Iran and the Future of U.S. Technical Assistance: Some Afterthoughts
本文反思了美国对伊朗的技术援助，指出冷战背景下援助可能重回反共工具，强调应关注减贫和避免对受援国造成伤害。
T he invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union has brought detente between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. to an end-at least temporarily-and has brought a return of the Cold War. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie in an address to the Foreign Policy Association in July 1980 stated that the administration needs foreign aid to help block Soviet expansionism. A return to the use of foreign aid as a Cold War weapon represents the completion of a cycle which began in the 1950s. Anticommunism was often the rationale for foreign aid projects in the 1950s and early 1960s. It will be unfortunate if the return to the Cold War brings an end to U.S. efforts, common in the 1970s, to help developing nations reduce poverty and achieve a equal distribution of benefits from development. Professor Montgomery's and Professor Esman's articles on the role public administration can play in such assistance are valuable in showing us how technical assistance can be used in an effort, as Montgomery says, in which the participants can indeed feel proud. The reduction of poverty was an important part of the original Point 4 idea, but the development strategy which followed-trickle down, a belief that the benefits of development would trickle down to the lower classes-did not achieve this goal. As we now know, very few benefits from rapid economic growth flowed down to the poorest in developing nations and studies have shown that such growth actually made the poor poorer in a number of countries.' Maybe it is with international aid-giving agencies that one must place one's hope for a continuing effort to help those developing nations which wish to aid their poorest. Yet, as Esman shows, the U.S. has some relevant experience to share with developing nations in this area. It also now has a number of people, such as former Peace Corps volunteers, who have experience in Third World nations and who are much sophisticated about these nations' problems than were those of us who participated in U.S. technical assistance programs in the 1950s and 1960s. I hope Professor Esman is right in his view that the U.S. will continue its efforts in this area and that it has learned some painful lessons from past failures. In the future Third World nations will need assistance to combat poverty even than they do now. It is in the direct interest of the U.S. to provide such assistance. A recent U.S. government study found that there is a potential for global problems of alarming proportions by the year 2000. The report concluded that time is running out for international action to prevent a starving, overcrowded, polluted and resourcepoor world, which would be more valuable to disruption than the world we live in now.2 Clearly, the U.S. should participate in any international eforts to try to prevent such a world from developing. Important benefits can come to Americans who participate in technical assistance efforts. The education which an American can receive by living and working in a Third World country is priceless and is an important by-product of the U.S. technical assistance and Peace Corps programs. The number of Americans now receiving in-depth exposure to the countries of the Third World is decreasing at a time when U.S. dependency on Third World countries is increasing. This is one of the reasons why I recommended in my article that the U.S. should participate in a technical exchange program. I would hope that such participation would be extensive. Improvements in American understanding of the Third World would be one of the primary benefits of the proposals I made and a by-product of programs which Professors Montgomery and Esman recommend. But American knowledge should not be gained at the expense of the peoples of the Third World. Unintended harmful consequences to the poorest, which resulted from American actions in the past-such as the promoting of rapid economic growth in developing countries-should make technical assistance advisers want to monitor their efforts very carefully. Montgomery is too optimistic when he states that it is doubtful harm could come from American efforts to aid the poor. As mentioned above, and in other instances, harm did come in the past. If American technical assistance advisers are aware, as Professor Esman writes, that the methods and the skills required [in programs to aid the poor] . .. are akin to mutual learning than to the conventional transfer of known technology from donor to recipient, an important lesson from the past will have been learned and the chances of doing harm than good will have been reduced. The experience of Iran should tell us that modernization is a goal which leaders of developing nations take at some risk. Our awareness now of the ills which came with modernization efforts in Iran and of the negative features of our own development should make us much less sure than we were in the 1950s that we know how to create the good life. Professor Siffin is undoubtedly correct when he states that the problems which came with modernization in Iran were beyond our ability to solve. But Siffin contradicts himself when he states that the lessons we should learn from Iran is that we should not have interfered in its affairs so ineptly. If modernization in Iran became a juggernaut, beyond anyone's control, as Professor Siffin states, how could the U.S. have done a better job in its interference? I am skeptical than Siffin in that we have learned to interfere in other countries' affairs in a efficacious way-a way which will not end up harming us as well as them, as it seems to have done in Iran. Professor Sherwood provides a valuable supplement to