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THE NATION: Foreign Aid Repaid

4 minute read
TIME

After months of debate over foreign aid, Washington seemed tired of it all. In the mouths of Administration leaders the timeworn arguments for the program —e.g., military aid is “vital” to the defense of the free world—had become cliches, wrung dry of meaning from reiterated challenge, reiterated response. Last week some of the deep meaning of this high-minded, unprecedented, costly U.S. experiment came to life in terms of people, fears, hopes and dramatic ambitions. It was brought to life by a short, black-haired man in a double-breasted suit who landed at the Washington airport in the presidential Columbine III and got a personal greeting from Dwight Eisenhower.

Up from Loneliness. For austere, scholarly Ngo Dinh Diem (pronounced ‘n godin d’zee-em), President and Premier of the Southeast Asian republic of South Viet Nam, Ike’s invitation to make an official state visit was a triumph almost as great as Viet Nam’s freedom is a shining vindication of U.S. foreign-aid policies. Less than three years ago Diem was a lonely, almost unknown Vietnamese patriot and onetime provincial governor living in self-imposed exile from French colonial rule—among other places, in the U.S., where he spent several years as a guest at Maryknoll Junior Seminary at Lakewood, N.J.

Recalled to Saigon by the French, and named Premier after the Communist victory at Dienbienphu, Roman Catholic Diem (his family has been Catholic since the 17th century) took office just as the big powers at Geneva were about to halt the Indo-China war by splitting Viet Nam in two—with the industrialized northern half going to Communist Ho Chi Minh. Sixteen months later Nationalist Diem took the final step. Overwhelmingly victorious in a national referendum which ousted the French puppet-Emperor, and named Diem chief of state, he proclaimed Viet Nam a republic, became its first President. Even with firm U.S. support and massive doses of military and economic aid ($450 million to date, and scheduled for about $250 million next year), his problems were enormous; e.g., his control over much of the country was disputed by Communist guerrillas and the private armies of dissident sects; his shaky, war-weakened economy was battered by the need to take care of thousands of refugees who fled Communism in the North.

Out of Backwardness. In speeches to a joint session of Congress and the National Press Club last week, President Diem talked earnestly on three themes. Time and again he thanked the U.S. for its outpouring of “moral and material aid,” without which Viet Nam could not have “overcome the chaos brought about by the war and the Geneva accords . . I could not repeat too often how much the Vietnamese people are grateful for American aid.” Unequivocally he denounced Red China and Russia: “Since Communism is not neutral, we cannot be neutral.”

But he was equally candid with the West: the people of free Asia are “impatient … to reduce their immense technical backwardness . . . They clamor for immediate economic development.” Thus, said Diem, the debate among Viet Nam leaders is how “to attain economic progress without sacrificing essential liberties.” Their choice is not between economic planning and no planning, but whether progress will take place by democratic or totalitarian means. Vital to the outcome of this debate, Diem warned, “are the efforts being made to safeguard liberal democracy through aid” from the industrial West. President Diem’s implied point: if the West’s aid programs are curtailed or eliminated, the Communists can win Asia by little more than talk.

Beyond Formality. Diem had two 45-minute sessions with Secretary of State Dulles, and a one-hour session, along with Dulles, with Eisenhower at the White House. Ike and Diem got another chance to talk at a formal dinner at the Viet Nam embassy, where Host Diem, dressed in traditional Vietnamese costume—black turban, white trousers, a purple-and-black knee-length coat—also had a chat with another Ike visitor, Britain’s Field Marshal Montgomery.

When the talking was over, and before Diem set out on a ten-day tour of the U.S. the two Presidents issued the customary formal communique. It was phrased in the same hard-worn phrases of today’s diplomacy: both recognized the threat of the Communist buildup in North Viet Nam, Diem pointed up the need for “closer cooperation with the free countries of Asia,” the two governments agreed “to cooperate closely together for freedom and independence in the world.”

But stated person to person with proud, doughty little Ngo Dinh Diem, these important underpinnings of free-world policy —and U.S. aid—regained something of the lustrous shine that they deserve.

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