The Foreign Service Journal, May 2010

1920 posed a special challenge for American humanitarian relief efforts becauseWashington occasionally inter- vened militarily in the conflict. The American Red Cross was presumably neutral, but matters were confused by the fact that President Woodrow Wil- son was also the president of the ARC. In 1914, Herbert Hoover helped form the Commission for Relief in Bel- gium, funded by the U.S., U.K. and France to organize relief to more than 10 million people in Belgium and northern France. In 1917 Hoover was made head of the U.S. Food Adminis- tration, which in 1919 alone spent $40 billion in relief funds, dispatched 18.5 million tons of food to Europe, and dis- tributed 23 million tons of clothing and medicine to help rehabilitate wartorn countries. During the 1920s, enormous official lending helped rebuild Germany and other countries, alongside the efforts of American religious organizations. Aid worth more than $241 million was sent to Russian famine victims in 1921 alone. But the U.S. loans stopped dur- ing the Great Depression and were not repaid. Campaigning in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised that the U.S. would no longer make similar for- eign investments. U.S. Government Scientific and Cultural Cooperation On May 3, 1939, Congress adopted Public Law 63 authorizing the presi- dent to detail any U.S. government employee to give advice and assistance on request to the government of any American (Western Hemisphere) na- tion. In August 1939, P.L. 355 author- ized the president to use any U.S. department to carry into effect “the re- ciprocal undertakings and cooperative purposes enunciated in the treaties, resolutions, declarations and recom- mendations signed by all of the 21 American republics” at conferences in 1936 and 1938. Philip Glick’s 1957 book, The Ad- ministration of Technical Assistance, re- ports that most of the projects were in agriculture and student exchanges. Geological investigations, civil aviation, child welfare and the improvement of statistical services were also priorities. To administer these early programs, President Roosevelt established the Interdepartmental Committee on Sci- entific and Cultural Cooperation in 1939. More than 25 bureaus from 18 departments and agencies were mem- bers, and the assistant secretary of State for public affairs was its chair- man. Through its chairmanship, the De- partment of State presided over the deliberations and activities of the com- mittee, and was responsible for pro- viding general coordination of all activities. But it was given neither au- thority nor responsibility for operating or directing the program. Indeed, no single entity was responsible for im- plementing the new legislation; each agency represented on the committee was responsible only for the projects assigned to it. Scaling Up Sector Development In an April 1940 executive order, Pres. Roosevelt established the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and appointed Nelson Rocke- feller as coordinator. Rockefeller initi- ated a broad set of joint bilateral pro- grams to deal with the basic problems of Latin American economies. In 1942, he secured a charter under the laws of Delaware for a gov- ernment-owned corporation called the Institute of Inter-American Af- fairs. This entity was authorized to conduct cooperative programs with Latin American governments in the promotion of public health and agri- cultural development. It later ex- panded to include elementary and vocational education. This focus grew out of a conviction that the best way to foster friendly re- lations was to work on the problems that most concerned these countries. The decision to establish the Office of the Coordinator for IIAA as an inde- pendent agency had been molded by FDR’s belief that a new agency would show greater initiative and energy in this new field of technical cooperation than could be expected from the De- partment of State. This approach was built on Rockefeller Foundation and earlier private-sector experience dat- ing back over a century, and it grew to be structured around long-term, in- country technical cooperation teams called “servicios.” Understandably, career personnel at State feared that an independent agency would create diplomatic prob- lems. While relations between the IIAA and the Interdepartmental Com- mittee on Scientific and Cultural Co- operation were reportedly smooth enough in the field, inWashington they viewed each other as competitors. By 1944 the tension had become so great that the director of the IIAA’s Food Supply Division resigned because ca- reer State Department officers were obstructing its new program. Over the next decade the State De- partment initiated multiple reviews, all of which recommended that the inde- pendent IIAA be continued. James Maddox’s 1956 book, Technical Assis- tance by Religious Agencies in Latin America , provides much-needed per- spective by reporting that in the 1950s, U.S. government funding was twice that devoted to missionary develop- ment — even though religious agen- cies had three times as many develop- ment staff in Latin America. Lessons for Today Shortly after the Marshall Plan got under way, President Harry Truman used his Jan. 20, 1949, inaugural ad- dress to articulate his Point Four pro- gram. Subsequently enacted as the International Development Act, this evolved into our current federally 48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 1 0