Reflect: The Ugly American - 1958 Irony 2025
In the form of a novel, Lederer and Burdick were making a policy argument — that the United States was doing foreign affairs in south-east Asia all wrong. Set aside smug superiority, they urged. Stop lecturing. Be curious. Learn. Be helpful. Make a real difference. That is how — to borrow a phrase from a later era — America will win hearts and minds.
And keep the Communists out.
...
The controversy wasn’t limited to foreign policy circles, however. The Saturday Evening Post — the magazine of middle America — serialized the novel. The Ugly American became a huge bestseller, eventually selling more than four million copies.
A young senator by the name of John F. Kennedy was particularly taken with the novel. He bought copies to give to every one of his colleagues in the Senate.
When Kennedy became president in 1961, he created the Peace Corps to advance the vision of Lederer and Burdick. He also collected the various foreign aid programs developed under Dwight Eisenhower and consolidated them into a new agency called the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID.
That’s right. The same USAID Trump, Musk, and Musk’s minions are carving up without so much as a cursory policy review.
Reflect: The #UglyAmerican - 1958 Irony 2025 - US foreign policy
