Dulles Seeks Approval Of U.S. Aid Plans

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28249, 10 April 1957, Page 13

Dulles Seeks Approval Of U.S. Aid Plans

(Rec. 8 p.m.) WASHINGTON, April 8.

The United States Secretary of State (Mr Dulles) said today that if the United States failed to maintain its economic and political links with the non-Com-munist world, “we shall face a peril the like of which we have never known.”

Mr Dulles was testifying in support of President Eisenhower’s 4.400,000,000 dollars mutual security programme before a special Senate committee studying the foreign aid programme. Mr Dulles told the committee that United States military and economic aid must continue for several years to strengthen mutual defences against international communism.

He proposed an economic development fund of the equivalent of about £268,000,000 a year from which loans could be made to improve the economies of the world’s under-developed areas. He asked Congress to break away from the cycle of annual economic aid appropriations and to eliminate the system under which it approves country-by-country allocations in advance. Justifying his request for authorisation to maintain the fund over a period of years, Mr Dulles

said: "International communism is waging against us what is sometimes called a ‘cold war.* “It can move, without budget controls or parliamentary action, to take advantage of opportunities such as those created by its own subversive efforts, by the infirmities of free governments not yet solidly based, or by the misfortunes of nature.” Effect of British Cuts

Mr Dulles disagreed with Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, that the British defence cuts necessarily meant a weakening of the ability of N.A.T.O. to deter the Soviet Union from launching a war.

Senator Russell said that the West now was weaker than it was 10 years ago, and he described its defensive position as “not better than a second-best poker hand.” Mr Dulles replied: ‘‘lt is true in some ways that the development of new weapons by the Soviet Union has created a danger greater than it was 10 years ago. “I do not know any way in which that danger could have been prevented unless we ourselves had engaged in a preventive war. which I am quite certain no-one here would ever contemplate.**

Mr Dulles described the principal objective as one of preventing war, not winning war. "With modem weapons, any general war could not be won by anybody,” he said. "It would be a disaster of world-wide proportions which would threaten the very existence of the human race. "The prevention of war depends on your capacity for retaliation. and when you think in those terms you will see that some of these modem developments do not necessarily mean a weakening of our policy to deter war." Explaining the economic aid proposals, Mr Dulles said that the United States objective was to keep hope alive in countries which otherwise would inevitably turn to the cruel experiments of communism. If newly-independent and underdeveloped nations turned to communism it would be disastrous for them and for us.