Evolution of the U.S. Assistance Program and the Soviet “Economic Offensive” Factor (1950s)

Abstract

Introduction. This article is devoted to studying the influence of the Soviet “economic offensive” factor in the 1950s on the formation of the New World Economic Order by the American by the American ruling elite in general and the use of such an important tool as foreign assistance in particular in the framework of this process. The reconstruction of this process makes it possible to clarify the specifics of the foreign policy decision-making mechanism in the United States, to identify the ideological approaches of main political interest groups to the goals and methods of building a new world order. Methods and materials. The study uses a group analysis approach as well as American executive and legislative documents, press material, speeches by key politicians, etc., to identify the reasons for the differences among representatives of the three leading interest groups in interpreting the nature of the Soviet “economic offensive” in the Third World countries. Analysis. These differences were primarily due to the possibility of using the factor of the Soviet “aggression” for conducting domestic propaganda campaigns as part of the interest groups struggle for control over the foreign assistance program. Thus, the representatives of the atlantists group claimed that the main threat from the Communist world remained in the military sphere; the globalist-oriented progressives insisted that the Soviet “economic offensive” was a critical danger to U.S. interests, while conservatives declared that the “myths” about the Soviet-communist threats to the United States in the Third World were invalid. Results. In the second half of the 1950s the group of progressives used the factor of the Soviet “economic offensive” more effectively in the framework of their campaigns (there were four of them), which allowed them to take control over the foreign assistance program and begin to reorient the American strategic course from the prevailing ideology of “mutual security” towards the global developmentalism.