FORGING A PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT

Point Four and American Universities

We cannot hope to be rid of human tyrants, until we wipe out the impersonal tyranny of hunger, misery and despair on which human tyrannies thrive.

Henry Bennett, Point Four Program director, 1951

The principal currency of Point 4 is not the American dollar, but American know-how.

Benjamin Hardy, "Point IV: Dynamic Democracy"

President Harry S. Truman wanted his January 20, 1949, inaugural address to reinvigorate American foreign policy in a time of increasing Cold War tensions. The president celebrated American diplomatic and economic leadership in the wake of the cataclysmic world war. "Our efforts," he declared, "have brought new hope to all mankind." Having "beaten back despair and defeatism," the United States now stood ready to "build an even stronger structure of international order and justice" and "to improve the standards of living of all people." To accomplish this lofty goal, Truman outlined four main priorities. The first two, support for the United Nations and European recovery, reaffirmed existing US policies. The third, participation in the collective security of the "free world," was about to become reality in the form of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But the fourth point, which the president talked about as much as the other three combined, was new to most Americans. "We must embark on a bold new program," he said, "for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas."

Truman presented international economic development as a significant component of the country's Cold War strategy. He reminded his listeners that most of the world's population lived in or near poverty. Inadequate food, lack of clean water, insufficient access to education, poor healthcare, and little upward mobility — these were the conditions that sparked violent revolution and made the "false philosophy" of communism deceptively attractive to millions of people. But the middle of the twentieth century offered new hope because, the president declared, "humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people." Furthermore, Truman boasted that "the United States is preeminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques." Americans should, in conjunction with suitable international partners, provide technical assistance and promote investment in poor countries to help them produce more and better food, improve education and housing, and expand industrial activity. The result would be "the achievement of peace, plenty, and freedom."

The resulting program, popularly called Point Four in reference to Truman's speech, became a modest but consistent part of US foreign policy during the 1950s. American universities soon emerged as attractive partners in this venture for international development. The 1950s and 1960s marked great expansion and internationalization of American higher education. Enrollments soared, research programs proliferated, and more professors and students went abroad than ever before. Thousands of foreign students also flocked to the United States to study, especially in fields such as engineering, agriculture, education, and medicine that were at the heart of national development. Early forays into overseas technical aid raised hopes that members of the academic community would "make both competent and selfless ambassadors — better, on average, than protocol-minded diplomats and bureaucratic civil servants."

This chapter traces the origins of the Point Four Program and discusses how and why universities became involved. The Point Four Program was a contested piece of US foreign policy that encountered turbulence as it went through major reorganizations and corresponding policy changes during the 1950s. The partnership for international development that emerged between the US government and universities also produced difficulties that are illustrated in the Utah universities' work in Iran, especially between 1951 and 1955.

TRUMAN'S BOLD NEW PROGRAM

Harry Truman felt he needed something big to capture the public's imagination following his unexpected victory in the 1948 presidential election. The three-and-a-half years since he had inherited the presidency upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt had been filled with ominous international crises. While the Allies emerged victorious from World War II during his first year in office, the Grand Alliance fell apart over the next three years. The Soviet Union tightened its grip on Eastern Europe, attempted to starve its erstwhile allies out of Berlin, and sought strategic advantages in the straits of Istanbul and in northern Iran. Farther east, Chinese communists under Mao Zedong pushed toward victory in a long and bloody civil war. All along the Eurasian periphery of these two behemoths, from Turkey to Korea, poor and weak nations appeared susceptible to communist expansion. Meanwhile, the United States and its partners struggled to contain that expansion and to rebuild Western European economies shattered by fifteen years of depression and war. Truman attacked these grave challenges with steadfast resolve despite having assumed the presidency with little foreign policy experience.

The American public, however, showed only lukewarm confidence in his presidential leadership. Plainspoken and occasionally given to frank self-deprecation, Truman lacked his predecessor's charisma and towering prestige. Roy Roberts, a longtime acquaintance and managing editor of the Kansas City Star, once described him as "the average man"; Time more bluntly called him "a man of distinct limitations, especially ... in high level politics." His political prospects appeared to dwindle during three tumultuous years in office. Roosevelt loyalists blamed him for the Republican sweep of the US Congress in the 1946 midterm elections; former interior secretary and New Deal stalwart Harold Ickes even suggested that he should resign. Public opinion polls in the spring of 1948 predicted that Truman would lose to any of the leading Republican challengers in the upcoming election. Liberal publications such as The Nation and New Republic called on him to step aside; Roosevelt's sons lobbied Dwight Eisenhower to run for the Democratic Party nomination. Throughout the fall campaign, the press seemed more enamored with the crisp and confident Republican candidate, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York. The conservative Chicago Daily Tribune declared "Dewey Defeats Truman" in the early morning hours after the election. The actual results, however, showed Truman to be the winner in one of the most dramatic presidential elections in modern American history.

Emboldened by the victory and adamant that the United States must lead the "free world" through a time of crisis, Truman set out to build public support for the nation's much-expanded foreign policy. When presidential aide Clark Clifford solicited the Department of State for recommendations on how to make Truman's inaugural address "a democratic manifesto" to the whole world, a public affairs officer named Benjamin Hardy responded with a proposal for a program of technical assistance for economic development in poor nations threatened by international communism. Hardy had formerly been a reporter for the Atlanta Journal and a press officer for the US government's embryonic technical assistance program in Brazil during World War II. Both positions gave him a firsthand appreciation for how the targeted spread of new technologies could improve underdeveloped rural areas. Hardy hoped his idea would "capture the imagination of the peoples of other countries" and create a "democratic campaign to repulse Communism." Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett balked at the idea, but Hardy had the gumption to pitch it directly to George Elsey, Clifford's assistant. Clifford sent the proposal back to the Department of State, but he presented it as Truman's idea to protect Hardy, who had risked his career by going outside channels. Again, Department of State officials brushed the idea of technical assistance aside, claiming they could not study it sufficiently. Clifford nevertheless began working Hardy's idea into drafts of the president's upcoming inaugural address. Truman embraced the proposal. His reading of American history and his previous experience as a rural county judge had acquainted him with problems of rural development. His top priority more than two decades earlier had been to extend well-paved roads to all farms and businesses in Jackson County, Missouri.

Truman's "Point Four" proposal, as the idea soon became known, received enthusiastic applause and an almost immediate groundswell of public support. The Washington Post said it would "electrify the world," while the Christian Science Monitor called it "a tremendous idea, not only humanitarian but practical." Economist John Kenneth Galbraith observed that "few actions by an American Chief Executive ever produced a more whole-souled response." David Lilienthal, then chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), described it as "the most potent weapon ever devised, a weapon that makes the atomic bomb seem a firecracker by comparison." Clifford added that the proposal "tapped a deep wellspring of altruism and idealism within the American people." Secretary of the Interior Julius Krug called the president's speech "one of the most constructive and far reaching statements of foreign policy of our time." He wrote incoming secretary of state Dean Acheson imploring that the technical assistance proposal be "implemented as soon as possible."

For Truman, Point Four was neither inaugural bluster nor a dose of sugar aimed at enticing poor countries to choke down American foreign policy objectives. Rather, it was a serious call for Americans to do something bold to help with the development of poor countries while simultaneously beating back the advance of international communism. "It was an adventurous idea," the president recalled in his memoirs, adding with some exaggeration, "such as had never before been proposed by any country in the history of the world." Though it was the smallest of four major foreign aid initiatives the Truman administration created, Point Four was the program "for which Truman personally felt a great deal of enthusiasm." He sincerely believed that an expanded technical assistance program would be a foreign policy asset. Diplomat Capus Waynick called it "the long-range answer to communism." Historian Amanda McVety observed that Point Four "promised to help the United States by helping others. It offered a Cold War weapon that was not a weapon and promised peace through peaceful means." Truman himself called it "a practical expression of ... our policies of preventing the expansion of Communism" that would help "insure the proper development" of recipient nations. Point Four would bring to the downtrodden peoples of the world "not the idealism of democracy alone, but the tangible benefits of better living through intelligent co-operation."

MAKING THE POINT FOUR PROGRAM A REALITY

Turning Truman's proposal into a working component of US foreign policy proved difficult throughout 1949 and 1950. The first task was to sell the concept to a reluctant Department of State, which, according to Clifford, "looked down on activities that were not purely diplomatic." Acheson, who himself had little enthusiasm for Point Four, recalled that Lovett and Paul Nitze of State's policy planning staff "were neither enthusiastic nor impressed with its utility." They would have preferred that the president not mention it. No one at State had a very clear idea of what Truman had in mind. "I think the first problem that the State Department had to figure out," recalled legal adviser Ben Hill Brown, "was what in the hell the man was talking about."

Administration officials indeed struggled to define the president's idea. A week after his address, Truman responded to a reporter's question about Point Four with "I can't tell you just what is going to take place, where it is going to take place, or how it is going to take place. I know what I want to do." Acheson tried to put aside his misgivings but likewise found he could speak only in generalities. Technical assistance would "help in the ancient struggle of man to earn his living and get his bread from the soil," and that would in turn help people obtain "freedom and dignity, the fullness of life." The new secretary attempted to head off potential criticism, especially concerning the plan's potential to expand American financial commitments to nations far removed from the historical scope of US foreign policy. Point Four, he asserted, would not burden American taxpayers with the cost of international development. Instead, it would emphasize the dissemination of know-how and encourage private investment. Acheson also reiterated that the United States was prepared to cooperate with the United Nations and other countries that could provide sound assistance. Beyond that, he could provide few specifics.

Point Four presented the Department of State with a host of logistical questions. How much good would technical know-how do in countries that lacked modern infrastructure? Would technical assistance require a new government agency, or would responsibility be spread among the roughly two dozen federal agencies already engaged in some kind of relief, reconstruction, or development work in Latin America and Western Europe? What countries would be eligible to receive technical aid, and would they have to be aligned with the United States in some way? Should the US government or recipient nations determine which projects to fund? Truman's stress on cooperation with the United Nations was appealing on the surface, but that would also mean funneling taxpayer dollars to multilateral projects over which the US government could not exercise unilateral control. What portion of the cost should the United States bear? The Department of State noted that the UN budget for technical assistance was modest and that the United States was already covering almost 40 percent of the UN World Health Organization's budget. Legislative ceilings would likely preclude any substantial increase in US government support for multilateral technical assistance. The president's emphasis on encouraging private investment likewise raised thorny questions, especially in the wake of a destructive world war. It remained to be seen how willing Americans — or anyone else — would be to invest in countries that lacked a stable economy and government. From Latin America to Asia, American diplomats scrambled to dampen expectations that Point Four could become a Marshall Plan for the world.

The Department of State developed a broad, though still not precise, vision for the Point Four Program throughout 1949. It would enhance world peace by promoting democratic government and sound and stable economic growth, and it would encourage the expansion of global trade. A State pamphlet published in December 1949 anticipated a first-year budget of around $85.6 million — nearly three times what the program eventually received — with just over half the money going to agriculture and forestry, health, and education. Promoting industrial development would be the next-highest priority. Other areas such as transportation, social services, and public administration would receive more modest support. Recipient nations would have to bear a significant portion of the cost, and US investment would have to come primarily from the private sector. The US government would not carry out development projects; rather, it would provide technical support for countries to do more for themselves. Already in 1949, US policy planners acknowledged that American technical experts could not risk the appearance of coming into countries as neo-imperialists in the garb of altruistic advisers.

The next hurdle, getting appropriate legislation through Congress, took nearly a year to clear. The congressional agenda was already crowded, and divergent visions for the program both inside and outside the government made arriving at a consensus difficult. Fiscal conservatives were reluctant to embrace another program that would ship millions of US tax dollars overseas in the wake of the capacious Marshall Plan and $400 million in "Truman Doctrine" economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey. Representative Otto Passman (D-LA) of the House Appropriations Committee doubted that Point Four would win the United States many long-term friends. Rather, he argued that recipient nations would resent the appearance of being dependent on American resources and know-how. Senator Kenneth Wherry (R-NE) similarly decried spending "billions" on the "fatuous idea that friendship of nations can be won with bribery." Representative Christian Herter (RMA), who later helped implement Point Four late in the Eisenhower administration, expressed support for the plan but wanted to ground its humanitarian idealism in economic reality. He therefore tried to steer legislation away from a large-scale commitment to foreign aid and toward the promotion and protection of private American investment in other countries. For his part, Secretary of State Acheson was preoccupied with Germany and finalizing the North Atlantic Treaty; he did little to encourage Point Four legislation.