The Wages of Containment
Foreign Aid, American Grand Strategy, and the Origins of the Developmental State
(further information on my dissertation can be found here)
My dissertation advances a geopolitical explanation for the origins of the “developmental state,” a model of state-led capitalism that studies in Comparative Politics have credited with producing the postwar economic miracles of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. My research contributes to this literature by focusing on the international context for the creation of the developmental state. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that the United States sponsored market capitalism in its foreign economic policy, I demonstrate that the United States supported economic planning in order to facilitate rapid industrialization among its allies in Northeast Asia. I argue that the United States’ interventions among its allies can be attributed to the belief in a long-term Communist threat that began with a period of emergency. I provide support for this thesis using historical case studies based on extensive archival research.
In addition to contributing to the literature in Comparative Politics, my dissertation contributes to the literature in International Relations on the geopolitics of foreign aid. The United States’ support for economic planning in Northeast Asia reflected its strategic interest in allocating its foreign aid efficiently in order to promote economic development. This finding presents a significant contrast with the existing literature. Previous studies have argued that in providing foreign aid to its allies, the United States sought to reward recipients for their political support instead of promoting their economic development. I argue that the precise opposite is the case. Because economic development enhances a country’s military power, the United States used aid to support development among its allies in order to defend them against security threats from the international Communist movement. In contrast, the United States used aid to purchase political support among non-allies whose geopolitical alignment was uncertain. In another chapter from my dissertation, I verify this claim using statistical analysis of an original measure of geopolitical alignment. This analysis yields the highly counterintuitive finding that the United States attached more conditions in its aid to allies than in its aid to non-allies.