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A Century of NGOs

Author(s): AKIRA IRIYE

Source: Diplomatic History , Summer 1999, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Summer 1999), pp. 421-435

Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24913673

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AKIRA IRIYE

A Century of NGOs

What is the connection between the twentieth century and the American Century? How is the history of the present century linked to the history of the United States? To establish the relationship between world history and U.S. history, it is, of course, crucial to identify themes in both world history and U.S.

history in the twentieth century and explore whether there may have been a connection between the two. For instance, it is possible to point to such themes as total war, revolution, and totalitarianism as among the major features of twentieth-century history and to discuss what they have to do with developments in U.S. history. Michael Sherry's In the Shadow of War (1996), to take an example, suggests that there was a congruence between the theme of total war globally and the construction of a war-oriented American society.1 Or, following Walter LaFeber and other historians, we may link American liberal capitalism to worldwide revolutionary movements in a dialectical relationship; in such a construction, the American Century would emerge as something of an antithesis to a major theme of twentieth century world history.2 A third and widely accepted perspective has been to stress the tremendous growth in the world's agricultural and industrial output and in cross-national trade and investment, and to see these devel opments as linked to the growth of the U.S. economy.5 Among the most popular interpretations of the linkages between world and U.S. history has been the postulation of an Americanized global culture in which American technology, food, fashions, popular entertainment (music, movies, televi sion programs), and language have transformed the ways of life and con sciousness of people throughout the globe. Reinhold Wagnleitner's Coca-Colonization and the Cold War (1996) is but one of many examples of this perspective.4

1. Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow of War The United States since the 1930s (New Haven, 1995") 2. Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1943-1990, 6th ed. (New York, 1991); Robert

Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development Ideas in Foreign Aid and Social Science (Princeton, 1973).

3. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1300 to 2000 (New York, 1987).

4. Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill, 1994); Jacques Portes, De la scène à l'écran: Naissance de la culture de masse aux Etats-Unis [From the stage to the screen: Birth of mass culture in the United States] (Paris, 1997).

Diplomatic History, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Summer 1999). © 1999 The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Maiden, MA, 02148, USA and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 iJF, UK.

421

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422 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

In this essay, I shall focus on another theme, the growth of non-governmental organizations (NGO), and argue that this phenomenon provides a plau sible framework for linking one of the most impressive developments of twentieth-century world history to the history of the United States. By non-governmental organizations are usually meant voluntary and open (non-secret) associations of individuals outside of the formal state apparatus (central and local governments, police and armed forces, legislative and judicial bodies, etc.) that are neither for profit nor engage in political activities as their primary objective. Such a definition of an NGO would thus exclude a secret fraternity, a business enterprise, or a political party. NGOs, therefore, are generally interchangeable with, and sometime called, non-profit organizations (NPO) or private voluntary organizations (PVO). Whether or not religious organizations (churches, synagogues, cemeteries, etc.) are to be considered NGOs is a question about which there seems to exist no consensus among specialists, but in this essay I shall include religiously oriented organizations only where their primary purposes are not devotional or sectarian: for instance, the American Friends Service Committee and the Church World Service, both established by religious bodies for voluntary, humanitarian work.

Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1830s that one of the principal charac teristics of American democracy was the existence of "private associations" ("associations civiles"). As he wrote in Democracy in America, "Americans of all ages, all situations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations." At the head of any new undertaking, "where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association." As is well known, Tocqueville saw voluntary associations as the key to the functioning of the American nation, as evidence that Americans were not so individualistic that they became self centered and atomistic but rather were driven by a sentiment of reciprocity through which they helped one another. Even more fundamentally, private associations were at the heart of democratic civilization. "If the inhabitants of

democratic countries had neither the right nor the taste for unity for political objects, their independence would run great risks, but they could keep both their wealth and their knowledge for a long time. But if they did not learn some

habits of acting together in the affairs of daily life, civilization itself would be

in peril."5 Half a century later, James Bryce also noted the critical role associa tions played in American society. "In nothing," he wrote in The American Commonwealth, "does the executive talent of the [American] people better shine than in the promptitude wherewith the idea of an organization for a common object is taken up, in the instinctive discipline that makes every one who joins in starting it fall into his place, in the practical, business-like turns which the discussions forthwith take." Associations played an important role in the

5. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York, 1969), 513-14.

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A Century of NGOs : 423

development of public opinion, "for they rouse attention, excite discussion, formulate principles, submit plans, embolden or stimulate their members, produce that impression of a spreading movement which goes so far towards success with a sympathetic and sensitive people."6

By the end of the nineteenth century, then, the United States had already become "a nation of joiners," as Arthur M. Schlesinger was to write in 1944.7 As the historian noted, however, many of the organizations the Americans joined in the nineteenth century were secret societies, political movements, and business associations - organizations outside our definition of NGOs. In the twentieth century, in contrast, there have been created numerous - a rough estimate today would be 1.1 million - private, voluntary, non-profit, and non political organizations ranging from large philanthropic foundations to local Boys Clubs, from research institutions to civil rights organizations, from mu seum societies to old people's associations. What has been of particular sig nificance has been the growth of those NGOs that are internationally oriented, or International NGOs (INGO). These are organizations that are engaged in pursuing cross-national agendas, such as providing humanitarian relief to victims of earthquakes, famine, or war in some part of the world, establishing schools and orphanages abroad, engaging in educational and cultural exchanges with other countries, cooperating across national boundaries to cope with pollution and other instances of environmental degradation, or safeguarding the rights of women, children, and persecuted minorities. Sometimes INGOs originate in the United States, but quite often their world headquarters are somewhere else (such as the International Red Cross with its main offices in Geneva) but there are national branches in all parts of the globe. Counting such national branches as well as headquarters, the total number of INGOs in the United States has increased steadily throughout the twentieth century, reach ing six hundred in i960 and over fifteen hundred by the mid-1980s. The current number may well be double that.8

The growth of NGOs has been an important aspect of the history of the United States in the twentieth century. Quite apart from the nation's emergence as the militarv sunernower or the economic heoemon it has continued to

exemplify what de Tocqueville and Bryce noticed in the nineteenth century; it has been characterized by the networks of private associations linking different parts of the country in a myriad of ways.

Twentieth-century world history has also been characterized by the growth of NGOs. This is where U.S. history and world history intersect or converge, thus providing one supreme example of why this century may be called an American Century. The United States has led the way, and the rest of the world

6. James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (New York, 1895), z:zy8. 7. Arthur M. Schlesinger, "Biography of a Nation of Joiners," American Historical Review 49

(October 1944): 1—zy. 8. Statistical information in this essay is mostly derived from Union of International Associa

tions, ed., International Organizations: Abbreviations and Addresses, 1984-85 (Munich, [1985]).

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424 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

has followed, in the development of non-governmental, non-profit organiza tions. In the sphere of international affairs, the particularly impressive devel opment has been the growth of INGOs, private, voluntary organizations that constitute part of the ever-expanding networks of cross-national associations. "The American Century" in this sense means the fantastic growth of such networks. It does not mean U.S. military or economic dominance; nor is it synonymous with cultural Americanization. Rather, this century has been an "American" century because a uniquely American experience in social organi zation has spread worldwide. In 1904, Frederick Jackson Turner noted, "The special contributions which students of American history are capable of making to the study of history in general are determined... by the peculiar importance of American history for understanding the processes of social development."9 The process of social development in the United States in the nineteenth century had taken the form, among other things, of the organization of private aççnriafinn«: This was nnp nf rhp nafinn'ç rnnfrihnfinnc fn mndprn hicfnrv AnH

in the twentieth century, U.S. history and world history have been joined together through the phenomenal growth of interlocking INGOs.

Kenneth Boulding has written, "The rise of international nongovernmental organizations has been spectacular.... This is perhaps one of the most spec tacular developments of the twentieth century, although it has happened so quickly that it is seldom noticed."10 This essay is an attempt to "notice" this phenomenon. It must be pointed out, however, that political scientists and international relations scholars have long - at least since the 1970s - noticed the growth of INGOs and incorporated the development into their analyses of international affairs. Writers such as Paul Diehl,Johan Galtung, Harold Jacob son, and Robert Keohane have published important monographs." But histori ans have been extremely slow to read this literature, let alone make use of it in their writings on twentieth-century history. Such standard histories of the century as Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes (1993), John Grenville, A History

of the World in the Twentieth Century (1994), or William Keylor, The Twentieth Century World (1995) are singularly lacking in any reference to NGOs, domestic or international.12 But to ignore them is to misread the history of the twentieth

century world.

9- Frederick Jackson Turner, "Problems in American History," in Congress of Arts and Science: Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904, ed. Howard J. Rogers (Boston, 1906), 2:184.

10. Kenneth Boulding, Three Faces of Power (Newbury Park, CA, 1989), 244. 11. Paul Diehl, ed., The Politics of Global Governance (Boulder, 1997); Johan Gaining, The True

World: A Transnational Perspective (New York, 1980); Harold Jacobson, The Networks of Interdependence (New York, 1984); Robert D. Keohane and Josephe S. Nye, Power and Interdependence, 2d ed. (New York, 1989). To this list may be added some recent works in the new field of sociology of globalization, including Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London, 1992); Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism, and Identity (London, 1995); and Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, 1998).

12. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (New York, 1994); J. A. S. Grenville, A History of the World in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1994); William R. Keylor, The Twentieth Century World: An International History, 2d ed. (New York, 1992).

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A Century of NGOs : 425

At the 1904 World Congress of Arts and Science held in conjunction with the St. Louis exposition commemorating the Louisiana Purchase, Woodrow Wilson remarked, "the deepest things are often those which never spring to light in events, and... the breeding ground of events themselves lies where the historian of the state seldom extends his explorations.'"5 While state-focused historians of international relations have written volumes on "events" such as

the wars (hot and cold) of the present century, they have seldom explored things that "never spring to light." Non-governmental organizations are one example. The remainder of this essay will explore how the history of the twentieth century looks if examined in the framework of non-governmental organiza tions, not of states, and how, in such a framework, the American Century may be better understood.

Although there was a small number of INGOs before the First World War - ranging from the well-developed International Red Cross to less formally structured associations of academics in various fields - it was not until after the

war that many more of them sprang up. Quite clearly, this was in reaction against the traditional system of interstate relations that was considered to have brought about the unprecedented tragedy. Instead of sovereign states playing the game of power politics, men and women after 1919 were determined to develop new institutions on the basis of which a more durable and just international order would be constructed. It is true that among these institu tions, intergovernmental organizations (IGO), of which the League of Nations was the most spectacular example, attracted the greatest attention. The growth of INGOs was no less impressive, however. According to one count, their number grew from 135 in 1910 to 375 by i93o.'4 The new INGOs included the International Research Council and various other organizations of scholars to facilitate their interchange, the national committees on intellectual cooperation established in forty or so countries, the International Educational Cinema tographic Institute, the International Association for the Promotion of Child Welfare, and the International Council of Nurses. The United States was. of

course, not the only country actively promoting such organizations. But be cause it did not join the League, its role in promoting the activities of INGOs was quite conspicuous. The newly established Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, for instance, were among the founding members of the International Research Council, and American doctors and nurses were deeply involved in the task of modernizing the work of the Red Cross to enable it to cope with peacetime health problems, not just wartime emergencies.1* In a book published during the war, Mary Follette, an

13. Woodrow Wilson, "The Variety and Unity of History," in Rogers, ed., Congress of Arts and Science, 6.

14. Saul A. Mendlovitz, On the Creation of a Just World Order Preferred Worlds for the ippo's (New York, 1975), 161.

iy. Paul Weindling, ed., International Health Organisations and Movements, tpi8~ip^p (New York, >995), 19-23

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426 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

American political scientist, wrote that since "association is the impulse at the core of our being," and since "the creative characteristic of war is doing things together," it was imperative to "begin to do things together in peace" through the efforts of "people united not by herd instinct but by group conviction." She may well have had in mind the American Friends Service Committee and other organizations established during the war when she noted, "The old-fashioned hero went out to conquer his enemy; the modern hero goes out to disarm his enemy through creating a mutual understanding.'"6 The American Century was beginning to be defined in the postwar years not simply through the nation's mass culture, such as movies and music, as many observers noted then and since, but also through the spread of NGOs, both domestic and international.

Even the history of the 1930s, the "nightmare decade" as William Shirer called it, may be put in a new light, as very much part of the American Century if we take NGOs into consideration. The number of INGOs increased from

375 in 1930 to 427 in 1940, an amazing phenomenon when one considers that the decade was characterized by exclusionary nationalism and totalitarianism in many parts of the world. Part of the increase in the number of INGOs is explainable by the fact that international non-governmental (as well as govern mental) efforts were needed for the rescue and relief of victims of war and persecution. The International Rescue Committee was established in 1933 and the Save the Children Foundation in 1938, both with major U.S. input. But there were other American initiatives as well. In 1933 the Experiment in International

Living was launched in order to send American high school students to study and live abroad, and four years later the Ford Foundation was established. The Rockefeller Foundation, created just before the First World War, was active throughout the 1930s on behalf of efforts by individuals and educational insti tutions to promote exchange programs with countries of Latin America.

It is impossible to know whether these organized activities were on Henry Luce's mind when he published his celebrated essay, "The American Century," in Life in February 1941. Its penultimate paragraph said, "Throughout the 17th Century and the 18th Century and the 19th Century, this continent teemed with

manifold projects and magnificent purposes." Elsewhere Luce wrote of "demo cratic idealism" as "the faith of a huge majority of the people of the world." And he envisaged the twentieth century as one in which the United States would play the leading role "as the dynamic center of ever-widening spheres of enterprise ... as the training center of the skillful servants of mankind ... as the Good Samaritan ... as the powerhouse of the ideals of Freedom and Justice."'7 If the article did not specifically refer to NGOs, at least these passages implied that the American Century would be built upon the "authentically American" experience of the past and establish networks of interdependence as the nation promoted the economic improvement of other countries, trained

16. M. K. Follette, The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government (New York, 1918), 193-95.

17. See Henry R. Luce, "The American Century," in the previous issue.

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A Century of NGOs : 427

technical and scientific experts, engaged in humanitarian activities, and cham pioned the cause of human rights.

In such a vision, the role of private, voluntary organizations would be of critical importance. In 1944 Schlesinger noted, "It is with calculated foresight that the Axis dictators insured their rise to power by repressing and abolishing political, religious, labor, and other voluntary groups."'8Combining Luce's and Schlesingers wartime assertions, we may have here a fairly accurate prognos tication of the American Century that was to come into reality after the end of the Second World War. For that century, or more accurately that half-century (the 1950s through the 1990s) was to be characterized by a tremendous growth of NGOs both in the United States and throughout the world, and by their activities in humanitarian, developmental, human rights, and many other activities to such an extent that Luce's assertion in 1941 that "our world ... is one world, fundamentally indivisible" has come to seem less and less hyperbolic and more and more realistic.

That, rather than the Cold War, is the meaning of the American half-century.

The Cold War was essentially a geopolitical readjustment after a great war, just like other postwar readjustments in history. There was nothing uniquely "American" about it; it was probably more part of the Soviet than of the American Century. What made the half-century American was the efforts of the numerous individuals and organizations in the United States and elsewhere to develop an international community of interdependence, freedom, commu nication, and reciprocity. As I hope to argue in a book-length study of this phenomenon, "global community" as a vision and as a reality is a major theme of recent world history, a theme that is far more critical to our understanding of the contemporary world than the Cold War.'9

In his magisterial study of European politics and diplomacy in the eight eenth and the early nineteenth centuries, Paul Schroeder has observed that the European statesmen who came together in Vienna in 1815 after more than twenty years of incessant fighting were determined to put an end to traditional geopolitics and develop a sense of community so that they would seek to cooperate with each other for the stability of the regional order. "[The] sense of inherent limits, acceptance of mutual rules and restraints, common respon sibility to certain standards of conduct, and loyalty to something beyond the aims of one's own state distinguished early nineteenth-century politics from what had preceded and would follow it.'Uo The architects of the post-i94j Cold

18. Schlesinger, "Biography of a Nation," 25. 19. Some of my ideas about alternative perspectives on post-1945 are contained in Cultural

Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore, 1997). It can be argued, of course, that the Cold War was waged by the United States precisely in order to create the kind of global community in which INGOs would prosper. But it may be questioned whether the Cold War was necessary and inevitable, logically or historically, to realize such a vision. The vision long antedated the Cold War, and unless we say that the idea of global community and the waging of the Cold War were two sides of the same coin, it seems better to view these two as distinguishable phenomena, each susceptible of analysis in its own terms instead of submerging one into the other.

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428 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

War — the governments of the victorious powers - clearly failed to develop any such system of interstate cooperation or to define a sense of community, regional or global. The task, then, had to be entrusted to IGOs and INGOs. But because the Cold War protagonists often extended their antagonism to the arenas of IGOs (most notably the United Nations), it fell upon the INGOs to assume a major responsibility for keeping the world "one, fundamentally indivisible." In that sense, the making of the American Century was in the hands of NGOs, both in the United States and elsewhere. It is a remarkable fact that

the number of INGOs had grown from 427 in 1940 to 755 by 1950, and further to 1,321 by i960 and 2,296 by 1970, a fivefold increase in those thirty years. While

the Cold War rivalry was dividing the globe, the INGOs, old and new, were dedicating themselves to communication, understanding, and cooperation across national boundaries.

Power, Boulding has written, is of three kinds: destructive, productive, and integrative. Destructive power entails the use or the threat of use of force to achieve one's objectives. Productive power works through exchange, an eco nomic activity. Integrative power is social and expressed in mutual affection. Institutions based on integrative power, according to Boulding, are "family, churches, religious and charitable organizations, the .. . international non governmental organizations, artistic and reformist organizations."21 In reality, of course, some INGOs do engage in economic activities, albeit of a non-profit nature, such as helping rural people to develop domestic industry. That non-governmental organizations are not entirely free of the state, even includ ing its military power, can be seen in instances where humanitarian relief workers must seek the protection of the host government, or when such programs fit into a government's foreign policy agenda and receive subsidies from the latter. Nonetheless, even in such cases the autonomy of an NGO is never questioned. To the extent that it works with the state, this should not be automatically viewed as an example of an NGO compromising its integrity, but rather as a case in which the state is altering its character, to turn to and accommodate NGO initiatives and expertise. In any event, NGOs as integra tive forces have contributed immensely to shaping the American Century.

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reconstruction, and relief all over the world were so immense that only governmental agencies, both national and international, could cope with them. Private organizations' involvement in such work was rather modest. Even so, the establishment, in the United States, of such organizations as the Church World Service (1946) and Direct Relief International (1948) shows that NGOs were ready and willing to do their share in providing assistance to war devastated areas abroad. That NGOs and governmental agencies cooperated in the task was demonstrated when CARE (Cooperative for American Remittances

20. Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, r/63-1848 (Oxford, 1994), 802. 21. Boulding, Three Faces of Povier, 31.

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A Century of NGOs : 429

to Europe) was created in 1946. (Soon the "E" in CARE came to stand for "Everywhere.")

In the meantime, the vision of one world was kept alive by postwar international organizations, in particular the United Nations and its affiliates and committees such as UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) and the Commission on Human Rights (a subcommittee of the UN Economic and Social Council). It is important to recognize, however, that many NGOs cooperated with these international bodies. At the San Francisco meeting of the allies in the spring of 1945 that led to the founding of the United Nations, 42 NGOs from the United States served as advisers to the official delegation, and another 240 NGOs sent observers.22 The preamble of the United Nations charter, with its ringing declaration, "We, the peoples of the United Nations . . . have resolved to combine our efforts" to achieve a

peaceful and just world, never mentioned nations or states, only peoples. And peoples would express themselves not simply through their governments — we should recall that there were only about seventy independent nations in 1945 and that the vast majority of Asians and Africans lived under colonial regimes - but through international agencies and NGOs. The 1948 UN declaration on human rights, as forceful a statement of the unity of humankind as any, was a product of long deliberation not just by governmental representatives sitting on the drafting committee but also by many individuals and organizations who sought to provide their input. And UNESCO's creation in December 194t immediately resulted in the establishment of national commissions throughout the world to support and carry out its objectives. Private citizens and groups actively participated in their work. And through UNESCO and other agencies, educational and cultural programs were resumed with renewed vigor. The Salzburg seminar, established in 1947 through Rockefeller Foundation support to bring American and European scholars and students together, was one of the earliest instances of an INGO working together with various governments to reestablish intellectual communication that had been severed by war.

Interestingly enough, it was during the i9yos, usually regarded as the decade when the Cold War provided the sole definition of both national and inter national affairs, that INGOs made impressive gains, both in number and in influence. Perhaps this reflected the fact that, while the U.S.-US SR confronta

tion divided the world, freezing the two alliance systems in a state of perpetual confrontation, and while national affairs, too, were driven by the overall pre occupation with "winning" the Cold War, INGOs, along with IGOs, stepped in to keep the globe together, to oppose the Cold War antagonists' destructive power with their integrative power. That can be seen most graphically in the cross-national endeavors to limit the arms race, in particular to stop the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. The anti-nuclear movement in the early postwar years had been dominated by pacifist groups or else by Communist

22. Tadashi Yamamoto, ed., Emerging Civil Society in the Asia Pacific Community (Tokyo, 1995), 274.

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430 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

organizations.2' In the 1950s, however, citizens' movements sprang up in North America, Europe, and Japan to protest against atomic tests, and representatives of many of them began meeting in Hiroshima every August after 1955 to continue the movement. In the meantime, a group of distinguished scientists and intellectuals led by Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell organized a conference in Pugwash, Canada, in 1957 to call for a "nuclear-weapons-free" world, and the conference was reconvened periodically. These movements were seeking to unite world opinion against the dangerous excesses of the Cold War, something only private individuals and groups could accomplish.

But to protest against the arms race was not the only function of INGOs in the 1950s. There were parts of the world that did not fit into the geopolitical equation of the Cold War, those that came to be called the Third World. Nearly twenty new states were created between 1945 and i960, some with huge populations such as India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Others, like Egypt, estab lished new systems of governmnet. Not all of these countries chose to align themselves with one side or the other in the Cold War; indeed, India, Indonesia,

and Egypt sought to stay out of the big-power rivalry, instead focusing on economic development, educational reform, population control, and other tasks of "modernization." For them the Cold War was of decisively less impor tance than these tasks, indeed than the simple task of feeding millions of people, a test of the legitimacy of the new states, and they preferred neutralism to siding with one side or the other in the global confrontation. In such circumstances, both IGOs and INGOs became critical for their well-being. They would do, or try to do, what the superpowers, with their preoccupation with the global geopolitics, were unwilling or incapable of performing.

INGOs that had earlier focused on humanitarian relief to refugees and other victims of the Second World War now reoriented themselves to help Third World countries with their demographic problems and developmental projects. Where necessary, new INGOs were created: for instance, the International Human Assistance Program (U.S.), the International Voluntary Service (U.S.), the World Rehabilitation Fund (U.S.), l'Association Mondiale de Lutte contre la Faim (France), and the Voluntary Service Overseas (Britain). Although incorporated in a particular country, these agencies had branches or offices in other parts of the world. Reliable budget and expenditure figures for these Ul^älllAdLlUlld ÜIC UUl dlWciyj dVctliauiC, UUl UICIV ov^ino imiv uuuui mai jLü lvxiuo

of voluntary personnel, far more were involved in developmental assistance programs than governmental officials. At a time when the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies were augmenting their state apparatus

and stockpiling arms, it was left to private individuals and organizations - admittedly, virtually all of them at this time were from the United States and its Western allies - to step in and go to Third World countries, there to meet

23. Milton S. Katz, Ban the Bomb: A History of SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (New York, 1983), 47.

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A Century of NGOs : 431

their people and organizations as well as government officials in order to build up networks of people committed to nation-building.

Developmental assistance, however, was only one area of INGO activities in the 1950s. To cite one other area where INGOs grew increasingly active, a significant number of international women's organizations devoted themselves to peace and human rights issues. In addition to the venerable Women's International League for Peace and Freedom whose history went back to the First World War years, several others became active during the 1950s, including the International Council of Women, the International Federation of Univer sity Women, the International Federation of Business and Professional Women, and the Liaison Committee of Women's International Organizations. The emergence of such organizations in the international arena, and their active participation in cross-national conferences, suggest one of the little understood aspects of the history of the 1950s. They were important as part of the growing assertiveness of INGOs, and also as indicative of the rising concern with women's rights. The two phenomena were intimately related in that women were not represented in the usual status apparatus (governments, armed forces) in proportion to their numbers, so that, if they were to have their voices heard, the best strategy was to organize NGOs.

In 1952, at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission s subcommittee on the prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities, a delegate proposed that a conference of non-governmental organizations be convened to coordinate their work. As he said, "Their zeal, independence, and, in some cases, very considerable resources [make] their assistance indispensable."*4 At an other meeting, a representative of the World Jewish Congress asserted that non-governmental organizations represented "elements and aspirations in inter national public opinion which must play a significant role in the development and consolidation of a genuine world community."25 These expressions, to gether with the activism of women's organizations, revealed an awareness of one of the significant developments of the 1950s. In retrospect, it seems possible to argue that these developments, rather than geopolitical vicissitudes, were defining the shape of the world to come.

That became even clearer in the decades following the 1950s. Space does not allow a detailed examination of INGOs during the 1960s through the 1990s, but certain salient characteristics of these recent decades may be noted. During the 1960s, for instance, in addition to a further growth in the number of organiza tions oriented toward developmental assistance - clearly in response to the decolonization and independence of many African states - INGOs were particularly active in peace movements. Going much beyond the modest beginnings of the 1950s, NGOs in many countries took to the street, organized demonstrations, and published advertisements in newspapers to demand a halt

24- United Nations Human Rights Commission, subcommittee on prevention of discrimina tion and protection of minorities, 3 October, 1952, mimeographed.

2y. Memo by World Jewish Congress, y October, 1951, mimeographed.

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432 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

in nuclear testing and the arms race. "End the Arms Race — Not the Human Race" was the slogan of Women Strike for Peace, a group of American women (later joined by those elsewhere) concerned with the effects of nuclear tests on their children. "We join with women throughout the world," declared the American organizers of the movement, "to challenge the right of any nation or group of nations to hold the power of life and death over the world."26 Such self-consciousness on the part of women was an important aspect of the history of the world and of INGOs in particular during the 1960s. Women were getting organized everywhere, and their national organizations were being linked through international bodies and conferences that brought their repre sentatives together.

Another important development was in cultural exchange and communica tion. Going much beyond the level of activities achieved earlier, individuals and groups not just from North America and Western Europe but from other parts of the world increasingly interacted with one another. Some of the interactions, to be sure, were initiated or actively promoted by governments. Among examples of this would be the Olympic games and world's fairs. The Olympics in Tokyo (1964) and Mexico City (1968), and the world's fairs in Seattle (1962), New York (1964), Montreal (1967), and Osaka (1970) were public affairs, funded by national, regional, or municipal governments. But even these events drew on the support, both financial and in voluntary personnel, from non-governmental organizations. Indeed, it is difficult to draw a precise line between official and non-official roles in cultural exchange. Even when official sponsorship was indisputable, such as the programs promoted by the Soviet government, this should not always be dismissed as a case of Cold War propaganda. Philip H. Coombs, writing as early as 1964, was able to report that "only some" of Soviet objectives in promoting cultural and educational ex changes were "associated with the cold war," and that there was "heavier emphasis now on genuine intellectual, technical, and artistic exchange without immediate ideological connotations."27 During the 1960s, the Bolshoi Ballet, the Leningrad Orchestra, and a number of other artistic organizations toured Western Europe, North America, and Asia, and NGOs in the host countries provided their hospitality and logistical support. And these countries in turn sent some of their best musicians, artists, and dancers on tours of the Soviet Union and its allies.

Cultural exchanges among the industrial democracies, and between devel oped and developing nations were even more impressive. Of the former category, it would suffice to note that in the United States alone a large number of NGOs were established during the 1960s with the primary objective of undertaking educational, intellectual, and professional exchanges. To cite but a few examples, the Academy for Educational Development was established in

26. Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Women's Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women's Rights (Syracuse, 199}), 205.

27. Philip H. Coombs, The Cultural Dimension of Foreign Policy (New York, 1964), 90-93.

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A Century of NGOs : 433

1961, the Citizen Exchange Council in 1962, the International Agricultural Exchange Association in 1963, the American Institute for Foreign Study Foun dation in 1964, the International Research Exchange Board (IREX) in 1968, and the American Secondary Schools for International Students and Teachers in 1969. The exchange programs these organizations undertook were no doubt facilitated by the increasing wealth of the United States and other industrial nations and by technological developments such as the jet aircraft for civilian travels and satellite television communication. (The Intelsat was established in 1964, and the games played at the Tokyo Olympics that year were instantaneously televised abroad through satellite transmission.)

NGOs were also active in promoting exchange and communication between advanced and developing nations. A large number of universities in the West organized area studies programs to better understand non-Western civiliza tions, and Western scholars and students, equipped with the newest theories and survey techniques provided by the social sciences, conducted their research in remote parts of the world. Liberal developmentalism, a key intellectual formulation of the 1960s in the United States, was not a tool of the Cold War,

as is often alleged, but an essential part of the American Century agendas, something that preceded the Cold War. To be sure, the two could be concep tually blurred, at no time more so than during the 1960s when the geopolitics

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cultural networks were tying different parts of the globe closer together. Thus, when in 1961 the U.S. Congress established the Center for Cultural and Tech nical Interchange between East and West (the so-called East-West Center) in Hawaii, it could be seen both as an official organ designed to influence Asian and Pacific opinion and as part of the forces bringing Americans and other people into communication with each other. Instead of viewing one as an aspect of the other, we should see the two - geopolitical and cultural - aspects of international affairs as developments with their respective momentums.

In 1975 the critic Susan Sontag wrote, referring to the worldwide movement against the war in Vietnam, "[The] movement was never significantly political, its understanding was primarily moral, and it took considerable moral vanity to expect that one could defeat the considerations of'Real-politik' mainly by appealing to considerations of 'right' and 'wrong.'"28 That is an apt charac terization or NOO activities and their relationship to the geopolitics or the 1960s. Sontag was correctly pointing to the dual structure of international affairs, power-political and moral. In the context of our discussion, the moral would include the cultural, the private, the non-governmental. Neither moral forces nor NGOs succeeded in determining the shape of geopolitics, but that does not mean they were not as real as the "realities" of power politics. To the extent that the state exemplifies the reality of power, and non-state actors the

28. Quoted in Katz, Ban the Bomb, 122.

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434 : diplomatic history

realities of morality and culture, there could have been no "American Century" without the latter.

The picture is even clearer for more recent decades. There has been a veritable explosion in the number of NGOs, both of domestic and international varieties. That there are today over one million NGOs in the United States alone is, perhaps, less surprising than the fact that in so many non-Western and formerly socialist states large numbers of them have emerged in the last couple of decades. And many of them seem to be inspired by the same forces that de Tocqueville and Bryce recognized in the early American republic: citizens' search for autonomy, their promotion of reciprocity, their diminishing trust in

governmental authority, and, in short, their commitment to developing a civil society. Thus, American voluntary associations have often served as a model, as have U.S. philanthropic foundations and research institutions. In the inter national realm, the total number of INGOs has reached some twenty thousand, with hundreds of thousands of local branches all over the world. The whole

globe is linked together by the networks established by INGOs. Not all INGOs, to be sure, contribute to the making of one world. Terrorist

organizations, drug trafficking syndicates, or exclusionary ethnic or religious bodies are anti-globalist and divisive. They oppose, often with force, the efforts of INGOs engaged in humanitarian and other activities. Moreover, the very fact that the vast majority of INGOs are committed to making the world more interdependent, more habitable, and more just impresses some - those on both sides of the ideological spectrum in all parts of the world - as subversive of local interests and loyalties. Some argue that because the phenomenal growth of INGOs is an aspect of the globalizing tendencies of our time, they in effect serve as agents of global processes that are fundamentally exploitative in nature; while others vehemently deny that NGOs of whatever variety, because their leaders are not chosen by the electorate, have any authority to speak on behalf of public opinion anywhere. These are valid arguments, and we shall need much more research into the workings of NGOs in order to develop a balanced perspective on the relationship between NGOs and governance, and in par ticular between INGOs and international order.

In the context of the American Century in relation to contemporary world history, however, it is clear that our understanding of that concept must incorporate the exponential growth of INGOs in the last decades. While, since the 1970s, they have continued to carry out tasks such as humanitarian relief, developmental assistance, and cultural exchange, the recent years have wit nessed particular emphasis placed on more politically sensitive agendas, such as the preservation of wildlife, the protection of the natural environment, and the promotion of interracial justice and other human rights. Perhaps this fact suggests growing confidence on the part of INGOs. Certainly, their prestige has risen considerably, even as people's trust in their own government has declined. In 1977 Amnesty International (founded in 1961) received the Nobel Peace Prize, and twenty years later the same recognition was bestowed upon

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A Century of NGOs : 435

the International Lampaign to Ban Landmines. INGOs have played key roles in providing a semblance of order in such strife-riven countries as Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. They have forced states to accept certain guidelines for the protection of the environment and strict rules against the export of ivory. Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and other INGOs have been more willing than governments, than even the United Nations, to speak out against violations of the rights of endangered species or of prison inmates.

What does such a phenomenon have to do with the American Century? The answer will have to be, everything. For the inspiration behind the organization of NGOs, their commitment to activism derived from a moral conception of the world, their humanitarianism, and their support of human (and animal) rights - they come close to defining American "core values," certainly far more than the pursuit of military power or economic wealth, about which there is nothing uniquely "American" or "twentieth century." The NGOs may not yet have created "the first great American Century," to borrow from the last words

in Luce's article, but they are getting there faster than any other force in the world.

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