Tuesday, November 12, 1996
STATECRAFT:
Too often, principles are sacrificed for power, economic gain"It
is better to be feared than loved."
-Niccolo Machiavelli
(due to excessive editing against my will, this piece is about
1/3 shorter than my original. E-mail me for additional evidence or
info: [email protected])
My main difficulty for this column will be to present my
argument without coming off like a complete radical nut case whom
you can instantly dismiss.
My argument is that contrary to common belief, the United States
is not a generous nation which keeps the peace and follows the
rules. Given the fundamentally amoral nature of the state system,
such a country would quickly lose its power and be destroyed. A
world leader must truly follow the "by any means necessary" school
of thought. In the case of the United States, this means routinely
bending other countries to its will with the help of military power
and economic clout. At times, it even has to resort to mass
slaughter and terrorism.
Let’s start out with a point on which I think we can all agree:
the Gulf War. Despite all of President Bush’s fiery rhetoric about
the immorality of aggression and the failure of appeasement, I
think we all know that we were really fighting for oil, right?
We didn’t lift a finger to stop the aggression and takeover of
Tibet by China or the conquest of East Timor by Indonesia.
Bush’s other rationale, which took us back to Germany and
appeasement, was equally unlikely as a motivation. Like any good
president, Bush compared Saddam Hussein’s attack to Hitler’s
annexation of part of Czechoslovakia, thus inferring that allowing
this action to go unchecked would allow Saddam Hussein to take over
most of the region before tomorrow’s breakfast. The simplest way to
create a frenzy of support for military action is to invoke The Old
and Great Enemy, King Nazi.
Unfortunately, the analogy didn’t hold. While both Hussein and
Hitler were tyrannical murderers, Hitler’s army was both immense
and strong enough to take over Europe while Hussein’s army could
not, even after 10 years of warfare, conquer its neighbor state
Iran. There was no danger of world conquest at the hands of
Iraq.
Since we were obviously going to war for neither moral reasons
nor to prevent World War III, I think it’s safe to assume that we
invaded because we had a vested interest.
So do we agree here? The United States attacked Iraq (whom we
had previously supported and given massive loans and large arms
shipments, with full knowledge of Hussein’s barbarism and
despotism) because he had stepped on our toes. His actions
interfered with U.S. plans, and that was not acceptable.
You can infer a lot from this example. If the United States went
to war for its own interests this time, perhaps some of its other
battles were also for selfish reasons. It comes down to this: at
some point, someone has to make a cold, calculated decision to take
military action. It does not make logical sense for a country to
risk its own resources in the name of principles. Someone decided
that it was in the best interests of the United States to remove
Iraq from Kuwait. Someone also decided that removing China from
Tibet was not worth the costs, or that it was perhaps even against
our own interests.
So why didn’t George Bush just go on television and say, "We’re
going in there for oil!"? Wouldn’t the public understand? Clearly,
for one reason, it’s a lot easier to whip up public support of
cherished principles against a Darth Vader-like villain than it is
to get them excited about a sticky black fluid that comes out of
the ground. Secondly, Americans have this bizarre moral sense that
wouldn’t take kindly to battle in the name of gluttonous
self-interest. These morals puzzle me; you’d think that the public
would realize that statecraft is a nasty, bloody business with
nearly no rules and infinite risk, and that therefore they’d
support any helpful actions. But they don’t. So, in order to
continue its objectives, the government either hides its unpopular
actions or gives the public an acceptable cover story.
Communism was the ultimate cover story. The Soviet Union was
never an actual threat to the United States. The Cold War was
essentially a front to fool the American people into accepting our
global military campaigns.
Popular apologists claim that those nutty guys over at the CIA,
well, they just goofed. Bullshit. The CIA did overestimate the
capacities of the Soviet Union, but not by a hell of a lot. Even
the most conservative estimates put the U.S. military budget at
twice that of the USSR’s and U.S. economic power at four times that
of the Soviet Union. The policy of anti-Communism was a very handy
tool to cover the tracks of immoral acts and it let American
citizens pretend that they weren’t accomplices in the butchery.
According to International Law (a loose series of resolutions
passed by the United Nations that countries break whenever it is
advantageous), a country’s borders are to be respected, meaning
that you don’t mess with another country’s internal state. That’s
off limits. Well, the United States doesn’t follow rules very well.
We have overthrown a number of governments and put our own puppet
leaders in their place; some of these are Panama, Iran, Guatemala
and Chile. Sometimes it is not necessary to actually run these
operations ourselves; often, our government simply throws its
support behind a revolutionary faction. This has happened in El
Salvador, Indonesia, Cambodia and others. But it gets worse.
The government is able to hide these things from its people. It
goes something like this: a portion of the world will somehow
rebuff or hinder American investors in its country. If the
government of that country does not change its ways, America will
make plans. The easiest is to find friends high up in the
government (these friendships are easily gained through sales of
U.S arms) and suggest that we may support their actions, should
they decide that they want to seize power. If these plans are
unsuccessful, then the U.S. often turns to more violent means.
Perhaps the most blatant example of this is the case of
Nicaragua. In the late ’70s, the Sandinistas revolted against the
tyrannical (and U.S.-supported) dictator Anastasio Somoza. After
successfully taking power, the Sandinista government began an
effort to reform unequal land ownership and to provide health care
and education to poor farming families.
However, this government was unfriendly to U.S. business and
foreign investment. As a result, the United States yelled.
"Commie!" and began the assault.
The first rule of American foreign policy is "You will do what
we say."
Since the Nicaraguans were an independent nation, they had to be
taught a lesson. The United States pressured international loan
institutions like the World Bank to stop their loans to Nicaragua,
a very poor country which was making good use of these funds. Worse
yet, we began to attack the people of Nicaragua from within their
own borders via the Contras. The Contras were a mercenary army
trained, funded and organized by the CIA to terrorize the citizens
of Nicaragua, destabilize the government and place the country into
the hands of someone who was more pro-American.
Not only were we cutting off the country from desperately needed
money and sending heavily armed guerrillas to attack farms and
health clinics but, to justify our actions, we lied. We claimed
that we were fighting an evil Communist regime when the Contras
were actually just a band of poor freedom fighters who needed our
help to bring liberty to their people. The U.S. media ate this
propaganda hungrily and soon no other version of the story could be
found on American soil.
Now compare this to El Salvador, a country whose government was
very friendly to American interests. Around the same time that the
Sandinista government was taking power, the United States began
sending aid to El Salvador’s military dictatorship despite the
pleas of that country’s archbishop (who was later gunned down by
government agents while giving mass).
Independent newspapers in the country were regularly bombed and
their editors assassinated. Although the citizens were allowed to
vote, candidates for liberal parties were kidnapped and murdered by
government forces. American media portrayed the "elected" President
Jose Duarte as a patient moderate attempting to lead his country
through difficult times.
Those who fought against his regime were dubbed "terrorists of
the ultra-left."
So we can see that governments who favor the United States
receive funding, positive press for themselves and negative press
for their enemies.
Governments who hinder the United States are subject to terror,
death, starvation, positive press for their enemies and negative
press for themselves.
Many people are shocked by the recent findings of the CIA-drug
connection. The rest of us have known about it for years. The CIA
is a scary organization; it’s the only government agency that does
not need to submit an itemized budget for review, meaning that it
can spend and earn money in any way that it feels is "in the
interests of national security." Of course the idea of American
national security is silly; we are supremely dominant in military
personnel and hardware and there hasn’t been an invading army on
American soil since the early 1800s. National interest means
economic interest.
More recent news has uncovered "illegal foreign campaign
contributions" given to the Democratic party by citizens of
Indonesia, supposedly in an effort to gain Most Favored Nation
status. News anchors make minor mention of Indonesia’s history and
even make passing references to a long-buried atrocity: the
massacre in East Timor. I’ll only mention it briefly here but for
more, read the excellent article by Mariza Cabral in the Oct. 24
Daily Bruin. The essential story is that President Ford went to
Indonesia, who was planning to invade East Timor, and assured its
leader General Suharto that there would be no cuts in the shipments
of arms to Indonesia if any military campaigns should be begun.
Indonesia invaded East Timor and, during the invasion, arms
shipments by the United States actually doubled. East Timor is not
a special example of U.S. treachery unless you consider the
magnitude of destruction: roughly 200,000- 300,000 people of a
population of around 700,000 have been wiped out.
I’ll just let that sink in …
This intense global manipulation began in 1947 after the signing
of the National Security Act, which created the CIA and the
National Security Council. One of the first covert actions under
this new policy took place in 1953, when the CIA overthrew the
Prime Minister of Iran (again, rallying against a
"Communist-influenced" leader) and replaced him with the
pro-American Shah, who was hated by the Iranian people. The CIA
then helped to establish SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police force
 a KGB (the former Russian secret police and intelligence
agency), if you will.
Eventually, the Shah was deposed and replaced by the Ayatollah
Khomeini. He often called the United States "The Great Satan," and
American news portrayed him as a nut case. But can you blame him,
or the people of Iran, for being a little upset?
The next big effort was Operation Success of 1954 in Guatemala.
President Jacobo Arbenz was elected democratically and he
instituted a land reform program that redistributed ownership.
Previously, 3 percent of the population had owned 70 percent of the
nation’s land. This change was undertaken to help the average
tenant farmer out from under the thumb of the rich landowners.
Unfortunately, some of the land that was nationalized had been
owned by the United Fruit Company, an American business. Arbenz
broke an important rule of international politics: don’t mess with
the Americans. The CIA hired mercenaries from Honduras to bomb the
capital. They were successful in unseating the government and the
CIA instituted a new ruler, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas who, of
course, overturned the land reforms. He ruled with an iron fist for
the next 30 years, killing roughly 100,000 people during his
reign.
Now this next segment is not so violent as the others, yet just
as deadly in the long run. It is the system of neo-mercantilism in
which countries like Chile, Costa Rica, Brazil, Ghana and the
Philippines, are turned to economic rubble. This is what happens.
Organizations like the IMF and World Bank will lend money to an
ailing Third World nation. The debtor nation often cannot repay the
loan. This surprises no one, because these countries have little or
no developed resources. So the IMF (which is largely funded by
economically stable countries), in its great benevolence, forgives
part of the debt  for a price. The debtor nation must cut
most of the social programs that help its deprived people (who need
things like food and medical care), pass new laws to make itself
"friendlier to foreign investment" (ending employment standards and
minimum wages so that big United States companies can get cheap
labor) and the people must stop growing sustenance crops to feed
themselves so that they can begin growing cash crops like tobacco.
They have to become a source of raw materials, cheap labor and a
market for U.S. products. This makes perfect sense to a capitalist;
these Third World nations have been foolishly squandering their
money on food and medicine, both of which will not provide an
economic return. Therefore, to make the debtor nation more
economically sound, they must turn towards a more "profitable"
system.
Perhaps this doesn’t seem a big thing to you. Maybe you’re
thinking "at least they have jobs," or "that’s what they get for
reneging on a loan." If so, I hear the Republican party is still
looking for members …
Most of this information is well-documented, although not
popularly so.
Organizations such as Amnesty International, the United Nations,
Organization of American States, Americas Watch, Witnesses for
Peace and many other peace and human rights groups can all testify
to these things.
As always, I invite all of you to discuss these things with me
via e-mail (you too, professors). I certainly hope that anyone who
has either extensively studied these things or has perhaps lived
through them would write to me to validate, or even to destroy, my
assertions. Send e-mail to:
Today’s recommended reading: nearly any political work by Noam
Chomsky. Try "Necessary Illusions," "The Chomsky Reader" or
"Deterring Democracy." There is also Bill Moyers’ somewhat
conservative "The Secret Government." Also check out Z magazine or
Covert Action Quarterly.
Jake Sexton is affiliated with the cultural insurgents of
Subversive Enterprises, International. View their Web page at:
www.geocities.com/Heartland/2484