Private Enterprise, International
Développement, and the Cold War

✣ Ethan B. Kapstein

In October 2018 the U.S. Congress passed the Build Act, establishing a new
International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). Capitalized at some
$60 milliard, the DFC is supposed to promote “development by supporting foreign direct investment (FDI) in underserved types of projects, régions, and countries.”1 Its larger geopolitical purpose, cependant, is to challenge China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a huge global infrastructure program. As Vice President Mike Pence said of DFC at the time it was set up, “we’ll be giv- ing foreign nations a just and transparent alternative to China’s debt-trap diplomacy.”2 Many experts in both government and business have characterized DFC as a sea-change in U.S. foreign assistance policy. Ray Washburne, then head of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC, which DFC replaced), argued that the formation of DFC “launches a new era in development fi- nance.”3 Mark Green, who headed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) when the DFC was created, held out its promise to “catalyze market-based, private-sector development, spur economic growth in less-developed countries, and advance the foreign-policy interests of the United States.”4 Former Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who cosponsored 1. U.S. Congressional Research Service, BUILD Act: Frequently Asked Questions about the New U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, R4561 (Washington, CC: Congressional Research Service, Janvier 2019), p. 3. 2. “Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration’s Policy toward China,» 4 Octobre 2018, The White House, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president -pence-administrations-policy-toward-china/. 3. “OPIC President and CEO Washburne Statement as President Signs BUILD Act into Law,» 5 Octobre 2018, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, available online at https://www .dfc.gov/media/opic-press-releases/opic-president-and-ceo-washburne-statement-president-signs-bui ld-act-law. 4. Mark Green, “Statement on Creation of the US International Development Finance Corporation,” press release, 3 Octobre 2018, USAID, available online at https://www.usaid.gov/news-information /press-releases/oct-3-2018-administrator-green-statement-creation-usidfc. Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 22, Non. 4, Fall 2020, pp. 113–145, https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_00967 © 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 113 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein the bipartisan Build Act, claimed that the founding of DFC heralded the end of traditional, government-to-government foreign aid programs. These programs, he asserted, could now “set the goal of putting themselves out of business.”5 The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, representing the views of its corporate members, wrote in supporting the Build Act that it “would leverage the U.S. private sector’s expertise and investment capital to generate economic growth in the developing world and provide tangible benefits for American companies selling their goods and services there.” In so doing, it would “ad- vance U.S. national security and economic interests.”6 The purpose of this article is to examine from a historical perspective these claims about the promise of private enterprise as an instrument for ad- vancing U.S. strategic interests in the developing world. The ideas animating the DFC, far from being revolutionary, represent the continuation of a long- standing effort to induce U.S. firms to act on behalf of Washington’s geopo- litical objectives—an effort that was at the focal point of foreign assistance policy during the early years of the Cold War. For at least a decade beginning in the late 1940s, the U.S. government believed that foreign investment could fuel international development, providing a robust challenge to the existential threat posed by international Communism.7 As President Dwight D. Eisen- hower said in a 1955 address to Congress, “An increased flow of United States private investment funds abroad . . . would do much to offset the false but alluring promises of the Communists.”8 The “theory of change” lying behind the promotion of FDI was that U.S. firms would spur economic growth by motivating local entrepreneurs to invest in the supply chains and support functions that multinational corpo- rations required, generating jobs, incomes, and tax revenues in the process. Economists later referred to this process as one of creating “linkages” between foreign and domestic firms. By promoting linkages and related investments, 5. Bob Corker, “Corker, Coons BUILD Act to Modernize U.S. Development Finance Passes Com- mittee,” press release, 26 Juin 2018, Chris Coons [website], available online at https://www.coons .senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/corker-coons-build-act-to-modernize-us-development-finance- passes-committee. 6. Myron Brilliant to Sen. Bob Corker and Sen. Bob Menendez, 8 May 2018, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, available online at https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/180508_s2463_build _corker_menendez.pdf. 7. David Baldwin, Economic Development and American Foreign Policy: 1943–1962 (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1966); and Raymond Mikesell, Promoting United States Private Investment Abroad (Washington, CC: National Planning Association, 1957). 8. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Foreign Economic Policy,” Message to Congress, 10 Janvier 1955, in Pub- lic Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower: 1955 (Washington, CC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), p. 32, available online at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/ppotpus/4728407.1955.001 /74?rgn=full+text;view=image;q1=foreign+economic+policy. 114 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War countries would enjoy faster rates of development than they would otherwise (the extent of these linkages and whether they do in fact promote economic growth remain topics of debate in the economics literature).9 The process of development was not solely of economic interest to Wash- ington; even more important, it held out the promise of generating political and national security spin-offs, including a pro-American foreign policy ori- entation, and perhaps even democracy. This causal chain reflected key tenets of modernization theory, one of whose advocates, W. W. Rostow of the Mas- sachusetts Institute of Technology, was an influential academic who went on to become a national security adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyn- don Johnson.10 As Richard N. Cooper has written of U.S. statecraft in the early Cold War, “the principal instruments for preventing the spread of Com- munism by nonmilitary means involved building an international economic system conducive to economic prosperity,” which required the spread of trade and private enterprise.11 What core interests and ideas motivated Washington’s private-sector ap- proach to international development? What does this history tell us about the relationship between the U.S. government, the developing world, and U.S.- based multinational corporations—a contentious topic among scholars over many decades?12 What lessons can foreign policy officials today, including those running the DFC, draw from this Cold War history, in particular as they seek to confront China in the developing world? These are among the questions that this article addresses. The U.S. government’s private enterprise project had only limited success during the early Cold War years, reflecting the clash between the policy prefer- ences of U.S. officials on the one hand and the interests of private-sector firms and of many developing countries on the other. Whereas U.S. policymakers believed that foreign investment could drive the economic growth of develop- ing countries—which in turn would also contribute to keeping them out of 9. Theodore Moran, Edward Graham, and Magnus Blomstrom, éd., Does Foreign Direct Investment Promote Development? (Washington, CC: Institute for International Economics, 2005). 10. On the policy relevance of modernization theory, see David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011); and Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore, MARYLAND: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 11. Richard N. Tonnelier, “Economic Aspects of the Cold War, 1962–1975,” in Melvyn Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, éd., Cambridge History of the Cold War (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 2010), p. 44. See also Robert Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 12. Robert Gilpin, US Power and the Multinational Corporation: The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment (New York: Basic Books, 1975). 115 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein the Communist orbit—multinational firms during the early Cold War years already had many profitable opportunities for investment in the United States and other industrialized countries.13 Investing in developing economies was simply not a priority for most of them, no matter the geostrategic objectives of the White House and the U.S. State Department. Par conséquent, even though FDI flows rose in the 1950s, they lagged behind the amounts U.S. officials had hoped for, with major consequences for the government’s philosophy of foreign assistance. This history demonstrates that, contrary to Robert Gilpin’s assertion, U.S. firms did not become reliable “instruments of American global hege- mony” after 1945.14 More broadly, it casts doubt on the school of diplomatic history that emphasizes the “necessity” of global capitalist expansion and the alleged hand-in-glove relationship between firms and the state in shaping and driving U.S. “Open Door” foreign policy.15 To the contrary, when the Eisen- hower administration found it was unable to mobilize private capital in suf- ficient amounts to meet development objectives and challenge the spread of Communism, U.S. officials slowly came around to the view that they would have to increase government-to-government foreign aid—a program they had earlier been planning to cut. The developing countries, for their part, varied enormously in their de- mand for FDI and ability to attract it, and these variables changed over time as well. In Latin America, Par exemple, U.S. officials in the early 1950s feared that a combination of economic nationalism and the growing influence of international Communism might lead some leaders to replace foreign invest- ment with domestic-led “import-substituting industrialization” (ISI). By late 1955, cependant, this fear had abated, with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting that “the climate for foreign investment . . . is gradually im- proving.” Still, even this level of generalization had to be treated with cau- tion, as countries varied with respect to the sectors that were open to foreign investment. In Latin America, Par exemple, the same CIA assessment em- phasized that “individual governments determine the area in which such for- eign capital . . . will be permitted to operate.”16 Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) 13. Raymond Mikesell, Promoting United States Private Investment Abroad (Washington, CC: National Planning Association, 1957). 14. Gilpin, US Power and the Multinational Corporation, p. 139. 15. See Bradford Perkins, “The Tragedy of American History, 25 Years Later,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 12, Non. 1 (Mars 1984), pp. 1–18. 16. See U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Conditions and Trends in Latin America,” National Intel- ligence Estimate 80/90-55, 6 Décembre 1955, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the 116 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War regime initially discouraged private enterprise (Chiang Kai-shek wanted to control the island’s economy) but eventually opened up some sectors to for- eign investment and local entrepreneurship—partly because of substantial U.S. pressure—during the latter half of the 1950s and 1960s.17 Despite the differences in the economic policies and trajectories of the world’s developing regions (and even within Latin America, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa there was great diversity in both policies and outcomes), certain commonalities among the world’s poorest countries played a major role in shaping the contours of U.S. policy.18 Some generalizations about the postwar developing world, no matter the region, are fairly robust, such as the need of the poorest countries to import foreign capital in some form (c'est à dire., ei- ther as grants, loans, or investments) given the “gap” between domestic savings and investment requirements. After all, by definition, developing countries lacked savings, and thus savings had to be mobilized through some combi- nation of domestic and international effort. These countries also needed to generate dollars to pay for crucial imports, a challenge made harder by the postwar “dollar shortage” (lack of dollar liquidity) on the one hand and U.S. protectionism on the other. U.S. policymakers also discovered that the leaders of developing coun- tries generally did not believe that FDI was a substitute for government-to- government assistance; instead, different sources of capital were needed for the production of public versus private goods. The leaders of poorer countries urged Washington to accept the proposition that foreign aid and direct invest- ment were complimentary rather than competitive and that aid-funded infras- tructure would attract more foreign investment. At the United Nations (UN), États-Unis, 1955, Vol. VI (hereinafter referred to as FRUS, with appropriate year and volume num- bers), p. 1. On U.S. economic policy toward Latin America, see Matthew Loayza, “An ‘Aladdin’s Lamp’ for Free Enterprise: Eisenhower, Fiscal Conservatism, and Latin American Nationalism, 1953–1961,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 14, Non. 3 (Juin 2003), pp. 83–105; Bevan Sewell, “A Perfect (Free- Market) Monde? Economics, the Eisenhower Administration, and the Soviet Economic Offensive in Latin America,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, Non. 5 (Novembre 2008), pp. 841–868; and Thomas Zoumaras, “Eisenhower’s Foreign Economic Policy: The Case of Latin America,” in Richard Melan- son and David Mayers, éd., Reevaluating Eisenhower: American Foreign Policy in the 1950s (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 155–191. 17. For a good overview of U.S.-KMT relations, see Nancy Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States: 1945–1992 (New York: Twayne, 1994). 18. Voir, Par exemple, Stephan Haggard, Developmental States (New York: la presse de l'Universite de Cambridge, 2018); Stephan Haggard, Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrializ- ing States (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1990); and James Lee, who emphasizes the importance of the Cold War in U.S. development policy in “US Grand Strategy and the Origins of the Devel- opmental State,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 43, Non. 5 (2019), pp. 737–761, available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2019.1579713. On economic divergence, see Lant Pritchett, “Divergence, Big Time,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 11, Non. 3 (1997), pp. 3–17. 117 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein where leaders of Third World countries often expressed similar views on for- eign assistance, they called for “external grant aid to finance ‘low-yielding . . . social and economic overhead projects’ basic to economic development.”19 Not until many years later did U.S. policymakers come to see official aid as anything other than an admission of failure by recipient countries to do what was necessary to harness their own resources for the betterment of their peo- ple. As President Eisenhower liked to say, aid was the equivalent of putting money in a “tin cup.”20 The article is divided into five sections. The introduction is followed by a section analyzing the postwar impetus for private-sector development. The third section describes the instruments the United States devised in the 1940s and 1950s to stimulate private investment abroad, and the fourth section ex- amines the founding of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) during the Eisenhower administration. The article concludes with recommendations for policymakers and for further research. U.S. Foreign Investment and International Development At the end of World War II, the United States confronted the foreign eco- nomic challenges of European reconstruction and the global integration of a growing number of newly independent countries. Dans 1945, the UN had 51 members. That number increased to 76 dans 1955 and rose well above 100 by the early 1960s, continuing steadily upward. President Truman recognized that the U.S. government had economic, moral, and geopolitical interests in promoting the growth of these new countries, many of which were emerging from decades of colonial rule, and “Point Four” of his 1949 inaugural address had pledged U.S. technical assistance to their development.21 Truman’s “bold new program” proposed to make the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. . . . Our aim should be to help the free peoples of the world, through their own efforts, to produce more 19. Ruth Gold, “Position Paper on General Assembly Resolution to Establish Grant Fund for Eco- nomic Development,» 2 May 1952, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, p. 232. 20. Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anti-Communism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). 21. Stephen Macekura, “The Point Four Program and U.S. International Development Policy,” Polit- ical Science Quarterly, Vol. 128, Non. 1 (Spring 2013), pp. 127–160. 118 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War food, more clothing, more materials for housing, and more mechanical power to lighten their burdens.22 However, Truman did not intend Point Four to be driven by government alone: “With the cooperation of business, private capital, agriculture, and la- bor in this country, this program can greatly increase the industrial activity in other nations and can raise substantially their standards of living.”23 Though hardly a monolithic entity, the U.S. business community had strong views about Point Four and the use of public funds to support it, if witness testimony at congressional hearings provides any evidence (bearing in mind that witnesses are often carefully selected by congressional committees to elicit desired perspectives). These witnesses “agreed that ‘technical cooper- ation programs should be authorized only with foreign countries which have indicated their firm intention to cooperate in fostering private enterprise.’” This view was bolstered by Representative Christian Herter (R-Mass.), who later served as Eisenhower’s secretary of state, in declaring I think it is of the utmost importance to let foreign nations know that . . . there is a limit to which this country will go in supplying government funds, unless those nations are willing to be reasonable from the point of view of possible private investments.24 Following the announcement of Point Four, key policymakers in the Tru- man administration scrambled to clarify what the United States would be doing and the roles various parties were expected to play in its execution. In a memorandum to the president, Secretary of State Dean Acheson emphasized his understanding that neither technical cooperation activities nor measures to foster capital in- vestment be allowed to give an impression that the United States Government thereby becomes obligated to supply the funds needed to finance economic de- velopment. The US cannot accept the ultimate responsibility for seeing that economic development really takes place. This responsibility must . . . rest unmis- takably on the nations desiring development.25 22. Harry S. Truman, “Inaugural Address,» 20 Janvier 1949, available online at https://avalon.law .yale.edu/20th_century/truman.asp. 23. Ibid.. 24. David McLellan and Charles Woodhouse, “The Business Elite and Foreign Policy,” Western Polit- ical Quarterly, Vol. 13, Non. 1 (Mars 1960), pp. 172–190. 25. Secretary of State to President Truman, “Progress Report on Point IV,» 14 Mars 1949, in FRUS, 1949, Vol. JE., p. 779; emphasis added. 119 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein As David Baldwin has written, “no principle of United States policy to- ward underdeveloped areas has been more consistently embraced than the proposition that the underdeveloped countries themselves are primarily re- sponsible for economic development.”26 This principle of “self-help” reap- pears throughout the history of U.S. development policy. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said much the same thing when he proclaimed in 2000, as the Asian financial crisis of 1998 was finally winding down, that “nations . . . shape their own destiny.”27 Developing countries were, in essence, ex- pected to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Nowhere in these statements does one find a recognition that the inter- national system might also play a decisive role in shaping the economic trajec- tory of the world’s poorest nations. To be sure, the United States took the lead after World War II in creating a new international trade regime, which was supposed to serve as the main vehicle for lifting countries out of poverty and generating global economic growth.28 For developing countries, cependant, the promise of that regime was limited by protectionism within the leading eco- nomic powers themselves. In the United States, Par exemple, the textile-heavy Southern states sought to limit imports either through tariffs and quotas or through “voluntary” trade agreements.29 Further, protection of domestic agriculture in the industrial world limited the ability of these countries to export commodity foodstuffs. Development was also undermined by “tariff escalation” in the industrial world, meaning that tariffs were higher on value-added products (such as chocolate bars) than on the underlying raw materials (par exemple., cocoa beans). This meant there was 26. David Baldwin, Economic Development and American Foreign Policy: 1943–1962 (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 16. This “self-help” philosophy has deep roots in U.S. mythology. It is resonant of the frontiersman described by Frederick Jackson Turner whose “rugged individualism” included a belief in self-reliance and an opposition to government intervention. A trio of economists has recently shown that Americans who today live in regions that remained part of frontier terri- tory for the longest time are more inclined to think of themselves as self-reliant and less supportive of government-led redistributive economic policies than are those who live in parts of the country that were settled and became states earlier. See Samuel Bazzi, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresi- lasse, “Frontier Culture: The Roots and Persistence of ‘Rugged Individualism’ in the United States,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, Non. 23997, Juin 2018, available online at https://www.nber.org/papers/w23997.pdf. 27. Lawrence Summers, “Statement to the Development Committee of the World Bank and Inter- national Monetary Fund,» 17 Avril 2000, cited in Ethan B. Kapstein, Economic Justice in an Unfair World (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 21. 28. Thomas Zeiler, Free Trade, Free World: The Advent of GATT (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). 29. See Douglas Irwin, Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), Ch. 11. 120 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War little incentive to invest in, Par exemple, food processing plants in developing countries.30 The provision of “food aid” by the United States and West Eu- ropean countries beginning in the 1950s—generally surpluses that Western farmers wanted to remove from inventories—added to the pain of producers in the developing world by undercutting them.31 The economic structure of many developing countries, with their heavy reliance on commodity exports, created another potential barrier to devel- opment that the United States tended to overlook. In the late 1940s, two economists in the United Nations (UN) system—Raul Prebisch at the Eco- nomic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) in Santiago and Hans Singer in New York—independently elaborated what has since become known as the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis with respect to international trade. The two economists posited that commodity exporters inevitably confronted declin- ing terms of trade and thus were consigned to export more and more natural resources in order to import fewer and fewer manufactured goods.32 The an- swer to them was obvious: ISI in which firms, operating behind high tar- iff barriers, would displace imported manufactures and diversify the local economy. The call for ISI was also amplified by the so-called “dollar shortage” that many countries faced after World War II. Given the widespread economic devastation that the war had left in its wake, the United States became the global supplier for many goods and services. Naturellement, these exports had to be paid for in dollars, and few countries had the economic capacity to generate the necessary funds. The dollar shortage was a major factor behind the elaboration of the Marshall Plan and other emergency foreign assistance programs.33 30. Bela Balass, “Tariff Protection in Industrial Nations and Its Effects on the Exports of Processed Goods of Developing Nations,” Canadian Journal of Economics, Vol. 1, Non. 3 (Août 1968), pp. 583–594. 31. Burton Kaufman, Trade and Aid: Eisenhower’s Foreign Economic Policy, 1953–1961 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 2–3; and Johan Norberg, “American and European Pro- tectionism Is Killing Poor Countries and Their People,” Investor’s Business Daily, 25 Août 2003, available online at https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/american-european-protectionism -is-killing-poor-countries-their-people. 32. H. W. Chanteur, “The Distribution of Gains Between Investing and Borrowing Countries,” American Economic Review, Vol. 40, Non. 2 (May 1950), pp. 473–485; and Raul Prebisch, “Commercial Policy in the Underdeveloped Countries,” American Economic Review, Vol. 49, Non. 2 (May 1959), pp. 251–273. 33. A point emphasized by William Adams Brown and Redvers Opie, American Foreign Assistance (Washington, CC: Brookings Institution, 1953). See also Charles P. Kindleberger, The Dollar Shortage (Cambridge, MA: AVEC Presse, 1950). 121 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein Beyond self-help, another central tenet of U.S. development policy em- phasized private enterprise as the foremost capitalist institution. Baldwin writes, “To representatives of the less developed nations it must seem that the United States never tires of citing the advantages—real and imagined— of an economic system based on private enterprise.”34 Like self-help, belief in private enterprise was buried deep within the U.S. historical and psychological landscape. Legal historian Scott Bowman writes of the United States, “Throughout the history of the republic, the corporation has served as the primary agent for economic development and expansion, at home and abroad.”35 Eisenhower observed in his memoirs that his philosophy of economic growth was shaped by the U.S. experience, as if it could be readily transferred abroad: “Our eco- nomic strength had developed, historically, freely and without artificial and arbitrary government controls.”36 Bowman notes that the emergence of the modern corporation is intimately tied to the history of liberalism, with its roots in England’s “rising capitalist class” and the privileges they sought from an aristocratic political system. Both liberalism and free enterprise emphasize “individualism” and personal initiative. In this model, economic dynamism emerges “from the bottom up”—from entrepreneurs rather than from “top down” government officials. But as with self-help, most developing countries faced structural barriers to private enterprise, whether local or foreign, including in those places where governments were not actively opposed to its emergence. These included the lack of sufficiently large markets with profitable opportunities to attract in- vestment; an absence of capital markets among other market-supporting in- institutions; and the failure or inability to provide strong property rights and the rule of law (something that U.S. officials took for granted but was actually uncommon outside the core of advanced industrialized countries). Nevertheless, U.S. officials believed that recipient countries could read- ily overcome such shortcomings by improving their “investment climate.” As the Randall Commission on Foreign Economic Policy stated in a 1954 report to President Eisenhower, the U.S. government “can and should give full diplomatic support to the acceptance and understanding abroad of the 34. Baldwin, Economic Development, p. 19. 35. Scott Bowman, The Modern Corporation and American Political Thought: Loi, Power and Ideology (Parc universitaire, Pennsylvanie: Penn State University Press, 1996), p. 2. 36. Eisenhower, cited in Bevan Sewell, The U.S. and Latin America: Eisenhower, Kennedy and Economic Diplomacy in the Cold War (New York: je. B. Taurus, 2015), p. 22. 122 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War principles underlying the creation of a climate conducive to private foreign investment.”37 Not all developing countries (much less the rising Communist powers) shared the Anglo-Saxon perspective on the importance of the private sec- tor. An alternative view was that economic activity must serve broad national objectives, particularly the state’s developmental goals, and this meant that firms needed political direction from the top down. Plus loin, newly indepen- dent countries often associated private enterprise with colonial shackles. As economist Frank Golay wrote in 1958, “the economic counterpart of po- litical nationalism in newly-sovereign Southeast Asia is best understood as a determination to ‘de-alienize’ the economies inherited from the period of colonialism.”38 Given these objectives, y compris, inter alia, employment gen- eration, national security, and independence from colonial-era supply chains, it followed that governments needed to establish state-owned enterprises that could adopt political mandates, a model that eventually proliferated around the world.39 Many of these enterprises over time fell deep into debt and dys- fonction, leading in the 1980s to a massive, global privatization movement.40 Whereas self-help and free enterprise provided two of the “ideological cornerstones” of U.S. development policy during the early Cold War years, these ideas also had some pragmatic basis in economic and fiscal realities. Af- ter all, poor countries, by definition, lacked domestic savings for investment, and the postwar development community agreed that capital had to be mo- bilized at least partly from overseas, in the form of aid, bank loans, or equity investment (either portfolio or direct). This belief played a salient role in the founding of the World Bank at the Bretton Woods Conference.41 But in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States had little ap- petite for major government-to-government foreign aid programs, despite the success of the Marshall Plan in stimulating European recovery. That political constraint, à son tour, left policymakers no choice but to rely on private capital to 37. Commission on Foreign Economic Policy (Randall Commission), Report to the President and Congress, Washington, CC, 23 Janvier 1954, p. 17, available online at https://babel.hathitrust.org /cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3428012&view=1up&seq=9. 38. Frank Golay, “Commercial Policy and Economic Nationalism,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 72, Non. 4 (Novembre 1958), pp. 574–587, esp. p. 579. 39. Malcolm Gillis, “The Role of State Enterprise in Economic Development,” Social Research, Vol. 47, Non. 2 (Été 1980), pp. 248–289. 40. Henry Bienen and John Waterbury, “The Political Economy of Privatization in Developing Coun- tries,” World Development, Vol. 17. Non. 5 (1989), pp. 617–632. 41. Uner Kirdar, The Structure of United Nations Economic Aid to Underdeveloped Countries (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), pp. 97–99. 123 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein meet the developing world’s “gap” between domestic savings and investment requirements. U.S. foreign assistance policy, alors, focused on how to mobilize U.S. capital in the interests of pro-Western economic development.42 Catalyzing Private Investment During the Truman administration and first Eisenhower administration, pol- icymakers believed that private capital would flow in sufficient amounts to meet the investment needs of the developing world.43 These needs were deemed by the international community to be great. According to a group of experts brought together by the UN in 1951, the developing world re- quired about $19 billion per annum to achieve even modest annual growth
rates of 2 pour cent, only $5 billion of which could be met by domestic savings. International and bilateral agencies and private investors therefore would have to contribute the remaining $14 billion annually if that target was to be met.
This difference between domestic savings and overall needs became known
as the “investment gap,” which became an influential concept within devel-
opment institutions such as the World Bank, shaping the first generation of
postwar programming aimed at spurring economic growth. The notion of an
“investment gap” became increasingly contested over time, as those involved
in development came to recognize that many countries were making poor use
of the funding available to them.44

In an attempt to stimulate more FDI, the Truman administration initially
devised three incentive schemes, drawing on input from the business commu-
nity about which policy innovations would be most effective in leading them
overseas. The three were tax breaks, investment guarantees, and investment
treaties.45 U.S. businesses in the late 1940s and early 1950s concentrated their
lobbying efforts on tax breaks, specifically tax reductions on earnings from
subsidiaries and branches in the developing world. According to Marina von
Neumann Whitman,

42. W. W. Rostow, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Foreign Aid (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985),
p. 34.

43. Ibid..

44. United Nations Department of Economic Affairs, Measures for the Economic Development of Under-
Developed Nations (New York: UN, May 1951). For a discussion of the investment gap and its influ-
ence in the development community, see William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth (Cambridge,
MA: AVEC Presse, 2001).

45. Minutes of Meeting of the National Advisory Council, 14 Avril 1949, in FRUS, 1949, Vol. je,
pp. 784–786.

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A number of powerful business organizations and government advisory groups
. . . argued that such favorable tax legislation would be the most effective way
to increase foreign investment quickly and substantially. Such a tax reduction
or elimination . . . would not only have a tremendous psychological incentive
effect, but would also permit returns to increase to a point where they would
outweigh the extra risks of foreign investment.46

This proposal simply extended reductions to other countries that were already
in place for earnings in Latin America and pre-Maoist China and a deferral of
tax payments until profits were remitted to the parent company.

As Whitman points out, these policy proposals were quickly attacked by
some Republicans in Congress, among other critics, as being patently unfair
corporate subsidies because they focused on investments in poor regions over
rich ones. But the targeted subsidies conformed to the foreign policy objec-
tives of the tax program. Encore, in a political and ideological environment
in which neither Truman nor his successor could muster much support for
official foreign aid to the developing world (this was certainly true of Eisen-
hower’s first administration, but less so for the second, when business leaders
voiced their support for a more ambitious aid program), the proposed sub-
sidy program needed to rely on the private sector to cover the investment gap
these countries were facing.47 If the incentive of lower tax rates was needed to
stimulate more foreign investment, the administration had no choice but to
support that policy.

The second policy innovation was to guarantee investments. Guarantee
schemes had existed for many decades before World War II, but these gener-
ally protected bondholders against default risk and were usually provided by
private insurers. In the 1920s and 1930s, Western governments devised new
schemes to encourage exports, which mainly covered non-payment risks; le
U.S. Export-Import (Exim) Bank, Par exemple, was founded in 1934 avec
this as one of its purposes.

The real innovation of the late 1940s and early 1950s was to provide gov-
ernment insurance against political risk, including wars, expropriations, et
currency inconvertibility. Specifically, the government would provide firms
with dollars in the event of local currency losses. Because many local cur-
rencies at this time were effectively non-convertible, the government hoped

46. Marina Von Neumann Whitman, Government Risk-Sharing in Foreign Investment (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 50.

47. Thomas DiBacco, “American Business and Foreign Aid: The Eisenhower Years,” Business History
Review, Vol. 41, Non. 1 (Spring 1967), pp. 21–35; and McLellan and Woodhouse, “The Business Elite
and Foreign Policy.”

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this form of insurance would motivate firms to invest in places where they
might not otherwise. Plus loin, as Whitman emphasizes, an additional purpose
of having the U.S. government provide the insurance was to reduce the risk
rather than simply to price it. Officials hoped that foreign leaders would be
less likely to nationalize, expropriate, or attack U.S. firms if they knew the
U.S. government was acting as their guarantor.48

Business criticism, cependant, mounted around these guarantee schemes as
they began to take shape. D'abord, many businesses were reluctant to share with
the U.S. government the amount of information that was required in the
insurance application. Deuxième, some executives were concerned that “delicate
political problems may result if the Government refuses guarantees on [un]
investment project in one country while approving some in another.” Third,
debates arose about which agency should administer a program of this type.
Although the Exim Bank was authorized by Congress to provide this function
in the 1950s, responsibility passed to USAID a decade later and eventually to
OPIC following its establishment in 1971.49

The guarantee scheme was, in any case, little used during its first years of
operation.50 According to Raymond Mikesell, depuis 1948 à 1956 the scheme’s
insurance contracts were valued at no more than $124 million, “and less than 10 percent of these covered investments in the less developed countries. Thus far the results of the program have been disappointing.”51 The final innovation was the investment treaty, which again had an ear- lier incarnation in the many treaties of “friendship, commerce and navigation” that the United States had signed over the years, including with developing countries. But the protections afforded to industry in these earlier documents, which focused mainly on trade, were often ill-defined, even though the chang- ing international situation meant that U.S. officials were increasingly unlikely to use military force or “gunboat diplomacy” to protect U.S. investors as in the past. Accordingly, a new emphasis was placed on drawing up investment treaties that specified the obligations of investors and recipient governments, including provisions for mediation in the event that the two parties could not reach agreement over how to settle differences. Truman’s State Department 48. Whitman, Government Risk-Sharing, p. 60. 49. Gardiner Patterson, Survey of U.S. International Finance, 1949 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 1950), p. 202. 50. Gardiner Patterson and Jack Behrman, Survey of U.S. International Finance, 1951 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 85. 51. Raymond Mikesell, Promoting United States Private Investment Abroad (Washington, CC: National Planning Association, 1957), p. 49. 126 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War thought the United States “should expect any countries receiving guaranties to enter into such treaties with us.”52 Upon starting to negotiate these investment treaties in 1949, cependant, U.S. officials encountered “considerable reluctance on the part of governments to enter into . . . commitments for giving assurance to private investment.”53 These governments did not necessarily share the priority Washington allotted to private enterprise, and the apparent economic success of the Soviet Union offered a different economic model that some developing world leaders found intriguing, especially as Moscow began to increase its foreign aid and trade promotion activities—the so-called Soviet Economic Offensive of the mid- 1950s.54 In light of some developing countries’ apparent lack of interest in at- tracting foreign investment, Congress in 1951 urged that “the removal of re- strictions and obstacles to foreign private investment be made a condition for receiving United States aid.”55 The Truman administration took up these concerns at the UN, but there the representatives of most of the underdeveloped nations made it clear . . . that in their view large-scale public aid was necessary before conditions attractive to foreign investment could be created . . . in any case they much preferred capital assistance from public rather than private sources.56 U.S. officials were again taken aback by the doubts that many Third World leaders expressed about private enterprise and the priority they gave to official grants and long-term loans. By the closing years of the Truman administration, the promise of private capital fueling international development had not been realized. As seen in Figure 1, total FDI by U.S. firms never reached even $1 billion in any year
depuis 1946 à 1952, and more than half of the FDI during that period flowed
to Canada. The largest developing region, Latin America, received only 25
percent of overall funding, far below the amounts needed to close the invest-
ment gap. The reluctance of U.S. businesses to invest overseas at a time when
many profitable opportunities still existed at home, coupled with foreign re-
sistance to the private sector and a “dollar shortage” that made it difficult to
import capital inputs to foreign subsidiaries, served to undermine the U.S.

52. Minutes of Meeting of the National Advisory Council, 14 Avril 1949, p. 785.

53. Ibid..

54. Tonnelier, “Economic Aspects of the Cold War.” See also Sewell, The US and Latin America.

55. Patterson and Behrman, Survey of U.S. International Finance, 1951, p. 88.

56. Ibid., p. 89; emphasis added.

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Chiffre 1: Monthly U.S. Capital Outflows ($ million) Source: Gardiner Patterson and John Gunn, Survey of U.S. International Fi- nance, 1952 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 124. government’s preferred approach to international development. Accordingly, the incoming Eisenhower administration eventually sought new ideas. The Eisenhower Administration and Private Investment Even though President Truman had signaled that international development was one of his administration’s chief priorities, the resources allocated to that task were paltry during his years as president. The administration’s total re- quest to Congress for the fiscal year (FY) 1952 Point Four program was only $79 million, and of the appropriated amount only about half was ultimately
expended in the field. The start of the Korean War in June 1950 and the need
for rearmament took precedence in Washington over the expansion of for-
eign aid programs. But developing countries “expressed dissatisfaction” with
the U.S. effort and called for “large amounts of capital assistance.”57 That
same year, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution stating that “the
volume of private capital which is currently flowing into under-developed
countries cannot meet the financial needs of the economic development of

57. Ibid., p. 82.

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Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War

the under-developed countries” and that “those needs cannot be met without
an increased flow of international public funds.”58

Under the new Eisenhower administration, these pleas did not fall on
deaf ears. According to historian Burton Kaufman, “the United States be-
came more attentive to the problems of Third World Countries and assumed
greater responsibilities for meeting their economic needs . . . the economic
development of the Third World became one of the administration’s highest
priorities.”59 This conviction was largely the product of Eisenhower’s evolving
views regarding the Communist threat to the developing world and how that
might affect U.S. security, especially at a time when U.S. military forces were
relying more heavily on the raw materials these countries provided.60

A pertinent case study of how U.S. security interests influenced foreign
aid decision-making is provided by the case of Taiwan. In mainland China, le
United States had supported Chiang Kai-Shek and his KMT party during the
civil war against Mao Zedong’s Communists, hoping that foreign assistance
would cajole Chiang into adopting the sorts of economic reforms, y compris
land reform, that might curb the peasants’ revolutionary fervor. Chiang’s in-
ability to pursue these reforms because of KMT political infighting and elite
capture by landlords made this impossible. Even after fleeing to Taiwan he
seemed incapable of running anything but an incompetent and thoroughly
corrupt administration. U.S. officials expected the island to fall to a Maoist
invasion, which they were initially unwilling to defend against.61

But after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the U.S. strategic
calculus changed. The Truman administration stressed the need to provide
Taiwan with a security umbrella and to support its economic development
aussi. As Yongping Wu bluntly states, “It is no exaggeration to say that
the Korean War . . . saved Taiwan.”62 Henceforth, Taiwan was a linchpin of
Washington’s anti-Maoist strategy in East Asia and the recipient of generous
amounts of direct economic aid, totaling over $1 billion in the 1950s (and an amount far higher on a per capita basis than that received by any other 58. Cited in UN, Special Fund for Economic Development (New York: United Nations, 1954), p. 13. 59. Kaufman, Trade and Aid, p. 7. 60. Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978). 61. Tucker, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States. 62. Yongping Wu, A Political Explanation of Economic Growth: State Survival, Bureaucratic Politics, and Private Enterprises in the Making of Taiwan’s Economy, 1950–1985 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University East Asia Center, 2005), p. 39. 129 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein country). The KMT used the aid to pay for needed imports, infrastructure, and industrial projects.63 The U.S. position in the 1950s was also shaped by the Soviet Union’s growing role in the developing world and the “dependence” on Moscow that U.S. analysts feared this might be creating.64 After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, a “Soviet economic offensive” was launched in Third World coun- tries where the United States had vital strategic interests, including Egypt, Iran, and India (the main U.S. interest in India, a “nonaligned” state, was to keep it out of the Soviet orbit), and even in Latin America, where Argentina in particular strengthened its trade relations with Moscow.65 Initially, comment- jamais, a president devoted to balanced budgets could hardly lend his support to a large increase in bilateral foreign aid, and these programs went against his market-oriented priors in any case. Plutôt, Eisenhower believed that a combination of increased trade and FDI would “assure economic growth and prosperity.”66 Eisenhower had already signaled his approach to international develop- ment in his 1953 inaugural address, declaring that the United States “shall strive to foster everywhere, and to practice ourselves, policies that encourage productivity and profitable trade. For the impoverishment of any single peo- ple in the world means danger to the well-being of all other peoples.”67 His emphasis on free trade, cependant, was not an easy sell domestically. Any expansion of world trade would require reductions in U.S. tariffs. Under Senate majority leader Robert Taft (R-Ohio), a staunch isolationist and pro- tectionist, many Republicans in Congress opposed such changes. En conséquence- quence, the administration deferred any major action on trade policy in 1953, instead accepting a one-year extension of the president’s trade negotiating au- thority and appointing a commission (the “Randall Commission,” named af- ter its chairman, Clarence Randall, CEO of Inland Steel Company) that was charged with conducting an overall review of foreign economic policy.68 63. David Chang, “U.S. Aid and Economic Progress in Taiwan,” Asian Survey, Vol. 5, Non. 3 (Mars 1965), pp. 152–160. 64. Philip Roeder, “The Ties that Bind: Aid, Trade, and Political Compliance in Soviet–Third World Relations,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 29, Non. 2 (Juin 1985), pp. 191–216. 65. Rostow, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Foreign Aid, pp. 15–21. 66. Kaufman, Trade and Aid, p. 7. 67. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Inaugural Address,» 20 Janvier 1953, American Presidency Project, avail- able online at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-3. 68. Kaufman, Trade and Aid, p. 17; and Irwin, Clashing Over Commerce, pp. 513–519, on trade policy during the Eisenhower administration. 130 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War The Randall Commission recommended that “economic aid on a grant basis should be terminated as soon as possible.”69 To be sure, most economic aid at that time flowed to a recovering Western Europe; the sums allocated to the developing world were insignificant by comparison. But this recommen- dation by definition meant that trade and investment must play a larger role in U.S. foreign economic policy. Cependant, the commission recognized that the political climate was not ripe for major changes in U.S. trade policy: “We are fully aware of the argu- ments for free trade. It is sufficient to say that, in our opinion, free trade is not possible under the conditions facing the United States today.”70 Instead, the commission emphasized giving the president greater authority to negotiate multilateral trade agreements. Given the limitations the commission placed on aid and trade as vehicles for economic development, it followed that “the United States Government should make clear that primary reliance must be placed on private invest- ment to undertake the job of assisting in economic development abroad.”71 Accordingly, the commission suggested that the United States should use its diplomatic corps as, in effect, representatives of the private sector to ensure that Third World governments would understand the conditions that would make their countries conducive to private-sector investment. The commis- sion further argued that the United States should relax any antitrust laws that constrained firms from creating joint ventures overseas. Sur 30 Mars 1954, President Eisenhower adopted a slightly refined ver- sion of the Randall Commission’s recommendations, which he delivered as an address to the Congress on U.S. foreign economic policy. On trade, the president called for “the gradual and selective revision of our tariffs” through multilateral negotiations. But it was “investment abroad” that would achieve multiple U.S. objectifs, including trade expansion, the maintenance of U.S. employment, the securing of mineral resources, and the strengthening of “the economies of foreign countries.” Given “the great importance of private investment to our foreign economic policy,” Eisenhower called for further changes in taxation that would make such investment even more appealing. In line with the Randall Commission, he also said that private investors would have “full diplomatic support,” including through the negotiation of invest- ment treaties. As for grant aid, Eisenhower echoed the recommendation for 69. Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, Report to the President and Congress, 23 Janvier 1954, p. 8. 70. Ibid., p. 44. 71. Ibid., p. 18. 131 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein eliminating it. “Dollar grants are no solution” to development problems, he insisted.72 The private investment theme was taken up in April in an article for For- eign Affairs written by Harold Stassen, the director of the newly established Foreign Operations Administration (successor to the short-lived Mutual Se- curity Agency). Stassen reiterated that “an important objective of our foreign economic policy in the years ahead must be to stimulate the flow of private investment into those areas of the world where the need is greatest.” He noted that the vast majority of U.S. FDI in the developing world after 1945 was aimed at exploiting natural resources, particularly when the price of these commodities skyrocketed during the Korean War. He expressed the belief that FDI would diversify into manufacturing and into countries that did not rely primarily on commodity exports. In addition to the U.S. actions already out- lined by President Eisenhower for spurring investment, Stassen urged Third World governments to adopt investor-friendly policies: “we hope it will be realized that private investment is the best, indeed the only means of supply- ing adequate funds to do the job for which the underdeveloped countries are clamoring.”73 Public assistance, it seemed, would not be forthcoming. Dans l'ensemble, as Rostow argued, “1954 was a . . . somewhat regressive year in foreign aid.”74 Despite the Eisenhower administration’s belief in the strate- gic importance of development to counter the Communist threat, the United States continued to rely on private investment as the elixir for growth. Al- though the amount of capital flowing to the developing world was on the rise, increasing from $6.1 billion in 1950 à $7.3 billion in 1953, it still lagged far behind the amounts required to fill the $19 billion “investment gap.”75

Toujours, confronted by the Soviet economic offensive and by Third World
demands for more assistance, by the fall of 1954 an Eisenhower economic
adviser was asking Randall (who was now also acting as a counselor to the
president) whether he would be open “to new thinking in the [development]

72. For background on the address, see Memorandum by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of States for
Economic Affairs to the Secretary of State, 18 Mars 1954, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, pp. 57–53;
and “Minutes of a Cabinet Meeting Held at the White House,» 19 Mars 1954, in FRUS, 1952–
1954, Vol. je, pp. 63–65. The text of Eisenhower’s message to the Congress is in Department of State
Bulletin, 19 Avril 1954, pp. 602–607.

73. Harold Stassen, “The Case for Private Investment Abroad,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 32, Non. 3 (Avril
1954), pp. 402–415.

74. Rostow, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Foreign Aid, p. 92.

75. U.S. Department of Commerce, Selected Data on U.S. Direct Investment Abroad, 1950–76 (Wash-
ington, CC: Bureau of Economic Analysis, 1982), Tableau 1.

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Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War

field. Mr. Randall replied affirmatively.”76 One aspect of that “new thinking”
would be U.S. support for an International Finance Corporation, to be housed
within the World Bank. But to get approval for the IFC, the administration
had to overcome opposition both at home and abroad.

En fait, the IFC was an old idea. It was initially proposed in 1951, prob-
ably by the World Bank, which recognized its own shortcomings with respect
to private-sector development.77 Even though the Bank’s articles of agreement
obliged it to “promote foreign investment,” its ability to do so was limited
by its charter, lequel, Par exemple, constrained the Bank from taking equity
stakes in private companies and projects. An IFC would therefore expand the
Bank’s limited ability to jumpstart the private sector in developing countries,
and it had the added benefit of being a multilateral organization that would
assuage the fears of foreign leaders who viewed U.S. efforts to promote di-
rect investment as a Trojan horse for more sinister attempts to control and
manipulate local politics and economics.78

The Truman administration had “strongly opposed the IFC concept”
when an advisory board on international development, chaired by Nelson
Rockefeller, sought U.S. government support for the idea.79 The reasons for
opposing it were several. D'abord, the administration did not want the United
States to be its sole funder, which appeared likely during the early postwar
années. Deuxième, business leaders feared that the IFC would “encroach upon a
field that should be reserved for private enterprise.” Third, business executives,
along with many public officials, including those at the Treasury Department
and Federal Reserve Board, were uncomfortable with the mixing of public and
private dollars in foreign investments.80 This practice would blur the differ-
ence between the public and private sectors and muddle the intended message
that these were separate spheres of activity.

76. Memorandum of Conversation, 1 Septembre 1954, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, p. 89. Le
conversation occurred among members of a new “Randall Committee” on foreign economic policy.

77. Who actually originated the idea of an IFC is a matter of dispute. An alternative theory is that
it arose during the deliberations of a postwar committee, headed by Nelson Rockefeller, that issued
un 1951 report, Partners for Progress: A Report to President Truman, which proposed the formation of
an IFC. The evidence indicates, cependant, that staff work for the IFC proposal was done at the World
Bank and that Rockefeller drew on its research. For the historical background, see B. E. Matecki, Estab-
lishment of the International Finance Corporation and United States Policy: A Case Study in International
Organization (New York: Praeger, 1957).

78. Memorandum for the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs to the Under Secretary of
State, 2 May 1952, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, p. 231.

79. International Development Advisory Board, Partners for Progress: A Report to President Truman
(New York: Simon & Schuster: 1951).

80. Kaufman, Trade and Aid, p. 47.

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Developing countries were also unsupportive of the IFC concept when
it was first broached. Led by India, with strong support from Latin America,
they continued to speak in UN forums in support of higher levels of public
funding.81 Specifically, they lobbied for the creation of a “special fund for
grants in aid and for low-interest, long-term loans” that would be housed
at the UN. The United States was firmly against this idea, with the State
Department in 1952 taking the position that “circumstances do not permit
the establishment of an international grant fund at this time.”82

The Eisenhower administration decided to launch its own evaluation of
the IFC, but only after first wavering on the issue, with the State Department
instructing its UN representatives in June 1953 to “frankly admit that the US
government has not yet formulated its position on the IFC proposal.”83 As
with the Truman administration, the IFC’s opponents both within and out-
side government continued to argue that it was not the public sector’s role to
make direct investments in private enterprise for the sake of economic devel-
opération. The National Foreign Trade Council, a peak business organization
that lobbied for free enterprise, “maintained that the Unites States govern-
ment ‘must make it clear, by word and action,’ that American public funds
would not be used for development and investment projects which . . . pourrait
be financed by private capital.’”84 A year later, the debate within the admin-
istration continued, and in July 1954 the National Advisory Council (NAC,
an interagency body established after World War II and responsible for inter-
national economic policy) determined that the United States should report
to the UN that it was “unconvinced that the establishment at this time of an
International Finance Corporation is either . . . necessary or desirable.”85

But the world had not stopped for the new president. At the UN, the de-
veloping countries were moving ahead with their call for a “Special UN Fund
for Economic Development” (SUNFED), which the United States continued
to resist. The U.S. representative to the UN’s Economic and Social Council
had already reported in the summer of 1953 que, as a result of Washington’s
failure to take a more positive stance toward international development, le

81. Patterson and Behrman, Survey of U.S. International Finance, 1951, p. 91.

82. Memorandum for the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs to the Under Secretary of
State, 2 May 1952, p. 230.

83. Draft Position Paper Concerning the IFC, 17 Juin 1953, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, p. 272.

84. Cited in McLellan and Woodhouse, “The Business Elite and Foreign Policy,” p. 184. I thank an
anonymous reviewer for emphasizing the NFTC’s importance at this time.

85. Paper Presented by the Staff Committee for the National Advisory Council on International Mon-
etary and Financial Problems, 1 Juillet 1954, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, p. 288.

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Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War

United States was becoming “the focus of resentment by the underdeveloped
countries.”86 By October 1954, the U.S. representative was urging Washing-
ton “that [le] US position [regarding IFC] be changed.”87

By November, the NAC had indeed changed its position; it now rec-
ommended “United States participation in an International Finance Corpo-
ration.” The NAC noted that its reconsideration was due to the urging of
Washington’s ambassador to the UN (former Senator Henry Cabot Lodge),
while the State Department added that it “was willing to support the . . . pro-
posal, largely because of the importance to the United States of avoiding a
perpetual negative position” on development initiatives. For his part, Federal
Reserve Board Chairman William McChesney Martin continued to express
skepticism about the IFC, stating that he “remained unconvinced that the
IFC . . . had economic merit.” But he added that he would support it if the
NAC “felt it necessary to approve the proposal on political grounds.”88 With
some important changes made to its lending principles, effectively curbing its
ability to make loans to state-owned enterprises, several leading U.S. bankers
and business leaders came around to accepting the new organization.89

The United States announced its official support of the IFC at a meeting
of Latin American finance ministers in late November 1954. Là, U.S. Sec-
retary of Treasury George Humphrey acknowledged that the proposal for an
IFC had been “under study for several years.” After all this deliberation, le
Eisenhower administration was now prepared to

ask the Congress to support United States participation in such a corporation.
We have in mind an institution organized as an affiliate of the International
Bank, with an authorized capital of $100 million to be contributed by those members of the International Bank who wish to subscribe.90 President Eisenhower himself discussed the importance of the IFC proposal in a January 1955 address to the Congress on foreign economic policy.91 By 86. Special Report of the United States Delegation to the Sixteenth Session of the Economic and Social Council, 5 Août 1953, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, p. 277. 87. United States Representative to the United Nations to the Department of State, 8 Octobre 1954, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, p. 295. 88. Minutes of the 218th Meeting of the National Advisory Council, 3 Novembre 1954, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, p. 302. 89. McLellan and Woodhouse, “The Business Elite and Foreign Policy,” p. 185. 90. George Humphrey, “Remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey” (at the meeting of Ministers of Finance and Economy, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), 23 Novembre 1954, in Annual Report of the Secretary of Treasury for the Year Ended 30 Juin 1955, p. 250. 91. Message by President Eisenhower to the Congress, “Foreign Economic Policy,» 10 Janvier 1955 (Washington, CC: U.S. Department of State, 1955). 135 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein the end of the year, the new institution would be established as part of the World Bank. With the United States now committed to the IFC’s creation, the Eisen- hower administration again indicated to the international community that it “intended to rely on the private sector to promote economic development abroad.”92 Eisenhower also hoped that the developing world’s demand to es- tablish a SUNFED for grants and low-interest loans would diminish. That proved not to be the case. As in the past, many developing countries contin- ued to express skepticism about the role the private sector should and could play in driving economic growth, meaning that their appetite for public funds had not changed.93 But would the Eisenhower administration be proved right about the role of foreign investment as a driving force for capital mobilization? To some extent that question must be answered in the affirmative. During the Eisenhower years, the stock of U.S. FDI in the developing world increased from $7.3 billion in 1953 à $11.1 billion in 1960.94 Toujours, the total amount of FDI flowing to developing countries remained far below the $19 billion that
the UN had estimated was needed to meet investment and growth targets.

The IFC made only a small contribution to closing the investment gap. Dans
FY 1960–1961, it made $6.2 million in new investments, bringing the total since its founding to $44.4 million. The organization devoted its annual re-
port that year to “some problems of industrial operations in developing coun-
tries,” citing the small size of many local markets, the financial problems these
countries faced, and the conflicts that sometimes arose between domestic and
foreign firms.95 Despite Washington’s best efforts, foreign investment did not
flow in sufficient amounts to meet the needs of the developing world.

One issue the IFC did not highlight was Third World governments’ ap-
parent lack of interest in foreign investment—or at least their lack of interest
in foreign investment in which multinational corporations owned controlling
shares in local subsidiaries. Plutôt, many countries sought joint ventures with
substantial technology transfer, a model that was preferred, Par exemple, par
the government of India.96 This lack of interest was of great concern to U.S.
policymakers, who grew frustrated with their inability to change the situation.
A member of the U.S. delegation to the UN wrote in late 1954,

92. Kaufman, Trade and Aid, p. 48.

93. Kirdar, The Structure of United Nations Economic Aid to Underdeveloped Countries.

94. U.S. Department of Commerce, Selected Data on U.S. Direct Investment Abroad, Tableau 1.

95. International Finance Corporation, Annual Report: 1960–1961, p. 17.

96. See Priyatosh Maitra, The Globalization of Capital in Third World Countries (Westport, CT:
Praeger, 1996), ch. 5.

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Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War

There is no seeming disposition on the part of any of the underdeveloped coun-
tries to rely on private capital . . . while giving lip service to its flow most of them
in practice do little to attract it. Many . . . underdeveloped countries consider
foreign private capital as a form of colonialism.97

This may have been true, but there were also other economic and politi-
cal reasons for the lack of interest. One that was widely prevalent during the
postwar years was “export pessimism.” Given, d'un côté, the allegedly
declining terms of trade for commodity exports that developing countries in-
evitably faced and, on the other hand, the protectionism that continued to
shape industrial world trade policies, many governments felt that they had
no choice but to build markets at home for locally produced manufactures
through protectionism of their own; c'est, through “import-substituting in-
dustrialization.”98 Some governments (par exemple., that of Brazil) welcomed foreign
investors into their ISI schemes, but many others did not, instead using ISI as
a tool to promote local firms and reward cronies. This meant that the scope
for FDI was limited by the desire of host governments to receive it.

How did the United States respond when FDI was either insufficient
or deemed by local rulers to be undesirable, especially when the country in
question was of strategic interest to Washington? By the end of Eisenhower’s
first term, the Cold War competition in the developing world was intensify-
ing. The Suez debacle of November 1956, in which France and Great Britain
joined with Israel in attacking Egypt and seizing the Canal Zone in response
to President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of that waterway, seem-
ingly demonstrated that Europe’s colonial impulse had not died. Eisenhower
was slowly coming around to the view that the United States would have to
offer more than the promise of private investment if it was to keep developing
countries out of the Communist orbit; it would have to provide direct foreign
aid in the form of soft loans as well. This was becoming all the more necessary
as demands for a SUNFED continued to rise in the United Nations.99

Accordingly, Eisenhower submitted to Congress an FY 1958 proposal
for foreign assistance that included $500 million for a development loan fund (DLF) et un supplémentaire $300 million for a “special assistance” fund

97. “Memorandum by the Senior Adviser to the United States Delegation to the United Nations,» 2
Septembre 1954, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Vol. je, p. 98.

98. Albert Hirschman, “The Political Economy of Import Substituting Industrialization in Latin
America,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 82, Non. 1 (Février 1968), pp. 1–32. The thesis that
developing countries faced declining terms of trade was made famous by UN economist Raul Prebisch.

99. Kaufman, Trade and Aid, ch. 6.

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that could be used during “economic and military emergencies.”100 These
requests were not greeted warmly by the Democratic-controlled Congress,
which slashed Eisenhower’s requests, approving only $300 million for the DLF. Senator H. Alexander Smith (R-NJ) lamented that “this is a devastat- ing defeat . . . for the President.”101 Yet even an underfunded DLF represented a sea change in U.S. foreign assistance policy. The long-standing belief that private-sector funds would suf- fice in meeting Third World demands was evaporating. Under Secretary of State Herter expressed this new perspective when he said in 1957, “it would be unrealistic to plan on a complete substitution of private investment for economic assistance programs.”102 Although this does not mean the U.S. government abandoned its com- mitment to the export of private enterprise, the central place of private fund- ing in development policy lost ground to government-to-government foreign aid programs from the late 1950s onward. A good example of this change is President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, a program from which U.S. busi- ness leaders felt “excluded.” A task force that Kennedy established to map out the Alliance stated that fostering private-sector development should not be “the determining principle or sole objective of American policy.”103 Still, the critical role of foreign investment for development was hardly overlooked in the 1960s and beyond. Despite concerns about the impact of FDI on the U.S. balance of payments, both Kennedy and Johnson exempted developing countries from the controls they sought on capital outflows.104 President Richard M. Nixon, for his part, established yet another agency de- voted to promoting foreign investment, OPIC, which offered an enhanced guarantee program, replacing the one that USAID had previously adminis- tered. (OPIC is the immediate precursor to the new DFC established in 2018 by the Build Act.) Plus tard, President Ronald Reagan, following up on the rec- ommendations of a task force he had created to study international private enterprise, reoriented USAID toward private-sector development. The task force urged the United States “to guide developing countries toward market- oriented policies; it should reward those countries that adopted strategies that 100. Ibid., p. 106. 101. Ibid., p. 110. 102. Ibid., p. 111. 103. Richard Swansbrough, The Embattled Colossus: Economic Nationalism and United States Investors in Latin America (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1976), p. 114. 104. Neil Rollings, “Multinational Enterprise and Government Controls on Outward Foreign Direct Investment in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1960s.” Enterprise & Society, Vol. 12, Non. 2 (Juin 2011), pp. 398–434. 138 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War will lead to a positive climate for business and investment.”105 With the end of the Cold War, the Reagan administration and its successors unveiled a medley of new policies and programs aimed at encouraging private-sector develop- ment throughout the former Soviet bloc. These later efforts to promote the spread of private enterprise merit their own histories. Conclusions During the early years of the Cold War, the U.S. government pinned most of its hopes for international development on the private sector. U.S. officials ex- pected that investors in the United States would be eager to enter developing countries and displace the capital-starved European companies that had once controlled local and regional markets and supply chains. To be sure, the as- sumption was that investors would need some incentives, including tax breaks and investment guarantees, but officials hoped that these policies and pro- grams would be sufficient to open the floodgates of U.S. financial resources, thus countering and even overwhelming the Communist economic challenge. This vision reflected a development policy that placed self-help and pri- vate enterprise as its core principles. But this ideological underpinning was ill-suited to the postwar economic environment in several important respects. D'abord, the international economy was in shambles at the war’s end, and the task of global market reconstruction was far greater than the postwar planners in Washington had anticipated. Deuxième, and related, the world suffered a “dol- lar shortage” that made foreign investments uninviting, as multinational firms were hesitant to operate in countries with non-convertible currencies. Troisième, because investment opportunities in the United States and Canada (et, with recovery, in Western Europe) were ample and profitable, there was no capi- talist “necessity” to invest in the developing world. Fourth, the Soviet Union and Communist China offered an alternative vision of economic growth and management, one that Moscow in particular promoted through its foreign as- sistance and trade policies, the “Soviet economic offensive.” Finally, the newly independent countries sought to free themselves from their colonial shackles. Many of them, such as India, were skeptical of Western policies that empha- sized foreign investment by multinational corporations, which they saw as instruments of colonial policy. All these factors conspired against the private investment boom envisaged in Washington. 105. President’s Task Force on International Private Enterprise, Report to the President, Washington, CC, Décembre 1984, p. 46. 139 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Kapstein On some levels, Third World governments’ skepticism about the promise of private investment proved correct. The amount of FDI flowing to the de- veloping world in the 1950s was far below the levels that experts had deemed necessary to overcome the “investment gap,” even though the amount steadily increased during that decade. The paucity of international funds, coupled with enduring protectionism in the United States and Western Europe, along with the structural problems faced by commodity exporters, caused many de- veloping countries to believe that they had to rely on “self-help” to generate economic growth. That belief, à son tour, provided intellectual support for poli- cies of economic nationalism, including ISI and the establishment of state- owned enterprises, as occurred from Taiwan to Latin America. Painting the developing world’s economic experience with a broad brush is dangerous, cependant. Latin America and East Asia, Par exemple, ultimately adopted very different developmental models, and even within these regions there was great political-economic diversity. De la même manière, the African continent witnessed myriad experiments with economic policy. Toujours, nearly all devel- oping countries were determined to industrialize and shrink the agricultural sector using the levers of public policy to the extent possible.106 But the limits of “self-help” became evident as the postwar decades rolled on. Domestic savings, even when coupled with rising levels of bilateral and multilateral foreign aid, proved insufficient to meet the investment needs that growing populations and economies demanded.107 Gradually, the developing world opened itself to more FDI, making the U.S. government’s emphasis on the central role of private capital more compelling. Dans 2006 the economic historian Dirk Willem te Velde put out a historical review of FDI that noted: Much of the FDI potential in developing countries was not realized 3–4 decades ago because many countries had severe restrictions on foreign owner- ship. . . . This is gradually changing. . . . They have liberalized their investment regime, but at different points in time. South-East Asian economies . . . were first, while other Asian . . . and Latin America countries began to liberalize in the 1980s and 1990s. . . . Many African countries followed only in the 1990s.108 In support of te Velde’s analysis, the data suggest that FDI in the devel- oping world did not take off until the late 1980s, following the global debt crisis that began in 1982. The debt crisis limited these countries’ access to 106. Norman Girvan, “Economic Nationalism,” Daedalus, Vol. 104, Non. 4 (Fall 1975), pp. 145–158. 107. A point emphasized in ibid. 108. Dirk Willem te Velde, Foreign Direct Investment and Development: An Historical Perspective (Lon- don: Overseas Development Institute, 2006), p. 10. 140 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . e d u / j c w s / art – pdlf / / / / 2 2 4 1 1 3 1 8 6 0 6 1 3 / j c w s _ a _ 0 0 9 6 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War international bank loans (many developing countries had fueled their ISI pro- grams with bank loans, leading to the debt crisis when interest rates rose in the early 1980s). Depuis 1986 à 1990, Par exemple, the annual growth rate of FDI in the developing world was nearly 24 pour cent par an!109 Depuis 1980 à 1988, the U.S. stock of outward investment grew from $220 bil-
lion to $345 milliard (equivalent to one-third of global FDI); about one-third of that growth, ou $43 milliard, occurred in the developing world.110 This
FDI contributed to gross fixed capital formation in the recipient countries,
though the extent of that contribution varied widely: “the share of FDI flows
in gross domestic capital formation . . . averaged 7 per cent” to the least de-
veloped countries and “13 per cent for all other developing countries” in the
1990s, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Develop-
ment (UNCTAD).111

Bien sûr, FDI of any amount could contribute to economic growth
through the so-called multiplier effect. Multinational firms, Par exemple,
could create local supply chains, spurring the establishment of domestic firms
as well as human capital formation. FDI could also contribute to exports.
Through these spillovers into the domestic economy, it seemed incontrovert-
ible that FDI would help boost the growth of its host countries.112

Yet the relationship between FDI and growth is hardly straightforward.
Although most economists argued for many years that FDI constituted “good
cholesterol”—in that it contributed technology, (relatively) high-paying jobs,
organizational skills, and often exports—Ricardo Hausman and Eduardo
Fernandez-Arias found little growth effect from the large infusion of FDI
into Latin America in the 1990s.113 They argue that foreign equity simply
replaced foreign debt, but in the absence of structural change within the recip-
ient countries there was no reason to expect growth gains from that injection.
While academic debates about the benefits of FDI continue, its future has
once again turned cloudy for political and macroeconomic reasons. Whereas

109. Padman Mallampally and Karl Sauvant, “Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries,»
Finance and Development, Vol. 36, Non. 1 (Mars 1999), available online at https://www.imf.org
/external/pubs/ft/fandd/1999/03/mallampa.htm.

110. Edward Graham and Paul Krugman, “The Surge in Foreign Direct Investment in the 1980s,»
in Kenneth Froot, éd., Foreign Direct Investment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 15;
and Thomas Brewer, “Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries,” Working Paper No. 712,
World Bank, Washington, CC, Juin 1991.

111. UNCTAD, FDI in Least Developed Countries at a Glance: 2002 (Genève: UNCTAD, 2003), p. 1.

112. See Theodore Moran, Harnessing Foreign Direct Investment for Development: Policies for Developed
and Developing Countries (Washington, CC: Center for Global Development, 2006).

113. Ricardo Hausman and Eduardo Fernandez-Arias, “Foreign Direct Investment: Good Choles-
terol?,” Working Paper No. 217, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, CC, Mars 2000.

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the global financial crisis of 1982 spurred FDI, the “Great Recession” that be-
gan in 2008 had the opposite effect, with FDI flows to the developing world
falling by 24 percent in 2009, as investment everywhere dried up. Unfortu-
nately, FDI flows continued to fall through 2017.114

The Great Recession also helped spark a rise in economic nationalism in
the advanced industrial countries, with potentially devastating consequences
for FDI in the developing world. According to a recent report by the PGIM
investment fund, the industrialized countries, led by the United States, sont
placing pressure on their multinational firms to “shift economic activity back
to their home tax jurisdictions” and to “onshore” their manufacturing.115 Not
only might this political and economic pressure limit future capital outflows,
but it could conceivably fuel the global spread of economic nationalism. Le
COVID-19 epidemic of 2020 has similarly provoked a globalization backlash,
as countries seek supply chains that are more secure.

This shift in political philosophy away from globalization could spell
trouble for the United States as it prepares to launch yet another U.S. agency
whose objective is to promote private-sector development across the devel-
oping world, the DFC. If, Par exemple, the United States becomes hostile
to imports from developing countries, then China’s BRI might offer a more
compelling alternative.116 BRI is a $1 trillion program, whereas DFC’s cap- italization stands at a mere $60 milliard. China likes to claim that its de-
velopment finance also has no “strings attached,” unlike that of the United
États, which has often tied its foreign assistance to civil and political rights.117
For all these reasons, the latest effort to use private-sector development as a
tool for geostrategic competition may be no more successful than its previous
attempts.

En même temps, U.S. officials should consider the extent to which BRI
investments could also attract FDI, including from U.S. firms. After all, infras-
tructure improvements are important to foreign investors. If Chinese foreign
assistance improves the investment climate by building better ports, roads, et
airports, then it may prove to be complementary to U.S. foreign economic

114. UNCTAD, World Investment Report: 2018 (Genève: UNCTAD, 2018).

115. PGIM, The End of Sovereignty? (Newark, New Jersey: PGIM, Spring 2018), p. 9, available online at
https://www.pionline.com/assets/docs/CO116463726.PDF.

116. See John Hurley, Scott Morris, and Gailyn Portelance, “Examining the Debt Implications of the
Belt and Road Initiative,” Policy Paper No. 121, Center for Global Development, Washington, CC,
Mars 2018.

117. Burton Abrams and Kenneth Lewis, “Human Rights and the Distribution of U.S. Foreign Aid,»
Public Choice, Vol. 77, Non. 4 (1993), pp. 815–821. Plus récemment, the Millennium Challenge Corpo-
ration has required its “compact countries” to meet a threshold level of civil and political rights.

142

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Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War

policy in important respects.118 If the United States and China could cooper-
ate on problems of international development, the world’s poorest countries
might be the ultimate beneficiaries.

What lessons can U.S. policymakers, including DFC’s new managers,
learn from the historical record? While the aftermath of World War II and the
Cold War that followed presented a much different economic and security en-
vironment from the one that exists today, history may still provide some useful
guidance. The first is to set modest expectations for what the government can
achieve when it attempts to motivate foreign investment. For the most part,
foreign investors put money at risk in countries where they can make a profit
independent of the sorts of subsidies the U.S. government may offer. Guaran-
tees against expropriation and the like can be helpful when private insurance
is lacking, but it is the rare case indeed where Washington can fundamentally
change the investment climate in a given country, making that place sud-
denly “attractive.” If (export-oriented) investors are to be enticed abroad, le
United States itself must put into place a host of coherent policies, y compris
trade policies that welcome imports.

Deuxième, private investment is unlikely to substitute for forms of for-
eign aid that are designed to provide public goods such as education and
health care. This suggests that DFC should partner with USAID to the ex-
tent possible in providing different types of finance. That will not neces-
sarily be easy. DFC’s predecessor agency, OPIC, operated independently of
USAID.

Troisième, DFC should cooperate to the extent possible with multilateral de-
velopment institutions. Ce, aussi, is easier said than done given the numerous
political and bureaucratic impediments to collaboration. But the multilateral
“cover” provided by institutions such as the IFC and World Bank can still
prove useful as the United States tries to advance its capitalist, private-sector
agenda.

Fourth, U.S. officials must recognize the tensions between their economic
and strategic objectives. China’s BRI might attract foreign investment in some
settings by funding needed infrastructure. That combination of public and
private capital would then, one hopes, help spur economic growth. But if the
overriding goal of DFC is to undercut Beijing’s international ambitions, alors
the United States might pursue policies that also reduce growth in recipient
nations, say by refusing to operate where BRI does business. If the Cold War

118. See Maggie Xiaoyang Chen and Chuanhao Lin, “Foreign Investment across the Belt and Road:
Motifs, Determinants, and Effects,” Policy Research Working Paper, Non. 8607, World Bank, Wash-
ington, CC, 2018.

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Kapstein

brings home any single lesson for Washington, it is that aligning national
security and international development goals is often elusive and fraught with
tradeoffs.

The history recounted here holds several suggestions for future research
aussi. D'abord, a large body of scholarship in diplomatic history and world pol-
itics has examined relations between multinational corporations and home
and host governments. One school of thought has emphasized the capitalist
“necessity” of expansion and the almost indistinguishable workings of home
governments and “their” firms. In contrast, the more statist variants of “Open
Door” theory look at firms as “instruments” of home government policy.
Scholars in either of these camps have yet to develop empirical strategies for
testing their hypotheses. An examination of the data might reveal that, de-
spite the U.S. government’s interest in promoting foreign investment (for ei-
ther economic or national security purposes), it has often failed to do so. That
est, private-sector preferences concerning FDI may have been less intense than
executive branch officials would have liked.

Deuxième, these accounts also often overlook or minimize the agency of
Third World governments. Par conséquent, developing countries are often viewed
as the “victims” of great-power politics and multinational enterprises. Have
Third World governments really been at the mercy of firms whose revenues
exceeded the total economic output of the developing countries? Or did firms
inadvertently strike “obsolescing bargains,” to use Raymond Vernon’s phrase,
in which leverage shifted to local governments once investments were dug
in the ground?119 To what extent were developing countries “actors in their
own right” as opposed to being mere “objects of U.S. and other great power
policies”?120 These questions once provoked a rich scholarly debate, but lit-
tle research of this type has been conducted in recent years. Revisiting these
issues in light of the FDI wave of the 1980s and the more recent challenge
from China could yield new insights into the relationships between foreign
investors and home and host governments.

Enfin, this history raises profound questions about the making of U.S.
foreign policy and its execution. Which ideas have animated U.S. foreign pol-
icy, and what are the sources of those ideas?121 Which among them have served

119. Raymond Vernon, Sovereignty at Bay? The Multinational Spread of U.S. Enterprises (New York:
Basic Books, 1971).

120. David Painter, “Explaining U.S. Relations with the Third World,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 19,
Non. 3 (Été 1995), p. 544.

121. See Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, éd., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions
and Political Change (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993).

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Private Enterprise, International Development, and the Cold War

U.S. strategic interests, and which have proved counterproductive? What can
and should today’s policymakers learn from U.S. encounters with the devel-
oping world during and since the Cold War? These are among the questions
that scholars must continually address and by doing so inform contemporary
policy debates.

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