THE QUESTION NOBODY ASKS
Hester, General Hugh B.
The Question Nobody Asks by GENERAL HUGH B. HESTER IN THE current national debate, no one has asked the basic question of foreign aid: has it, on balance, improved the chances of world peace? Only...
...President Truman, then a U.S...
...Once we were able to reach mutually beneficial terms, agreements were possible and when made, they were kept...
...Any military aid, under these conditions, tends to upset the balance of power, as in the case of Pakistan and India, and so automatically wipes out any possible benefit from economic aid...
...This, in turn, the HUGH B. HESTER, Retired Brigadier General of the U.S...
...The question answers itself...
...dollars...
...Even the Soviet Union has recently suggested such a solution for the Middle East...
...Thus military aid to Pakistan means a corresponding or greater increase in the military budget of India...
...It is not that the leaders themselves are immoral, but that the state system is amoral...
...All this means that they cannot possibly form a purposeful alliance...
...From a vantage post as head of the United States-German Food and Agricultural program in Berlin, 1945-47, I watched the drama of the Cold War develop and unfold...
...This assumption raises a number of interesting questions, only two of which can be discussed briefly here...
...Perhaps the most basic of these assumptions—I prefer the word myths—was the readiness of the West to maintain perfectly normal and friendly relations with the Soviet Union at the end of World War II, only to be rejected by Stalin's brutal intransigence...
...The mere statement, that since Russia has not attacked Western Europe, NATO must have therefore prevented such an attack, makes no sense...
...Most of the non-aligned nations, such as Burma, Indonesia, and India, have repeatedly stated their preferences for a multilateral aid system under U.N...
...Assuming, as I think one must, that military aid is the common cement which binds together the bricks of the U.S...
...This brief survey seems to suggest that military aid, especially for the small nations, may not only cancel out economic aid by inducing small local armament races, but may also shore up reactionary, despotic regimes, and thus increase poverty and national tension by preventing necessary changes...
...Economic aid is, also, given to them and to a few other nations like India that insist upon a policy of non-alignment with any power bloc...
...Pakistan, which receives both types of aid, and India, which receives only economic aid, serve as a useful illustration of how the two affect each other...
...Only if it has done this, can foreign aid be justified as serving the interests of the American people, for, after all, it is they who are paying the bills and will be among the millions dying if and when World War III comes...
...Would the United States, after having lost over 12 million of her people and all her farms and factories east of the Mississippi River, be able, ready, and planning a war against an even greater giant: one strengthened instead of weakened by the great war...
...Most of the Middle East is a prime example of this...
...And this is primarily because of great power competition and conflict...
...aid in support of the great military alliances, such as NATO and SEATO and the Bagdad Pact...
...Much of Asia, Africa, and Central and South America are victims of this same outmoded struggle for power...
...Army, held major posts in both the Pacific and in Europe during and after World War II...
...It is an essential ingredient of the Truman-Dulles-Eisenhower doctrine of Soviet containment, and as such can only contribute to a world war...
...Nations do not have permanent allies, only permanent interests, and those permanent interests now are synonymous with world peace...
...If neither was a world power, the fact that one was a socialist totalitarian state and the other a capitalistic democracy would have little significance...
...A vast economic aid program, organized and administered along the lines of UNRRA earlier, would contribute materially to world peace because of its international scope and cooperative character...
...Finally, what of the U.S...
...In our own interests, and in the interests of world peace, we should now be willing, in my opinion, to modify our aid program in accordance with these suggestions...
...According to the Indian leaders, any increase in the military power of Pakistan automatically increases the insecurity of her adversary, India...
...foreign policy is that the Soviet Union was able, ready, and planning to march west across Europe soon after the end of the war, and, therefore, NATO was necessary to prevent and did prevent this aggression...
...First, what is the basis of the belief that a nation, which had lost more than 15 million of her people as a direct result of the war, including much of her youth, and had had two-thirds of her farms and factories destroyed, was ready, able, and actually planning another war...
...So far as the power elite of the Soviet Union and the United States are concerned, the problem consists primarily of the fact that both countries now are centers of world power and, therefore, in the jungle world of the state system, they must of necessity be enemies...
...And again, unfortunately perhaps, the so-called enemies of the small nations, in the opinion of many of their leaders at least, are not the Russian and Chinese Communists, but their immediate neighbors: those generally in a comparable state of underdevelopment, poverty, and military strength...
...Any worthwhile survey of the value of U.S...
...The United States waged a two-front war against the Soviets immediately following the conclusion of World War I, participated in an economic blockade, including food, for one full year, and refused diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union for 17 years...
...Historically, all great powers have kept their agreements when, but only when, it was in their interest to do so...
...It would be interesting indeed to see a score card of great power performance in this respect, compiled by a competent panel of international experts, free of bias...
...When, if ever, has any great power waited years for a grand coalition to form, organize, arm, and train before attacking, if any attack was intended in the first place...
...He is, also, reported to have stated to a group of his principal advisers less than two weeks after the death of Roosevelt that Stalin had received his last concession from us...
...No other test makes sense...
...It might, also, prove interesting to observe the red faces of some of the leaders who have so often, ostentatiously and sanctimoniously, wrapped themselves in the cloak of international morality...
...Indians contend, not only consumes an equal amount of economic aid, but tends to set off an arms race chain reaction among the lesser powers, which may, and often does, increase poverty rather than, as intended under the aid program, reduce it...
...The only sensible response to such obvious propaganda is that the Soviets have no better and probably no worse record of performance in international relations than many other governments, including some with whom the United States now has military alliances...
...Whether this should be true is not the question here, for logic has little in common with fear-induced hate...
...military and economic aid to the great powers, such as Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan, must include, as a minimum, a few of the basic assumptions upon which the present Cold War is based...
...Here a whole region, capable of one of the highest standards of living anywhere, is kept in abysmal poverty...
...I do not know how much experience Admiral Arthur W. Radford has had in negotiating with Soviet Russia, or how good a negotiator he is...
...The Soviets, of course, reciprocated these fears and hates in full measure, and made their own special contributions...
...And, therefore, it is not in the interest of the American people...
...In recent years he has written widely on American foreign policy...
...Before a satisfactory answer can be given to this basic question, however, it is necessary to observe how the two types of aid work: whether they really complement or oppose each other as forces for peace...
...foreign policy assumption, "You cannot trust the Soviets under any circumstances"—recently revived by Admiral Radford...
...Her present system of unilateral aid, heavily emphasizing the military side, does not contribute to peace, but does contribute to conflict...
...Winston Churchill urged the strangulation of the "Communist baby" in its crib at the end of World War I, led the British propaganda attack upon the system between the wars, proclaimed it as evil as Nazism the same day Hitler invaded Russia and ordered Montgomery to stack German arms for possible use later against the Soviets and, also, urged Eisenhower to do likewise at the time of surrender, May 1945...
...I found the British and French good collaborators too...
...Senator, is reported to have welcomed the German attack upon Russia in June 1941, and to have proposed that we aid the Germans when the Russians were winning and the Russians when the Germans were winning, in order to help them both kill each other off...
...It is a fact that the 40-odd "allies" of the United States do not really have a common enemy, common interest, common language, common culture, common political institutions, or common concepts of freedom and justice...
...What then of U.S...
...The only interest common among these allies is a consistent demand for U.S...
...military alliance system, and assuming as one must, that great power alliances divide the world sharply, the conclusion is unavoidable that foreign aid as now administered with its emphasis on the military does not promote peace but conflict...
...This God and Devil, good and evil theory has furnished propaganda and fuel for war for every power group since the beginning of time...
...He resumed the attack openly and with full vigor at Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946, in the presence of and while a guest of the President of the United States...
...And this time, make war against a formidable alliance, which included the materially most powerful nation on earth, the United States—a nation greatly strengthened, not weakened as was she, by the war...
...How stupid must one assume the Soviets to be...
...Once this interest has been overcome by a greater one, such as nationalism, or fear of the atom and hydrogen bomb attack, the alliances must of necessity fall apart...
...This is a myth...
...Military aid is now granted to any nation that will ally itself with the United States against Russia and China, or will join us in the policy of containment of Communism anywhere or preferably everywhere...
...direction...
...Another important assumption of U.S...
...In the jungle world of the state system, this has been standard operating procedure for centuries...
...The Arabs almost to a man believe that French colonial power over Algeria is now possible only because of U.S...
...But, for whatever it is worth, as chief administrator of our German Food and Agricultural Program in Berlin after World War II I negotiated with the representatives of the Soviet Union frequently, often daily, and I found them sound, sensible, and reasonable people with whom to work...
...Second, what then is the justification for the belief that NATO, until quite recently a paper organization, and still far from adequate to its stated purpose, has or could have prevented a Soviet aggression against Western Europe...
...If the United States would place her vast resources at the disposal of such a project, she could promptly recapture her former proud leadership in the cause of international peace, and likewise, she would contribute greatly to her own security...
...The points to remember, however, are that 20-odd years of suspicion, fear, and hate-inspired propaganda left little or no basis for trust and cooperation, that the war alliance was one of pure convenience, that both sides were responsible for this difficult, if not impossible, condition at the end of the war, and that once the war was over the thin veneer of friendship was ripped off by the top leaders of both blocs...
...Again, in accordance with Indian views and many others, these apparently conflicting characteristics of foreign aid, as now conceived and administered by the United States, may be, and often have been, used to maintain the power of governments that are medieval in structure and totalitarian in nature, even when social, political, and economic reforms admittedly were absolutely necessary for any tolerable future for the peoples involved...
Vol. 21 • July 1957 • No. 7
