For Andy Fox and Chris Alger

I can't continue the threads below tonight as I must go out soon. I think we are having some valuable discussions. I may have isolated one of the primary causes for our different views on certain issues. Put simply, I believe I view the threats posed by the Soviet Union as being far worse than you do, and I am therefore willing to make greater allowances. Of course a lot of US policy in Latin America was probably wrong. Of course Nixon was a crook. I know you guys also know the former USSR was bad, but I view the former USSR as being truly terrible--on a par with the Nazis--and I believe that a world taken over by the USSR could have possibly been as terrible as a world taken over by the Nazis (different of course, but possibly just as terrible, although in somewhat different ways). So we may never agree on some of these issues, in part due to our different assessments of the designs and horrors of Soviet-style totalitarianism.

Andy seems reasonable. Don't bother trying to discuss anything with Chris Alger. He's one of those people that thinks the USA is evil. and Al Queda is a bunch of freedom fighters.

I agree that a world taken over by the Soviet Union would have been horrific. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with United States policy in Central America. The Soviet Union was not instrumentally involved. We were told that they were, but this was a flat out lie. As a result of this lie, since 1954 200,000 civilian forces have died at the hands of the internal security forces of Guatemala, largely equipped and trained by the United States. This had nothing at all to do with stopping the Soviet Union from taking over the world.


I know I said I would let you have the last word, and I will. I'll let this go with your next response tomorrow.

. . .in the origins of our policy in Guatemala, and documentation for my statements about our policy, there are a number of excellent books which are well written and good reads:


Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala 1952-1954 by Nick Cullather


Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer


Shattered Hope: The Guatemala Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 by Piero Gleijeses


Managing the Counterrevolution: The United Staes and Guatemala, 1954-1961 by Stephen M. Streeter


[apparently if your name is Stephen you go into Guatemalan studies]


The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention by Richard Immerman [the least interesting read of these, IMO, despite the provocative title]

Guatemala may have been a lie; I really don't know. However not all the US involvement in Latin America was based on lies; the Sandinistas were communists, they had Soviet advisors and Soviet arms and the Soviets were indeed looking to expand their power in the region--for a crystal clear example of their success along similar lines, look no further than Cuba. The US may have been misled in some instances and may also have even misled the American public somewhat, but I don't buy that ALL of the USA's involvement in Latin America was based on lies and had nothing to do with actually stopping the Soviet expansionist empire. Certainly some of it may have been misguided or otherwise wrong, but I don't believe it ALL was.

Some rhetorical questions:


If communism leads to subversion and world domination, why was there a Sino-Soviet split? If communism leads to subervsion and world domination, why has the world's largest and arguable most communist country been given most favored nation status for trade with the U.S.? Why didn't the fall of Vietnam also lead to the fall of Indonesia, Thailand and other "dominos" and, indeed, why did the fall of Vietnam have no effect at all on U.S. national security or national security policy? If Cuba is a threat to the security of the mainland U.S., how have U.S. marines remained there since Castro's earliest days? If U.S. defense spending since 1947 resulted from a "Cold War," why has defense spending increased even though the Cold War is over (we even won it!), even though every "rogue state" invoked to justify current defense expenditures existed during the Cold War, when they were generally more powerful and more hostile toward the U.S. than they are today (e.g., Cuba, N. Korea, Libya, Iran)?


You simply cannot fit the idea that U.S. foreign policy has ever been the result of a communist threat to take over or dominate the world with the basic facts about the U.S. and the world. So where's the evidence that ties the ideology to the facts? Not Eastern Europe, the pathway that German armies took to kill 30 million Russians in the first half of the century. The existence of Russian vassal states hardly proves that the Russians ever wanted to conquer the world, and certainly not that "communism" compelled them to try. If you think for a second about what it would take for any one state to control the rest of the world, or even the Western World, you can't imagine anything more sophisticated than the unintentional farce of Jack Webb's pseudo-documentary, "Red Nightmare."


Nor do you see references to communists or Russians trying or hoping to "take over the world" in the academic and specialist literature about U.S. foreign policy. Instead, you read things like this:


"The USSR's demise has .... forced the American foreign policy elite to be more candid in articulating the assumptions of American strategy. Underpining U.S. world order strategy is the belief that America must maintain what is in essence a military protectorate in economically critical regions to ensure that America's vital trade and finacial relations will not be disrupted by political upheaval."


This isn't some lefty crackpot, it's Senior Cato Institute fellow Christopher Layne with Benjamin Schwartz of RAND writing for the flagship of the Foreigin Policy intelligentsia, Foreign Policy, in Fall 1993. It's not about defending abstractions like "freedom" from abstractions like "communism," but about the real nuts and bolts of concrete foreign interests: access to markets, raw materials, financial stability and the free flow of capital and goods. No country needs these things more than the U.S., and no country fights harder or dirtier to preserve them.


This has nothing to do directly with Central America, with it's few important resources and small U.S. investment. On the other hand, the international system that the U.S. constructed after WWII is premised on private property onwership and the domination of states by dominant property owners (e.g., corporations), a system which has proven both resilient and subject to severe tension and instability, usually because the populations of the lesser developed countries don't see much benefit to it. It therefore important for the U.S. to prevent successful alternative political systems. Since any alternative to the preferred model involves some form of state intervention in the economy for the benefit of the people, it is easy for the U.S. to label even the most democratic regimes, such as Allende's Chile and Guatemala under Arbenz as "communist" and therefore worthy of the most brutal subversion in the name of self-defense.


None of this suggests that there's some sort of conspiracy of foreign policy elites to trick the public about U.S. foreign policy. There are verying degrees of sophistication. Most Americans traditionally know and care little about the rest of the world, although their acquiesence and support, even if tacit, is necessary in a fairly democratic country. The Cold War (and the all-purpose "Munich apeasement analogy") therefore became the pardigm, the distortive lens, through which policy makers have explained a complicated world to ordinary Americans, to give them a sense that they have a moral and material stake in the outcome of world affairs, and to convince them to make the huge sacrifices and tolerate unconscionable brutality to protect the foreign interests of a relative few.

Chris,


Your post raises too many points to address easily but I did just that---then lost the screen. So here's my briefest response:


1. Domino theory doesn't have to work in every case to still work at times or have an effect


2. Land-based missiles nearby (e.g. Cuba) are indeed more dangerous than sub-based missiles and they also constitute an additional threat (you raised this question in another post). Land-based missiles are always in position for attack; subs aren't. Nearby land-based missiles can strike with almost no warning compared to ICBM's.


3. Cato institute fellow said something else 2 days ago on radio---omg---he said we don't need to spend money on weapon systems for fighting large-scale wars because we will most likely be fighting smaller wars like Afghanistan. My view is that we may need to shift the balance of our spending, not eliminate it in one area altogether. What if we do end up having to fight a large war? And this guy is a Fellow??? I think ki'll take Cato recommendations with a grain of salt from now on.


4. Communism itself in pure ideological form may not be inherently evil. It really hasn't been tested in pure form yet. It may be unworkable and it may have flaws which make it more susceptible to authoritarian manipulation and control--that's my guess but I can't be sure. However Soviet-style communism was indeed evil, in its marriage to a totalitarian regime, as is Sino communism.


5. The Soviet empire was expansionist. Rhetorical question: what did Khruschev mean when he told our President, "We will bury you." ?


6. Free access to goods, capital and markets may indeed benefit the USA the most--I don't know--but it benefits everybody else too.


7. Free enterprise and democracy are lousy systems, full of holes and problems. It's just that they're the best lousy systems humans have ever tried. Communism on the other hand has been tried and failed numerous times, and for some strange reason almost always seems to go hand-in-hand with totalitarianism.

1. Domino Theory


There are two "domino theories." The one for crude propaganda and public consumption paints lesser developed countries as pretty much alike, ripe for takeover any time another country in the region "goes communist." Using this model, you pretty much ignore the dynamics and history unique to every country, you just find some form of "communist" influence (AK-47's, for example) and jump to the conclusion that the Russians are storming another beachhead. It is to serious discussions of foreign policy what Sunday school is to theology, oversimplification to the point of lying). You don't find many domino theorists like this in planning circles or in the think tanks or schools, although you used to see it in the right-wing press all the time.


A more rational version is also rarely discussed explicity (although explicit examples abound): if any alternative development model to that demanded by the U.S. were to succeed and prosper independently from Western markets and capital, the demonstration effect on potential revolutionaries, progressive politicians, labor unions and the like, to say nothing of the impoverished masses of these countries, could hurt the long-term interests of private capital and finance. When you read policy papers that refer to "our interests" or "American interests," this is what they're referring to, not whether the U.S. or any country will be forced into a dictatorship.


You said theory doesn't have to work every time. Well, is has to work once, doesn't it? You can't think of a single instance where a successful communist revolution has been exported to another country? Eastern Europe? No revolutions there, just the Red Army dictating terms, invading as necessary to maintain the status quo. N. Vietnam to Cambodia? They went to war with each other.


2. Land-based missiles. They have nothing to do with anything. You never see the U.S. saying, in effect, "your politics are your own but we need a verifiable agreement (like the one with Cuba) that precludes you from basing offensive weapons near our border." It's not a realistic threat, and you never see it discussed when the planning documents are declassified.


3. The bad things about actually-existing communism. I agree with you here, although the political conditions in many non-communist countries are often even worse.


4. Expansionism of the Soviet Empire and "we will bury you."


All empires are expansionist; this doesn't mean they aim to conquer the four corners of the globe.


Krushchev wasn't referring to a pile of radioactive rubble, but who would win the economic and political race. BTW, Krushchev's vision of the future, that Russia would provide the more popular model, was a serious worry to some conservative intellectuals in the west, in light of what appeared to be enormous stides in the Soviet Union's development during the 1950's and the growing acceptance by the west of socialst and quasi-socialst institutions. You see it, for example, in the 1962 novel "Clockwork Orange."


5. Free access to goods, capital and markets may indeed benefit the USA the most.


It's debatable, or at least it would be in a society that wasn't smothered by propaganda. But even if it's so, note that this is the way that organized criminals think before launching turf wars. And that's really what this is all about. It's about the aggrandizement of power and wealth for the benefit of the few and the detriment of the many. It's the ugly reality that forces politicians and pundits to constantly emphasize the assumption that our motives, though sometimes flawed, are pure and good at heart. Otherwise it's fairly difficult to convince large groups of people -- perhaps Americans in particular -- to risk their lives and those of others over money or oil.

..And to think that poker players engage in philosophy only when fondling greasy chips, breathing carcinogen smoke and lying to each other.

The above view borders on a communist perspective. Anarchy sounds more on the mark. Given your proclivity to detest Israel, I'd say that your more than likely a believer in radical Islam. A Islamic theocracy ruled by Osama seems to be your ideal system.


Oh, I am not Ray Springfield. He makes far more spelling and typing mistakes than I do.

Now the USA is run by organized criminals, and offshore anonymous fly by night shell banks are legitimate buinessmen.


I can't figure out if you are a communist, or just flat insane. I think it's closer to Maoist

communism than anything else. Mao is out, even in china.

I wish more people were as articulate about the lies and deceptions that the US has offered in citizenry as rationalization to dominate others for the sake of private property. My second wish was that these people's ideas about different ways of social and economic organization were given the validity they deserve by those who might disagree with them. Then we could have some real, open debate our world outside of the rhetoric of demonization, dehuminization and deception that makes everyone with a different idea seem like a threat to national security. The only result from this cycle is less debate, the most undemocratic result imaginable.


KJS

I really don't believe that the free enterprise system, and free access to goods and markets, is about aggrandizement of wealth for the benefits of few and the detriments of many, as you put it.


I believe it primarily produces benefits, not detriments, for many, although it does produce even greater benefits for few.

Well let's hope the debate spreads to communist China, where such internet discussions can land the participants in jail.

Mao is out, but much of the evil he set in motion still remains. It's actually too bad Mao wasn't "taken out" before he managed to murder millions of his own countrymen in the greatest engineered famine in history in 1961. Strange how communism and totalitarianism always seem to go hand in hand.

I agree with you. It's strange that the heaviest critics of the USA never offer any superior system.

U.S. foreign policy isn't about maintaining free enterprise (you would hardly call enterprise in the PRC "free"), it's about maintaining the property rights and privileges of the dominent actors, the ones that fund the political selection process. It makes little difference to "free enterprise" or the average consumer as to who these actors are, but it makes a huge difference to the corporations, banks, insurance companies and the like that comprise them. For example, when the U.S. toppled the Guatemalan democracy at the direct behest of the United Fruit Company, the travails of this company made no difference at all to fruit-consuming Americans, the fruit would have been sold for what the market could bear regardless of who the middleman was. When the U.S. threatened trade sanctions against Thailand in retalliation for the Thai's efforts at limiting cigarette imports to cope with their lung cancer epidemic, the interests of typical Americans were barely implicated, but the tobacco companies had a great deal at stake. So when I say the benefits of a few, I mean very, very few.