US Imperial Planning for "Our Little Region Over Here" (Latin America)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKwJI9axblQ#http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh3o4mPwLEs#By Noam Chomsky
In the words of Diplomatic and CIA Chief Historian,
Gerald K. Haines:QuoteFollowing World War II the United States assumed, out of self-interest, responsibility for the welfare of the world capitalist system. American leaders tried to reshape the world to fit U.S. needs and standards.
Throughout Latin America US policymakers worked to expand U.S. influence. [Washington] sought a favorable climate for US business and private investment, encouraged US access to raw materials (especially oil and other strategic minerals), resisted "excessive industrial development," and they condemned government intervention and interference in the economy.
According to these officials economic nationalism injured U.S. business. They perceived American security and continuing prosperity as being dependant upon the maintenance of a strong international economy with free access to markets and raw materials.
The first principal [of] U.S. foreign policy is designed to create and maintain an international order in which U.S.-based business can prosper, a world of "open societies," meaning societies that are open to profitable investment, to expansion of export markets and transfer of capital, and to exploitation of material and human resources on the part of U.S. corporations and their local affiliates. "Open societies," in the true meaning of the term, are societies that are open to U.S. economic penetration and political control.
Preferably, these "open societies" should have parliamentary democratic forms, but this is a distinctly secondary consideration. Parliamentary forms..are tolerable only as long as economic, social and ideological institutions, and the coercive forces of the state, are firmly in the hands of groups that can be trusted to act in general accord with the needs of those who awn and manage U.S. society.
If this condition is satisfied than parliamentary forms in some client states are a useful device, ensuring the dominance of minority elements favored by U.S. elites while enabling the U.S. political leadership to mobilize its own population in support of foreign adventures masked in idealistic rhetoric ("defense of democracy") but undertaken for quite different purposes.
In its actual usage, the term "democracy" in U.S. rhetoric, refers to a system of governance in which elite elements based in the business community control the state by virtue of their dominance of private society, while the population observes quietly. So understood, democracy is a system of elite decision and public ratification, as in the United States itself.
Correspondingly, popular involvement in the formulation of public policy is considered a serious threat. It is not a step toward democracy; rather it constitutes a
"crisis of democracy" that must be overcome. The problem arises both in the United States and in its dependencies, and has been addressed by measure ranging from public relations campaigns to
death squads, depending on which population is targeted.
In his history of hemispheric relations, British scholar
Gordon Connell-Smith writes:QuoteWhile paying lip-service to the encouragement of representative democracy in Latin America, the United States has a strong interest in just the reverse. Apart from procedural democracy, especially the holding of elections — which only too often have proved farcical. Functioning democracy may respond to popular concerns, while the United States has been concerned with fostering the most favorable conditions for her private overseas investment.
What all this means for much of the third world, to put it crudely but accurately, is that the primary concern of the U.S. foreign policy is to guarantee the freedom to rob and exploit.
Elsewhere I have referred to this as "the Fifth Freedom." one that was not enunciated by FDR when he formulated the famous Four Freedoms, which were presented as the war aims of the Western allies during World War II: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. The history of [U.S. foreign policy] reveals just how these fine words are to be understood: as a means to gain public support for crusades in defense of the Fifth Freedom, the one that really counts...
The threat to U.S. security [of small, weak third world countries] is too ludicrous to discuss, but the threat to U.S. foreign policy is quite real. In fact, in a certain sense it is the small, weak countries that pose the greatest threat to American foreign policy. It is quite remarkable to see the extraordinary savagery the U.S. has displayed against the weakest and most inconsequential countries...
It takes a large dose of what has sometimes been called "intentional ignorance" not to see the facts. Such blindness must be guarded zealously if state violence is to proceed on course -- always for the good of humanity, as Obama reminded us again in his Nobel Prize address.
With regard to Latin America, the matter was put most plainly by
Secretary of War Henry Stimson in May 1945 when he was explaining how we must eliminate and dismantle regional systems dominated by any other power, particularly the British, while maintaining and extending our own system. He explained with regard to Latin America as follows:
QuoteI think that it's not asking too much to have our little region over here [Latin America] which never has bothered anybody.
The basic thinking behind all of this has been explained quite lucidly on a number of occasions. (This is a very open society and if one wants to learn what's going on, you can do it; it takes a little work, but the documents are there and the history is also there.) One of the clearest and most lucid accounts of the planning behind this was by George Kennan, who was one of the most thoughtful, humane, and liberal of the planners, and in fact was eliminated from the State Depatment largely for that reason. Kennan was the head of the State Department policy planning staff in the late 1940s.
In the following
document, PPS23, February 1948, he outlined the basic thinking:
QuoteWe have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity . To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas remain in hands which we can control or rely on.
We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
Now, recall that this is a Top Secret document. The idealistic slogans are, of course, to be constantly trumpeted by scholarship, the schools, the media, and the rest of the ideological system in order to pacify the domestic population, giving rise to accounts such as those of the "official view" that I've already described. Recall again that this is a view from the dovish, liberal, humane end of the spectrum. But it is lucid and clear.
There are some questions that one can raise about Kennan's formulation, a number of them, but I'll keep to one: whether he is right in suggesting that "human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization" should be dismissed as irrelevant to U.S. foreign policy. Actually, a review of the historical record suggests a different picture, namely that the United States has often opposed with tremendous ferocity, and even violence, these elements -- human rights, democratization, and the raising of living standards.
This is particularly the case in Latin America and there are very good reasons for it. The commitment to these doctrines is inconsistent with the use of harsh measures to maintain the disparity, to insure our control over 50 percent of the resources, and our exploitation of the world.
In short, what we might call the "Fifth Freedom" (there were Four Freedoms, you remember, but there was one that was left out), the Freedom to Rob, and that's really the only one that counts; the others were mostly for show. And in order to maintain the freedom to rob and exploit, we do have to consistently oppose democratization, the raising of living standards, and human rights. And we do consistently oppose them; that, of course, is in the real world.
This Top Secret document referred to the Far East, but Kennan applied the same ideas to Latin America in
a briefing for Latin American ambassadors in which he explained that one of the main concerns of U.S. policy is:
Quotethe protection of our raw materials.
Notice that they are
'our' raw materials, which, by accident, happen to be somewhere else. This sort of vulgar Marxist rhetoric is typical of internal documents and the business press, but it varies.
Who must we protect
our raw materials from? Well, primarily, the domestic populations, the indigenous population, which may have ideas of their own about raising the living standards, democratization, and human rights. And that's inconsistent with maintaining the disparity. The indigenous populations have the tendency to try to use
"our raw materials" for their own purposes. Now thats a "conspiracy" that has to be stopped!
How will we protect
our raw materials from the indigenous population? Well,
the answer is the following:QuoteThe final answer might be an unpleasant one, but we should not hesitate before police repression by the local government. This is not shameful, since the Communists are essentially traitors. It is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal government if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by Communists.
Well, who are the Communists? "Communists" was cover term used in American political theology to refer to:
Quotepeople who are committed to the belief that the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people.
I'm quoting the words of a
1949 State Department intelligence report which warned about the spread of this grim and evil doctrine, which does, of course, threaten "our raw materials" if we can't abort it somehow.
In July 1941, a major study by the
US State Department and War Department defined Communism and warned that:
QuoteCommunism which superficially at least can be associated with a rising tide all over the world wherein the common man aspires to higher and wider horizons.
Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles warned that:
QuoteThe poor people are the ones [the communists] appeal to and they have always wanted to plunder the rich.
So they must be overcome, to protect our doctrine that the rich should plunder the poor.
