Private Voluntary Aid and Nation Building in South Vietnam: The Humanitarian Politics of CARE, 1954–61

Abstract

Between 1954 and 1961, American private voluntary organizations (PVOs) endorsed U.S. intervention in Vietnam and offered humanitarian assistance to help save the Vietnamese people from communism. The Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere (CARE) and a prominent group of PVOs solicited the support of American and Saigon governments and willingly supplemented official strategies to build an independent, noncommunist nation in South Vietnam under Ngo Dinh Diem. Government authorities protected and advised PVOs’ operations, subsidized their distributions, and used their altruistic reputations to boost the psychological impact of America’s role there. As U.S. military involvement escalated, PVOs’ partnership with the government ultimately hampered their aid efforts by politicizing their humanitarian programs and increasing their dependence on government security. CARE’s participation in this failed nation building experiment reveals the pervasiveness of Americans’ cultural and political misjudgments about Vietnam’s struggle for independence. It also shows how private citizens and beneficent institutions helped serve Cold War objectives and implement U.S. foreign policy.