Perspectives on Development Aid: World War II to Today and Beyond

After World War II the United States responded to the decimation of Western Europe and to the expansion of communism by providing massive economic assistance— the Marshall Plan. President Truman's Point Four Program enunciated American willingness to share "scientific advances and industrial progress for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas." As of the late 1970s, after a generation of unprecedented development progress for a majority of the world, the most basic needs of nearly one billion people remain unmet and the international economic system is no longer working well for either the industrial democracies of the Northern Hemisphere or the developing countries to their south. Without increased cooperation and major systemic reforms, the North as well as the South face the prospect of persistent, high inflation and slower growth in the 1980s. Today, as in the years immediately after World War II, a new statecraft is required if the last decades of this century are to bring political, economic and social progress to the countries of the North and the South comparable to that achieved by the industrial democracies in the period from the late 1940s to the early 1970s.