Department of State Committee files, lot 54 D 5, “Working Group on Colonial Problems”
Memorandum by Louis H. Pollak Office of the Ambassador at Large (Jessup), to the Working Group on Colonial Problems1
I have given some thought to Mr. Cargo’s request that each member of the Working Group submit a list of specific problems which might profitably be studied by the group. A number of possible topics have occurred to me as colonial problems which are in the forefront of our current foreign policy thinking. These topics will, of course, have occurred to most of the members of the Working Group independently.
Pretty clearly, the problem of drawing up a list of topics to be studied is essentially a problem of selectivity from among an enormous amount of material. Accordingly, I would like to suggest a criterion by which to measure suggested topics:
It seemed to me that our discussion last Friday [June 20] suggested that the purpose of the Working Group is not so much to redefine the U.S. position on colonial problems as to draw new equations between that position and other U.S. positions which have become increasingly important in the implementation of our foreign policy. In a general way we all know what our colonial policy is—the U.S. favors the orderly evolution of dependent peoples toward political and economic freedom, etc. Our problem is not that we have shifted our goals with respect to dependent peoples. Our problem is that in various specific situations other factors have intruded themselves, and a conflict of U.S. positions frequently results.
To my way of thinking, the problems we can fruitfully study are those which pose most sharply the interaction of two or more of these themes of contemporary foreign policy.
In Tunisia, for example, our natural sympathy for colonial peoples has been countered and to some extent overridden by urgent need for solidarity with France, one of our foremost military and political partners. We face very similar conflicts of interest in Iran and Egypt.
[Page 1126]Tunisia, Egypt, and Iran are merely dramatic illustrations of a pattern which repeats itself in many forms and in many areas. Thus, for example, we have had great difficulty in maintaining a very vigorous position in the UN with respect to the shocking conduct of the South Africans; indeed, in view of the very serious turn which South African events have taken since the close of the last session of the General Assembly, I would think the Working Group could very profitably devote some attention to that whole situation. Another problem which has gotten us into even more difficulty in the UN is our attitude on economic aid through the UN to underdeveloped areas: I would suggest that some consideration of our position on the creation of an International Development Authority might be quite instructive. (It is to be noted that in this last case, the conflict is primarily with themes of domestic policy—i.e., economy, and mistrust of the UN—rather than with another theme of foreign policy.)
In reviewing our relations with the Arab world, some attention might be given to the problems posed in setting up the MEC. A closely related problem is that of strengthening our ties with the underdeveloped Arab countries and at the same time maintaining cordial relations with their relatively advanced and hence highly suspect neighbor, Israel.
The foregoing suggestions are quite random, and no special significance attaches to any one of them. Their important common characteristic, as I have indicated, is that each of them raises one or more aspects of conflict between our traditional position toward dependent peoples and other U.S. positions which have achieved some short-run or long-run urgency. Focusing on these areas of conflict, with the hope of working out intelligent methods of reconciling various types of conflict, seems to me the most fruitful point of departure for the Working Group.
- Circulated to the Working Group under cover of Doc CP D–1/1, June 26, 1952 (the first of 4 attachments).↩