POLITICS OF 1970
425
in future
be
European, though Britain and France still invest heavily
in
Africa, and some profits are being ploughed back into Middle Eastern
oil. No major West European country is likely in the foreseeable future
to stake an economic claim comparable to the pre-1939 foreign hold–
ings of Britain, France, or Holland. The old certainties are gone, po–
litical risks have mounted, and democratic pressures in the industrial
countries work in the direction of letting both investment and charity
commence at home. Socialist economics favor the domestic consumer,
and most West European countries are now semi-socialist and likely
to go further in that direction. Moreover, the global economic pull rein–
forces these social trends. To quote from an author who has made
a professional study of the subject:
"Western Europe has failed since 1945 to attain more than a precarious
satisfaction of the economic demands of its own people. This failure
is the more striking since output has risen much faster than in the
United States. Europe nevertheless preserved a net dependence on dol–
lar aid and could not provide capital of its own for the risky venture
of investment in the poorest countries--or where it could, as in Ger–
many, there was more profit in investing at home.
It
is a fact of the
first importance that the United States has no real Western European
partner in the economic development of the poorest countries. What
Communism may in the future be able to extract from its subjects
without asking for their consent, the richer Western European peoples
could not provide with democratic goodwill." (Oscar Gass, "The United
States and the Poorest Peoples,"
Commentary,
February 1958.) .
This is so true and so important that one wonders why it is not
being said more often. Perhaps it is thought impolitic to draw the at–
tention of 'the American public to the fact that the United States has
no major helpers in the work of building an international economy out–
side the Soviet system. (To say nothing of the need to spare the sensi–
tive feelings of people in Europe who still fancy themselves equal part–
ners in this task.) It is difficult enough (one can hear the experts telling
each other) having to persuade people that America must trade with
other Western countries.
If
in addition they are also told that it is up
to the United States to finance the bulk of economic development in
the backward regions of the globe-those that the Communists have
not taken over, that is-the public mood may become unduly despond–
ent. But how long can the secret be kept? After all, even the present
administration has had to ask for additional global investment funds,
and all Mr. Kennan's admonitions to take a firm line with ex-colonial
countries cannot quite blot out the awkward fact that when these
countries describe their position as critical, they are merely stating the
obvious.
