400 



ence from whatever sources." And finally, he referred to the U.S. goal 

 of supporting foreign economic and technological development — 



And even while these hopes of peace are blocked for now by aggression, we 

 on our side and other nations have reaffirmed our deep commitment to the peace- 

 ful progress of Vietnam and Southeast Asia as a whole. In April the President 

 proposed to the nations of Asia and to the United Nations that there be con- 

 structed a new program of support for Asian efforts and called upon Mr. Eugene 

 Black to assist them. Now in June this work is underway. The Mekong River 

 project has been given new life. A new dam is ready to rise in Laos. A billion- 

 dollar bank is in the making for the development of Southeast Asia. And in 

 Vietnam itself new impetus has been given to programs of development and 

 education and health. 48 



Shortly after the President's April 1965 speech, Walt W. Rostow, 

 Counselor of the Department of State and chairman of the Policy 

 Planning Council, identified five ways Asian nations, cooperating as 

 a region, mignt "help one another in this next phase of the region's 

 economic evolution." They could intensify trade among themselves. 

 They could harmonize tlieir national development plans, with each 

 nation concentrating in fields of its own natural advantage, at the 

 same time reducing possibilities of overproduction and idle industrial 

 capacity. There could be multilateral planning and financing. (In this 

 connection, the proposed Asian Development Bank would be "an ex- 

 tremely useful instrument.") For his fourth and fifth points, Mr. 

 Rostow stressed the opportunities of regional development per se : 



Certain of the countries within the region may wish to generate even more 

 intensive measures of economic cooperation than are possible on an all-regional 

 basis. This has always been the hope which lay behind, for example, the schemes 

 to uevelop the Mekong River basiu. [Anu in tliis context, also] 'mere would cer- 

 tainly be an enlarged role for intensified technical assistance on a regional basis, 

 notably in the fields of agriculture, marketing, and export promotion.' 7 



U.S. Measures to Raise the Tempo of Mekong Development 



President Johnson moved vigorously to show that he intended his 

 proposal to take effect at once — without waiting for the war to end. 48 

 He dramatized this intention by immediately ordering $500,000 of 

 U.S. surplus foods sent to Southeast Asia for use by workers on Me- 

 kong development projects; he also sent six U.S. experts to make a 

 90-day survey of rural electrification opportunities in Vietnam. He 

 named Eugene Black, former president of the World Bank, to head 

 a presidential mission to develop a plan of U.S. assistance to the 

 Mekong project. 



The plan that evolved concentrated on four lines of attack : ( 1 ) An 

 immediate contact with the U.N. Secretary General, U Thant, to gather 

 resources to start work on the Nam Ngum Dam, to which the United 

 States would contribute substantially; (2) reversal of the U.S. posi- 

 tion from opposition to a proposed Asian Development Bank to one of 

 vigorous support; (3) resumption of a program of pre-engineering 

 st nil its by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation of a proposed huge dam at 

 Pa Mong on the main stem of the Mekong west of Vientiane in Laos, 



tn Ibid., p. fiT). 



"Wall w. Rostow, "Economic Development in Asia," address at Tokyo, Japan, April 23, 

 1965, Department of State Bulletin (May 31, 1965), pp. 850 851. 



"Meeting In special session in Bangkok, May l<i 11, 1965, tin- Coordination Committee 

 qulrklv formulated a priority lisl of projects. First on the list was the Nam Ngum Dam. 

 The list was sent in a communique to the United Nations Secretary-General, noting with 

 interest That substantial additional resources may be made available" to the U.N. to 

 support the Mekong 1'roject. 



