The Soviet Economic and Technical Challenge

Abstract

American foreign aid policy, and especially mutual security programmes, are an important part of the non-military aspect of US national security policy. The Republican administration had initially aimed at a progressive reduction of foreign aid, by encouraging, instead, the liberalisation of world trade and private foreign investment, in order to ‘enhance the capacity of free world nations for self-support and defense’.1 As discussed earlier, foreign aid policy was a divisive issue within the administration. The president and the secretary of state were both keen to preserve and, if necessary, to increase American mutual security programmes to support their allies and to protect the free world. Just as Eisenhower’s views on East—West trade were based on pragmatism and sound strategy — he told Radford on 18 April 1956 that he ‘did see positive value in pressing forward with trade with the Satellites in Eastern Europe’2 — the president continued to believe that the foreign aid programme was ‘the cheapest insurance in the world’, since the ‘want of a few million bucks had put the United States into a war in Korea’.3 The Treasury Department and the Bureau of the Budget took a less generous attitude towards the idea of continuing to provide US aid to foreign countries and Congress remained hostile to American foreign aid programmes, regarding them as wasteful.4