Jeffrey F. Taffet - Against Aid: A History of Opposition to US Foreign Aid Spending

Against Aid presents a complex and diverse history of opposition to US foreign aid spending, explaining why critics challenged aid and how they had a significant impact on US foreign policy.

Foreign aid was an integral part of US foreign policy during the Cold War. US leaders hoped aid spending could modernize other societies, create steadfast allies, and promote global stability, but there was always considerable opposition. Jeffrey F. Taffet skillfully examines aids opponents and shows how they questioned the assumptions that the United States needed to be globally engaged. He argues that aids opponents forced changes in US aid programs that dramatically reduced overall spending and limited support for dictatorships. Taffet also makes a larger argument, that in fighting aid, opponents were challenging essential views about the nation and its global role that transcended debates about how much to spend. They were arguing about the appropriate use of national power and the essence of the nations purpose.

This book is essential reading for courses in American politics, international studies, and history of American foreign policy. Students will benefit from the broad, chronological scope and accessible narrative of the text.

Jeffrey F. Taffet is Professor of History at the United States Merchant Marine Academy. He is the author of Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy: The Alliance for Progress in Latin America (Routledge 2007) and The United States and Latin America: A History with Documents (Routledge 2017, with Dustin Walcher).

First published 2022

by Routledge

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The right of Jeffrey F. Taffet to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Names: Taffet, Jeffrey F., author.

Title: Against aid : a history of opposition to U.S. foreign aid spending / Jeffrey F. Taffet.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020057905 (print) | LCCN 2020057906 (ebook) |

ISBN 9781138345287 (paperback) | ISBN 9781138345270 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429437984 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Economic assistance, American--History. | United States--Foreign economic relations.| United States--Foreign relations.

Classification: LCC HC60 .T238 2021 (print) | LCC HC60 (ebook) |

DDC 338.91/73--dc23

LC record available athttps://lccn.loc.gov/2020057905

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057906

ISBN: 978-1-138-34527-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-34528-7 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-43798-4 (ebk)

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I would like to thank Kimberley Smith, Eve Meyer, Emily Irvine, Zoe Forbes, Gill Gairdner and Megan Hiatt at Routledge for supporting this text and helping move it forward toward publication. I received travel funding to visit numerous archives from my employer, the United States Merchant Marine Academy, and am thankful to our dean and provost, John Ballard, for his support in obtaining those funds. I would also like to thank my friends in the Humanities Department for their camaraderie and encouragement. As a faculty member at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, I am an employee of the US federal government, and need to state for the record that the views expressed in this work are not those of the United States government or any of its agencies. At the Bland Library, my institutional library, I would like to thank Donna Selvaggio, Jan Edmiston, and Jeremy Lauber for their help in obtaining sources and for access to electronic databases.

I did most of my writing in the Wertheim Study and the Allen Room at the New York Public Library, and I am thankful for all the assistance Melanie Locay and the other librarians and support staff have given me over the years. I received help from many archivists and their assistants across the United States as I did research. At the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Sarah Navins helped me locate sources; at the Truman Library, Randy Sowell offered guidance about using their materials; and at the Eisenhower Library, David Holbrook pointed me in the right direction. I did research at the National Archives, and am thankful to the archivists who offered useful suggestions. While there, I was fortunate to stay with my friends Mimi and Archer McCrudden and their parents Chuck and Amada in College Park, Maryland. Aya Beydoun helped me obtain materials from the Citizens Foreign Aid Committee Collections at Wayne State University. Jacque Roether, the expert on the Wallace Papers at the University of Iowa helped me during a short visit to Iowa City. In Monroe, Louisiana, Heather Pilcher was fantastically accommodating as I worked with the Otto Passman collection at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. Lydia Saad of Gallup offered sage advice about interpreting their historical polling data. I am thankful for the assistance I received as I worked with multiple collections at Columbia Universitys Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the help Michael Koncewicz gave me at the Tamiment Library at New York University. I have been working out pieces of this text in conversations with too many historians to mention, and am thankful for the feedback and advice Ive received along the way. It is a better work as a result. I have used some of this material with my students as well, and am thankful for their responses. I especially want to thank Felipe Pereira Laureiro for asking me to teach a course at the University of So Paulo based on this text.