UPROAR OVER THE GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICY
Rodell, Katherine
Latin American Round-Up Uproar Over The Good Neighbor Policy By KATHERINE RODELL SEN. Hugh Butler's criticism of the Good Neighbor Policy in action has aroused a storm in Administration circles...
...is a deadly insult to Latin America, a "shocking slur" for which the Vice-President hastened to apologize...
...If we want our actions to conform to that ideal a stock-taking is indeed necessary...
...It is ridiculous for Sen...
...There are strong forces working in that direction throughout Latin America, but so far neither our dollars nor our propaganda have reached them...
...I do believe, however, that there aro things wrong with the working out of the G.N.P...
...Nor do I mean to imply that I agree with all of Butler's criticisms, or that I consider a 60-day tour of 20 countries sufficient to qualify him as an expert...
...Many people below the Rio Grande are still genuinely fearful lest the G.N.P...
...Now one of our great difficulties in dealing with Latin America is the fact (pointed out by realistic Latin Americans as well as by Nazi and Falangist agents) that there is no guarantee that the United States has permanently abandoned past imperialism in favor of true good neighborliness...
...Butler was unaware of politial considerations when he made his report to the Senate and wrote his piece for the Reader's Digest...
...McKellar to call Butler's suggestion that we have promoted jealousies between other countries "absolutely incorrect...
...as it exists today is that it means a freezing of the status quo in Latin America...
...should not be made a political football, an examination of that policy in action is not primarily, or even necessarily, mere partisan politics...
...In the old days, private companies made the loans and investments, and while they were usually supported by the State Department they could not always counh on such assistance, as Electric Bond & Share Chile and the oil companies in Mexico discovered...
...A friendly, democratic, and peaceful Latin America is a vital, necessity to us for our very existence...
...Butler's report should stimulate an informed appraisal of our Latin American policy it will have done more good than a thousand polite good-neighborly speeches...
...is revealed in his surprising suggestion that the era of good neighborliness was inaugurated by Blaine...
...But with Uncle Sam himself taking the place of the late unlamented private bankers it is no wonder that thoughtful Latin Americans are concerned...
...In order further to discredit Butler, many of the internationally minded folk who accept Wendell Willkie as an authority on world affairs after his "39-day Phineas Togg tour are now crying out that Butler, who spent 60 days on one continent, can't know what he is talking about...
...But informed criticism is the breath of the democratic process, and while it is undeniably true that a policy as' important to our national security as the G.N.P...
...Since everyone realizes by now that figures can be made to mean whatever you want them to mean, this is a fine way of avoiding the main body of the Senator's argument...
...This is not to say that Sen...
...His disinclination to allow the Roosevelt Administration to claim credit for the success of the G.N.P...
...Stormi lost his job, of course, for although he only said out loud what many people had been thinking, that is a fatal error in international diplomacy...
...Whatever its limitations, if Sen...
...we have become the active financial supporter of downright dictatorships whose loyalty we believe we have bought...
...and Secretary Hull himself has rushed into print shouting "unfair," and suggesting that this "indefensible attack" is dangerous to the war effort...
...Joseph F. Guffey, Pennsylvania Democrat, suggests that Butler is the innocent dupe of an anti-Administration magazine...
...and the fact that the casual visitor happens to be a Republican Senator should not deprive Jhim of the right to point out what is wrong...
...It is doubtless because he touched upon these that Sen...
...Hugh Butler's criticism of the Good Neighbor Policy in action has aroused a storm in Administration circles for one very good and conspicuously unpublicized reason: the Senator has come dangerously close to the truth...
...We are committed to the support of existing regimes even though hardly any of them is representative of the Latin American people...
...has bsen implemented...
...No one likes to have so much of his country's economy under the control of a foreign nation—even of a nice neighborly nation like ours...
...The first of these objections is that we have indeed elfcbarked upon another and more dangerous form of dollar diplomacy through our loans and Lend-Lease commitments...
...The Administration's obvious strategy has therefore been to side-track the whole discussion into an endless and irrelevant wrangle over the exact sum of money spent on Latin American projects...
...That point is amply proved by the famous note of ex-Foreign Minister Stormi of Argentina to Secretary Hull, which intimated that Argentina might become less neutral if more armaments should be forthcoming...
...For we are no longer a good neighbor who doesn't interfere...
...and his remark in the Reader's Digest about WPA's, PWA's, NYA's, etc...
...Two Serious Objections While there isn't any doubt that by no means all of the projects designed to promote better relations with Latin America are foolish enough to be called boondoggles, there are, as I see it, two far more serious objections to the way in which the G.N.P...
...House Speaker Sam Rayburn, Texas Democrat, used it to try to quiet uncomfortable questioning on the home front...
...which even a casual visitor would sense...
...The ideal of the good neighbor is widely accepted by the common people on both sides of the Rio Grande...
...Stock-Taking Is Necessary Naturally this leads to suspicions and rivalries between the various countries, for dictators are subject to the same pressures the world over, and Latin America is far from immune to the lures of power politics...
...It is more dangerous from the Latin American point of view because the U. S. government itself is directly involved...
...prove only a temporary Democratic experiment which may well be scrapped when an authentically Republican Administration returns to Washington...
...The second great difficulty with the G.N.P...
...Kenneth McKellar, Tennessee Democrat, compares Butler to Ananias, Baron Munchausen, and Jules Verne...
...Sen...
...in Latin America can scarcely be considered innocent...
...It would be interesting to see what would happen if a dictatorship now friendly to us, such as that of Vargas in Brazil, should be overthrown by a genuine people's revolution...
...It is the reason given for our hush-hush policy toward Britain's treatment of India...
...Butler has been so lambasted by Administration spokesmen...
...The too hasty recognition of the Ramirez government in Argentina does not invalidate this point, for the Castillo regime had been conspicuously unfriendly and the State Department was delighted to have it overthrown, assuming for some incomprehensible reason that the military junta which seized power would be more democratic...
...And in this country most of us have no idea of what we have done or left undone to promote the cordial relations we desire...
...Informed Criticism Is Vital This Administration attitude—that criticism of almost anything upsets our friends and gives aid and comfort to our enemies—is not new...
...Vice-President Wallace contends that a criticism of the working of the G.N.P...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 52
