Year 501 (8 page)

The South is assigned a service role: to provide resources, cheap labor, markets, opportunities for investment and, lately, export of pollution. For the past half-century, the US has shouldered the responsibility for protecting the interests of the “satisfied nations” whose power places them “above the rest,” the “rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations” to whom “the government of the world must be entrusted,” as Winston Churchill put the matter after World War II.

US interests are therefore understood in global terms. The primary threat to these interests is depicted in high-level planning documents as “radical and nationalistic regimes” that are responsive to popular pressures for “immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses” and development for domestic needs. These tendencies conflict with the demand for “a political and economic climate conducive to private investment,” with adequate repatriation of profits (NSC 5432/1, 1954) and “protection of our raw materials” (George Kennan). For such reasons, as was recognized in 1948 by the clear-sighted head of the State Department Policy Planning staff, “We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization,” and must “deal in straight power concepts,” not “hampered by idealistic slogans” about “altruism and world-benefaction,” if we are to maintain the “position of disparity” that separates our enormous wealth from the poverty of others (Kennan).

The profoundly anti-democratic thrust of US policy in the Third World, with the recurrent resort to terror to eliminate “the political participation of the numerical majority,” is readily understandable. It follows at once from the opposition to “economic nationalism,” which is, quite commonly, an outgrowth of popular pressures and organization. Such heresies must therefore be extirpated. Entirely independent of the Cold War, these have been salient features of policy; notoriously, the savage and destructive policies of the past decade, which are, accordingly, hailed for bringing democracy and a new respect for human rights to the world, exactly as one would expect in a well-behaved intellectual culture.

The domestic analogue is apparent, though other devices are needed to tame the “bewildered herd” at home.
1

As discussed earlier, “free trade” is highly regarded by those who expect to win the competition, though honored in the breach when interests so dictate. Correspondingly, opposition to economic nationalism (for others) is virtually a reflex among global planners. It became a primary theme of US policy after its own resort to protectionism, import substitution, and other such “ultranationalist” methods enabled the US to play the game successfully. By the mid-1940s, US dominance had reached extraordinary levels. The virtues of economic liberalism were therefore extolled with much fervor, in tandem with calls for extending the huge state subsidies for domestic enterprise. The only problem was how to help backward minds appreciate the merits of policies that would serve US interests splendidly.

At the Chapultepec (Mexico) hemispheric conference in February 1945, the US called for “An Economic Charter of the Americas” that would eliminate economic nationalism “in all its forms.” This policy stood in sharp conflict with the Latin American stand, which a State Department officer described as “The philosophy of the New Nationalism [that] embraces policies designed to bring about a broader distribution of wealth and to raise the standard of living of the masses.” State Department Political Adviser Laurence Duggan wrote that “Economic nationalism is the common denominator of the new aspirations for industrialization. Latin Americans are convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources should be the people of that country.” The US position, in contrast, was that the “first beneficiaries” should be US investors, while Latin America fulfills its service function. It should not undergo “excessive industrial development” that infringes on US interests, the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations held.
2

Given the power relations, the US position prevailed.

With regard to Asia, the principles were first given a definitive form in an August 1949 draft of NSC 48, Bruce Cumings observes. The basic principle it enunciated was “reciprocal exchange and mutual advantage.” A corollary, again, is opposition to independent development: “none of [the Asian countries] alone has adequate resources as a base for general industrialization.” India, China, and Japan may “approximate that condition,” but no more. Japan's prospects were regarded as quite limited: it might produce “knick-knacks” and other products for the underdeveloped world, a US survey mission concluded in 1950, but nothing more. Though doubtless infused by racism, such conclusions were not entirely unrealistic before the Korean war revived Japan's stagnating economy. “General industrialization in individual countries could be achieved only at a high cost as a result of sacrificing production in fields of comparative advantage,” the draft continued. The US must find ways of “exerting economic pressures” on countries that do not accept their role as suppliers of “strategic commodities and other basic materials,” the germ of later policies of economic warfare, Cumings observes.

Prospects for development in Africa were never taken seriously, White Africa aside. For the Middle East, the major concern was that the energy system be in US hands, operating in the manner designed by the British: local management would be delegated to an “Arab Façade,” with “absorption” of the colonies “veiled by constitutional fictions as a protectorate, a sphere of influence, a buffer State, and so on,” a device more cost-effective than direct rule (Lord Curzon and the Eastern Committee, 1917-1918). But we must never run the risk of “losing control,” as John Foster Dulles warned. The Façade would therefore consist of family dictatorships that keep pretty much to what they are told, and ensure the flow of profits to the US, its British client, and their energy corporations. They are to be protected by regional enforcers, preferably non-Arab (Turkey, Israel, Iran under the Shah, Pakistan), with British and US muscle in reserve. The system has operated with reasonable efficiency over a considerable period, and has new prospects today with secular nationalist forces in the Arab world in utter disarray, and the Soviet deterrent removed.
3

The basic themes of internal planning sometimes reach the public, as when the editors of the
New York Times
, applauding the overthrow of the parliamentary Mossadegh regime in Iran, observed that “Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.” The service areas must be protected from “Bolshevism” or “Communism,” technical terms that refer to social transformation “in ways that reduce their willingness and ability to complement the industrial economies of the West,” in the words of an important scholarly study of the 1950s. Most important, the historical record conforms very well to this commonly articulated understanding of the role of the South.
4

“Radical and nationalistic regimes” are intolerable in themselves, even more so if they appear to be succeeding in terms that might be meaningful to oppressed and suffering people. In that case they become a “virus” that might “infect” others, a “rotten apple” that might “spoil the barrel.” For the public, they are “dominoes” that will topple others by aggression and conquest; internally, the absurdity of this picture is often (not always) conceded, and the threat is recognized to be what Oxfam once called “the threat of a good example,” referring to Nicaragua. When Henry Kissinger warned that the “contagious example” of Allende's Chile would “infect” not only Latin America but also southern Europe, sending to Italian voters the message that democratic social reform was a possible option, he did not anticipate that Allende's hordes would descend upon Rome. Although the Sandinista “Revolution without Borders” was a spectacularly successful government-media fraud, the propaganda images reflected an authentic concern: from the perspective of a hegemonic power and its intellectual servants, declaration of an intent to provide a model that will inspire others—the actual source of the imagery—amounts to aggression.
5

When a virus is detected, it must be destroyed, and potential victims immunized. The Cuban virus called forth invasion, terror, and economic warfare, and a rash of National Security States to prevent the rot from spreading. The story was the same in Southeast Asia in the same years. The standard approach to the virus itself is a two-track policy, as in the case of Allende's Chile. The hard line called for a military coup, finally achieved. The soft line was explained by Ambassador Edward Korry, a Kennedy liberal: to “do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty, a policy designed for a long time to come to accelerate the hard features of a Communist society in Chile.” Hence even if the hard line did not succeed in introducing fascist killers to exterminate the virus, the vision of “utmost deprivation” would suffice to keep the rot from spreading, and ultimately demoralize the patient itself. And crucially, it would provide ample grist for the mill of the cultural managers, who can produce cries of anguish at “the hard features of a Communist society,” pouring scorn on those “apologists” who describe what is happening. The point was made clearly by Bertrand Russell in his bitterly critical account of Bolshevik Russia in its early days:

Every failure of industry, every tyrannous regulation brought about by the desperate situation, is used by the Entente as a justification of its policy. If a man is deprived of food and drink, he will grow weak, lose his reason, and finally die. This is not usually considered a good reason for inflicting death by starvation. But where nations are concerned, the weakness and struggles are regarded as morally culpable, and are held to justify further punishment.

There is, evidently, much satisfaction to be gained by careful inspection of those who are writhing under our boot, to see if they are behaving properly; when they are not, as is often the case, indignation is unconstrained. Far worse atrocities of our own, or of our “moderate” and “improving” clients, are merely an aberration, soon to be overcome.
6

To introduce further technical terminology, “rotten apples” constitute a threat to “stability.” As Washington prepared to overthrow the first democratic government in Guatemala in 1954, a State Department official warned that Guatemala “has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail.” “Stability” means security for “the upper classes and large foreign enterprises,” and it must naturally be preserved. It is understandable, then, that Eisenhower and Dulles should have felt that the “self-defense and self-preservation” of the United States might be at stake when they were advised that “a strike situation” in Honduras might “have had inspiration and support from the Guatemalan side of the border.”
7

So important is “stability” that “desirable reforms” must not be implemented. In December 1967, Freedom House issued a statement by 14 noted scholars who declared themselves to be “the moderate segment of the academic community,” praising US policies in Asia as “remarkably good,” particularly in Indochina, where our courageous defense of freedom contributed greatly to “political equilibrium in Asia,” improving “the morale—and the policies—of our Asian allies and the neutrals.” The point is illustrated by what they cite as our greatest triumph, the “dramatic changes” that took place in Indonesia in 1965, when the army, encouraged by our stand in Indochina, took matters in hand and slaughtered several hundred thousand people, mostly landless peasants (see chapter 5). Quite generally, the moderate scholars explain, “many types of reform increase instability, however desirable and essential they may be in long-range terms. For people under siege, there is no substitute for security.” The terms “people,” “stability,” etc., have their usual PC meanings.

Many noted scholars agreed with MIT political scientist Ithiel Pool that throughout the Third World, “it is clear that order depends on somehow compelling newly mobilized strata to return to a measure of passivity and defeatism.” The same lessons were soon to be drawn by the Trilateral Commission for the population of the West, who were undermining “democracy” by attempting to enter the arena of democratic politics instead of keeping to their “function” as “spectators,” as their betters run the show.
8

Such thinking is pervasive, and understandable. It will persist, as long as threats to order and stability remain. The continuities are apparent, and quite independent of the Cold War. After the Gulf War, when the Cold War was lost as a pretext beyond hope of resurrection, George Bush returned to support for his old friend and ally Saddam Hussein as he crushed the Shi'ites in the South and then the Kurds in the North. Western ideologues explained that although these atrocities offend our delicate sensibilities, we must nevertheless accept them in the name of “stability.” The chief diplomatic correspondent of the
New York Times
, Thomas Friedman, outlined Bush Administration reasoning: Washington seeks “the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein,” a return to the days when Saddam's “iron fist held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia,” not to speak of the boss in Washington. Saddam Hussein committed his first serious crime on August 2, 1990, when he disobeyed orders. Therefore he must be destroyed, but some clone must be found to ensure “stability.” In accord with the same doctrines, the Iraqi democratic opposition was barred from contact with Washington, hence from the mainstream US media, throughout the crisis (and, indeed, before and after). It was not until summer 1992, in the context of electoral concerns, that the Bush Administration opened limited contacts with Iraqi democrats.
9