The growing literature on foreign aid has tended to focus on the effectiveness of aid, usually tested with quantitative methods (for overviews of this literature, see David Roodman's Working Papers 137 and 134 for the Center for Global Development) or on the motivations of aid-giving governments, also frequently examined with econometric analyses. For this literature, see, for example, Alberto Alesina (“Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?” Journal of Economic Growth 5 [March 2000]: 33–63) or Peter Schraeder, et al. (“Clarifying the Foreign Aid Puzzle: A Comparison of American, Japanese, French and Swedish Aid Flows.” World Politics 50 [January 1998]: 294–323). The book in question also deals with the issue of aid effectiveness, but from a more historical perspective.

Foreign Aid as Foreign Policy is a study of the Alliance for Progress—the major aid initiative undertaken by John F. Kennedy to further economic, social, and political development in Latin America and thereby to block the expansion of Cuban and Soviet influence there. The Alliance has been studied relatively little over the past several decades, having been widely regarded as a failed effort. It is well past time for a new and more rigorous look, written from the vantage point of a longer historical perspective.

This study seeks to fill that gap. Jeffrey Taffet agrees to a considerable extent with past studies that the Alliance failed to realize its goals of promoting economic and political reforms and social inclusion in Latin America. He goes beyond these findings to ask why this important initiative failed in its goals and finds that the aid programs provided by the Alliance came to be used more for short-term political purposes (like promoting the election of Eduardo Frei in Chile against the socialist Salvador Allende) than for long-term development goals. He argues that aid will always fail to achieve its development and “moral” goals if it is used for short-term political purposes.

The book begins with several chapters describing the background of the Alliance—the historical and political context of U.S.-Latin American relations in the late 1950s and 1960s and the problems of planning and implementing the Alliance—and reminds us of the mind-set in Washington during the early 1960s. The Cold War was intensifying; the Cuban Revolution had become very left-leaning and reliant on Moscow; and Washington feared that with the poverty and deprivation in Latin America, Cuban influence was set to grow and become a threat to U.S. interests in the hemisphere. This was also a time when “modernization theory” was popular, and the belief was widespread in Washington that land and tax reform plus large-scale investments (partly funded with foreign aid) would lead economic growth to “take off,” thereby producing democratization in the region—and that all of this would work against Castro's influence while improving sagging U.S. relations with the region.

The author offers four country case studies of the Alliance for Progress in action: Chile, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Columbia. In Chile, Alliance monies permitted Frei to spend generously in bolstering the economy (and, it was hoped, his popularity), but the restrictions and constraints on aid loans created increasing frictions with the Chilean government. By decade's end, the Chileans had elected the Socialist Salvador Allende as president, precisely the result the United States had so feared.

In Brazil, the United States tried to limit the radical policies favored by President Joao Goulart by using aid as a carrot and stick, cutting off aid when they were displeased with him. Once Goulart was overthrown in a military coup, U.S. aid funds flowed more generously and regularly, supporting an authoritarian government inconsistent with the stated purposes and hopes of the Alliance.

In the Dominican Republic, the United States commenced aid once the brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo had been replaced with an elected president, Juan Bosch. But Bosch was too left-leaning for the United States and he was eventually overthrown by a military coup. When it seemed as if he might return, President Lyndon Johnson sent the U.S. military to prevent that outcome, at which point U.S. aid began to flow again.

Finally, in Colombia, the implementation of Alliance policies proved more successful. There, a stable government not immediately threatened by left-wing radical groups was willing to undertake reforms. As a result, Colombia was seen in Washington as a laboratory for successful U.S. aid in the region and was a place where long-term planning for development aid could occur. But even here, despite the apparent success of the Alliance aid, political leaders felt resentment toward the United States because of the way that aid was directed from Washington.

Taffet reminds us that it is very difficult to disentangle the impact of U.S. aid as one element among many influencing the course of events in these countries. Nevertheless, the author finds that “attempting to use aid to achieve moral goals and long-term economic development will always fail if aid is also used to advance short-term foreign policy aims” (p. 5).

This is a useful book that reminds us that today, the United States confronts many of the same challenges it faced during the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s when it comes to foreign aid. But Taffet's sweeping conclusions are questionable. One can conceive of cases where short-term foreign policy aims may coincide with long-term development goals. Indeed, Colombia appears to be one of those cases. It would have been useful for the author to unpack what it is about foreign policy aims that so often causes aid policies to collide with long-term development. One problem, especially in Latin America, was that U.S. foreign policy aims included stability of regimes in the face of potential communist pressures. However, the most stable regimes were often authoritarian and neglectful of the reforms needed to develop their countries. Indeed, those reforms themselves were problematic since they would have reduced the power and resources of the very Latin American elites charged with implementing them. Was the Alliance therefore doomed from the start because of its inherent inconsistencies? This, too, would have been an interesting discussion.

This brings me to a final point about the book. Perhaps the question the author asks—whether the Alliance was successful or not—is mischaracterized. If we take the stated (and unrealistic) goals of the Alliance as our measure, the answer to this question is bound to be no, as others have argued in the past. The real question should be what impact the Alliance had on economic and social progress in Latin America over the long term. This is not an easy question to answer, but it is an important one that should be possible for us to answer with the passage of time.