What Foreign Aid Can and Cannot Do
Bowles, Chester
What Foreign Aid Can and Cannot Do by CHESTER BOWLES This article is adapted from Mr. Bowles' absorbing new book, Ideas, People and Peace, to be published soon by Harpers. Formerly our ambassador...
...Concern for the welfare of the underprivileged people should, therefore, become a central premise of American diplomacy...
...Substantial progress on disarmament, a genuine easing of the Cold War, and the ultimate abandonment of Lenin's old dream of Communist world revolution will become possible only as the Kremlin becomes convinced that the free nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have the capacity to remain free...
...In so narrowing our objective we have inadvertently appeared to offer a premium to those countries which have the most Communists...
...To a struggling government, hungry for outside assistance, we have made Communists worth their weight in American dollars...
...in others they have been less productive...
...But it should stand on its own feet instead of being lumped under "foreign development assistance...
...If a wealthy resident of the little New England community in which I live announced that he would build a swimming pool for our children, a new library, and an extension of our town hall, provided only that we support his views willy-nilly in our town meetings, he would be invited to take his beneficence elsewhere...
...Our policies may thus be said to have been operating in reverse...
...Economic aid is not charity...
...We have put $740 million into military aid to South Vietnam in two years...
...We have seen ample evidence that a landless laborer or a tenant farmer who lacks a sense of belonging and a sense of justice will not be satisfied with a few marginal economic gains...
...To this extent we are making both disarmament and peace more difficult to obtain...
...In 1958 the Soviet Union is spending twice as much as we are on such programs—not including the sizable aid she is giving China...
...It is no more possible to buy the loyalty of a nation than it is to buy the loyalty of a friend...
...This argument appears equally hollow...
...In the decade since that historic speech, we have embarked on Point Four programs in various parts of the world...
...Such reasoning was reflected in the preamble of the 1957 foreign aid bill, which asserted that it would be necessary for our government to continue its aid program as long as world Communism continued to threaten our interests...
...The need for sensitive, adequate, and continuing economic assistance to many Asian, African, and Latin-American nations is urgent...
...A third mistaken argument in support of foreign aid grows from the false assumption that we can turn Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans into orderly supporters of the status quo simply by filling their hungry stomachs regularly with rice...
...By holding back on economic development we are fostering Soviet hopes that the non-Communist countries will politically disintegrate and fall under their influence...
...And the higher our tariffs the more aid will be required...
...Instead of turning him into a supporter of the status quo, these meager improvements will simply create an appetite for the full citizenship to which he now believes he is entitled...
...To those who are critical we have been more niggardly...
...It brings those traditions into focus on the problems of today's world...
...A more formidable obstacle to its full acceptance by the public, however, has been the failure of the succeeding Administration properly to explain it to the American people...
...This calls for a revolution in American economic thinking comparable to that of the early 1930's...
...Only as this economic gap diminishes will there be orderly political growth in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and only with such growth can we expect the Soviet Union someday to abandon its global ambitions and to negotiate soberly and in good faith for the creation of a meaningful peace...
...In explaining our opposition before the United Nations we have asserted that we will support such an effort only after a disarmament agreement is reached with the Soviet Union...
...We have been spending close to a billion dollars annually, for instance, to maintain the South Korean army...
...I believe that we should end our opposition to the establishment of the Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development (SUNFED) which we and the Russians have blocked...
...Costs $644 Million...
...Bowles recently completed another journey through Southeast Asia, the Soviet Union, and Europe...
...Each year 80 per cent of our foreign aid program has gone directly or indirectly for military purposes...
...We should make it clear that we are acting not out of fear of Communism but because we know that a free and prosperous nation can be created and defended only by free people...
...In the days of the Great Depression millions of ill-fed, unemployed workers walked back and forth in front of grocery stores filled with food spoiling for lack of customers...
...The Point Four program which was laid down by President Harry Truman in his inaugural address in January, 1949, is one of the most creative concepts in history...
...HH A major share of the non-military aid, moreover, has been given to three nations—Formosa, South Korea, and Vietnam—which together represent only four per cent of the peoples of the underdeveloped world...
...His other books include Tomorrow without Fear, Ambassador's Report, The New Dimensions of Peace, Africa's Challenge to America, and American Politics in a Revolutionary World.—The Editors Unless the economic misery of two-thirds of the world is eased, unless the gap between the white Western world and the colored majority of mankind begins gradually to be closed, the world will remain two regions, one of the rich, one of the poor, and each increasingly antagonistic to the other...
...It should be provided largely on a loan basis, payable in large part in local currencies...
...We have appeared willing to share our wealth liberally only with those who accept our interpretation of world affairs...
...The kind of constructive non-military economic aid programs that I believe are required would amount to much less than one per cent of our annual national output...
...The necessary American investment in the cause of peace is infinitesimal when we compare it with the incalculable cost of war...
...It expresses the traditions of the American people at their best...
...Each year the White House has presented a budget for "foreign aid" in the neighborhood of $4 billion...
...This is not a temporary effort and that fact should be frankly faced...
...His forthcoming book is based in part on those travels...
...Orthodox economists insisted that nothing could be done because of the "iron laws of economics...
...Yet we Americans have inadvertently placed ourselves in the position of the richest individual in the world community trying to buy friends and supporters for his views...
...Out of every federal tax dollar that we paid in 1957, 80 cents went for the cost of past wars or preparation for possible future wars...
...Is it any wonder that our program is suspected, if not rejected, by many proud, suspicious, newly free peoples...
...Is it surprising that Communist leaders have said to the people of Asia and Africa, "The Soviet Union offers loans and technicians to speed your development and for this you are grateful...
...Can anyone imagine the Soviet Union allowing similar capacity to lie idle...
...Mistakes in the administration of such a new and revolutionary program were, of course, inevitable...
...Most Americans have assumed that this money was largely earmarked for such down-to-earth essentials as plows, D.D.T., fertilizer, pumps, and other equipment necessary to help struggling new nations ease the pressures of poverty and create foundations for free societies...
...Most of it can be secured by cutting down some of our more wasteful military aid grants, many of which have opened up such tempting political opportunities for the Kremlin...
...A second reason often offered in behalf of our foreign aid program is that it will bring military allies to our side, or at least win their support for whatever political position we may take in the United Nations...
...But doesn't this put the cart before the horse...
...A nation that could produce a sufficiently frightening array of local Communist agitators was often flooded with more assistance than it could properly use, while other nations which were less well endowed with such troublemakers received little or none...
...In many areas the results have been spectacular...
...In negotiating and administering this aid we should seek to establish our identification with the welfare of peasants, workers, bazaar keepers, and students...
...It is essentially a tax on free men everywhere, naturally bearing most heavily on the richest nation on earth, to promote the general welfare of the world community as a primary requirement of peace...
...Stable societies in Asia, Africa, or elsewhere can be secured only as people begin to develop a faith in their own community, a faith in their own nation, a faith in their own future, and consequently a determination to defend that future against all comers...
...This East Asian military defense effort is necessary...
...For instance, we have stated that this program is primarily designed to block Communist expansion...
...America's primary strength lies in her ideas, and in her capacity to produce...
...American aid will be needed until the underdeveloped nations are themselves able to meet their most urgent development problems from their own resources...
...In the winter of 1958 we face a world crying for industrial goods and for food while 30 per cent of our steel capacity and much of our automotive capacity remain idle, and headlines proudly announce: "Soil Bank Averts Billion-Dollar Food Surplus...
...Formerly our ambassador to India, where he served with great distinction, Mr...
...This is about twice the annual cost of our entire global Point Four program...
...But this is a misconception...
...In their own official documents they frankly state that if they were not so frightened of us Communists, they would give you nothing...
...Unpredictable year-to-year grants or loans do not encourage sound, long-term plans for development...
...As much of our assistance as possible should go through the United Nations...
...This implied that, when Communism ceased to exist, our interest in the peoples of the underdeveloped areas would likewise cease...
...We must muster the imagination to put this strength to work to help create a world of peace and plenty...
...Another reason for the public confusion which has plagued this critically needed program from its inception is the hollow and misleading arguments that often have been advanced in its favor...
...But you should be equally grateful to Moscow for the aid the Americans give you...
...While the Soviet Union cynically offers to "pull in its belt" to help its "Asian and African brothers," rich America with its magnificent record of generosity and love of humanity inadvertently places itself in the position of the hardhearted banker interested only in quick political profits...
Vol. 22 • April 1958 • No. 4
