Nevertheless Moscow is laying out considerable capital in this effort at a time when there are ample alternative claims on Soviet resources for civil and military purposes within the Communist bloc. The problem of getting agreement within the Soviet Presidium for this rather expensive program is undoubtedly eased, however, by the increasing dependence of the Communist bloc on imported foodstuffs and raw materials. Mikoyan is probably able to claim that he can make the effort virtually pay for itself: the old Soviet principle of balancing the foreign policy books every night can be roughly maintained.
In facing Communist policy, then, we are not engaged in a popularity contest or in a numbers racket centered on total figures for aid and trade. We are confronted with a systematic effort—diplomatic, psychological, economic and political—to exploit the weaknesses, confusions and temptations of new nations in the transitional period so as to clamp Communism down firmly on them before steady economic growth and the political resilience of a modern state emerge.
Indeed, in the sweep of history, Communism as we have known it thus far in the twentieth century is likely to be viewed as a diseased form of modern state organization, capable of being imposed by a determined minority on a confused, frustrated transitional society. Conversely, a society which has passed through its economic take-off and restructured its political and social institutions around the requirements of modern statehood is likely to have a high immunity to the Communist appeal. Russia almost made it, but the First World War came at a bad time in the Russian evolution.
If this view is correct, the central objective of American policy in the transitional areas is to use whatever influence we can bring to bear to focus the local energies, talents and resources on the constructive tasks of modernization. American military strength must be used to give these nations relative security, with a minimum diversion of their own efforts; and when it is mutually judged necessary to generate local military forces, these in turn should be made to contribute wherever possible to the constructive tasks of modernization. The nineteenth century role of the American Corps of Engineers is a suggestive guide. Diplomatically, our stance should put a greater premium on the posture of governments towards the modernization of their own societies than on their day-to-day position in the politics of the cold war. Finally, our economic foreign policy must make it both possible and attractive for local politicians to set the aspirations of their peoples on long-term programs of modernization rather than on tempting but diversionary "bloody shirt" nationalism.
This incentive cannot be created unless American resources available for economic development are sufficiently big and offered with a continuity and on terms such that a serious operating politician can plot a long-period course with reasonable confidence.
Thus the American interest in Asia, the Middle East and Africa is fundamentally political. The American interest lies in assisting the new nations to advance toward modern economic and political status while maintaining their independence and assuring the possibility of a domestic evolution which employs the political techniques of consent and safeguards the liberty of the individual. If we are prepared to recognize—as we should—that democracy is a matter of degree and of the direction of change, then our objective can be described as the creation of a world of independent, democratically oriented states which have built economic growth into their societies as a regular condition. This is an objective we should be prepared to state frankly, without embarrassment. It requires an American economic development effort larger and with more continuity, one with criteria for lending vastly less ambiguous (and economically more hard-headed) than our present programs. We are unlikely to get such an effort under way until its purposes in relation to Communist strategy are widely understood.
There is a second prerequisite for a mature and effective American economic development effort. This is increased clarity and consensus on the relation between private and public enterprise both within the areas receiving American government loans and as between the public and private sources of capital and technical assistance in the United States.
In the course of the last year's reexamination of American economic foreign policy, there were interesting and forceful assertions of three propositions: first, that private enterprise is superior in efficiency to public enterprise, even in the underdeveloped areas; second, that substantial untapped potentialities exist in public policy both for expanding American private capital exports and for increased collaboration between public and private sources of American capital; and third, that the American Government could do more than it is now doing to create a more favorable climate for private investment in the underdeveloped areas. These views were presented against the background of what appeared to be a relatively substantial increase in American private investment abroad, opening up a somewhat more optimistic vista of the future role of private capital exports than that generally accepted in the recent past.