POINT FOUR PROGRAM


857


   The present concept of how the technical cooperation program is
 to operate envisages the division of operational responsibility among
 some score of agencies in the U.S. Government, the Department exer-
 cising supervision over what they do. This concept is the product
 largely of acquiescence by the Department in the views advanced by
 the other interested agencies. The general attitude in the Department
 has been one of hoping that somehow the Department will be able
 to coordinate all these powerful independent agencies in Washington
 and that somehow our embassies will be able to coordinate their
 operations in the field. There has been some criticism that the Depart-
 ment has not thus far exercised the force of leadership necessary to
 an effective program and this naturally has its counterpart in doubt
 whether the Department, in such an interdepartmental setup as is
 contemplated, can exercise such leadership in putting the actual pro-
 gram into*operation. The present concept seems to many of us to be
 a formula for frustration.
   Some of us have anticipated that weakness in the Department's
 handling of Point Four may give rise to a move to centralize the
 responsibility elsewhere, and consideration would be given in such a
 context to providing a justification for perpetuating ECA beyond
 its present two-year lease of life.
 There is a possible alternative to the present drift of circumstances5
 It has been in many minds and now a precedent for it is being estab-
 lished in plans for the administration of Point Four in southeast Asia.:
 That alternative would be to establish a single administering or oper-
 ating agency for each of the three geographic regions involved (the re-
 spective areas of ARA, NEA, and FE). Presumably the Institute of
 Inter-American Affairs, revamped for the purpose, would be the
 agency for the Latin American area. It would conduct the actual oper-
 ations in what are conceived to be the basic fields of economic develop-
 ment: agriculture, public health, elementary and vocational education,
 and perhaps communications. It would not, however, as is the present
 case, duplicate the technical staffs of USDA, USPHS, and any other
 competent regular agencies of the Government. It would, rather, de-
 pend entirely on them for the recruiting of technical personnel, for
 technical inspection of field programs, and for whatever else is em-
 braced by the term "technical backstopping". The respective country
 programs would not be under the direct daily supervision of the re-
 spective embassies. They would, rather, be under the direct daily super-
 vision, in each case, of an IIAA Chief of Field Party, who would in
turn have the same sort of ultimate responsibility to the Ambassador
that IIAA Chiefs of Party have today. He would have under his super-
vision all the IIAA programs (in the several fields of the IIAA's oper-

  'For documentation on economic and technical assistance to Southeast Asia,
see vol. vi, pp. 1 if.