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Morgenthau takes a scholarly scalpel to the concept of economic development aid. It has, he says, "a very much smaller range of potentially successful operation than is generally believed." Many underdeveloped countries "suffer from deficiencies, some natural and insuperable, others social and remediable, which no amount of capital and technological know-how supplied from the outside can cure." There are "bum and beggar nations" that, unless a "miraculpus transformation" of character takes place, cannot or will not use foreign aid for genuine economic development.
Here & Now. In some underdeveloped countries, the people and the rulers care little or nothing about long-range economic development. What they want is highly visible, here-and-now projects that provide an appearance of modernity and progress. The classic example, cited by Morgenthau and much quoted within the Kennedy Administration, is Afghanistan's request a few years ago that the U.S. pave the streets in Kabul. U.S. aidmen declined on the ground that the paving would not really contribute to the country's economic development. Instead, the U.S. built the Afghans a costly but little appreciated hydroelectric dam. So who paved the streets in Kabul? The Russians. And in political terms, they got a lot more credit than the U.S. for a lot less money.
What Morgenthau proposes, and what the Administration is considering, is that the U.S. set aside illusions about the potentialities of economic development and realistically re-examine foreign aid in terms of the U.S. purposes the aid is supposed to serve. "The problem of foreign aid is insoluble if it is considered as a self-sufficient technical enterprise of a primarily economic nature. It is soluble only if it is considered an integral part of the political policies of the giving country."
Foreign aid, he says, can serve valid purposes other than economic development, such as supporting pro-Western governments, winning good will or even bribing governments to do something the U.S. wants. Whatever the particular purpose, the aid should be tailored to fit it. Where the receiving country is really capable of economic development, and where the leaders really want it, it may make sense to build dams and other massive projects in the backlands. But in many underdeveloped countries, argues Morgenthau, the U.S. might serve its own ends better by paving streets.