Blindfolded Good Samaritans? American Domestic Debates over Aid to Post–First World War Europe

This paper proposes to analyze domestic support for early U.S. humanitarian and capacity-building efforts in post-First World War Eastern Europe (1918-1923). The case study seeks to extract patterns on how the American public and policymakers approached foreign aid implementation in war-torn, politically unstable Eastern Europe. Although the United States is most famous for its post-Second World War Marshall Plan (1949-1951), many of its lessons were initially learned in the 1910s. Driven by President Woodrow Wilson and humanitarian figure Herbert C. Hoover, American foreign aid rallied resources to reconstruct Eastern Europe. Furthermore, foreign aid served Wilsonian objectives, including promoting American priorities (democracy, industrialization, antibolshevism) and building trade networks. Despite its grand ambitions, American foreign aid achieved mixed results, especially in the face of divided domestic opinions over the nation’s role in world affairs. A large portion of this project will focus on domestic elements over how Americans embraced – or challenged – foreign aid policies in the light of a new world order. It asserts that most Americans, while idealistic towards outreach in global affairs, lacked the commitment for long-term development programs in fragile Europe. Utilizing Congressional records as well as newspapers, this paper will highlight how Americans viewed their allies, aid recipients, and their role in the new world order. As this research will demonstrate, foreign aid was a key battlefield in American society over America’s position in the world. From classrooms to the halls of Congress, America’s rise called into questions over its role in the world as a system builder and maintainer. Americans struggled to define the transformation of humanitarianism from philanthropic grassroots mobilization for charity to the responsibility of privileged nations to provide aid to the destitute peoples of the world, otherwise loosely termed ‘right to assistance’.