Letter from Lima

Peru can be viewed as a classic example of how good intentions, unless based on a true understanding of politics and human nature, can lead to the worst results. Although application of the penalties of the Hickenlooper Amendment has been postponed until August the problem it has posed in our confrontation with Peru remains unsolved and may yet damage our interests in all of Latin America.

For years well-intentioned bureaucrats lavished our aid all over the world with scant regard for American interests or even American principles, in many cases directly subsidizing uneconomic socialist dreams and regimes. The natural reaction has been a continually declining foreign aid appropriation, an isolationist reaction in the U.S. against those “ungrateful foreigners,” and the Hickenlooper Amendment, which is a blanket order to the Executive to curtail all aid and agricultural subsidies to any country which confiscates U.S. investments for any reason without suitable compensation. Congress was not in a position to judge the nuances and vagaries of particular cases and had for so long had its intentions thwarted by the aid-givers that it simply handcuffed the Executive by its order. The effect, as distinct from the intention, of the Hickenlooper Amendment is that the U.S. Government can be compelled to sacrifice over-all American interests for the sake of backing up every U.S. business abroad, no matter what its abuses or its special problems with a host government.

JU

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Jon Basil Utley

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Peru can be viewed as a classic example of how good intentions, unless based on a true understanding of politics and human nature, can lead to the worst results. Although application of the penalties of the Hickenlooper Amendment has been postponed until August the problem it has posed in our confrontation with Peru remains unsolved and may yet damage our interests in all of Latin America.

For years well-intentioned bureaucrats lavished our aid all over the world with scant regard for American interests or even American principles, in many cases directly subsidizing uneconomic socialist dreams and regimes. The natural reaction has been a continually declining foreign aid appropriation, an isolationist reaction in the U.S. against those “ungrateful foreigners,” and the Hickenlooper Amendment, which is a blanket order to the Executive to curtail all aid and agricultural subsidies to any country which confiscates U.S. investments for any reason without suitable compensation. Congress was not in a position to judge the nuances and vagaries of particular cases and had for so long had its intentions thwarted by the aid-givers that it simply handcuffed the Executive by its order. The effect, as distinct from the intention, of the Hickenlooper Amendment is that the U.S. Government can be compelled to sacrifice over-all American interests for the sake of backing up every U.S. business abroad, no matter what its abuses or its special problems with a host government.