs to support three or four single volunteers overseas...
...Under the new "family plan," too, a technician may bring his wife and up to four children into the Peace Corps with him...
...Yet 70 per cent of the agricultural workers in the Philippines do not own their own land -- 50 percent are tenants and 20 per cent are hired hands...
...Despite a torrent of telephoned complaints from government officials, Peace Corps refrained from forcibly evicting the 16 demonstrators and succeeded in avoiding the publicity a dramatic confrontation would have brought...
...Convinced that the organization actually works against the interests of the Third World's poor, they are actively campaigning to abolish it...
...Lists circulated naming personnel who fell under the rule, accompanied by rumors that they were to be dismissed early...
...Largely unnoticed outside Washington during the turmoil of the Cambodia protests last May, 16 members of the Committee occupied the fourth-floor East Asia office in Peace Corps headquarters for 36 hours...
...Some even speculate that there may be a move afoot for Peace Corps to take over some of aid's old functions...
...The crisis over volunteer protests and Peace Corps' apolitical status stems from domestic constraints--i.e., protecting the agency's requests for funds from Congress--more than considerations of foreign relations...
...But Peace Corps administrators have tended to underestimate, or ignore entirely, these political implications...
...Blatchford has had unusual difficulty getting and keeping a competent body of administrators, although word went out that the agency was looking for Republicans and businessmen...
...But over the past year it has not been able to escape a barrage of bad publicity that no amount of slick magazine ads can ever offset...
...The Father will usually be given a regular 9-to-5-type assignment, making it impossible for him to become as fully involved in his community as Peace Corps tradition dictates...
...As Pacific Admiral John McCain put it, "We have had some trouble with some volunteers in Micronesia...
...Its editors were fired after the entire press run of its original March-April issue on dissent, with a cover featuring three clenched fists, was recalled and shredded to pulp...
...The expulsion of volunteers from African countries like Gabon, Tanzania, Libya, Somalia, and (with the last group set to leave this winter) Nigeria, delivered two messages: First, Peace Corps was going to have to move toward a genuine binationalism by including more host country people on its staff and involving more foreign officials in the planning and supervision of its programs...
...they now have enough teachers of their own to fill the bulk of their existing classrooms, for example, and want specialists and professionals to fill gaps in narrowly defined technical areas...
...Fighting induction, Murray accused the Peace Corps of conspiracy with his draft board...
...The Congress has recognized the distinctiveness by excluding the Peace Corps from the purview of the Hickenlooper Amendment...
...They were telling the Micronesians that they should hold out for full independence...
...It went on to emphasize that Peace Corps was seeking to screen out dissent-prone applicants and to recruit "people with more maturity, greater experience and training...
...Political protest is one...
...More efficient producers (middle-level farmers and above) are going to push smaller farmers out of business...
...Because of the children's needs, it will have to live where there are adequate schools and health facilities--in most cases, in a large city where there is already a sizable American community...
...Within a few months there was a reported 90 percent turnover in the senior administrative positions...
...The substitute issue carefully explained the Administration's position on volunteer protest behind a cover of two peasants tending their fields...
...The Peace Corps' function is to disguise the repressive arms of U. S. foreign policy, the Green Berets and the CIA...
...in practice, he is obligated by the agency not to involve himself in politics in the country he serves...
...The poor man at the bottom, who has no voice in the government, is frequently neglected...
...The governments of most countries where Peace Corps works represent the wealthy minority who exploit the impoverished majority...
...Adds Blatchford, "So many volunteers don't understand this...
...Another wrote: "In Venezuela, old suspicions of the Peace Corps are beginning to return as a result of the war in Indochina...
...The organization's prestige and the morale of its staff have sunk to an all-time low...
...The memo concluded: "We inherited a very difficult situation resulting from volunteers just out of college with strong liberal views...
...American military officials, however, are interested in establishing permanent bases there...
...In trying to assist national agencies and programs abroad, Peace Corps has always had to live with the dilemma that host country politics often dictate aiding those groups in the society that already have a measure of power...
...The search for "new types of volunteers," however, actually began before the crisis over dissent came to a head...
...We also had to weed out many members of a hostile staff hired during the past eight years of Democratic administration and unwilling to accept the new Administration...
...This restriction has been challenged in the courts by a former volunteer, Bruce Murray of Newport, Rhode Island, who was dismissed from Peace Corps in 1967 for writing a letter critical of the Vietnam war to a Chilean newspaper...
...It bothers many volunteers that the vast majority of the population is either untouched or actually harmed by successful Peace Corps efforts to help the middle class...
...A few desk officers are worried that the "person-to-person" aspect of volunteer service may suffer...
...They should either shape up and do the job expected of them, or ship out...
...It claimed that 12 volunteers had been fired for protest activities, while in fact many of them had quit on their own initiative...
...He has evidently felt himself obliged to take an essentially political stance while attempting to direct an agency which is apolitical...
...Some have sons in Vietnam...
...Peace Corps had 560 volunteers in Micronesia prior to the Defense Department muscle flexing (the figure has now dropped to about 360), most of them teaching English, with others in such projects as health, agriculture, and cooperatives...
...As an international organization, it would presumably be safe from the increasing nationalism and anti-Americanism of the majority of developing nations, as well as the anti-Establishment feelings of many of the idealists who are needed to fill its ranks...
...And the logic of cost-benefit analysis, inherited from McNamara's Pentagon, has led Peace Corps to focus its efforts where it will get the greatest--and most measurable--results...
...in a little more than a year from now, all volunteers overseas will have been selected during this Administration...
...Most of the headlines about Peace Corps during the past year, though, have tended to obscure the institution's "distinctiveness...
...The public applauded the plan to send idealistic young Americans abroad to promote world peace by working to eliminate the causes of war: poverty, ignorance, hunger, disease and despair...
...The Office of Public Affairs itself, once manned entirely by Democrats, has been completely re-staffed and is under its fifth new director in the past year...
...But, at home, the sentiment of many lawmakers was voiced by Congressman William Scherle (R.Iowa) : "Those people were not hired to demonstrate either for or against our government...
...Writing in the Far East Economic Review, he tellingly observes: "The breed of rice which Peace Corps seeks to spread in order to raise food production and general living standards is an expensive mistress...
...The situation is similar with the "miracle rice" projects in the Philippines, according to former volunteer Bruce Nussbaum...
...Volunteers who felt that their first commitment was to the people they were serving, rather than the government that had sent them, complained bitterly...
...Partly from necessity, there has been a 22 per cent cutback in the Washington staff and a total reorganization of its operations...
...for having delivered a political speech ("A Republican President . . . has brought a burgeoning budget into check, and checked a spiraling inflation") at a $50-a-plate Lincoln Day dinner...
...Repeatedly, events have focused public attention on the fact that Peace Corps is an agency of the U. S. Government...
...Second, many nations no longer want large numbers of generalist volunteers...
...It is the angel's face on the devil's policy...
...Peace Corps' unique apolitical status was reaffirmed by Secretary of State William Rogers in a cable to all U. S. embassies and consulates a little over a year ago: "A separation of Peace Corps activities from other overseas operations, including economic assistance programs, is of importance to the agency's esprit and effective operation...
...His wife is expected to do some kind of volunteer work, but she may not have a specified assignment, and if she has the maximum four children, it is difficult to see how she will have much time to spare...
...Staff members then drew up a petition for the President--which Blatchford asked them not to send: "We . . . feel that the Director of the Peace Corps has been subjected to unfair and excessive political pressure to conform to partisan policies...
...Peace Corps is now placing about 30 percent of its volunteers overseas in positions placing for technical skills, while the proportion of generalists--for the most part recent college graduates--has fallen from the traditional level of 95 per cent to 70 per cent...
...The 800-900 members of the radical Committee of Returned Volunteers argue that the Peace Corps has become just another cog in the U. S. foreign policy machine...
...The biggest bombshell for Peace Corps, of course, has been the war in Indochina and the need many young volunteers feel to protest against it...
...The magazine, once a remarkably open forum for volunteers to criticize the agency's policies and programs, has been converted into a more conventional house organ...
...And you would be...
...Binationalism, moreover, may not be enough...
...Upon returning to the United States, he was refused a request for conscientious objector status and quickly drafted...
...As present programs are designed, volunteers have little opportunity to help the distressed segments of the population...
...Last December Judge Raymond J. Pettine ruled out the conspiracy theory, but condemned the draft board for illegal procedure and Peace Corps for violating the due process guarantee of the First Amendment...
...There have been no other tests of the issue, and Peace Corps has made it clear that it does not consider the Murray case binding...
...These 2,100 islands scattered across the South Pacific are held as a Strategic Trust Territory by the U. S., and this country is obligated by the terms of the UN charter to prepare the islanders for eventual independence...
...Others tried to resist the tide and were dismissed...
...Corps is part of the problem, not part of the solution," one Committee leaflet declares...
...They don't realize the unbelievable reaction this would have at home...
...Faced with threats of a budget cut as high as 50 per cent, Blatchford sent members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee a memo last April 14, entitled "Specific Steps Taken to Deal with Protests and to Recruit New Types of Volunteers...
...The Executive Branch has recognized this distinctiveness by having Peace Corps continue its work in countries with which we have suspended diplomatic relations...
...Peace Corps has proven capable of attracting more technical people than the critics expected, although the shift in emphasis has not been as great, either, as Blatchford's publicity originally implied...
...Nevertheless many volunteers, including the most idealistic, feel compelled to publicly attest their disagreement with a foreign policy that is morally objectionable to them...
...They draped a large banner from the windows bearing the slogan "Liberation not Pacification," and unfurled a Vietcong flag in full view of the White House, just across Lafayette Square...
...President, let it be made known in these times of polarization and tension that the Peace Corps has kept its integrity, that it remains an officially sanctioned organization in which any American desiring to effect change peacefully and constructively has an opportunity to serve...
...It was to be a people-to-people endeavor, manned by volunteers who would serve independently from U. S. diplomatic missions overseas...
...Meanwhile, at home, President Nixon was appointing Joseph H. Blatchford, a 36-year-old Republican who had just lost a bid for Congress in Southern California, to replace Jack H. Vaughn as Director of Peace Corps...
...Many former volunteers argue that the only solution is to turn Peace Corps over to international auspices, such as the United Nations, and make every participating country both a donor and recipient of volunteers...
...Past experience has taught that older volunteers, particularly blue-collar workers, generally find it more difficult than young college graduates to learn a foreign langauge adjust to crude living conditions, and adapt to a different culture...
...The intrusion of the U. S. into the affairs of a small nation in Asia does not go unnoticed here...
...The military had its way and the legal-aid program was suspended...
...It is also a response to new attitudes in some developing lands...
...In theory, a Peace Corps volunteer is not a U. S. Government employe and thus has the same right as any other citizen to free expression of his opinion...
...U. S. foreign policy supports these ruling classes and the U. S. businesses which exploit these countries...
...Critics argue that such a volunteer will find himself in a role scarcely distinguishable from that of an aid technician, except for its lower pay scale and fewer diplomatic privileges...
...A group of 12 volunteer lawyers had been counseling Micronesians about their land rights, advising them to claim reimbursement for land that was taken without payment by the U. S., and--according to a Marine Corps Lieutenant General--encouraging the Palauian legislature to pass a resolution opposing the establishment of a U. S. military base on their island...
...Blatchford's high-pressure campaign for older recruits, including married couples with children and technically skilled persons, is not simply a reflection of the Administration's coldness toward liberal youth...
...One volunteer recently wrote Blatchford: "It is becoming increasingly difficult to remain here in Botswana as a volunteer...
...After all, we are the Peace Corps," some have pleaded...
Vol. 53 • November 1970 • No. 23
