115. Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Rostow) to President Kennedy0
SUBJECT
- Foreign Aid Strategy, Next Six Months
It is agreed that the first essential in foreign aid is a good boss; and it is agreed that his first job is to strip down the old staff and build a new one of first quality.
But given the fact that we have only about six months to create a new look in foreign aid—and to justify the battle for long-term aid—I believe it is also necessary to have a clear substantive strategy; and to move with maximum speed to give it life.
I believe the correct strategy consists of giving the highest priority and momentum to two enterprises.
First, bringing as many nations as authentically qualify under long term aid arrangements of the kind we now have with India. These are possible candidates: Pakistan, Nigeria, Tanganyika, Iran, Egypt, Formosa, Tunisia, Brazil, and two or three other Latin American nations. These nations now have reasonably respectable national plans, or could develop [Page 259] them in short order (e.g., Brazil). With a maximum effort, we could go into Congress next year with almost two-thirds of the population of the underdeveloped areas of the Free World under the new arrangement. The turn-around would then have substance in Congress, quite aside from its wholesome impact on our relations with the other underdeveloped nations.
But, second, in order to do this, we must develop consortium arrangements, in which others contribute as well as ourselves; notably, the Germans and the Canadians, who could do more. We must be able to demonstrate to Congress by next Spring not only that the turn-around is more than rhetoric but that, roughly speaking, our development aid is being matched by the rest of the Free World.
Technically both objectives are achievable; but the strategy must be understood from the top to the bottom of the government; Gene Black must cooperate to the hilt, as father of the consortia; Riddleberger must push DAG as hard as it can be done; you and the Secretary of State, as well as Ball and the aid boss, must work over the Germans, Canadians, etc., unremittingly.
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda Series, Staff Memoranda, Rostow, 2/61-6/62. No classification marking. Copies were sent to McGeorge Bundy, Ralph Dungan, and Theodore Sorensen.↩