glorious chapter in the already glorious traditions of the American States.” Virtually every attempt to bring about any constructive change in this U.S.-constructed Chamber of Horrors has met with a new dose of U.S. violence. The historical record is one of the most shameful stories in modern history and naturally is very little known here, though in a free society it would be well-understood and taught in elementary school in all of its sordid and gruesome detail. Throughout this period the public pose has always been that we are defending ourselves. So, in Vietnam, we are defending ourselves against the Vietnamese when we attack South Vietnam. It’s what Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations called “internal aggression,” another phrase that Orwell would have admired and one that we use quite commonly. “Internal aggression,” meaning, aggression by the Vietnamese against us, in Vietnam— and we’ve often had to defend ourselves against that kind of internal aggression. Nicaragua today is another case. So, for example, when our mercenary army attacks Nicaragua, we argue that this is defense—that we are defending Mexico, Central America, and ultimately ourselves from Russian imperialism or “internal aggression.” Well, it’s interesting to look at that in the light of history. Virtually everything that is now happening has happened before, in corresponding or very similar forms. Our historical amnesia prevents us from seeing that. Everything looks new and therefore we don’t understand it. It must just be a stupid error. So, for example, in the late 1920s, President Coolidge sent the Marines once again to Nicaragua. At that time we were defending Nicaragua against Mexico, now we are defending Mexico against Nicaragua. At that time we were defending Nicaragua against Russian imperialism when we sent the Marines that time, eventually ending up with the ' establishment of the Somoza dictatorship. President Coolidge, in fact, said, “Mexico was on trial before the world,” when he sent the Marines into Nicaragua at that time. Notice that the bottom line remains the same as the cast of characters changes: Kill Nicaraguans. What did we do before we had the Bolsheviks to defend ourselves against? For example, when Wilson sent the Marines to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, that was before the Bolshevik revolution, so we couldn’t be defending ourselves against Russian imperialism. Well, then we were defending ourselves against the Huns. The hand of the Huns was particularly obvious in Haiti. If you look back, the Marine Commander there, Marine Commander Thorpe, explained that “the handwork of the German” was evident here because of the kind of resistance that the “niggers” were putting up. Obviously, they couldn’t be doing it on their own so there must be German direction. The same sentiments were expressed throughout. So for example, in the Dominican Republic the resistance was being carried out by the people who Theodore Roosevelt had, during an earlier intervention, called “damned Dagoes,” or by “spigs,” “coons,” “higs,” in the terms that are regularly used to describe the people against whom we’re defending ourselves, the perpetrators of such “internal aggression.” Well let's go back a little further, because self-defense is deeply rooted in American history. In the 19th century, when we were wiping out the Native American population, we were defending ourselves against savage attacks from British and Spanish sanctuaries in Canada and Florida and therefore we had to take over Florida, and we had to take the West to defend ourselves from these attacks. In 1846 we were compelled to defend ourselves against Mexico. That aggression began deep inside Mexican territory, but again, that was self-defense against Mexican aggression. We had to take about a third of Mexico in the process, including California where the explanation was that it was a preemptive strike. The British were about to take it over, and, in self-defense, we had to beat them to it. And so it goes, all the way back. The Evil Empire changes, but the truth of the matter remains about the same. And if American history were actually taught, people would know these things. This is the core of American history. Let me return to Kennan’s formula, “human rights, the raising of the living If a tiny, nothing-country with no natural resources like Grenada can begin to extricate itselffrom the system of misery and oppression that we rve helped to impose, then others who have even more resources might be tempted to do likewise. standards, and democratization,” considering now Latin America. I want to consider the question that I raised before: are they really irrelevant to our policy the way he suggested they ought to be? Let’s take a closer look. Take human rights. Now actually, that’s an empirical question. You can study how American foreign policy is related to human rights, and it has been studied for Latin America and elsewhere. The leading American specialist on human rights in Latin America, Lars Schoultz, has a study published in Comparative Politics, January 1981, in which he investigated exactly that question. He asked how the human rights climate in a country correlated with American aid. He chose a very narrow conception of human rights, what he called, “anti-torture rights,” that is, the right to be free from torture by the government and so on. And, in fact, he found there is a relationship between human rights and American foreign policy: namely, the more the human rights climate deteriorates, the more American aid increases. The correlation was furthermore strong. There was no correlation between American aid to need. This aid included military aid and it went on right through the Carter administration. To use his words, he said that “aid has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens,” to “the hemisphere’s relatively egregious violators of fundamental human rights.” This might suggests that Kennan understated the case: human rights are not irrelevant, rather, we have a positive hatred of them. We send aid to precisely those governments which torture their citizens, and the more effectively they do so, the more we’ll aid them. At least that’s what the evidence shows in this and other studies. A correlation isn’t a theory. It’s not an explanation. We still need an explanation, and number of them come to mind. One possible explanation would be that the American leadership just likes torture. So the more a government tortures its citizens the more we will aid them. That’s a possible explanation, but it’s an unlikely one. The real explanation is probably Kennan’s: that is, it is irrelevant. Human rights are irrelevant. What we like is something else. There have been other studies that suggest a theory to explain the correlation. There’s one by a co-author of mine, Edward Herman, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, who investigated the same sort of thing that Schoultz studied, but on a worldwide basis. Herman again found the same correlation: the worse the human rights climate, the more American aid goes up. But he also carried out another study which gives you some insight into what's really happening. He compared American aid to changes in the investment climate, the climate for business operations, as measured, for example, by whether foreign firms can repatriate profits and that sort of thing. It turned out there was a very close correlation. The better the climate for business operations, the more American aid—the more we support the foreign government. That gives you a plausible theory. American foreign policy is in fact based on the principle that human'rights is irrelevant, but that improving the climate for foreign business operations is highly relevant. In fact, that flows from the central geopolitical conception. Now, how do you improve the business climate in a Third World country? Well, it’s easy. You murder priests, you torture peasant organizers, you destroy popular organizations, you institute mass murder and repression to prevent any popular organization. And that improves the investment climate. So there's a secondary correlation between American aid and the deterioration of human rights. It’s entirely natural that we should tend to aid countries that are egregious violators of fundamental human rights and that torture their citizens, and that’s indeed what we find. Well, so much for human rights. What about raising the living standards? In Latin America there has been economic growth. If you look, the GNP keeps going up but at the same time, typically, there is increased suffering and starvation for a very large part of the population. So, in one case, Brazil, the most important Latin American country, there has been what was called an “economic miracle” in the last couple of decades, ever since we destroyed Brazilian democracy by supporting a military coup in 1964. The support for the coup was initiated by Kennedy but finally carried to a conclusion by Johnson. The coup was called by Kennedy’s ambassador, Lincoln Gordon, “the single most decisive victory for freedom in the mid-tweYitieth century.” We installed the first really major National Security State, Nazi-like State, in Latin America, with high-technology torture and so on. Gordon called it “totally democratic,” “the best government Brazil ever had.” And that, in turn, had a significant domino effect in Latin America; Brazil is an important country. Well, there was an economic miracle and there was an increase in the Gross National Product. There was also an increase in suffering for much of the population. So, for example, here are some statistics from a Brazilian scientific journal concerning Rio de Janeiro, which is far from the poorest area in Brazil. The figures on malnutrition for children showed that from 0 to 2.5 months, two-thirds of them suffered severe malnutrition, from 5 to 12 months, 40 percent, from 12 months to 2.5 years, 10 percent. Now, why do the figures go down? Well, you can figure that out: they die. The children die, therefore the figures go down. That’s in Rio de Janeiro as one consequence of “the most decisive victory for freedom in the mid-twentieth century.” And that story is duplicated throughout much of Latin America, where the United States has successfully intervened, from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, to Nicaragua and Guatemala and so on. So much for the second element, raising of the living standards. What about democratization? Well, we’ve repeatedly intervened to overthrow democratic governments. This is understandable. The more a country is democratic, the more it is likely to be responsive to the public, and, hence, committed to the dangerous doctrine that “the government has a direct responsibility for the welfare of the people,” and, therefore, not devoted to the transcendent needs of Big Brother. Therefore, we have to do something about it. Democracy of O.K. but only as long as we can control it and be sure that it comes out the way we want, just as the Russians permit democratic elections in Poland. That is the typical history. So, in Guatemala, the government was democratic but out of control, so we had to overthrow it. Similarly in Chile under Allende. Or take the Dominican Republic, which has long been the beneficiary of our solicitous care. Woodrow Wilson began a major counterinsurgency campaign which ended in the early 1920’s and which led to the Trujillo dictatorship, one of the most brutal and vicious and corrupt dictatorships that we managed to install in Latin America. In the early 1960’s it looked as though there was going to be a move towards democracy. There was, in fact, a democratic election in 1962. Juan Bosch was elected, a liberal democrat. The Kennedy Administration was very cool. The way it reacted is interesting. (You have to understand that the U.S. so totally dominates these countries that the U.S. embassy essentially runs them.) The American embassy blocked every effort that Bosch made to organize public support. So, for example, land reform, labor organizing, anything that could have developed public support against a military which was pretty certain to try another coup—any such effort was blocked by the Kennedy Administration. As a result, the predicted military coup took place and Washington, which was essentially responsible for the success of the coup, shortly after it, recognized the new government. A typical military dictatorship of the type we like was established. In 1965, there was a coup by liberal, reformist officers, a constitutionalist coup, which threatened to restore democracy in the Dominican Republic, so we intervened again. That time we simply sent troops. A bloody and destructive war took place, many thousands of people were killed and we again succeeded in establishing a terror-and-torture regime. The country was also, incidentally, brought totally within the grip of American corporations. The Dominican Republic was virtually bought up by Gulf and Western and other corporations after the coup. The country was totally demoralized. It was, in fact, subjected to terror and suffering, crushing poverty and so on. So then we could have elections, because it was guaranteed that nothing would happen. They can even elect social democrats for all we care, the basic results having been achieved. The government would never be able to accomplish anything for its population, that is, for that part of the population which had not been killed or Clinton St. Quarterly 33
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz