Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 The rise and fall of the economy
- 2 U.S. aid to Vietnam: goals and programming
- 3 The growth of national income
- 4 Indicators of economic development
- 5 Land reform and income distribution in Vietnam economic development
- 6 Domestic saving, foreign aid, and economic development
- 7 Wartime inflation
- 8 Windfall gains from importing
- 9 The international value of the piaster
- 10 Vietnam foreign assistance
- 11 Financing public expenditures
- 12 The fiscal dilemma
- 13 Foreign aid and economic development in an environment of high military threat
- Notes
- References
- Index
2 - U.S. aid to Vietnam: goals and programming
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 The rise and fall of the economy
- 2 U.S. aid to Vietnam: goals and programming
- 3 The growth of national income
- 4 Indicators of economic development
- 5 Land reform and income distribution in Vietnam economic development
- 6 Domestic saving, foreign aid, and economic development
- 7 Wartime inflation
- 8 Windfall gains from importing
- 9 The international value of the piaster
- 10 Vietnam foreign assistance
- 11 Financing public expenditures
- 12 The fiscal dilemma
- 13 Foreign aid and economic development in an environment of high military threat
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Two major themes on the purpose of foreign aid are expressed throughout the literature. One is highly pragmatic, realistic, and, in the view of some, even contemptible. The other is idealistic. The first is that foreign aid is (and should be) one instrument of foreign policy used to advance the goals of the donor in the world arena. The second theme is that foreign aid should be given generously to promote economic development in poor countries. Because the first theme can easily encompass the second, they are not necessarily inconsistent. However, it is important to separate these themes, because they suggest the use of different criteria for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of a given aid program. The first section of this chapter is given to a discussion of the goals of foreign aid in general, without reference to Vietnam aid.
Next we attempt to define the goals of the massive U.S. economic aid program to South Vietnam. A year after the fall of Saigon, the Agency for International Development (AID) completed a major review of its twenty years of aid to Vietnam (AID 1976). Unfortunately, that report contains no coherent discussion of the criteria by which the effectiveness of the various programs was to be judged. Thus, a necessary first step in our analysis of aid is to identify the principal objectives of U.S. economic aid to South Vietnam, and that is undertaken in Section 2.2.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Foreign Aid, War, and Economic DevelopmentSouth Vietnam, 1955–1975, pp. 22 - 37Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986