Foreign Aid and the Defense of Southeast Asia PDF
Preview Foreign Aid and the Defense of Southeast Asia
FOREIGN AID and the DEFENSE of SOUTHEAST ASIA FOREIGN AID and the DEFENSE of SOUTHEAST ASIA AMOS A. JORDAN, Jr. Colonel, U.S. Army With a Foreword by William H. Draper, Jr. FREDERICK A. PRAEGER Publisher (cid:127) New York BOOKS THAT MATTER First published in the United States of America in 1962 by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., Publisher 64 University Place, New York 3, N.Y. All rights reserved © 1962 by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-14862 Manufactured in the United States of America Foreword “To the peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe strug- gling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves.” In those words, President Kennedy promised to continue America’s foreign-aid program and thus help wage the war against poverty and disease in the poorer countries of the world. Administrations come and go, but the problems of foreign aid go on forever —or so it must seem to each new Congress as ever-increasing aid appropriations are asked by each new Presi- dent. Lend-Lease under Roosevelt, the Marshall Plan and Point Four under Truman, Mutual Security and new treaty obligations for military assistance under Eisenhower —all have blazed a bipartisan record of American generosity and enlightened self- interest. Now President Kennedy is laying even greater emphasis on economic aid for the whole southern half of the world —Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia—as the best way to encourage economic growth and political democracy, and to reduce world tensions. The President, in recommending increased economic assistance by the free industrialized nations, has hailed the 1960’s as a decade of progress for “the less de- veloped world looking toward the ultimate day when all nations can be self-reliant and when foreign aid will, no longer be needed.” But in vivid contrast to these ambitious hopes, the recent Russian airlift to the rebels in Laos also made it necessary vi | Foreword for us to step up our own arms shipments to the Laotian Government. It is in this context of continuing and perhaps mounting prob- lems of foreign aid that Colonel Amos A. Jordan, Jr., a brilliant young professor of economics and the social sciences at the United States Military Academy, has made a real contribution to this whole subject in his study Foreign Aid and the Defense of Southeast Asia. In 1959, a Presidential committee to study military assistance and the related aspects of economic assistance —of which I had the honor to be Chairman —called on West Point for expert professional help. And Colonel Jordan, one of those responding, made a very important contribution to the work of our committee. In his book, Colonel Jordan divides foreign aid into three categories —military assistance, stability assistance (essentially what has long been known as defense support), and economic development. Geographically, the study relates to Southeast Asia, and it is a field study rather than a headquarters or Wash- ington study. Although seven countries are discussed —Pakistan, South Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Taiwan, and the Philippines —the study concentrates on, and many of the illustra- tive examples and incidents concern, two typical and large-scale recipients of our military and economic assistance: Pakistan and South Vietnam. Much public discussion in the press and from the platform is currently being focused on nuclear and other deterrents to global war —and on the possibilities of atomic versus limited conflict—as a new and vigorous national Administration carefully evaluates our defense policies and our weapons systems, and also looks critically at our military- and economic-assistance programs, both over-all and country by country. Colonel Jordan’s study is therefore very timely. His detailed discussions of conventional- and guerrilla-type forces, of fire- alarm and associated theories of defense, as well as unorthodox delaying defenses, of the respective values of alliances and guarantees, and of various other local and area-wide deterrents to war in Southeast Asia will be helpful indeed to the student Foreword ] vii of military assistance in both the Pentagon and in State’s Foggy Bottom. His detailed expositions of specific local currency, foreign- exchange and budgetary problems, and the related export and import difficulties, which have impeded joint efforts by these Asian countries and ourselves to achieve economic stability and then economic growth, will be valuable to anyone studying our econoiriic-aid programs. Both proponents and critics of foreign aid will find much to ponder over and to consider in this comprehensive delineation of individual aid programs on the level of specific recipient countries, as distinct from the Washington level. It has now become clear to most observers that military assist- ance is a vital part of our own defense in the current struggle against Communism. Military assistance helps to arm our friends and allies who man the free world’s ramparts and who defend the perimeter positions. Better, longer-range planning of military- assistance programs is in progress. These programs are now properly being directed, budgeted, and administered by the Department of Defense under the foreign-policy guidance of the Secretary of State. Military assistance must be sufficient as a minimum to help free-world nations maintain sufficient forces to deter, or if neces- sary to fend off or seriously delay external aggression. Colonel Jordan’s study includes several countries such as South Vietnam, Laos, and Taiwan, where such threats have been and still are very real indeed. But after granting the existence of sufficient military assistance and local forces to deal reasonably with the threat of external aggression, relative emphasis in the foreign-aid picture properly shifts to the crying need in all such countries for economic development. Economic assistance is not only an important and indispensable tool of our foreign policy, but a vital expression of America’s generous desire to help its less prosperous friends and neighbors. As President Kennedy has said so well, failure to attain sustained growth in the underdeveloped nations “would be disastrous to viii | Foreword our national security, harmful to our comparative prosperity, and offensive to our conscience.” The President has pointed out the goal:—self-sustained growth for many more nations, so that an enlarged community of free, stable, and self-reliant nations will reduce world tensions and bring about economic and political security. He recognizes that the magnitude of the problem is staggering: “In Latin America, for example, population growth is already threatening to outpace economic growth —and in some parts of the continent living standards are actually declining.” Unfortunately, the President does not seem to draw the only logical conclusion —all possible efforts by the underdeveloped country in question, with our help, to increase the production of food and other needed products, and also all appropriate and acceptable efforts to check excessive population growth. Unless this two-way approach is made effective —increasing production and limiting people —it seems inescapable that the worlds population will double in the next forty years and that present inadequate living standards in most underdeveloped countries will decline further. Our committee unanimously con- cluded that “unless the relationship between the present trends of population growth and food production is reversed, the already difficult task of economic development will become a practical impossibility.” Two glaring examples in Southeast Asia, where Colonel Jordan’s study is centered, are found in Taiwan and Pakistan. While the problems of rapid population growth must be faced and solved largely by the individual countries concerned, ‘it seemed clear to our committee that our government should give help, when requested, to meet the serious challenge posed by rapidly expanding populations. I cannot overlook this problem because, in my judgment, no study, no planning, and no program of economic aid can afford to disregard this fundamental ob- stacle to success. Colonel Jordan has provided a host of case studies from South- east Asia that illustrate practically all the difficulties encountered in administering U.S. military and economic assistance. He is the first to describe and explain in such detail the close relation-
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