Showing papers in "Foreign Affairs in 1967"

To Intervene or Not to Intervene

Abstract: INTERVENTION is as ancient and well-established an in strument of foreign policy as are diplomatic pressure, nego tiations and war. From the time of the ancient Greeks to this day, some states have found it advantageous to intervene in the affairs of other states on behalf of their own interests and against the latters' will. Other states, in view of their interests, have opposed such interventions and have intervened on behalf of theirs.

Malnutrition and National Development

Abstract: New evidence suggesting a relationship between malnutri tion and mental retardation should be cause for major policy concern in a number of world capitals. The recog nition that malnourished children may emerge from childhood lacking the ability to reach their full genetic intellectual potential introduces a new and perhaps frightening note into theories of national development. The implications are ominous. For many years we have as sumed that, given educational opportunities and environmental advantages, each normally born infant has every prospect of growing up to be bright and productive. It is now suggested that malnourished children may be basically dull. The significance of this can be appreciated when we recognize that as many as two-thirds of the children of most developing countries are now suffering from some degree of malnutrition. The relationship of malnutrition to mental growth dramatizes the issue. However, the insidious drain of malnutrition on national development takes other significant forms. Half the deaths in the developing countries occur among children under six years of age. In certain African countries, Libya for example, a mother must have five children to assure that one reaches the age of fifteen. In Northeast Brazil, 48 percent do not survive the first year of life; by the age of four, 63 percent have succumbed. In parts of Southeast Asia, 40 percent of the children die of disease in their first four years. This is a proportion of deaths not reached in the United States until the age of sixty. The vast majority of these child deaths are attributed to in fectious diseases. Yet most of these diseases are relatively minor childhood ailments. The cause of the death, we now know, is not the infection itself, but usually the malnourished condition of the child when he contracted it. In other words, malnutrition debilitates the body to such a degree that it is incapable of re sisting what would otherwise be a passing infection. In a country like Ecuador, child death due to measles is more than 300 times greater (per thousand of population) than in North America. Whooping cough is still a major killer in much of the world.

The Population Crisis: Reasons for Hope

Abstract: A discussion of the crisis of population growth must be or ganized around two sharply contrasting themes: one, of "almost unrivaled dangers; the other, of new hope that it may be resolved during the remainder of this century. It is diffi cult to overstate the importance of either theme. The dangers threaten the entire process of modernization among the two-thirds of the world's people in the technologically backward nations, and thereby the maintenance of their political coherence; they threaten, indeed, a catastrophic loss of life. The hope lies in the fact that there is now new reason to think that, if the world is will ing to bend its energies toward solving the problems, it can go far toward doing so during the coming decades. The time has passed when the problem must be viewed as insuperable. In what follows, I shall be concerned with the technologically backward nations. The question here is not what population they might ultimately be capable of supporting if they achieve a high state of development. At present they are desperately poor, grossly uneducated and badly organized to make use of what knowledge they have. They have to start from where they are, and not from where they should like to be. The problem in the real world is that the rate of population growth is proving to be a major obstacle to economic development. Mounting rates of pop ulation growth are proving to be almost insuperable obstacles to the technological development on which our future hopes must depend. The heart of the demographic problem is that of slowing the rate of population growth sufficiently to permit the develop ment of the lagging economies and of doing this in the next two or three decades. The case is now too well known to require detailed documenta tion. Most of the newly developing nations have populations that are growing by at least 2.5 percent per year. Moreover, those with slower rates of growth have negligible health protection and will quickly come to that rate whenever rudimentary health services are developed. The rates of growth go up to 3.5 percent and oc casionally higher. Growth continuing at 2.5 percent doubles the size of the population in 28 years and growth at 3.5 percent

Toward a New Order in Indonesia

Abstract: THE most dynamic factors in Indonesian politics today are the action fronts of university and high school students, KAMI and KAPPI. Many of their members were born after the August 17,1945, Proclamation of Independence. Unlike their elders, who are still inclined to blame "imperialism" for the mess their country finds itself in, the new generation holds Presi dent Sukarno personally responsible. For them the man who led the nationalist movement forty years ago is neither a father figure nor a charismatic leader, but the creator of a bankrupt and dishonorable Old Order. For years almost all articulate adult Indonesians had been caught in the cobweb of slogans and acronyms spun by Sukarno. Even his political enemies used his language of phantasy in criti cizing him. The Sukarno r?gime exposed all students to massive doses of indoctrination, but the students choked on what their elders had relished. The new generation has a mind of its own, hostile to ideology and pragmatically interested in deeds rather than words. They abhor hypocrisy, for which they have coined the term plin-plan, and reject the notion that past achievements can buy anybody permanent absolution from present sins. A year ago KAMI and KAPPI acted as the catalyst which precipitated the Army's first measures against the old order. After the assassination of Army Commander Achmad Yani and five other senior generals on October 1, 1965, the Army reacted in military fashion: viewing the Indonesian Communist Party (P.K.I.) as the enemy, they rounded up and killed or imprisoned all leaders, cadres and followers whom they were able to capture. Party Chairman D. N. Aidit, about half of the politburo and of the central committee, and no less than 200,000 persons associated with the P.K.I, lost their lives. While many communist cadres were killed by the Army, which was determined to prevent the resurgence of the P.K.I., the mass murders were perpetrated pri marily by the villagers themselves. They took place mostly in East and Central Java and in Bali, where population pressure is becoming intolerable. In the past the village communities had absorbed the population increase by dividing again and again their limited resources among a growing number of claimants, in

Gold and the Dollar

Abstract: THE persistent deficit in the United States' balance of inter national payments and the continuing loss of gold have led to increasing discussion of national policies relating to gold and the dollar. While the issues involved are quite technical and complex, they are important to the future of the nation and the world. Broader understanding of the forces impinging on the nation's balance of payments is essential if the United States is to react properly to the changes in its role in the world economy. The authors start from the firm belief that the present gold exchange standard is the most efficient, equitable and powerful international monetary system in the world's history. It has performed remarkably well under conditions of unprecedented world growth, and has contributed significantly to that growth. The objective must be to preserve the present system, while working to improve it by gradually supplementing it with some new source of international liquidity. The key to this proposition is that the official dollar price of gold must remain unchanged regardless of the pressures that might be put on the United States to revalue gold. To achieve this, it is essential to recognize that our responsibility for fiscal and monetary stability extends beyond our borders. Not only are non-inflationary poli cies desirable for domestic reasons; they are necessary to maintain the purchasing power of the large liquid dollar assets held by for eigners. Foreign dollar holders must feel confident that dollars constitute the best available store of internationally acceptable purchasing power. It should continue to be a major objective of U.S. policy to achieve a viable balance in international payments, but this objective should be pursued through responsible mone tary and fiscal policies rather than through new controls over international capital movements, foreign exchange transactions or tourism.

New Perspectives on Trade and Development

Abstract: THE first meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 marked a turning point in relations between poor and rich countries. As we approach the second conference, now scheduled to convene in New Delhi early in 1968, it is fitting to assess the impact of UNCTAD on thought and policy with respect to the trade prob lems of the low-income countries. The first UNCTAD dramatized a salient fact about the de velopment process?namely, that the sluggish increase in the poorer countries' capacity to import had become a principal con straint on their economic growth. But the conference went far beyond a diagnosis of the problem and gave expression to some basic policy implications and prescriptions, mainly in the form of measures to be adopted by the advanced countries to increase the foreign-exchange receipts of the less developed countries. Furthermore, the conference set up institutional machinery de signed to exert continuous pressure on the rich countries to find ways of meeting the needs of the poorer countries. Today, not quite three years after the conclusion of the 1964 conference, the policies of the rich countries are being subjected to a steady pounding in a formidable array of international or ganizations operating under the aegis of UNCTAD: the con ference itself which is a plenary body of more than 120 countries; a 55-nation Trade and Development Board which acts as an ex ecutive organ between meetings of the conference; and numerous more specialized committees, subcommittees, working parties and expert groups, all serviced by a permanent secretariat of several hundred people. In 1966 scarcely a week went by when one of these UNCTAD bodies was not in session. Talk is cheap. And one can well understand the frustration re flected in a recent statement by U Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations, when he lamented "the slow rate of progress on virtually every recommendation of the first UNCTAD Con ference, even those adopted unanimously."1

The Suez Crisis

Abstract: SINCE I retired as United States Ambassador to Great Britain in February 1957, so much has been written about the events leading up to the seizure of the Suez Canal by the Egyptian Government in July 1956, and so much contro versy has arisen over the reaction of the French, British and American governments to that event, that it might be useful for me to set down as briefly and clearly as possible the story of what happened as seen from the American Embassy in London The first intrusion of the Egyptian question into Anglo-Ameri can relations during my term as Ambassador in London came before Anthony Eden became Prime Minister and soon after I arrived at my post early in 1953 In May of that year, violent at tacks were being made by the new Egyptian r?gime under Gen eral Naguib on the continued presence of British troops in the large British military base in the Suez Canal Zone The British Government felt that United States policy was definitely sym pathetic with the Egyptian point of view, and British opinion received the quite erroneous impression that we were putting pressure on Britain to withdraw its forces from the base Later the feeling developed that but for this pressure the British forces would have remained there and Nasser could never have seized the Canal A further sense that America was unfriendly arose from mis understandings between Eden, who had just become Prime Minister, and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in connec tion with proposals for joint financing of the Aswan High Dam Opposition to the plan developed in Congress, and finally Secre tary Dulles cancelled American participation He did so without informing the American Embassy in London This was not un usual, as I was never asked my opinion on matters of policy ex cept when Dulles was in London or I accompanied Eden to Washington Such were the preliminaries to the Suez crisis of July 1956 On July 26 of that year I left London for New York by air on a short vacation One hour later the British Government received