And this test, let me say parenthetically, is the only one under which the Foreign Aid program can be justified. It cannot, that is to say, be defended as a charity. The American government does not have the right, much less the obligation, to try to promote the economic and social welfare of foreign peoples. Of course, all of us are interested in combating poverty and disease wherever it exists. But the Constitution does not empower our government to undertake that job in foreign countries, no matter how worthwhile it might be. Therefore, except as it can be shown to promote America’s national interests, the Foreign Aid program is unconstitutional.
It can be argued, but not proved, that American aid helped prevent Western Europe from going Communist after the Second World War. It is true, for example, that the Communist parties in France and Italy were somewhat weaker after economic recovery than before it. But it does not follow that recovery caused the reduction in Communist strength, or that American aid caused the recovery. It is also true, let us remember, that West Germany recovered economically at a far faster rate than France or Italy, and received comparatively little American aid.
It also can be argued that American military aid has made the difference between friendly countries having the power to fight off or discourage Communist aggression, and not having that power. Here, however, we must distinguish between friendly countries that were not able to build their own military forces, and those that were. Greece, Turkey, Free China, South Korea and South Vietnam needed our help. Other countries, England and France, for example, were able to maintain military forces with their own resources. For many years now, our allies in Western Europe have devoted smaller portions of their national budgets to military forces than we have. The result is that the American people, in the name of military aid, have been giving an economic handout to these nations; we have permitted them to transfer to their domestic economy funds which, in justice, should have been used in the common defense effort.
Now let us note a significant fact. In each of the situations we have mentioned so far—situations where some evidence exists that Foreign Aid has promoted American interests—there is a common denominator: in every case, the recipient government was already committed to our side. We may have made these nations, on balance, stronger and more constant allies, though even that is debatable. But we did not cause them to alter their basic political commitments. This brings us to the rest of the Foreign Aid program—and to the great fallacy that underlies it.
Increasingly, our foreign aid goes not to our friends, but to professed neutrals—and even to professed enemies. We furnish this aid under the theory that we can buy the allegiance of foreign peoples—or at least discourage them from “going Communist”—by making them economically prosperous. This has been called the “stomach theory of Communism,” and it implies that a man’s politics are determined by the amount of food in his belly.
Everything we have learned from experience, and from our observation of the nature of man, refutes this theory. A man’s politics are, primarily, the product of his mind. Material wealth can help him further his political goals, but it will not change them. The fact that some poor, illiterate people have “gone Communist” does not prove that poverty caused them to do so any more than the fact that Alfred K. and Martha D. Stern are Communists proves that great wealth and a good education make people go Communist. Let us remember that Communism is a political movement, and that its weapons are primarily political. The movement’s effectiveness depends on small cadres of political activists, and these cadres are, typically, composed of literate and well-fed people. We are not going to change the minds of such political activists, or impede their agitation of the masses by a “war on poverty,” however worthy such an effort might be on humanitarian grounds.
It thus makes little sense to try to promote anti-Communism by giving money to governments that are not anti-Communist, that are, indeed, far more inclined to the Soviet-type society than to a free one. And let us remember that the foreign policies of many of the allegedly neutral nations that receive our aid are not “neutral” at all. Is Sukarno’s Indonesia neutral when it encourages Red Chinese aggression? Or Nehru’s India when it censures the Western effort to recover Suez but refuses to censure the Soviet invasion of Hungary? Or Nasser’s United Arab Republic which equips its armed forces with Communist weapons and Communist personnel? Is American aid likely to make these nations less pro-Communist? Has it?
But let us, for the moment, concede the validity of the “stomach theory,” and ask a further question: Is our foreign aid program the kind that will bring prosperity to underdeveloped countries? We Americans believe—and we can cite one hundred and fifty years of experience to support the belief—that the way to build a strong economy is to encourage the free play of economic forces: free capital, free labor, a free market. Yet every one of the “neutral” countries we are aiding is committed to a system of State Socialism. Our present
