Presidential Papers, Doc#153 To Walter Bedell Smith, 23 April 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
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Doc #154

Document #153; April 23, 1953
To Walter Bedell Smith
Series: EM, AWF, Dulles-Herter Series
The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIV - The Presidency: The Middle Way
Part I: Charting a New Course; January 1953 to April 1953
Chapter 2: "A number of misunderstandings": Party and International Struggles

 

Memorandum for the Acting Secretary of State: Herewith a memorandum that represents rather accurately my current thinking with respect to Egypt and some of our Mid East problems.1

At your convenience I should like for you to talk to me about these matters.

If this memorandum does, in fact, represent the State Department view as well as my own thinking, it is possible that the British Foreign Office and the Director of our own MSA might both study the paper.2

I should like it returned to my files when it has served its purpose.

1 The page-and-one-half paper (AWF/I: Egypt), dated April 22, was marked in an unknown hand as having come from Eugene Robert Black, a Georgia native who had been president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) since 1949. The memorandum argued that there were two questions in the region "calling for an urgent and definitive solution": (1) the related issues of Sudan, the Suez Canal, and Middle East defense and (2) the connected problems of Israel and of Arab refugees. Egypt clearly was the key to the first problem, Black wrote, and might prove to be an important factor in solving the second as well. He doubted, however, that any Egyptian government could come to terms with these international issues without first building a firm domestic base. "This means at least having made a start with economic policies designed to raise the miserable standard of living of the bulk of the Egyptian people." Black then outlined Egypt's plans for a second dam on the Nile, above Aswan, which would increase cultivable Egyptian land by about one-third, generate electricity, and form part of a fertilizer-producing plant. Black wrote that IBRD alone could not finance the Aswan project; he asked the President whether the United States, perhaps joining with the British, would consider offering Egypt a grant toward the cost of the Aswan dam, "coupled with Egyptian support for a settlement of the urgent political issues mentioned." Egyptian Prime Minister Naguib had requested U.S. aid in building the dam the preceding December (see State, Foreign Relations, 1952-1954, vol. IX, The Near and Middle East, pt. 2, p. 1908).

2 We have found no written comment on the Black memorandum in AWF. In May Dulles and MSA Director Stassen would visit the Middle and Near East, speaking with the Egyptians on May 11 and 12. In those discussions, principally focusing on Egyptian-British tensions and Middle East defense, Naguib mentioned Egypt's expectations of social and economic progress and hope of constructing the Aswan dam (ibid., pt. 1, pp. 3-4; Dulles to Eisenhower, May 18, 1953, AWF/D-H). For further developments see nos. 181 and 206.

Bibliographic reference to this document:
Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Walter Bedell Smith, 23 April 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 153. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/153.cfm

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