abort it somehow. In the mid-1950s, these ideas were developed further. For example, one interesting case was an important study by a prestigious study group headed by William Yandell Eliot, who was the Williams Professor of Government at Harvard. They were also concerned with what Communism is and how it spreads. They concluded accurately that the primary threat of Communism is the economic transformation of the Communist powers “in ways which reduce their willingness and ability to complement the industrial economies of the West.” That is essentially correct and is a good operational definition of “Communism” in American political discourse. Our government is committed to that view. If a government is so evil or unwise as to undertake a course of action of this sort, it immediately becomes an enemy. It becomes a part of the “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” to take over the world, as John F. Kennedy put it. It is postulated that they have been taken over by the Russians if that’s the policy that they appear to be committed to. American policy toward Nicaragua after the 1979 revolution could have been predicted by simply observing that the In May, 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson explained, with regard to Latin America as follows-. “I think that it7s not asking too much to have our little region over here which never has bothered anybody.77 health and education budget of Nicaragua rose rapidly, that an effective land reform program was instituted, and that the infant mortality rate dropped very dramatically, to the point where Nicaragua won an award from the World Health Organization for health achievements (all of this despite horrifying conditions left by the Somoza dictatorship which we had installed and supported, and continued to support to the very end, despite a lot of nonsense to the contrary that one hears). If a country is devoted to policies like I’ve just described it is obviously an enemy. It is part of “the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy”—the Russians are taking it over. And, in fact, it is part of a conspiracy. It is part of a conspiracy to take from us what is ours, namely, “our raw materials,” and a conspiracy to prevent us from “maintaining the disparity,” which of course, must be the fundamental element of our foreign policy. Well, it is obvious that a country of this sort is an enemy—that is, part of “the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy”— and that we have to take drastic measures to ensure that “the rot does not spread,” which is the terminology constantly used by the planners. In fact, when one reads reports of this kind or looks at the health and education statistics—the nutritional level, land reform, and so on—one can understand very well why American hostility to Nicaragua has reached such fanatic, and almost hysterical levels. It follows from the geopolitical conception previously outlined. The people who are committed to these dangerous heresies, such as using their resources for their own purposes or believing that the government is committed to the welfare of its own people and so on, may not be Soviet clients to begin with and, in fact, quite regularly they’re not. In Latin America, they are often members, to begin with, of Bible study groups that become self-help groups, church organizations, peasant organizations, and so on and so forth. But by the time we get through with them, they will be Soviet clients. They will have nowhere else to turn for any minimal form of protection against the terror and violence that we regularly unleash against them if they undertake programs of the kind described. And this is a net gain for American policy. One thing you’ll notice, if you look Clinton St. Quarterly 31
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