100. Editorial Note
On March 22, 1961, President Kennedy sent a special message to the Congress on foreign assistance. While preparing for this foreign aid initiative, the President directed that no foreign aid bill should go to Capitol Hill without his “explicit approval.” (Memorandum from McGeorge Bundy to Ball; Department of State, S/S-NSC Files: Lot 72 D 316, NSAM No. 21) The President’s March 22 message was the outgrowth of studies and memoranda on the subject by concerned principals and meetings [Page 219] with the President. See, for instance, Documents 94 and 95. Moreover, in a March 13 memorandum to the President, Walt Rostow forwarded his ideas for the “crucial portion” of the President’s upcoming foreign aid message, as did Bowles in his memorandum to Richard Goodwin, March 18; for texts of both, see the Supplement.
Regarding the drafting of the President’s special message, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., gives credit to Walt Rostow, David Bell, and the latter’s deputy, Kenneth Hansen, who took the original text, drafted in terms of “an old-fashioned ‘let’s beat communism through foreign aid’ appeal,” and “managed to insert a little of the new philosophy into the text before it was delivered.” (A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, page 592)
According to Rostow, Sorensen wrote a “low-key first draft of the aid message,” which “was geared to the rather gloomy prospects on the Hill. Kennedy evidently wished to aim somewhat higher. He had Sorensen send the draft to me for revision. And, when Kennedy approved the new directions suggested by me (and perhaps, by others), Sorensen, quite typically, carried forward in a more heroic direction with verve and elegance.” (The Diffusion of Power: An Essay in Recent History, page 187)
The President’s message began with a discussion of three propositions: 1) the existing foreign aid programs were “largely unsatisfactory and unsuited for our needs and for the needs of the underdeveloped world as it enters the Sixties;” 2) the economic collapse of free but less-developed nations “would be disastrous to our national security, harmful to our comparative prosperity and offensive to our conscience;” and 3) the 1960s presented “an historical opportunity” for the United States and other free industrialized nations to initiate a major foreign assistance effort that could “move more than half the people of the less-developed nations into self-sustained economic growth, while the rest move substantially closer to the day when they, too, will no longer have to depend on outside assistance.”
After elaborating at some length on these points, the President expounded on “a whole new set of basic concepts and principles,” which included integration in a single agency of the aid programs of the International Cooperation Administration, Development Loan Fund, Food-for-Peace, Export-Import Bank, and the Peace Corps; the need for country plans carefully tailored to meet the needs of each country; long-term financing and planning; special focus on development loans repayable in dollars; and special attention to those nations most willing to utilize their own resources, make necessary reforms, and engage in long-range planning. He also emphasized a multilateral approach designed to encourage and complement an enlarged foreign aid emphasis of other industrialized nations, and a separation of social and economic development from military assistance.
[Page 220]President Kennedy concluded by asking Congress for a foreign aid budget of $4 billion, which the previous administration had requested, although he proposed reduction of the military assistance component from about $1.8 billion to $1.6 billion so that more could be spent on economic aid, especially development loans.
Text of the message is in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961, pages 203-212.