428 



corporate instrumentality situated in the region. Officials of the U.S. 

 foreign assistance program tended at first to be skeptical that this 

 approach could be transplanted to a multinational region. Bilateral 

 aid problems were thought hard enough to deal with, without the 

 necessity of becoming involved in multinational plans and programs. 

 However, the "spirit of the Mekong has been shown to have exerted 

 a durable cooperative influence on the Riparian States for nearly 

 two decades. (jiven a forum for consultation, and a shared opportunity 

 for economic growth and development with many donor nations con- 

 tributing, the nations of a region can demonstrably work together, de- 

 spite a long history of conflict and instabilities. 



When a regional development project involves both a plurality of 

 recipient nations and a plurality of donor nations (and perhaps also 

 an array of United Nations instrumentalities) the administrative com- 

 plications may grow but the political complications seem actually to 

 be reduced. One reason for this is the doubly '"lowered profile" of the 

 individual donors, even though their contributions may be of com- 

 manding importance on an individual program unit in some, one coun- 

 try. The various arrangements for task management by the World 

 Bank or some other institution, plus the coordinating organization for 

 the total regional program, tend to insulate the donor from the re- 

 cipient. In terms of imposing conditions on the recipient, this insula- 

 tion may limit the benefits of the arrangement to the donor, but in 

 terms of its general acceptability to all recipients and amity among 

 all participants it is highly beneficial. At the same time, as President 

 Nixon has said: "I am confident that our role can be kept in conso- 

 nance both with our interests and with those of the increasingly self- 

 reliant and independent Asian states." 98 



Drawing upon his experience in helping to organize the Asian De- 

 velopment Bank and fund the Nam Ngum Dam, Engene Black in 1969 

 published a short study in which he proposed the Mekong Project as 

 a prototype for American diplomacy in the future. He offered "pro- 

 grammed development" as a substitute for the "doctrine of counter- 

 insurgency." 



The diplomatic problem [wrote Black] is to reconcile with the short-term needs 

 and demands of the riparian countries the long-range interest that the rest of the 

 world has in restoring peace and stability in this area. Mekong development offers 

 the opportunity to protect this interest by building inhibitions in the form of 

 development projects among four fragmented countries that are likely to find 

 themselves beset with turmoil and threats for some time to come. Mekong de- 

 velopment is an invitation to North Vietnam to join in a vast program of regional 

 cooperation. It is just the sort of commitment needed to counteract the ill-effects 

 of the Vietnam war. 



Black suir<rcsts that what is needed is to reduce the U.S. presence, 

 and to continue the building of a "strong multilateral f ramework." ° 9 



As a development banker. Black is "frankly a partisan of multi- 

 lateral and regional organizations . . . ," because this arrangement 

 insulates development finance from political considerations. ("Or to 

 put it the other way around, it does not stand to reason that the U.S. 

 Government should undertake in the name of development to intervene 

 wholesale in the domestic all'airs of six dozen or so poor countries.") 



,e U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970'8: Building for Peace, House Document 92,o3, p. 70. 

 00 Black, Alternative in Southeast Aniii, p. 145. 



