Attached are guidelines for use of the media in focusing their output on
Modernization (Theme 5).2
Special attention is invited to the points (listed in the Summary) for
emphasis by all media. Repeated use of these points is essential if foreign
publics are to understand what conditions are necessary for development to
take place and for them to qualify for U.S. aid. With imagination it should
be possible to weave these points into what would amount to a continuing
educational campaign on the nature and requirements of modernization.
As this perspective is established, U.S. programs of assistance to other
nations should gain increasing recognition and respect around the world.
The media are requested to consult my office for concurrence on the major
items they propose to undertake.
Attachment
Paper Prepared in the Office of
Plans, United States Information Agency3
Washington, undated.
MODERNIZATION—GUIDELINES FOR TREATMENT
Summary
Modernization is a basically revolutionary movement that is now under way
in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Probably its most essential, and
certainly its most prominent aspect is a desire for economic and social
development. The new AID program4 has been designed to provide economic
and technical assistance to the newly developing countries in their
modernization efforts—in the Western Hemisphere through the Alliance for
Progress—during what President Kennedy has termed the “Decade of Development” of the
60’s.5
The task of USIA in this connection is
two-fold. Broadly, we must interpret the AID program to all our audiences in the context of U.S.
policy in the world of the 1960’s. We should seek:
(1) To make clear that the U.S. welcomes the modernizing revolution, with
its promise of economic growth and the strengthening of freedom and
independence.
(2) To make clear also that in offering development assistance we accept
the obligations and welcome the opportunities our position in world
affairs entails.
(3) To encourage people of other free industrialized countries to
recognize that they too share in these obligations and opportunities to
shape the kind of world in which the 1960’s will end.
(4) To help the peoples of the newly developing nations understand the
basis on which we offer our cooperation.
The more demanding part of our task centers on (4). It will be our
responsibility to help audiences in the newly developing countries gain
some appreciation of the complex nature of modernization and understand
how the AID program can help them meet
the requirements
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of economic
and social development without prejudice to their sovereignty and
independence.
Points to Emphasize
In this educational effort, we should emphasize the following points:
(1) The major push toward progress must be supplied by the people of any
country. Otherwise, help from the outside cannot be effective and cannot
be justified. Self-help, self-reliance, self-discipline are
indispensable if economic development and modernization are to take
place.
(2) Modern technology and monetary aid can accelerate the process of
modernization but cannot bypass the fact that it is a process, one that
takes time and imposes different requirements at succeeding stages of
development.
(3) Modernization doesn’t just “happen.” It must be planned for and
worked for. This planning must look to the future, so that each stage of
the development process will produce readiness for the next step toward
sustained growth. (“Showy” projects not properly geared to a country’s
true needs will often lead only to disappointment and may even slow down
the rate of development.)
(4) Countries desiring a progressive improvement in their productive
capacity and standards of living will find the United States ready and
able to help, provided that those countries have a businesslike plan,
will carry out their own tasks responsibly, including necessary reforms,
and are realistic in the kind and scale of development projects they
propose to undertake.
(5) A major requirement of modernization programs is that all the people
of the country being aided shall be able to share in the benefits as
improvements in productive capacity and trade bring increases in goods
and services.
We shall need to bear in mind, as we explain these fundamentals, that our
assistance is designed basically to assure that these countries may
pursue their course of modernization effectively and independently, so
that each fashions the kind of modern society it wants. (We rely on the
independence of this process and on their experience in the cooperative
AID effort to result in their
choosing their own versions of what we would recognize as a democratic
and open society.)
We bear in mind, too, that our emphasis must consistently be on
modernization, not on the U.S. contribution. We must concern ourselves
with understanding the problems of people who find themselves caught up
in a revolutionary situation. We must constantly remind ourselves of the
stresses and strains, the conflict between progress toward modernity and
attachment to traditional ways, values, and
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interests, that are unavoidable under such
circumstances. These problems of group and individual adjustment, these
national and cultural “growing pains,” will appear in many different
forms. USIA as well as AID must be prepared to deal with them as
understandingly and effectively as possible, month after month and year
after year, as the Decade of Development progresses.
It follows from this that in our explanation of the general AID approach and of its application in
specific country programs we focus attention on how it helps meet the
diverse modernization requirements of the emerging countries. The merit
of AID lies not in the instruments of
policy it uses, but in the appropriateness and suitability of those
instruments for promoting modernization. These basic instruments are
four in number:
(1) Long-term loans—to supplement a country’s own
saving, so as to make capital projects feasible without entailing
balance-of-payments deficits.
(2) Development grants—to help make good
shortcomings in human resources, through provision of or improvement in
public and private institutions, including primarily those affecting
education and facilities for transportation, sanitation, health, and
housing.
(3) Food-for-Peace shipments—to enable a country
to release farm workers for nonagricultural projects without waiting for
its own agriculture to be made more efficient.
(4) People—technicians, educators,
administrators—to help in planning as well as accomplishing
modernization. (Peace Corps volunteers, outside the AID program, make similar
contributions.)
Closely related to development assistance are supporting assistance
(authorized by the same legislation), multilateral assistance programs,
and the promotion of multilateral world trade on a basis as free as
possible of tariff or quota restrictions:
(5) Supporting assistance—for allies undertaking
substantial military defense burdens, friendly countries facing economic
collapse, and other countries providing valuable assistance to our
security effort.
(6) Multilateral programs—providing development
aid under international auspices, to which the U.S. contributes; now
including also bilateral programs coordinated through the OECD.
(7) World trade—basic to self-help and to
modernization itself—under international agreements enabling the
modernizing countries to market their traditional export products less
hazardously and, more especially, free of restrictions that limit access
to markets for their new industrial products.
[Omitted here are the sections “Introduction,” “Requirements and Related
Points to Emphasize,” “Suitability of U.S. Development Assistance,” and
“Related Policies.”]
