The Mutual Security Programme and the Merging of Foreign Aid

Abstract

In 1951 the American approach to foreign aid underwent a major shift. Conditions in Europe and world-wide were markedly different from those of 1949, when the military assistance programme began. European recovery was almost complete, and the strengthening of western defences against communism was an ever-increasing priority for the United States. Early in the year it became clear that the US no longer intended to operate separate programmes of economic and military aid. Instead it planned to create an omnibus foreign aid scheme, the Mutual Security Programme, to coordinate aid currently provided under three aid programmes — the European Recovery Programme, the Mutual Defence Assistance Programme, and the Act for International Development. This incorporation of all existing foreign aid into a single programme signified ‘the subordination of longer-term plans for economic and social progress to the more pressing claims of strengthening the defences of the free world against communist aggression’1 and provided tangible evidence of the shifting priorities of the United States as containment rapidly became the major focus of American foreign policy and European economic recovery became a secondary concern.