The SHAM Battle over Foreign Aid

...We have already all but lost it in Asia and the Middle East...

...A year ago, I put forward a detailed, specific proposal for the creation of such a mechanism—a proposal which has been endorsed by the American Association for the United Nations and the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace...

...The fact that they have done this at the expense of human freedom means little to people who have never known the meaning of individual freedom...

...Worst of all, it keeps us perpetually at the brink of war with the most powerful military force in Asia...

...We shall never know until we try to find out...

...If we continue our present policy, we shall lose the competitive struggle...

...That way is to sponsor and to help create a United Nations Development Authority, with regional subsidiaries in each of the world's major underdeveloped areas, and to propose that all the industrialized nations channel their aid through that agency...

...It may well be that Peking is not ready for such give-and-take negotiation...

...If the United States were to take the lead in sponsoring such a proposal, it could recapture a large part of its lost prestige and influence...

...It alienates the unaligned countries of Asia...

...The alternative is to recognize that the greatest danger we face at present lies in a continuation of the nuclear arms race...

...Let me now turn to that part of our foreign aid program which goes under the heading of military aid and defense support...

...The SHAM Battle over Foreign Aid by JAMES P. WARBURG Congressional passage of the Eisenhower Administration's foreign economic aid bill in the closing hours of the last session emphasized anew the shameful character of this annual Donnybrook between those who lustily support wholly inadequate Administration proposals and those who with equal enthusiasm endeavor to cut them down...

...Ten years ago, when we launched the Marshall Plan for Europe, we were on the right track...

...I found it difficult to get excited over whether the measure was passed...

...There can be no disarmament so long as these major differences remain unresolved...

...Our preoccupation with preserving the strength of our European allies has made us into a status quo power during a time of worldwide revolutionary change...

...Moreover, no conquest lasts forever...

...This was true in the last two years of the Truman Administration and has been even more true since the Eisenhower Administration took office...

...Of course, there is now some truth in this contention...

...It is stupid, because the primary Communist threat is not military but political...

...Brinkmanship" is immoral because he who practices it throws into a game of bluff chips which do not belong to him—namely, the lives of all humanity...

...Military aid to Turkey, as an important member of the NATO alliance, seems to me to make sense, so long as we do not reach a European settlement and a mutual hands-off agreement in the Middle East...

...It divides us from our major allies...

...A nuclear war, on the other hand, means extinction, and extinction is to all intents and purposes permanent...

...adequate program of capital assistance to the underdeveloped nations...

...That is one reason why our annual debates over what we euphemistically call our foreign economic aid program fill me with a sense of shame...

...We had what amounted to a monopoly on economic assistance...

...The alternative to "brinkmanship" is not appeasement or surrender...

...This was about one-tenth of what we spend annually on cosmetics...

...We could have indulged in pact-omania and still have developed an JAMES P. WARBURG is one of the nation's foremost spokesmen on foreign affairs...

...The one thing which would have aroused my interest did not happen—a movement in the Congress to tell this Administration that its proposals for economic assistance were disgracefully inadequate...

...Other substantial amounts go to Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran...

...The recent enactment by Congress produced a total appropriation of $3,518,092,000 of which only $400,-000,000 were allotted to the Development Loan Fund with $172,000,000 for technical assistance...

...But, while we cannot win the competitive struggle, we can perhaps end it by turning competition into multilateral cooperation...

...And again, a year later, when President Truman announced a "bold new program of aid to the underdeveloped areas," we seemed to be moving in the right direction...

...If, on the other hand, the Russians were to reject the proposal, their rejection would amount to a confession that their economic assistance to the underdeveloped countries is given purely for selfish reasons and thus much of their newly-gained prestige would be lost...

...The trouble with the Point Four program was that it was not supplemented by a program of capital assistance...

...One of the strange things about this program is that you and I are not permitted to know how these $3 billion of our money are to be distributed...

...If the proposal were accepted by the Soviet Union, the economic aspect of the cold war would have been ended, and a great step would have been taken toward the establishment of Herblock in The Washington Post "Maybe We Should Propose Shooting This Stuff Across in Rockets" peace...

...and that the only way to settle our differences with them is through patient, give-and-take negotiations...

...What right have we to settle this question for all of mankind...

...A Communist conquest of the world would, to be sure, create conditions of life intolerable to the English-speaking peoples and to some, though not all, of the peoples of Western Europe and Latin America...

...The Middle East, Africa, and Latin America were almost entirely forgotten...

...that the Communist dictatorships will neither conveniently disappear nor be frightened into retreat...

...The largest amounts go to our dear old friends, Chiang Kai-shek and Syngman Rhee, and to our relatively new friend, Ngo Diem, the not altogether democratic ruler of South Vietnam...

...The sad fact, however, is that military aid wholly preempted the attention of our government...

...These people know what individual freedom means...

...As a rule, it does not do very much good to show an underdeveloped country what to do, if it lacks the capital to carry out the advice given...

...because the chief power of attraction of the Communist dictatorships lies in their having been able to lift masses of people into the Twentieth Century within the span of a single generation...

...In any case, it is difficult to see how Pakistan could be a useful ally, even if she wanted to be...

...The fact is that for ten years— from 1945 to 1955—the United States was the only nation capable of meeting the needs of the hungry, diseased, impoverished, and ignorant two-thirds of the human race...

...It remains to be seen, however, to what extent a reform of foreign economic policy initiated by Undersecretary Dillon can succeed in the context of an unaltered approach to overall political policy on the part of his chief...

...My point is that technical advice and the sharing of know-how, though often extremely helpful in themselves, actually tend to stimulate the demands of the revolution of rising expectations without satisfying them...

...The rearming of Iran and Iraq—particularly Iraq—under the Bagdad Pact has had disastrous consequences in alienating Egypt, splitting the Arab world, and opening the door to Soviet penetration...

...The Communist dictatorships were in no position to compete...

...Recognizing these facts, we should enter into high-level negotiations with Peking, the object of which would be to settle the questions of Korea, Vietnam, and Formosa...

...and the bitter fact remains that what little we do is not done out of a decent sense of justice and humanity but out of a desire to strengthen our own power-political position, to bolster our alliances, and assure access to strategic materials...

...It strengthens the Sino-Soviet alliance...

...His many books include "Victory Without War," "Germany—Key to Peace," "The United States and the Changing World," and "Turning Point Toward Peace...

...It was less than one-tenth of one per cent of our national income...

...They can be resolved only through fair compromise...

...East Pakistan lies between neutral India and neutral Burma...

...In Europe, military aid supplanted economic assistance...

...In Asia, the Point Four program, which had aroused such great expectations, was buried under huge appropriations for military assistance to South Korea, to the Chinese Nationalists on Formosa, and to the French in Indo-China...

...These forward steps are to be welcomed...

...But a Communist-dominated world would not necessarily be intolerable to the vast majority of the human race which has never had a taste of freedom...

...But there is still a way by which we can create an instrument to do what we have failed to do and to prevent the inevitable march of events from being guided solely by Moscow and Peking...

...Nevertheless, almost anyone can figure out for himself what the chief items are...

...You cannot reach a fair compromise if you don't sit down and talk...

...My own view is that our present China policy is not only self-defeating but extremely dangerous...

...Do you realize that, under this curiously complacent administration, our total budget for economic assistance sank, two years ago, to about $300 million...

...It forecloses all possibility of reaching settlements in the three major disputed areas...

...Our rearming Pakistan has alarmed the Afghans and caused them to turn toward the Soviet Union, thus opening the traditional gateway into the Indian sub-continent...

...The Eisenhower Administration has compounded the error by reducing that doctrine to an absurdity...

...The Truman Administration made a mistake in subordinating all other considerations to the doctrine of military containment...

...We have missed our chance to make the United States into the one great friend of the peoples struggling to emerge into the Twentieth Century...

...I suggest that we should be well-advised to stop our military aid to Pakistan and perhaps convert it into economic assistance...

...Now as to the three chief East Asian beneficiaries of our military aid and defense support—South Korea, Formosa, and South Vietnam: It is obvious that the necessity for our spending some $2 billion a year in this area arises from the state of our relations with the Chinese People's Republic...

...Have you ever considered that, while two-thirds of the world's peoples live on the ragged edge of starvation, fortunes are made in this country out of weight-reducing pills, slimming diets, and slenderizing establishments...

...Yet those invaluable ten years were wasted, partly because we were callously insensitive to the needs of our fellow human beings, but chiefly because we let the Communist dictatorships frighten us into a sterile and wholly negative policy of military containment...

...But the Soviet rejection of the Marshall Plan, the rape of Czechoslovakia, and, finally, the North Korean aggression derailed American policy so that all other consideration were subordinated to the policy of military containment...

...Our much-travelled Secretary of State has extended a wrong policy in Europe into a global policy wholly inappropriate to the political, economic, and psychological conditions existing in Asia, Africa, and Latin America...

...We have missed our chance to help and guide that revolution...

...Every dollar we reluctantly spend is ground out of an unwilling Congress by the single, great persuader: "If we don't do it the Communists will...

...I do not mean to deprecate the value of the technical assistance which was rendered—in spite of preoccupation with military strategy—during and after the Korean war...

...We cannot compete with the dictatorships in mobility, nor in the terms we can offer, nor in controlling our trade so as to supplement economic aid with trade agreements...

...The blunt truth is that not just one part but practically all of our foreign policy needs drastic overhauling...

...It is my considered conviction that we shall never regain the ground we have lost so long as we stick to the bilateral principle...

...On the other hand, I can see no justification whatever for continuing to give military aid to Pakistan...

...In Asia and the Middle East they are actually beating us at what should be our own best game...

...The information is classified in the interests of security...

...Since 1955, both the Soviet Union and the Chinese People's Republic have become active competitors...

...Brinkmanship"—our present policy of threatening nuclear war to halt any Communist advance—is both a stupid and a morally indefensible policy...

...It makes a mockery of our pursuit of disarmament...

...In spite of the squandered years and the wasted opportunities, I believe that it is still not too late to retrieve the situation, but only if a wholly new approach is taken to the problem of eliminating or at least ameliorating some of the injustices and inequalities which exist in the world today...

...But, even under the lash of the Communist challenge, we move at a snail's pace, doing too little too late and all too often in the Wrong way...

...This is important in view of the fact that the General Assembly is now dominated by nations which are would-be beneficiaries rather than potential contributors...

...We shall never find out so long as we maintain our present attitude...

...A second reason why I am filled with disgust at our annual debates over foreign economic aid is the chief argument used to support the niggardly proposals timidly put forward by this Administration and, as a rule, cut down by the Congress...

...I shall not go into detail, except to say that the proposal provides for balanced representation on the Authority of those countries which would contribute the funds and those which would benefit from their investment...

...So far, the same disasters which have strengthened Dillon's hand appear to have hardened rather than softened the complacent inflexibility of Secretary of State Dulles...

...It will not be long before they become active in Latin America...

...Nevertheless, the mistake having been made, I suppose it is necessary to continue to provide arms for our friends in the Middle East unless and until an agreement is reached with Russia to embargo all arms shipments into that troubled area...

...Author's Postscript] Vice President Nixon's unhappy experiences in Latin America and the French-Algerian and Middle East crises have apparently brought about a belated partial awakening in Washington...

...In addition, Washington sponsored an increase of the loaning capacity of the World Bank itself and of the International Monetary Fund...

...Our ill-advised rearming of that country has alienated India and forced that hard-pressed and crucially important democracy into countervailing rearmament, the cost of which has jeopardized its already precarious five-year plan...

...These questions can be settled peaceably only if both sides recognize that neither can hope to achieve the unconditional surrender of the other...

...In August, the American government reversed its position with regard to the internationalization of economic aid—at least to the extent of giving its approval to a Middle East Development Authority, an Inter-American Bank, and the creation of a "soft-loan" subsidiary of the World Bank, as suggested by Senator A. S. Mike Monroney...

...It may be that they would rather die than lose it...

...It is my belief that, had it not been for the outbreak of war in Korea, the Point Four program might have developed, during the Truman Administration, into a series of Marshall Plans—for Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America...

...At the very least, we can recapture the world's respect by making the effort to do so...

...I believe that, in this respect, my feeling is shared by a great many Americans...

...What we should do is to face the fact that the Peking government is— whether or not we like it—the government of China and that there is not the remotest chance that the Chinese Nationalists will reconquer the mainland...

...that the only way to halt this insane competition is to recognize that we are not the world's paramount power...

...In addition, "brinkmanship" is stupid because the masses of mankind want peace and are repulsed by the threat of war...

...West and East Pakistan are separated by a thousand miles of neutral Indian territory...

...Also, at long last, the Indian economic problem received serious attention...

...Even if it were necessary to embark upon global military containment—which I do not believe —it was not necessary to let the demands of military strategy submerge the crying needs of two-thirds of the world's population, most of whom have no interest whatever in the cold war...

...What right have we deliberately to march to the brink of nuclear war over Matsu and Quemoy...

...You know that argument: "This will help us beat the Communists...

...Moreover, I question whether Pakistan ever wanted to be rearmed primarily in order to resist or prevent a Soviet invasion and whether the chief purpose of Pakistani rearmament has not been directed against India...