15. Letter From the Representative at the United Nations (Lodge) to the President
1
SUBJECT
- Economic Aid to Foreign Countries
Dear Mr. President: Stalin’s death eliminated the
violent sounds which helped to keep our allies together.
In its place has now come the most effective campaign to date to break up
NATO and to penetrate Africa and the
Near East.
I have just seen this in Libya (Soviet offers of road building material,
hospitals, doctors, etc.) and Sudan (Czech tractors for cotton).
Jack McCloy has just told me of great Soviet
activities in Saudi Arabia. Communists (with help from the Arabs) have
created anti-American feeling in France.
Enclosed is a memorandum which sets down some ideas on how the United States
should react to these Soviet tactics in the field of technical and economic
assistance.
With warm and respectful regard.
Faithfully yours,
[Page 69]
[Enclosure]
Memorandum From the Representative at the United Nations (Lodge) to the President
2
SUBJECT
- Proposed United States Reaction to New Soviet Tactics to Penetrate
Africa by Technical, Economic and Political Means
- 1.
-
Many of these tactics are fundamentally political and
psychological. They are the type of tactics which have been used
at home in American politics, but which for many reasons
Americans do not use abroad.
For example:
- (a)
- When the late Frank Hague was Mayor of Jersey City or
when James Michael Curley was Mayor
of Boston, scarcely a curbstone or lamp post could be
installed without its being done in such a way as to
provoke a wave of gratitude, complete with speeches,
publicity, etc. Yet the former head of United Nations
Technical Assistance in Afghanistan told me that in the
capital, Kabul, the Soviets had won considerable
applause simply by paving the main streets of the city
which for years had irritated everybody because it was
so full of dust in the summer and mud in winter. But the
United Nations and the United States have done work
which was far more sincere and far more constructive
without getting much credit.
- (b)
- Upon arriving in Geneva I was told that the Soviet
representatives at Geneva always give immense tips to
the chambermaids and taxi drivers and that the Soviet
generosity becomes the talk of the town. When I was in
Tripoli, I was told that a member of the Soviet Embassy
in Tripoli pulled two Libyan pounds out of his pocket
and said to his cab driver: “I have two pounds and I
split them with you—one for you and one for me.” These
examples were reported to me as examples of diabolical
Soviet cleverness.
Yet many a man who has run for office in the United States has
had the experience of spending the night in a hotel in a part of
the state which was remote from his home and of giving large
tips to chambermaids, bellboys, etc., knowing of the favorable
talk which this produces in the community.
These incidents are not mentioned in order to prove that we
should send more American politicians abroad. Nor do I think we
should give up our emphasis on quality projects undertaken with
a sincere desire to improve basic conditions.
But we should have every now and then a
so-called “flashy” project which does create some favorable
talk for the United States and we should not be in the
[Page 70]
position of being a “Mother Superior” who is
always trying to make the little boy swallow some medicine
he doesn’t like.
We cannot expect all American representatives to be politically
clever or irresistibly charming, but they should all be tactful
and they should make a real effort to think in psychological
terms—of what the effect of our program will be on the mentality
of the people of the country where he is stationed.
- 2.
- To meet the new Soviet tactics there should be an administrative organization which will enable
American officials to move quickly. Having, in the Cabinet
meetings, heard so often about our wheat surplus, it was astounding
to realize the trouble and delay there has been in sending wheat to
Libya. This was partly due to the necessity to get clearances from
many different officials in Washington; it was also due to a desire
not to send the Libyans so much wheat that they would not start
their own wheat-growing program. I think there can be too much of
the latter attitude. They are going to have to make their own
mistakes and learn by their own experience. If they want a little
more wheat than our experts think they should have, I would be for
letting them have it, particularly as it would reduce our surplus by
that much.
- 3.
-
The Executive Branch should be enabled to make
long-term arrangements. I believe that if the President had
the authority to make a five or six-year program in Libya, it would
in all probability be cheaper in dollars in the end, as compared to
yielding to an endless succession of blackmail-type trades, and it
certainly would put us in a bargaining position where we could get
some very valuable concessions involving our own security—such as a
Libyan prohibition on Soviet activity in the area of our Libyan
bases.
- 4.
- Study should be given to making an offer to the Soviets to cease
this poisonous competition, with its debilitating results for these
weak countries, and joining us in a multilateral
program under the United Nations on a basis of a high
percentage of funds in convertible currency. We could use the
nonconvertible percentage to expend our own surpluses. We could
certainly control a multilateral program under the United Nations,
and there is no doubt in my mind that the Soviets would refuse such
an offer. If they accepted it, it would be good. If, as seems
likely, the Soviets are determined to continue a bilateral program,
then we have no choice but to continue with a bilateral and a multilateral program as we are now
doing.
- 5.
- Speaking more broadly, it seems that the American people and
Congress would accept as a working policy the proposition that the
United States, as a country which achieved its own independence 175
years ago, is naturally interested in seeing to it that other [Page 71] nations who have just
achieved their independence, maintain theirs and that economic aid
can be based on this concept.
