% FROM THE NOAM CHOMSKY ARCHIVE
% http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu:/usr/tp0x/chomsky.html
% ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/cap/chomsky/
% Filename:    articles/chomsky.z.year-501-part1
% Title:       Year 501: World Orders Old and New, Part I
% Author:      Noam Chomsky
% Appeared-in: Z Magazine, March 1992
% Source:      jaske@bat.bates.edu (Jon Aske)
% Keywords:    
% Synopsis:    
% See-also:    articles/chomsky.z.year-501-part2

           YEAR 501: WORLD ORDERS OLD AND NEW, PART I
                          Noam Chomsky
                     Z Magazine, March 1992


The year 1992 poses a critical moral and cultural challenge for
the more privileged sectors of the world-dominant societies. The
challenge is heightened by the fact that within these societies,
notably our own, popular struggle over many centuries has won a
measure of freedom with opportunities for independent thought and
committed action. How this challenge is addressed, in fact
whether it is perceived at all on a broad scale, may have fateful
consequences.

As everyone knows, we are entering the 500th year of the Old
World Order, sometimes called the Colombian era of world history,
or the Vasco da Gama era, depending on which bloodthirsty
adventurer got there first. Or ``the 500-year Reich,'' to borrow
the title of a recent book that compares the methods and ideology
of the Nazis with those of the European invaders who subjugated
most of the world. <<>> The major theme of the Old World Order
has been a confrontation between the conquerors and the conquered
on a global scale. It has taken various forms, and been given
different names: imperialism, the North-South conflict, core
versus periphery, G-7 (the 7 leading state capitalist industrial
societies) and their satellites versus the rest. Or, more simply,
Europe's conquest of the world.

By the term ``Europe,'' we include the European-settled colonies
that now lead the crusade; adopting South African conventions,
the Japanese are admitted as ``honorary Whites,'' rich enough to
qualify. Japan was the one part of the South that escaped
conquest and, perhaps not coincidentally, the one part that was
able to join the core, with some of its former colonies in its
wake. The idea that there is more than coincidence in the
correlation of independence and development is reinforced by a
look at Western Europe, where parts that were colonized followed
the Third World path of underdevelopment. One notable example is
Ireland, violently conquered, then barred from development by the
standard ``free trade'' doctrines selectively applied to ensure
subordination of the South---today called ``structural
adjustment,'' ``neoliberalism,'' or ``our noble ideals,'' from
which we, to be sure, are exempt. <<>>


A Bit of History

The early Spanish-Portuguese conquests had their domestic
counterpart. In 1492, the Jewish community of Spain was expelled
or forced to convert. Millions of Moors suffered the same fate.
The fall of Granada in 1492, ending eight centuries of Moorish
sovereignty, made it possible for the Spanish Inquisition to
extend its barbaric sway. The conquerors destroyed priceless
books and manuscripts with their rich record of classical
learning, and demolished the civilization that had flourished
under the far more tolerant and cultured Moorish rule. The stage
was set for the decline of Spain, and also for the racism and
savagery of the world conquest---``the curse of Columbus,'' in
the words of Africa historian Basil Davidson. <<>>

Spain and Portugal were soon displaced from their leading role,
as English pirates, marauders and slave traders swept the seas,
perhaps the most notorious, Sir Francis Drake. Later, the newly
consolidated English state took over the task of ``wars for
markets'' from ``the plunder raids of Elizabethan sea-dogs''
(Christopher Hill). State power also enabled England to subdue
the Celtic periphery, then to apply the newly-honed techniques
with even greater destruction to new victims across the seas. By
1651, England was powerful enough to impose the Navigation Act,
which established a closed trading area throughout much of the
world, monopolized by English merchants. They were thus able to
enrich themselves through the slave trade and their
``plunder-trade with America, Africa and Asia'' (Hill), assisted
by ``state-sponsored colonial wars'' and the various devices of
economic management by which state power has forged the way to
development. <<>>

It should be stressed that the economic doctrines preached by the
powerful are intended for others, so that they can be more
efficiently robbed and exploited. No wealthy developed society
accepts these conditions for itself, unless they happen to confer
temporary advantage; and their history reveals that sharp
departure from these doctrines was a prerequisite for
development. At least since the work of Alexander Gerschenkron in
the 1950s, it has been widely recognized by economic historians
that ``late development'' has been critically dependent on state
intervention; Japan and the Newly Industrializing Countries
(NICs) on its periphery are standard contemporary examples. The
same is true of the ``early development'' of England and the
United States. High tariffs and other forms of state intervention
may have raised costs to American consumers, but they allowed
domestic industry to develop, from textiles to steel to
computers, barring cheaper British products in earlier years,
providing a state-guaranteed market and public subsidy for
research and development in advanced sectors, creating and
maintaining capital-intensive agribusiness, and so on. ``Import
substitution [through state intervention] is about the only way
anybody's ever figured out to industrialize,'' development
economist Lance Taylor observes, adding that ``In the long run,
there are no laissez-faire transitions to modern economic growth.
The state has always intervened to create a capitalist class, and
then it has to regulate the capitalist class, and then the state
has to worry about being taken over by the capitalist class, but
the state has always been there.'' Furthermore, state power has
regularly been invoked by the capitalist class to protect it from
the destructive effects of an unregulated market, to secure
resources, markets, and opportunities for investment, and in
general to safeguard and extend their profits and power; the
Pentagon system of public subsidy for high tech industry is the
most glaring example, close to home. <<>>

It is hardly surprising that the government is seeking new ways
to maintain the Pentagon-based industries now that the
conventional pretext had disappeared. One method is increased
foreign arms sales, which also help alleviate the balance of
payments crisis. The Bush Administration has created a Center for
Defense Trade to stimulate arms sales, and has directed US
embassies to participate actively while proposing US government
guarantees for up to $1 billion in loans for purchase of US arms.
The Defense Security Assistance Agency is reported to have sent
more than 900 officers to some 50 countries to promote US weapons
sales. The Gulf war was prominently featured as a sales promotion
device. Larry Korb of the Brookings Institution, formerly
Assistant Secretary of Defense in charge of logistics, observes
that the promise of arms sales has kept stocks of military
producers high despite the end of the Cold War, with arms sales
skyrocketing from $12 billion in 1989 to almost $40 billion in
1991. Moderate declines in purchases by the US military have been
more than offset by other arms sales by US companies. <<>> Such
considerations, however, should not obscure the more fundamental
role of the Pentagon system (including NASA and DOE) in
maintaining high tech industry generally, just as state
intervention plays a crucial role in supporting biotechnology,
pharmaceuticals, agribusiness, and most competitive segments of
the economy.

By IMF standards, the United States, after a decade of what
George Bush accurately called ``voodoo economics'' before he
joined the team, is a prime candidate for severe austerity
measures.  But it is far too powerful to submit to the rules,
intended for the weak. No one espoused liberal doctrine more
fervently than the British, after they had employed state power
to rob and destroy, establishing the basis for the first
industrial revolution and their domination of world manufacture
and trade.  But the passionate rhetoric subsided when it no
longer served the needs of the rulers. Unable to compete with
Japan in the 1920s, Britain effectively barred Japan from trade
with the Commonwealth, including India; the Americans followed
suit in their lesser empire, as did the Dutch. These were
significant factors leading to the Pacific war as Japan set forth
to emulate its powerful predecessors, having naively adopted
their liberal dictates only to discover that they were a fraud,
imposed upon the weak, accepted by the strong only when they are
useful. So it has always been. Today, the World Bank estimates
that the protectionist measures of the industrial
countries---keeping pace with free market bombast---reduce the
national income of the ``developing societies'' by about twice
the amount provided by official ``development assistance''; the
term ``developing societies'' is the standard euphemism for those
that are not developing, with a little help from their friends.
We return to a few examples. <<>>
@Set

The ``development assistance'' may help or harm the recipients,
but that is incidental. Typically, it is a form of export
promotion.  One familiar example is the Food for Peace program,
designed to subsidize US agribusiness and induce others to
``become dependent on us for food'' (Senator Hubert Humphrey),
and to promote the global security network that keeps order in
the Third World by requiring that local governments use
counterpart funds for armaments (thus also subsidizing US
military producers). Another familiar example of export promotion
was the Marshall Plan and other devices of the period, motivated
in large part by the ``dollar gap'' that deprived US industry of
an export market, threatening a return to the depression of the
1930s. More generally, its goal was ``to avert `economic, social
and political' chaos in Europe, contain Communism (meaning not
Soviet intervention but the success of the indigenous Communist
parties), prevent the collapse of America's export trade, and
achieve the goal of multilateralism,'' and provide a crucial
economic stimulus for ``individual initiative and private
enterprise both on the Continent and in the United States,''
undercutting the fear of ``experiments with socialist enterprise
and government controls,'' which would ``jeopardize private
enterprise'' in the United States as well (Michael Hogan, in the
major scholarly study). The Marshall Plan also ``set the stage
for large amounts of private U.S. direct investment in Europe,''
Reagan's Commerce Department observed in 1984, establishing the
basis for the modern multinational corporations, which
``prospered and expanded on overseas orders, . . . fueled
initially by the dollars of the Marshall Plan'' and protected
from ``negative developments'' by ``the umbrella of American
power,'' _Business Week_ observed in 1975, lamenting that this
golden age of state intervention might be fading away. Aid to
Israel, Egypt, and Turkey, the leading recipients in recent
years, is motivated by their role in maintaining US dominance of
the Middle East, with its enormous oil energy reserves. <<>>

So it goes case by case. ``Our idealism'' and ``American moral
leadership'' (Henry Kissinger) are the tools of trade of the
commissar class in state and ideological institutions. The real
world proceeds along a different path.

The utility of free trade as a weapon against the poor is
well-illustrated by a World Bank study on global warming,
designed to ``forge a consensus among economists'' (meaning, the
expert advisers of the rulers) in advance of the Rio conference
on global warming in June, _New York Times_ business
correspondent Silvia Nasar reports under the headline ``Can
Capitalism Save the Ozone?'' (the implication being: ``Yes'').
Harvard economist Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World
Bank, explains that the world's environmental problems are
largely ``the consequence of policies that are misguided on
narrow economic grounds,'' particularly the policies of the poor
countries that ``have been practically giving away oil, coal and
natural gas to domestic buyers in hopes of fostering industry and
keeping living costs low for urban workers'' (Nasar). If the poor
countries would only have the courage to resist the ``extreme
pressure to improve the performance of their economies'' by
fostering development while protecting their population from
starvation, then environmental problems would abate. ``Creating
free markets in Russia and other poor countries may do more to
slow global warming than any measures that rich countries are
likely to adopt in the 1990's,'' the World Bank concludes---
correctly, since the rich are hardly likely to pursue policies
detrimental to their interests, and they do have many weapons to
wield against the poor, including selective use of ``free trade''
(in the small print, the consensus economists also recognize that
``more effective government regulation'' reduces pollution, but
crushing the poor has obvious advantages).

The same page of the _New York Times_ business section carries an
item referring a confidential memo of the World Bank, just
published by the _London Economist_. The author of the memo is
the same Lawrence Summers. He writes: ``Just between you and me,
shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging _more_ migration of the
dirty industries to the [Third World]?'' This is reasonable on
economic grounds, Summers explains: for example, a
cancer-producing agent will have larger effects ``in a country
where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country
where under-5 mortality is 200 per thousand.'' Poor countries are
''_under_-polluted,'' and it is only reasonable, on grounds of
economic rationality, to encourage ``dirty industries'' to move
to them. ``The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic
waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face
up to that.'' Summers recognizes that there are ``arguments
against all of these proposals'' for exporting pollution to the
Third World: ``intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons,
social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.'' But the problem
is that these arguments ``could be turned around and used more or
less effectively against every Bank proposal for
liberalisation.'' ``Mr Summers is asking questions that the World
Bank would rather ignore,'' the _Economist_ observes, but ``on
the economics, his points are hard to answer.'' Quite true. We
have the choice of accepting the conclusions, or regarding them
as a _reductio ad absurdum_ argument against the ``free market''
ideology.

The doctrines, then, are very clear. On grounds of economic
rationality, the Third World should cut back on its ``misguided''
efforts to promote economic development while protecting the
population from disaster, while the rich countries, observing the
same principles of economic rationality, should export pollution
to the Third World. That way, capitalism can overcome the
environmental crisis. Free market capitalism is, indeed, a
wondrous implement. Surely there should be two Nobel prizes
awarded annually, not just one.

Confronted with the memo, Summers said that it was only
``intended to provoke debate''---elsewhere, that it was a
``sarcastic response'' to another World Bank draft, in the style
of Jonathan Swift. Perhaps the same is true of the World Bank
``consensus'' study reported on the same page of the _Times_
business section. In fact, it is often hard to determine when the
intellectual productions of the World Bank and other experts are
intended seriously, or are a perverse form of sarcasm.
Unfortunately, huge numbers of people, subjected to these
doctrines, do not have the luxury of pondering this intriguing
question. <<>>

Though not intended for us, ``free trade does, however, have its
uses,'' Arthur MacEwan observes in a review of the uniform record
of industrial and agricultural development through protectionism
and other measures of state interference, notably in the United
States: ``Highly developed nations can use free trade to extend
their power and their control of the world's wealth, and
businesses can use it as a weapon against labor. Most important,
free trade can limit efforts to redistribute income more equally,
undermine progressive social programs, and keep people from
democratically controlling their economic lives.'' <<>> Small wonder, then,
that neoliberal doctrine has won such a grand victory within the
ideological system. The evidence about successful development and
the actual consequences of neoliberal doctrine is dismissed with
the contempt that irrelevant nuisance so richly deserves.

All of this is a crucial part of the doctrinal and policy
framework of the New World Order, as of the old.

The English colonists in North America pursued the course laid
out by their forerunners in the home country. From the earliest
days of colonization, Virginia was a center of piracy and
pillage, raiding Spanish commerce and plundering French
settlements as far as the coast of Maine. By the beginning of the
17th century, ``New York had become a thieves' market where
pirates disposed of loot taken on the high seas,'' historian
Nathan Miller observes, while as in England, ``corruption . . .
was the lubricant that greased the wheels of the nation's
administrative machinery''; ``graft and corruption played a vital
role in the development of modern American society and in the
creation of the complex, interlocking machinery of government and
business that presently determines the course of our affairs,''
Miller writes, ridiculing the ideologists who expressed great
shock at Watergate. <<>>

As state power consolidated, piracy became less acceptable than
graft and corruption, though the US would not permit American
citizens apprehended for slave trading or other crimes to be
judged by international tribunals. The US would not accept the
reasonable standards proposed by Libya's Qaddafi, who has urged
that charges concerning its alleged terrorism be brought to the
World Court. That proposal is naturally dismissed with disdain by
the US, which has little use for such instruments---perhaps, the
noted specialist on international law Alfred Rubin suggests,
because ``the US and its two European friends are seeking a legal
basis for some military strike at Libya that might help an
incumbent president or prime minister nearing election time.''
The US refusal to permit punishment of American criminals was no
small matter; by mid-century, ``most of the slave ships . . . not
only flew the American flag but were owned by American
citizens.'' <<>>

With American independence, state power was used to protect
domestic industry, foster agricultural production, manipulate
trade, monopolize raw materials, and take the land from its
inhabitants. In the approving words of diplomatic historian
Thomas Bailey, Americans ``concentrated on the task of felling
trees and Indians and of rounding out their natural boundaries.''
<<>> These tasks were eminently reasonable by the
approved standards of political correctness; the challenge to
them in the past few years has, predictably, elicited much
hysteria among those who regard anything less than total control
over the ideological system as an unspeakable catastrophe. Hugo
Grotius, a leading 17th century humanist and the founder of
modern international law, determined that the ``most just war is
against savage beasts, the next against men who are like
beasts.'' George Washington wrote in 1783 that ``the gradual
extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage,
as the wolf, to retire; both being beasts of prey, tho' they
differ in shape''; Washington, however, regarded purchase of
Indian lands (typically, by fraud and threat) as a better tactic
than violence. Consciences were eased further by the legal
doctrine developed by Chief Justice John Marshall: ``discovery
gave an exclusive right to extinguish the Indian right of
occupancy, either by purchase or by conquest''; ``that law which
regulates, and ought to regulate in general, the relations
between the conqueror and conquered was incapable of application
to . . . the tribes of Indians, . . . fierce savages whose
occupation was war, and whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from
the forest.''

The colonists, to be sure, knew better. Their survival depended
on the agricultural sophistication of the ``fierce savages.''
Observing the Narragansett-Pequot wars, Roger Williams could see
that their fighting was ``farre less bloudy and devouring than
the cruell Warres of Europe.'' John Underhill sneered at the
``feeble Manner'' of the Indian warriors, which ``did hardly
deserve the Name of fighting,'' and their laughable protests
against the ``furious'' style of the English that ``slays too
many men''---not to speak of women and children in undefended
villages, a European tactic that had to be taught to the backward
natives. The useful doctrines of John Marshall and others
remained in place through modern scholarship; thus the highly
regarded anthropological authority A. L. Kroeber attributed to
the East Coast Indians a kind of ``warfare that was insane,
unending,'' inexplicable ``from our point of view'' and so
``dominantly emphasized within [their culture] that escape was
well-nigh impossible,'' for any group that would depart from
these hideous norms ``was almost certainly doomed to early
extinction.'' This ``harsh indictment would carry more weight,''
Francis Jennings observes, ``if its rhetoric were supported by
either example or reference,'' in this influential scholarly
study. The Indians were hardly pacifists, but they had to learn
the techniques of ``total war'' and true savagery from the
European conquerors, with their ample experience in Ireland and
elsewhere. <<>>

Respected statesmen have upheld the same values. To Theodore
Roosevelt, the hero of George Bush and of the liberal
commentators who gushed over his sense of ``righteous mission''
during the Gulf slaughter, ``the most ultimately righteous of all
wars is a war with savages,'' establishing the rule of ``the
dominant world races.'' This ``noble minded missionary,'' as
contemporary ideologues term him, did not limit his vision to the
``beasts of prey'' who were being swept from their lairs within
the ``natural boundaries'' of the American nation. The ranks of
``savages'' included as well the ``dagos'' to the south, and the
``Malay bandits'' and ``Chinese halfbreeds'' who were resisting
the American conquest of the Philippines, all ``savages,
barbarians, a wild and ignorant people, Apaches, Sioux, Chinese
boxers,'' as their stubborn recalcitrance amply demonstrated.
Winston Churchill thought that poison gas was just right for use
against ``uncivilized tribes'' (Kurds and Afghans, particularly).
Noting approvingly that British diplomacy had prevented the 1932
disarmament convention from banning bombardment of civilians, the
equally respected statesman Lloyd George observed that ``we
insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers,'' capturing the
basic point succinctly. <<>> The
metaphors of ``Indian fighting'' were carried right through the
Indochina wars. The conventions have not lapsed into the 1990s,
as we saw in early 1991 and quite possibly will again, before too
long.

``The task of felling trees and Indians and of rounding out their
natural boundaries'' also required that some way be found to rid
the continent of European interlopers. The main enemy was
England, a powerful deterrent, and the target of frenzied hatred
in broad circles. It was, incidentally, reciprocated, interlaced
with considerable contempt. Thus in 1865, a progressive English
gentleman offered to endow a lectureship at Cambridge University
for American studies, a subject then considered too insignificant
to merit attention. Cambridge dons protested with outrage against
what one called, with admirable literary flair, ``a biennial
flash of Transatlantic darkness.'' They feared that the lectures
would spread ``discontent and dangerous ideas'' among uneducated
undergraduates, ``over whom they would naturally exercise some
considerable influence.'' Some thought ``that the Harvard
credentials of the lecturers would guarantee that the lectures be
inoffensive,'' historian Joyce Appleby notes, quoting one don who
recognized that the lecturers would be drawn from the class that
felt itself ``increasingly in danger of being swamped by the
lower elements of a vast democracy.'' Most feared the subversive
influence of these lower elements. The threat was beaten back in
an impressive show of the kind of political correctness that
continues to reign in most of the academic world, as fearful as
ever of the lower elements and their strange ideas. <<>>

Recognizing that England's military force was too powerful to
confront, Jacksonian Democrats called for annexation of Texas to
ensure a US world monopoly of cotton. The US would then be able
to paralyze England and intimidate Europe. ``By securing the
virtual monopoly of the cotton plant'' the US had acquired ``a
greater influence over the affairs of the world than would be
found in armies however strong, or navies however numerous,''
President Tyler observed after the annexation and the conquest of
a third of Mexico. ``That monopoly, now secured, places all other
nations at our feet,'' he wrote: ``An embargo of a single year
would produce in Europe a greater amount of suffering than a
fifty years' war. I doubt whether Great Britain could avoid
convulsions.'' The same monopoly power neutralized British
opposition to the conquest of the Oregon territory.

The editor of New York's leading newspaper exulted that Britain
was ``completely bound and manacled with the cotton cords'' of
the United States, ``a lever with which we can successfully
control'' this dangerous rival. Thanks to the conquests that
ensured monopoly of the most important commodity in world trade,
the Polk Administration boasted, the US could now ``control the
commerce of the world and secure thereby to the American Union
inappreciable political and commercial advantages.'' ``Fifty
years will not elapse ere the destinies of the human race will be
in our hands,'' a Louisiana congressman proclaimed, as he and
others looked to ``mastery of the Pacific'' and control over the
resources on which European rivals were dependent. Polk's
Secretary of Treasury reported to Congress that the conquests of
the Democrats would guarantee ``the command of the trade of the
world.''

The national poet, Walt Whitman, wrote that our conquests ``take
off the shackles that prevent men the even chance of being happy
and good.'' Mexico's lands were taken over for the good of
mankind: ``What has miserable, inefficient Mexico . . . to do
with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble
race?''  Others recognized the difficulty of taking Mexico's
resources without burdening ourselves with its ``imbecile''
population, ``degraded'' by ``the amalgamation of races,'' though
the New York press was hopeful that their fate would be ``similar
to that of the Indians of this country---the race, before a
century rolls over us, will become extinct.''

The concerns of the expansionists went beyond their fear that an
independent Texas would break the US resource monopoly and expand
to become a rival empire; it might also abolish slavery, igniting
dangerous sparks of egalitarianism. Andrew Jackson thought that
an independent Texas, with a mixture of Indians and fleeing
slaves, might be manipulated by Britain to ``throw the whole west
into flames.'' His earlier conquest of Florida had been justified
by John Quincy Adams, with Thomas Jefferson's enthusiastic
approbation, by the need to thwart British efforts to launch
``mingled hordes of lawless Indians and negroes'' in a ``savage
war'' against the ``peaceful inhabitants'' of the United States.

It is evident without further comment that the logic of the
Jacksonian Democrats was essentially that attributed to Saddam
Hussein by US propaganda after his conquest of Kuwait. But the
comparisons should not be pressed too far. Unlike his Jacksonian
precursors, Saddam Hussein is not known to have feared that
slavery in Iraq would be threatened by independent states nearby,
or to have publicly called for their ``imbecile'' inhabitants to
``become extinct'' so that the ``great mission of peopling the
Middle East with a noble race'' of Iraqis can be carried forward,
placing ``the destinies of the human race in the hands'' of the
conquerors. And even the wildest fantasies did not accord Saddam
potential control over the major resource of the day of the kind
enjoyed by the expansionists of the 1840s. Like Qaddafi, Saddam
still has a few things to learn from our history, so extolled by
enraptured intellectuals.

After the successful mid-19th century conquests, New York editors
proudly observed that the US was ``the only power which has never
sought and never seeks to acquire a foot of territory by force of
arms''; ``Of all the vast domains of our great confederacy over
which the star spangled banner waves, not one foot of it is the
acquirement of force or bloodshed''; the remnants of the native
population, among others, were not asked to confirm this
judgment. The US is unique among nations in that ``By its own
merits it extends itself.'' That is only natural, since ``all
other races . . . must bow and fade'' before ``the great work of
subjugation and conquest to be achieved by the Anglo-Saxon
race,'' conquest without force. Leading contemporary historians
accept this flattering self-image. Samuel Flagg Bemis wrote in
1965 that ``American expansion across a practically empty
continent despoiled no nation unjustly.'' Arthur M. Schlesinger
had earlier described Polk as ``undeservedly one of the forgotten
men of American history'': ``By carrying the flag to the Pacific
he gave America her continental breadth and ensured her future
significance in the world,'' a realistic assessment, if not
exactly in the intended sense. <<>>

Such doctrinal fantasies could not easily survive the Vietnam
war, at least outside the intellectual class, where we are
regularly regaled by orations on how ``for 200 years the United
States has preserved almost unsullied the original ideals of the
Enlightenment . . . and, above all, the universality of these
values'' (Yale Professor Michael Howard, formerly Regius
Professor of Modern History at Oxford, among many others).
Writing today on ``the self-image of Americans,'' _New York
Times_ correspondent Richard Bernstein observes that ``many who
came of age during the 1960's protest years have never regained
the confidence in the essential goodness of America and the
American government that prevailed in earlier periods,'' a matter
of much concern to ideologists and a factor in the appeal of
dreams of Camelot, an interesting topic that merits separate
discussion. <<>>

The conquest of the New World set off two vast demographic
catastrophes, unparalleled in history: the virtual destruction of
the indigenous population of the Western hemisphere, and the
devastation of Africa as the slave trade rapidly expanded to
serve the needs of the conquerors. The basic patterns persist to
the current era. As the slaughter of the indigenous population by
the Guatemalan military approached virtual genocide, Ronald
Reagan and his officials, while lauding the democracy-loving
assassins, informed Congress that the US would provide arms ``to
reinforce the improvement in the human rights situation following
the 1982 coup'' that installed Rios Montt, perhaps the greatest
murderer of them all; although ``the primary means'' by which
Guatemala obtained US military equipment, the General Accounting
Office of Congress observed, was commercial sales licensed by the
Department of Commerce (putting aside the network of allies and
clients that are always ready to contribute to genocide if there
are profits to be made). The US was also instrumental in
maintaining a high level of slaughter and terror from Mozambique
to Angola, while ``quiet diplomacy'' helped the Administration's
South African friends to cause over $60 billion in damage and 1.5
million deaths from 1980 to 1988 in the neighboring states. The
most devastating effects of the general catastrophe of capitalism
through the 1980s were in the same two continents: Africa and
Latin America. <<>>

One of the grandest of the Guatemalan killers, General Hctor
Gramajo, was rewarded for his contributions to genocide in the
highlands with a Mason Fellowship to Harvard's John F. Kennedy
School of Government---not unreasonably, given Kennedy's decisive
contributions to the vocation of counterinsurgency (the technical
term for international terrorism conducted by the powerful).
Cambridge dons will be relieved to learn that Harvard is no
longer a dangerous center of subversion.

While earning his degree at Harvard, Gramajo gave an interview to
the _Harvard International Review_ in which he offered a more
nuanced view of his own role. He said that he was personally in
charge of the commission that drafted the ``70%-30% civil affairs
program, used by the Guatemalan government during the 1980s to
control people or organizations who disagreed with the
government'' (_Central America Report_ (_CAR_), Guatemala City).
He outlined with some pride the doctrinal innovations he had
introduced: ``We have created a more humanitarian, less costly
strategy, to be more compatible with the democratic system. We
instituted civil affairs [in 1982] which provides development for
70% of the population, while we kill 30%. Before, the strategy
was to kill 100%.'' This is a ``more sophisticated means'' than
the previous crude assumption that you must ``kill everyone to
complete the job'' of controlling dissent.

It is unfair, then, for journalist Alan Nairn, who exposed the US
origins of the Central American death squads, to describe Gramajo
as ``one of the most significant mass-murderers in the Western
Hemisphere,'' as Gramajo was sued by the Center for
Constitutional Rights in New York for damages for murders,
disappearances, torture, and forced exile of Guatemalan citizens.
We can also understand now why former CIA director William Colby
sent Gramajo a copy of his memoirs with the inscription: ``To a
colleague in the effort to find a strategy of counterinsurgency
with decency and democracy,'' Kennedy-style. We can be assured
that Gramajo, like Colby, correctly understands what is
``compatible with the democratic system,'' as envisioned by the
masters.

Given his understanding of humanitarianism, decency, and
democracy, it is not surprising that Gramajo appears to be the
State Department's choice for the 1995 elections, _CAR_ reports,
citing Americas Watch on the Harvard fellowship as ``the State
Department's way of grooming Gramajo'' for the job, and quoting a
US Senate staffer who says: ``He's definitely their boy down
there.'' The _Washington Post_ reports that many Guatemalan
politicians expect Gramajo to win the elections, not an unlikely
prospect if he's the State Department's boy down there.
Gramajo's image is also being prettified. He offered the _Post_ a
sanitized version of his interview on the 70%-30% program: ``The
effort of the government was to be 70% in development and 30% in
the war effort. I was not referring to the people, just the
effort.'' Too bad he expressed himself so badly---or better, so
honestly---before the Harvard grooming had taken effect. <<>>

It is not at all unlikely that the rulers of the world, meeting
in G-7 conferences, have written off large parts of Africa and
much of the population of Latin America, superfluous people who
have no place in the New World Order, to be joined by many
others, in the home societies as well.

Diplomacy has perceived Latin America and Africa in a similar
light. Planning documents stress that the role of Latin America
is to provide resources, markets, investment opportunities with
ample repatriation of capital, and in general, a favorable
climate for business. If that can be achieved with formal
elections under conditions that safeguard business interests,
well and good; if it requires death squads ``to destroy
permanently a perceived threat to the existing structure of
socioeconomic privilege by eliminating the political
participation of the numerical majority . . .,'' that's too bad,
but preferable to the alternative of independence; the words are
those of Lars Schoultz, the leading US academic specialist on
human rights in Latin America, describing the National Security
States that had their roots in Kennedy Administration policies.
As for Africa, State Department Policy Planning chief George
Kennan, assigning to each part of the South its special function
in the New World Order of the post-World War II era, recommended
that it be ``exploited'' for the reconstruction of Europe, adding
that the opportunity to exploit Africa should afford the
Europeans ``that tangible objective for which everyone has been
rather unsuccessfully groping . . .,'' a badly needed
psychological lift, in their difficult postwar straits. Such
recommendations are too uncontroversial to elicit comment, or
even notice. <<>>

The genocidal episodes of the Colombian-Vasco da Gama era are by
no means limited to the conquered countries of the South, as is
sufficiently attested by the achievements of the leading center
of Western civilization 50 years ago. Throughout the era, there
have also been regular savage conflicts among the core societies
of the North, sometimes spreading far beyond, particularly in
this terrible century. From the point of view of most of the
world's population, these have been much like shoot-outs between
rival drug gangs or mafia dons. The only question is who will
gain the right to rob and kill. In the post-World War II era, the
US has been the global enforcer, guaranteeing the interests of
the club of rich men. It has, therefore, compiled a impressive
record of aggression, international terrorism, slaughter,
torture, chemical and bacteriological warfare, human rights
abuses of every imaginable variety. This is not surprising; it
goes with the turf. Nor is it surprising that the occasional
documentation of these facts far from the mainstream elicits
tantrums among the commissars, as it regularly does.

This horrifying record, if noticed at all, is considered
insignificant, even a proof of our nobility. Again, that goes
with the turf. The most powerful mafia don is also likely to
dominate the doctrinal system. One of the great advantages of
being rich and powerful is that you never have to say: ``I'm
sorry.'' It is precisely here that the moral and cultural
challenge arises, as we approach the end of the first 500 years.


Persistent Themes

Since its liberation from Spanish rule, Latin America has faced
many problems. One of the most grave was foreseen by the
Liberator, Simon Bolivar, in 1822: ``There is at the head of this
great continent a very powerful country, very rich, very warlike,
and capable of anything.'' Citing this comment, Latin America
scholar Piero Gleijeses observes that ``In England, Bolivar saw a
protector; in the United States, a menace.'' Naturally so, given
the geopolitical realities. <<>>

The United States was ambivalent about the independence of the
Spanish colonies. ``In the Congressional debates of the period,''
Gleijeses notes, ``there was much more enthusiasm for the cause
of the Greeks than that of the Spanish Americans.'' One reason
was that Latin Americans ``were of dubious whiteness,'' at best
``from degraded Spanish stock,'' unlike the Greeks, who were
assigned a special role as the Aryan giants who created
civilization, in the revision of history constructed by European
racist scholarship (the topic of Martin Bernal's _Black Athena_).
Yet another reason was that, unlike the Founding Fathers, Bolivar
freed his slaves, thus becoming a rotten apple that might spoil
the barrel, a virus that might infect others, to borrow the
terminology of US planners in the modern period, expressing their
concerns over the threat to ``stability'' caused by a dangerous
good example.

A still more fundamental issue was brought forth by the major
intellectual reviews of the day. They concluded that ``South
America will be to North America . . . what Asia and Africa are
to Europe''---_our_ Third World. This perception retains its
vitality through the 20th century. Commenting on Secretary of
State James Baker's efforts to enhance ``regional
problem-sharing'' through the hemisphere, _Times_ correspondent
Barbara Crossette notes ``the realization in the United States
and throughout the hemisphere [by the sectors that matter, at
least] that European and Asian trading blocs can be best tackled
by a large free-trade area in this part of the world'': our Third
World, in what Roosevelt's Secretary of War, Henry Stimson,
called ``our little region over here which never has bothered
anybody'' when he was explaining in May 1945 why all regional
systems must be dismantled in the interests of liberal
internationalism, apart from our own, which are to be extended.
<<>> The World Bank is less sanguine about the
prospects. A recent report concludes that the US will gain more
than Latin America from free trade agreements than Latin America,
apart from Mexico and Brazil, and that the region would do better
with a customs union on the model of the European Community, with
a common external tariff, excluding the US, something definitely
not in the cards. <<>>

In the 19th century, there was a problem in establishing US
dominance of the hemisphere: the British deterrent. But the
conception of ``our confederacy'' as ``the nest, from which all
America, North and South, is to be peopled'' (Thomas Jefferson)
was firmly implanted, along with the Jeffersonian corollary that
it is best for Spain to rule until ``our population can be
sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece.''
<<>>

There were internal conflicts over the matter. American merchants
``were eager to contribute to the cause of freedom---as long as
the rebels were able to pay, preferably cash,'' Gleijeses notes.
And the well-established tradition of piracy provided a reservoir
of American shipowners and seamen (British too) who were happy to
offer their services as privateers to attack Spanish shipping,
though extension of their terrorist vocation to American vessels
led to much moral outrage and a government crackdown. Apart from
England, liberated Haiti also provided assistance to the cause of
independence, but on the condition that slaves be freed. Haiti
too was a dangerous rotten apple, punished for independence with
huge reparations to France, the former colonial power, and a
half-century US embargo followed by Woodrow Wilson's destructive
rampage and other such benefits, until this very moment.

The concept of Panamericanism advanced by Bolivar was
diametrically opposed to that of the Monroe Doctrine at the same
time. A British official wrote in 1916 that while Bolivar
originated the idea of Panamericanism, he ``did not contemplate
the consummation of his policy under the aegis of the United
States.'' In the end, it was ``Monroe's victory and Bolivar's
defeat,'' Gleijeses comments.

The status of Cuba was of particular significance, another
illustration of the resilience of traditional themes. The US was
firmly opposed to the independence of Cuba, ``strategically
situated and rich in sugar and slaves'' (Gleijeses). Jefferson
advised President Madison to offer Napoleon a free hand in
Spanish America in return for the gift of Cuba to the United
States. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the author of the
Monroe Doctrine, described Cuba as ``an object of transcendent
importance to the commercial and political interests of our
Union.'' He too urged Spanish sovereignty until Cuba would fall
into US hands by ``the laws of political . . . gravitation,'' a
``ripe fruit'' for harvest. Support for Spanish rule was near
universal in the executive and Congress; European powers,
Colombia, and Mexico were approached for assistance in the
endeavor of blocking the liberation of Cuba. A prime concern was
the democratic tendencies in the Cuban independence movement,
which advocated abolition of slavery and equal rights for all,
unlike the US, which, in its Constitution, designated Black
slaves as less than human. There was again a threat that ``the
rot might spread,'' even to our own shores. <<>>

By the end of the 19th century, the US was powerful enough to
ignore the British deterrent and conquer Cuba, just in time to
prevent the success of the indigenous liberation struggle.
Standard doctrines provided the justification for relegating Cuba
to virtual colonial status. Cubans were ``ignorant niggers,
half-breeds, and dagoes,'' the New York press observed, ``a lot
of degenerates . . . no more capable of self-government than the
savages of Africa,'' the military command added. The US imposed
the rule of the White propertied classes, who had no weird
notions about democracy, freedom, and equal rights, and were thus
not degenerates. The ``ripe fruit'' was converted to a US
plantation, terminating the prospects for successful independent
development.  In the 1930s, FDR cancelled the ``good neighbor
policy'' to overturn a civilian government regarded as a threat
to US commercial interests. The Batista dictatorship served those
interests loyally, thus enjoying full support.

Castro's overthrow of the dictatorship in January 1959 soon
elicited US hostility, and a return to the traditional path. By
late 1959, the CIA and the State Department concluded that Castro
had to be overthrown. One reason, State Department liberals
explained, was that ``our business interests in Cuba have been
seriously affected.'' A second was the rotten apple effect: ``The
United States cannot hope to encourage and support sound economic
policies in other Latin American countries and promote necessary
private investments in Latin America if it is or appears to be
simultaneously cooperating with the Castro program,'' the State
Department concluded in November 1959. But one condition was
added: ``in view of Castro's strong though diminishing support in
Cuba, it is of great importance, however, that the United States
government not openly take actions which would cause the United
States to be blamed for his failure or downfall.'' As for
Castro's support, public opinion studies provided to the White
House (April 1960) concluded that most Cubans were optimistic
about the future and supported Castro, while only 7% expressed
concern about Communism and only 2% about failure to hold
elections.  Soviet presence was nil. ``The liberals, like the
conservatives, saw Castro as a threat to the hemisphere,''
historian Jules Benjamin observes, ``but without the world
communist conspiracy component.''

By October 1959, planes based in Florida were carrying out
strafing and bombing attacks against Cuban territory. In
December, CIA subversion was stepped up, including supply of arms
to guerrilla bands and sabotage of sugar mills and other economic
targets. In March 1960, the Eisenhower Administration formally
adopted a plan to overthrow Castro in favor of a regime ``more
devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more
acceptable to the U.S.,'' emphasizing again that this must be
done ``in such a manner as to avoid any appearance of U.S.
intervention.''

That dictate remains in force as the US now advances towards the
traditional goal of preventing Cuban independence. Crucially, the
ideological institutions must suppress the record of aggression,
campaigns of terror, economic strangulation, and the other
devices employed by the lord of the hemisphere in its dedication
to ``the true interests of the Cuban people.'' Cuba's plight must
be attributed to the demon Castro and ``Cuban socialism'' alone.
Castro bears full responsibility for the ``poverty, isolation and
humbling dependence'' on the USSR, the _New York Times_ editors
inform us, concluding triumphantly that ``the Cuban dictator has
painted himself into his own corner,'' without any help from us.
That being the case, by doctrinal necessity, we should not
intervene directly as some ``U.S. cold warriors'' propose:
``Fidel Castro's reign deserves to end in home-grown failure, not
martyrdom.'' Taking their stand at the dovish extreme, the
editors advise that we should continue to stand aside, watching
in silence as we have been doing for 30 years, so the naive
reader would learn from this (quite typical) version of history,
crafted to satisfy doctrinal demands.

The US concern for ``the true interests of the Cuban people''
merits no comment. The concerns over public opinion in Cuba and
Latin America, and crucially the ``true interests'' of US
business, have always been real enough. The former are
understandable in the light of the public opinion polls just
cited, or the Latin American reaction to the Agrarian Reform Law
of May 1959, acclaimed by one UN organization as ``an example to
follow'' in all Latin America. Or by the conclusion of the World
Health Organization's representative in Cuba in 1980 that ``there
is no question that Cuba has the best health statistics in Latin
America,'' with the health organization ``of a very much
developed country'' despite its poverty. Or by the interest in
Brazil and other Latin American countries in Cuban biotechnology,
unusual if not unique for a small and poor country. It is not
Castro's crimes that disturb the rulers of the hemisphere, who
cheerfully support the Suhartos and Saddam Husseins and Gramajos,
however grotesque their crimes, as long as they perform their
service role. Rather, it is the elements of success that arouse
fear and anger and the call for vengeance, a fact that must also
be suppressed by ideologists, not an easy task, given the
overwhelming evidence confirming this primary principle of world
order. <<>> HERE Sabotage,
terror, and aggression were escalated further by the Kennedy
Administration, along with the kind of economic warfare that no
small country can long endure. Cuban reliance on the US as an
export market and for imports had, of course, been overwhelming,
and could hardly be replaced without great cost.  In February
1962, the Kennedy Administration imposed an embargo, breaking all
economic, commercial, and financial relations.  Theoretically,
medicines and some food were exempt, but food and medical aid
were denied after Cyclone Flora caused death and destruction in
October 1963. Standard procedure, incidentally: consider Carter's
refusal to allow aid to any West Indian country struck by the
August 1980 hurricane unless Grenada was excluded (they refused,
and received no aid), or the US reaction when Nicaragua was
fortuitously devastated by a hurricane in 1988; any weapon is
permissible against the perpetrators of the crime of
independence. The Kennedy Administration also sought to impose a
cultural quarantine to block the free flow of ideas and
information to the Latin American countries, whose unwillingness
to emulate US controls on travel and cultural interchange always
greatly troubled the Kennedy liberals, as did their legal
systems, requiring evidence for crimes by alleged
``subversives,'' and their excessive liberalism generally. <<>>

After the Bay of Pigs failure, the Kennedy terrorist attacks
escalated further, reaching quite remarkable dimensions
(``Operation Mongoose''). They are largely dismissed in the West,
apart from some notice of the assassination attempts, one of them
implemented on the very day of the Kennedy assassination. The
operations were formally called off by Lyndon Johnson, who is
reported by aides to have condemned the Kennedy programs as ``a
damned Murder Inc.'' The terrorist operations continued, however,
and were escalated by Nixon. Subsequent terrorist operations are
attributed to renegades beyond CIA control, whether accurately or
not, we do not know; one high Pentagon official of the
Kennedy-Johnson Administrations, Roswell Gilpatric, has expressed
his doubts. The Carter Administration, with the support of US
courts, condoned hijacking of Cuban ships in violation of the
anti-hijacking convention that Castro was respecting. The
Reaganites rejected Cuban initiatives for diplomatic settlement
and imposed new sanctions on the most outlandish pretexts, often
lying outright, a record reviewed by Wayne Smith, who resigned as
head of the US Interests Section in Havana in protest. <<>>

In the 1980s, the US barred from the US industrial products
containing any Cuban nickel, an effort to block a major Cuban
export. It prohibited a Swedish medical supply company from
providing equipment to Cuba because one component is manufactured
in the US. Aid to the former Soviet Union is conditioned on
suspension of commercial relations with Cuba. In early 1991, the
US resumed Caribbean military maneuvers, including rehearsal of a
Cuba invasion, a standard technique of intimidation. In mid-1991,
the embargo was tightened further, cutting remittances that
Cuban-Americans are permitted to send to relatives, among other
measures. Legislation now under consideration calls for extending
the embargo to US subsidiaries abroad and the barring of ships
from US ports for six months after any landing in Cuba, as well
as seizure of cargo if they enter US territorial waters.  The
ferocity of the hatred for Cuban independence is extreme, and
scarcely wavers across the narrow mainstream spectrum. <<>>

Currently, there is no effort to conceal the fact that the
disappearance of the Soviet deterrent and the decline of East
bloc economic relations with Cuba offers an opportunity to
achieve US aims through economic warfare or other means. In a
typical reaction, the editors of the _Washington Post_ urge that
the US seize the opportunity to crush Castro: ``For his great
antagonist, the United States, to give relief and legitimacy to
this used-up relic at this late hour would be to break faith with
the Cuban people---and with all the other democrats in the
hemisphere.'' Pursuing the same logic, the editors, through the
1980s, called upon the US to coerce Nicaragua until it was
restored to the ``Central American mode'' of the Guatemalan and
Salvadoran death squad ``democracies,'' observing their admirable
``regional standards''; and scoffed at Gorbachev's ``New
Thinking'' because he had not yet offered the US a free hand to
achieve its objectives by the means condemned by the World Court
(irrelevantly, by the standards of Washington liberals). The
_Post_ speaks for the people of Cuba just as State Department
liberals did in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years; as William
McKinley spoke for ``the vast majority of the population'' of the
Philippines who ``welcome our sovereignty'' and whom he was
``protecting . . . against the designing minority''; and as his
proconsul Leonard Wood spoke for the decent (i.e., wealthy
European) people of Cuba who favored US domination or annexation
and had to be protected from the ``degenerates.'' <<>> The US has never been short of good will
for the suffering people of the world who have to be protected
from the machinations of evil-doers. As for the _Post_'s love of
democracy, charity dictates silence. Its peers scarcely differ.

The Cuban record demonstrates clearly, once again, that the Cold
War framework was scarcely more than a pretext to conceal the
standard US refusal to tolerate Third World independence,
whatever its political coloration. Traditional policies remain
beyond serious challenge within the mainstream. We can
anticipate, then, efforts of the usual kind to ensure that the
``ripe fruit'' drops into the hands of its rightful owners, or is
pulled more vigorously from the tree. A cautious policy would be
to tighten the stranglehold, resorting to economic and
ideological warfare (and perhaps more) to punish the population
while intimidating others to refrain from interfering. As
suffering increases, it is assumed, so will protest, repression,
more unrest, etc., in the predictable cycle. At some stage,
internal collapse will reach the point where the Marines can be
sent in cost-free to ``liberate'' the island once again,
restoring the old order while the commissars chant odes to our
grand leaders and their righteousness. Inability to manufacture a
pre-election economic recovery, even if only on paper, might
accelerate the process with the hope of deflecting popular
attention by a foreign policy triumph. But it is unlikely that
the Bush Administration will veer far from the policies outlined
in its early National Security Policy Review, which concluded
that the US must avoid combat when confronting ``much weaker
enemies,'' defeating them ``decisively and rapidly,'' because
domestic ``political support'' is so thin.


The ``Natural Boundaries'' of the South

``Rounding out the natural boundaries'' was the task of the
colonists in their home territory, but the ``natural boundaries''
of the South also have to be defended. Hence the unremitting
dedication to the task of ensuring that no sector of the South
goes a separate way, and the near-hysteria, evident even in the
internal record, if some tiny deviation is detected. All must be
properly integrated into the global economy dominated by the
state capitalist industrial societies. The servants must
``fulfill their major function'' as sources of raw materials and
markets, as the State Department put it years ago; they must be
protected from ``Communism,'' the technical term for social
transformation ``in ways that reduce their willingness and
ability to complement the industrial economies of the West,'' in
the words of an important scholarly study of the 1950s. <<>>

In this broader framework, the Cold War can be understood, in
large measure, as an interlude in the North-South conflict of the
Colombian era, unique in scale but similar in character to other
episodes. The Third World, historian Leften Stavrianos observes,
``made its first appearance in Eastern Europe,'' which began to
provide raw materials for the growing textile and metal
industries of England and Holland as far back as the 14th
century, and then followed the (now familiar) path towards
underdevelopment as trade and investment patterns took their
natural course. Russia itself was so vast and militarily powerful
that its subordination to the economy of the West was delayed,
but by the 19th century it was well on the way towards the fate
of the South, with deep and widespread impoverishment and foreign
control of key sectors of the economy. <<>> The Bolshevik takeover in October
1917, which quickly aborted the incipient socialist tendencies
and destroyed any semblance of working class or other popular
organization, extricated the USSR from the Western-dominated
periphery, setting off the inevitable reaction, beginning with
immediate military intervention. These were, from the outset, the
basic contours of the Cold War.

The logic was not fundamentally different from the case of
Grenada or Guatemala, but the scale of the problem was. It was
enhanced after Russia's leading role in defeating Hitler left it
in control of Eastern and parts of Central Europe, separating
these regions too from the domains of Western control. A tiny
departure from subordination is intolerable, a huge one far less
so, particularly when it threatens ``stability'' through the
rotten apple effect. Still more ominous was the fact that the
insubordinate deviant was able to lend support to those targeted
for subversion or destruction by the global enforcer, while its
military capacity was so enormous as to deter US intervention
elsewhere. Under such circumstances, ``coexistence'' is even more
out of the question than in the case of Guatemala, Chile,
Grenada, Nicaragua, Laos, and so on; and ``dtente'' could be
entertained as an option only if it entailed Soviet
disintegration and withdrawal from the world scene. As noted
earlier, even as the Soviet Union collapsed through the 1980s,
the test of Gorbachev's ``New Thinking'' was his willingness to
allow the US to have its way everywhere, without impediment;
failing that criterion, his gestures are meaningless, more
Communist aggressiveness.

For such reasons, the US rejected out of hand Stalin's proposals
for a unified and demilitarized Germany with free elections in
1952, Khrushchev's call for reciprocal moves after his radical
cutbacks in Soviet military forces and armaments in 1961--3,
Gorbachev's proposals for dismantling Cold War confrontation in
the 1980s, indeed any possibility of reduction of tension short
of the return of the miscreants to their service role. <<>>

The Soviet Union reached the peak of its power by the late 1950s,
always far behind the West. The Cuban missile crisis, revealing
extreme Soviet vulnerability, led to a huge increase in military
spending, levelling off by the late 1970's. The economy was then
stagnating and the autocracy unable to control internal
dissidence. By the 1980s, the system collapsed, and the core
countries, always far richer and more powerful, ``won the Cold
War.'' Much of the Soviet empire is likely to return to its
traditional Third World status, following something like the
Latin American model.

A 1990 World Bank report describes the outcome in these terms:
``The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China have until
recently been among the most prominent examples of relatively
successful countries that deliberately turned from the global
economy,'' relying on their ``vast size'' to make
``inward-looking development more feasible than it would be for
most countries,'' but ``they eventually decided to shift policies
and take a more active part in the global economy.'' A more
accurate rendition would be that their ``vast size'' made it
possible for them to withstand the refusal of the West to allow
them to take part in the global economy on terms other than
traditional subordination; that is the ``active part in the
global economy'' imposed upon the South by the world rulers.
<<.>>> Following the standard
prescriptions, tendered in this case by Harvard economist Jeffrey
Sachs, Poland has seen ``the creation of many profitable private
businesses,'' the knowledgeable analyst Abraham Brumberg
observes, along with ``a drop of nearly 40 percent in production,
enormous hardships and social turmoil,'' and ``the collapse of
two governments.'' In 1991 alone, gross domestic product (GDP)
declined 8--10% with an 8% fall in investment and a near doubling
of unemployment. Russia has been going the same way. Economic and
finance minister Yegor Gaidar warned of a further drop of 20% in
production in coming months, with the ``worst period'' still
ahead. Light industrial production fell by 15--30% in the first
19 days of January while deliveries of meat, cereals and milk
fell by a third or more, and worse is predicted.

Western ideologists are impressed with Poland's successes, but
concerned that economic irrationality might impede further
progress. Under the heading ``Factory Dinosaurs Imperil Poland's
Economic Gain,'' _New York Times_ correspondent Stephen Engelberg
looks at ``a worst-case instance of how the industrial legacies
of the Communist system threaten to drag down economic reform
plans in Poland and other Eastern European nations'': the city of
Rzeszow, dependent on an aircraft manufacturer for employment,
tax revenues, even heat from industrial by-products.  The free
market policies have ``brought cities like Warsaw or Cracow alive
with commerce,'' Engelberg notes, doubling the number of private
businesses (the numbers of those too impoverished to buy even
basic goods do not reach threshold). But this welcome progress is
threatened by calls for Government intervention to rescue
enterprises suffering from the collapse of the Soviet Union (loss
of markets, unpaid debts, etc.) and to meet minimal human needs.
No less ominous is the ``social unrest from the workers'' who now
have a measure of control in factories and even go on strike to
prevent closure of plants that might be rescued by
``Government-guaranteed loans to rebuild foundries.'' The
Solidarity Union calls on the Government ``to forgive overdue
taxes and place big new airplane orders for the Polish army.'' A
Solidarity leader says that ``the Government has to make a
decision whether or not it needs an aircraft industry or whether
it has to be restructured or whether one-half should produce
aviation and the rest something else.'' But Western analysts
understand that such decisions are not for the Poles to make:
they are to be made by the ``free market''---or more accurately,
the corporations that dominate it. And no embarrassing questions
are raised about the fate of the US aircraft industry, or
advanced industry in general, without the huge public subsidy to
create and maintain it; or about the Chrysler bail-out or
Reagan's rescue of Continental Illinois Bank (``the largest
government nationalization in American history,'' economist
Howard Wachtel comments); or the hundreds of billions of taxpayer
dollars to pay off S&L managers and investors, freed from both
regulation and risk by the genius of Reaganomics; and so on
through the functioning parts of the economy. We put aside the
question of how ``economic irrationality'' of the kind denied to
the Third World created an economy in which Americans no longer
pursue their comparative advantage in exporting furs. <<>>

The economies of Eastern Europe stagnated or declined through the
eighties, but went into free fall as the IMF regimen was adopted
with the end of the Cold War in 1989. By the fourth quarter of
1990, Bulgaria's industrial output (which had previously remained
steady) had dropped 17%, Hungary's 12%, Poland's over 23%,
Romania's 30%. The UN Economic Commission for Europe expects a
further decline of 20% for 1991, with the same or worse likely in
1992. One result has been a general disillusionment with the
democratic opening, and, in fact, growing support for the former
Communist parties. In Russia, the economic collapse has led to
much suffering and deprivation, as well as ``weariness, cynicism,
and anger, directed at all politicians, from Yeltsin down,''
Brumberg reports, and particularly at the ex-_Nomenklatura_ who,
not surprisingly, are taking on the role of Third World elites
serving the interests of the foreign masters. In public opinion
polls, half the respondents considered the August 1991 _Putsch_
illegal, one-fourth approved, and the rest had no opinion.

Support for democratic forces is limited, not because of
opposition to democracy, but because of what it becomes under
Western rules. It will either have the very special meaning
dictated by Western needs, or it will be the target of
destabilization, subversion, strangulation, and violence until
the proper ``mode'' and ``standards'' are restored. Exceptions to
the pattern are rare. <<>>

Loss of faith in democracy is of small concern in the West,
though the ``bureaucratic capitalism'' that might be introduced
by the Communists-turned-yuppies is a potential problem. In the
Western doctrinal system, democratic forms are acceptable as long
as they do not challenge business control. But they are
secondary: the real priority is integration into the global
economy with the opportunities this provides for exploitation and
plunder.

With IMF backing, the European Community (EC) has provided a
clear test of good behavior for Eastern Europe: a demonstration
that ``economic liberalization with a view to introducing market
economies'' is irreversible. There can be no attempts at a
``Third Way'' with unacceptable social democratic features, let
alone worker's control, that is, more substantive steps towards
democracy and freedom. The chief economic adviser to the EC,
Richard Portes, defined acceptable ``regime change'' not in terms
of democratic forms, but as ``a definitive exit from the
socialist planned economy---and its irreversibility.'' One recent
IMF report, Peter Gowan notes, ``concentrates overwhelmingly on
the Soviet Union's role as a producer of energy, raw materials,
and agricultural products, giving very little scope for the
republics of the former Soviet Union to play a major role as
industrial powers in the world market.'' Transfer of ownership to
employees, he notes, ``has commanded strong popular support in
both Poland and Czechoslovakia,'' but is unacceptable to the
Western overseers, conflicting with the free market capitalism to
which the South must be subjected.

The South, that is. Conforming to the general practice of the
leading industrial societies, the EC has raised barriers to
protect its own industry and agriculture, thereby closing off the
export market that might enable the East bloc to to reconstruct
its economies. When Poland removed all import barriers, Gowan
notes, the EC refused to reciprocate, continuing to discriminate
against half of Polish exports. The EC steel lobby called for
``restructuring'' of the East European industry in a way that
would incorporate it within the Western industry; and the
European chemical industry warned that construction of free
market economies in the former Soviet empire ``must not be at the
expense of the long-term viability of Western Europe's own
chemical industry.'' And of course, none of the state capitalist
societies accept the principle of free movement of labor, a _sine
qua non_ of free market ideology. The errant Eastern European
sectors of the Third World are to return to their service role.
Their resources must be free for exploitation, and they must
provide cheap skilled labor for Western investors, supplying the
markets of the core industrial societies. <<>>

The situation is reminiscent of Japan in the 1930s, or of the
Reagan-Bush Caribbean Basin Initiative, which encourages open
export-oriented economies in the region while keeping US
protectionist barriers intact, undermining possible benefits of
free trade for the targeted societies. <<>> As noted
earlier, the patterns are as pervasive as they are
understandable.

The US has watched developments in Eastern Europe with some
discomfort. Through the 1980s, it sought to impede the
dissolution of the Soviet empire and East-West trade relations.
Last August, George Bush urged Ukraine not to secede just before
it proceeded to do so. One reason for this ambivalence is that
after a decade of spend-and-borrow economic mismanagement, the US
is deeply in debt at every level: federal, state, corporate,
household, and the incalculable debt of unmet social and
infrastructure needs. It is not well-placed to join German-led
Europe and Japan in the project of despoiling the newly opening
sectors of the South.


Some Free Market Successes

It would only be fair, however, to add that the IMF-World Bank
recipe now being imposed upon the former Soviet empire has its
successes, at least in Latin America. Bolivia is a highly-touted
triumph, its economy rescued from disaster by the harsh but
necessary stabilization program prescribed by its expert
advisers, now plying their craft in Eastern Europe (notably,
Jeffrey Sachs). Public employment was sharply cut, the national
mining company was sold off leading to massive unemployment of
miners, real wages dropped, rural teachers quit in droves,
regressive taxes were introduced, the economy shrank as has
productive investment, and inequality increased. In the capital,
economist Melvin Burke writes in _Current History_, ``street
vendors and beggars contrast with the fancy boutiques, posh
hotels and Mercedes-Benzes.'' Real per capita GNP is
three-fourths what it was in 1980, and foreign debt absorbs 30%
of export earnings. As a reward for this economic miracle, the
IMF, Interamerican Development Bank, and Paris Club of creditor
governments (G-7) offered Bolivia extensive financial assistance,
including secret salary payments to government ministers to make
up for their reduced incomes.

The successes are that prices stabilized and exports are booming.
About two-thirds of the export earnings are now derived from coca
production and trade, Burke estimates. The drug money explains
the stabilization of currency and price levels, he concludes.
About 80% of the $3 billion in annual drug profits is spent and
banked abroad, mainly in the US, providing a lift to the US
economy as well. Drug launderers and bankers, needless to say,
are not targets of the US-sponsored drug war. This profitable
export business ``obviously serves the interests of the new
illegitimate bourgeoisie and the `narco-generals' of Bolivia,''
and ``also apparently serves the United States national interest,
inasmuch as money laundering has not only been tolerated by the
United States but has, in fact, been encouraged.'' It is ``the
poor peasant coca growers'' who ``struggle to survive against the
combined armed might of the United States and the Bolivian
military,'' Burke writes. There are always plenty more to ensure
that the economic miracle will continue, with the applause of the
international economists. <<>>

Achievements have also been recorded elsewhere, thanks to timely
US intervention and expert management. Take Grenada. After its
liberation in 1983, it became the largest per capita recipient of
US aid (after Israel, a special case), as the Reagan
Administration proceeded to make it a ``showcase for
capitalism.''  The austerity programs brought with them the usual
disaster, condemned even by the private sector they are designed
to benefit. But there is one bright spot in the generally dismal
picture, Ron Suskind reports in a front-page _Wall Street
Journal_ article headlined ``Made Safe by Marines, Grenada Now is
Haven for Offshore Banks.'' The economy may be ``in terrible
economic shape,'' as the head of a local investment firm and
member of Parliament observes---thanks to USAID-run structural
adjustment programs, the _Journal_ fails to add. But the capital,
St. George, ``has become the Casablanca of the Caribbean, a
fast-growing haven for money laundering, tax evasion and assorted
financial fraud,'' with 118 offshore banks, one for every 64
residents. Lawyers, accountants and some businessmen are doing
well, as, doubtless, are the foreign bankers, money launderers,
and drug lords. <<>>

The US liberation of Panama recorded a similar triumph.
Guillermo Endara, sworn in as President at a US military base on
the day of the invasion, would receive 2.4% of the vote if an
election were held, recent polls indicate. His government
designated the second anniversary of the US invasion a ``national
day of reflection.'' Thousands of Panamanians ``marked the day
with a `black march' through the streets of this capital to
denounce the US invasion and the Endara economic policies,'' the
French press agency reported. Marchers claimed that US troops had
killed 3,000 people and buried many corpses in mass graves or
thrown them into the sea. The economy has not recovered from the
battering it received from the US embargo and the destructive
invasion. But some indicators are up. The General Accounting
Office reported that drug trafficking ``may have doubled'' since
the invasion while money laundering has ``flourished,'' as was
predicted at once by everyone who paid attention to the practices
and commitments of the tiny White elite whom the US restored to
their traditional rule. Increased drug trafficking and the
economic crisis have also contributed to ``an unprecedented
increase in drug consumption, especially among the poor and the
young,'' the _Christian Science Monitor_ reports. <<>>

Another triumph of free market democracy was recorded in
Nicaragua, where the Chamorro government and US Ambassador Harry
Shlaudeman recently signed accords opening the way for the US
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to operate in Nicaragua ``in an
attempt to control the growing drug trafficking problem''
(_Central America Report_, Guatemala). The DEA agent in Costa
Rica declared that Nicaragua is now ``being used as a corridor
for transferring Colombian cocaine to the United States,'' and a
Department of Justice prosecutor added that the Nicaraguan
financial system is laundering drug money. There is also a
growing drug epidemic within Nicaragua, fueled by the high level
of drug use by recent returnees from Miami as well as the
continued economic decline and the new avenues for drug
trafficking since the US regained control. ``Since the
installation of the Chamorro government and the massive return of
Nicaraguans from Miami,'' _CAR_ reports, ``drug consumption has
increased substantially in a country long free from drug usage.''
Miskito leader Steadman Fagoth accused two members of the
Chamorro cabinet, his former contra associate Brooklyn Rivera and
the minister of fishing for the Atlantic Coast, of working for
the Colombian cartels. The Nicaraguan delegate to the Ninth
International Conference on the Control of Drug trafficking in
Colombia in April 1991 alleged that Nicaragua ``has now become a
leading link in cocaine shipments to the US and Europe.'' <<>>

A conference attended by government officials and nongovernmental
organizations in Managua in August 1991 concluded that the
country now has 250,000 addicts and is becoming an international
bridge for drug transport, though the rate of addiction is still
below the rest of Central America (400,000 addicts in Costa Rica,
450,000 in Guatemala, 500,000 in El Salvador). Nicaraguan
addiction is increasing among young people, particularly with the
return of many from years in Miami. A conference organizer
commented that ``In 1986 there wasn't one reported case of hard
drugs consumption'' while ``in 1990, there were at least 12,000
cases.'' 118 drug dealing operations were identified in Managua
alone, though it is the Atlantic Coast that has become the
international transit point for hard drugs, with increasing
addiction there as a consequence. US journalist Nancy Nusser
reports from Managua that cocaine has become ``readily available
only since president Violeta Chamorro took office in April
1990,'' according to dealers. ``There wasn't any coke during the
Sandinistas' time, just marijuana,'' one dealer said. Carlos
Hurtado, currently Minister of Government, said that ``the
phenomenon of cocaine trafficking existed before, but at a low
level.'' Now it is burgeoning, primarily through the Atlantic
Coast according to ``a ranking Western diplomat with knowledge of
drug trafficking'' (probably from the US Embassy), who describes
the Coast now as ``a no man's land.'' <<>>

Drugs are becoming ``the newest growth industry in Central
America,'' _CAR_ reports, as a result of the ``severe economic
conditions in which 85% of the Central American population live
in poverty'' and the lack of jobs, particularly in neoliberal
Nicaragua. But the problem has not reached the level of Colombia,
where security forces armed and trained by the US are continuing,
perhaps even escalating, their rampage of terror, torture, and
disappearances, targeting political opposition figures, community
activists, trade union leaders, human rights workers, and the
peasant communities generally while US aid ``is furthering the
corruption of the Colombian security forces and strengthening the
alliance of blood between right-wing politicians, military
officers and ruthless narcotics traffickers,'' according to human
rights activist Jorge G"mez Lizarazo, a former judge. The
situation in Peru is still worse. <<>>

These are only symptoms of much deeper malaise in Latin America,
and in the South more generally. In part II, I would like to
explore these problems further, along with the challenge of the
500-year war, moral and cultural no doubt, but with institutional
roots that will determine, finally, whether and how it can be
addressed.