NEW ROADS TO ECONOMIC AID
PROGRESSIVE New Roads to Despite the presence of many fresh faces and the use of many fine phrases, the Kennedy Administration has failed thus far to develop an American foreign policy that...
...Too often too much of our aid has gone to line the pockets of the privileged few at the top, and they have used our assistance to maintain an intolerable status quo for the rest of their country...
...The average annual income of its people is only $70, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere...
...Little if any has reached the people for whom it was intended...
...During his three years in office, Duvalier has done nothing of consequence to cope with the hunger, misery, illiteracy, and hopelessness of his people...
...President Kennedy seemed to accept this critical judgment of American policy when he said: "Too often we have let ourselves appear as friends of the status quo—and the status quo may be $50 a year" [annual average ¦income...
...This Caribbean country is one of the poorest in the world...
...Here, clearly, is the type of assistance that urgently needs reconsideration if the new foreign aid program is to measure up to the lofty goals proclaimed by the Administration...
...i» Haiti is but one example of the I self-defeating character of a sizable " proportion of our foreign aid...
...Here, clearly, to use President Kennedy's language, "we have let ourselves appear as friends of the status quo...
...Foreign aid, said Secretary of State Dean Rusk ;n a welcome break with past concepts, "is right . . . because peoples are in need of help, and we are able to help them help themselves...
...It is significant, too, that it is pitched to the constructive theme of assistance rather than, as before, to the negative concept of "stopping Communism...
...Francois Duvalier, rules with the iron fist of despotic dictatorship...
...We refer to the field of foreign economic aid in which President Kennedy has called for basic reforms for which the Eisenhower Administration showed little or no inclination to fight...
...The result has been to emphasize a type of boondoggling project that fails to provide fundamental progress...
...In many of the President's speeches, and those of his principal aides, there is an arresting awareness of the nature of the struggle in which we are involved and a sensitive appreciation that we must somehow play a more creative role than we have up to now, but almost invariably at this point the President and his lieutenants retreat from their own diagnosis to embrace the negative concepts of their predecessors...
...Much of the money has gone to balance a budget which is never made public—a budget devoted in great measure to the maintenance of a military establishment whose only discernible purpose is to keep the people in bondage...
...The reason we are on the defensive in so many places," said Walter Lippmann recently, "is that for some ten years we have been doing exactly what Khrushchev expects us to do...
...Thus, Mr...
...there has been no indication that he appreciates the possibilities of proposing a solution based on the concept of a free, neutralized, unified Germany...
...It is significant that the Kennedy program calls for a long-term approach to the problem, rather than a year-by-year patching process...
...Too frequently over the years, our economic assistance has gone to shore up a corrupt, reactionary, and rejected status quo...
...Kennedy spoke eloquently at the outset of his Administration of the social and economic causes of crisis in Latin America, and then proceeded to swallow, disastrously, the Eisenhower Administration's invasion cure for Cuba...
...the problem we face is the case of Haiti...
...For all its disturbing reliance on the discredited policies of its predecessor in other areas of foreign policy, the Kennedy Administration deserves a chance to move ahead along the lines so hopefully laid down by its principal spokesmen in this field of foreign economic aid...
...because they are illiterate while we have the means of education...
...But the achievement of this goal demands even greater changes in the conduct of the program than is indicated in the bare language of the pending legislation...
...These are brave and hopeful words, but the true test will come—if the legislation passes substantially unaltered—when the new program goes into operation...
...because their children sicken and die while we have the science to save them...
...Too often in the past we have "parceled out our money on a year-to-year basis which has prevented the recipient countries from embarking on the kind of basic building which requires capital commitments over a period of years...
...The heart of the Kennedy program, said Rusk, is "to attempt to forestall crisis—not simply to live from crisis to crisis...
...Only last month, for example, long before his first term was ending, he had himself proclaimed "reelected" to a second six-year term without in any way consulting the electorate...
...A striking example of...
...Haiti's president, Dr...
...And yet we have continued to pour more than $12,500,000 a year into that country...
...This has been exactly what Khrushchev's dogma calls for—that Communism should be the only alternative to the status quo with its immemorial poverty and privilege...
...Gone from the preamble of the new foreign aid measure are all references to the "threat of international Communism...
...Only in one major area of foreign policy, in our judgment, is the Kennedy Administration moving toward Economic Aid measurable progress over the approach of its predecessor, and here, ironically, it has encountered bitter opposition in Congress...
...This emphasis on aid as a matter of moral principle and not as a reaction to the Communist thrust in the underdeveloped areas of the world represents one of the most hopeful advances in the Administration's thinking on foreign affairs...
...It will require, for example, that we exact minimum standards from recipient countries—standards that will compel the expenditure of American assistance in ways that will supplement domestic programs to benefit the populace as a whole in the critical areas of health, housing, education, and agrarian reform...
...We have used money and arms in a long losing attempt to stabilize native governments which, in the name of anti-Communism, are opposed to all important social change...
...Instead, the purpose proclaimed is "to help make an historic demonstration that economic growth and political democracy can go hand in hand to the end that an enlarged community of free, stable, and self-reliant nations can reduce world tensions and insecurity...
...On the basic conflict over Berlin and Germany, the President has produced nothing more affirmative than his resolve to maintain the status quo "at any risk...
...We have long permitted the Communists to become identified in the popular mind with change and reform while we have supported repudiated regimes simply because they seemed to us to be anti-Communist...
...As for South Vietnam, which will soon replace Laos in front page headlines, the Kennedy Administration, like its predecessor, seems disinclined to face up to the ugly fact that the Diem regime, which we are cordially supporting, has failed so completely to cope with social and economic needs, and is so riddled by corruption and the suppression of democratic liberties that it has lost the support of the people of that strife-ridden country...
...His foreign aid program, as we have indicated, is the one field in which he seems prepared to break with the past and strike out along a more purposeful course than we have followed up to now...
...There is hope, however, that the Kennedy Administration understands the fatal flaws of our policies in the past and is prepared to move ahead, as even Vice President Lyndon Johnson urged, to see that "the benefits of economic development must go directly to the masses rather than to dictators and aristocrats...
...PROGRESSIVE New Roads to Despite the presence of many fresh faces and the use of many fine phrases, the Kennedy Administration has failed thus far to develop an American foreign policy that represents a significant advance over the sterile doctrines that dominated our foreign relations under the Eisenhower Administration...
...Equally significant in its potential for long-run improvement is the new emphasis on long-range assistance...
Vol. 25 • July 1961 • No. 7
