(1) Gabriel Kolko, “Confronting the Third World – United States foreign policy 1945-1980”, Pantheon books 1988; “The American commitment to advancing its essentially economic interests was revealed immediately after World War Two, above all in Latin America but also in the Middle East and the Philippines. In these areas the question of communism and the Soviet Union was nonexistent or, at most, marginal; its major problems were with those who, while ideological allies, were also economic rivals. Latin America’s preeminent economic importance to the United states made t the single most significant test of Washington’s basic goals and assumptions open Door rhetoric and equal treatment for all, which the united States often employed in its statements of aims elsewhere, was irrelevant in explaining the special relationship in south to build in this hemisphere .Throughout the post-war era, Washington’s unwavering hegemonic objective of domination frequently pitted it against key, often ruling, sectors of the Latin American capitalists. Those who accept Open door phraseology at face value as an adequate description of U.S. purposes ignore both the far deeper American devotion to its own interests in the most classically nationalist sense of that term and the role of its ideology not merely as a reflection of belief that but also as tool to neutralize its reticent allies. / The irony of U.S. policy in the Thrid Wrld is that while it has always justified iet larger objectives and efforts in the nameof anticommunis, its own goals have made it unable to toeleratechange for any quarter that impinged significanctly ino its interests. Much of its conflict with political forces in the Third World has arisen from this fact. only in nations where there has been a strong Left had the United States sometimes allowed strategic and political considerations to define the form and even the ends of its policies and to minimize, at least temporarily the central importance of its economics purposes /
(2) Passim: More vital in causing the United States to waver from the systematic pursuit of its principal interests in the Third World has been its repeated inability since 1949 to reconcile the inherent tension between its diverse aliases in every corner of the earth with its very great but nonetheless finite resources. America’s formal priorities have generally reflected a relatively logical setoff objective. But its endemic incapacity to avoid entangling, costly commitments in areas of the world that area of intrinsically secondary importance to the priorities has caused. Foreign policy and resources to whipsaw virtually arbitrarily from one problem and region to the other. The result has been the United States’ increasing post-war loss of control over its political priorities, budget, military strategy and tactics, and, ultimately, its original economic goals. / Until at least 1960, America’s leaders always considered their most significant problems to be Europe and the USSR, yet by that time the Third World had already absorbed much of their efforts and money and still was growing in importance. Washington’s ingrained unwillingness after 1950 to forgo intervention anywhere led to what has been a consistent but unsuccessful effort to define a military doctrine that overcame the limits of both space and its resources for realizing all its objectives simultaneously. Various concepts of limited war and counterinsurgency were its responses to this challenge. If the Vietnam War was the penultimate consequence of this dilemma, the successive failure of every post-war administration to resolve the frustrations inherent in America’s arms and power led to a leggy of political and military difficulties hat have often appeared to overshadow the original economic basis of US. //Policies in the Third Wold – The accumulated contradictions that have emerged from such irresolvable quandaries have eroded persistently the fundamental position of the United Sates as world power. / Cedibility was embedded in the minds of American leaders and how little they had learned from the Vietnam experience. /
(3) Passim: linked to the credibility obsession was the domino theory, which provided a geopolitical justification for intervention and reinforced an economic rationale insofar as it judged the importance of a nation in its larger regional context, which only made more defensible its involvement in seemingly marginal countries. These tow definitions of theatre of the world, more than any others, became successive administrations’ most consistent and effective justifications to themselves as well as to the Congress, the media, and the public. The problems inherent in the domino and credibility theory, however, did not disappear simple because they were politically palatable at home. Their real test came not from tier frequent successes but from occasional failures, which invariably forced the United State s to persist in futile policy or, as in Vietnam escalate its efforts. It was at such a point that the dangers of its policy to the rational management of its global system produced the most profound economic an political contradictions in American power both at home and aboard, shattering those priorities for action it had initially believed essential to its success. The United States increasingly staked its future on place secondary to its direct interests but suffused, according to its thinking, with extraordinary symbolic significance. / Since all wars for the United States, if it does not win them quickly, become capital-intensive imposing an economic and political price beyond its capacity to pay without sacrifices that divided the society, the main challenge confronting America’s leaders after the mid-1960s was less the justification for interventions, on which they agreed, but its viability. (Dat is de plaag van de moderne wapenindustrie, haar druk nood de maatschappij tot het voeren van oorlog of tenminste het dreigen ermee. Maar de kosten van die oorlog zijn zo hoog, dat de samenleving, maar korte tijd, slechts een moment oorlog kan voeren, voordat ze het weer moet opgeven, en weer moet gaan ‘sparen’ om de wapenindustrie verder te ‘steunen’.)
(4) Passim: Korea and Vietnam both proved that the United States cannot fight a protracted war successfully but that given all of the assumptions, techniques, and goals in its foreign policy it will not avoid fighting more in the future. America’s inability to succeed with its fundamental policy was indisputable by 1996. But the high costs this fact imposed on the health of America’s economy and society did not cause its leaders to abound their global aspirations but only divided them on tactical issues rather than basis principles. the United States’ post-war fixation on its credibility, dominos, and the like only produced more and more distractions over essentially extraneous issues and places, making it even feasible to cope with the growing major challenges to its hegemony. Increasingly, by the late 1970s it was unable to reverse the successes of revolutionary moments, which grew, paradoxically, out of those exploitive social and economic conditions for which the United States wars frequently responsible. / The extent of Washington’s grown shortcomings and contradictions magnifies as it tied its credibility in more and more nations to its need to maintain its surrogates and praxis in office. That the United States should sponsor and rely upon willing collaborators was essential for it to avoid stretching its own manpower far beyond their capacities. To varying degrees, the policy of aligning itself with cooperative military leaders, the Shah, or dictators in Nicaragua, Cuba, or South Vietnam became the rule rather than the exception early in the post-war years, and it was the inevitable outcome of Washington’s belief that it had both the right and the ability to define the politics of any nation it deemed important to it interests. The fundamental, fatal danger of this policy for the United States is that it made its power no stronger than them man and regimes op on whom it depended. /
(5) Passim: The United States supported repressive constituencies and the socioeconomic conditions they fostered. Although these clients were generally most favourable t American economic interests, such a policy also virtual guarded that the United states not only would eventually help to mobilize a nationalist resistance to its local allies but also that such opponents, even if conservative in their social and economic goals, would, by necessity, also have to attack U.S. imperialism. Its intimate symbiosis with the inherently unstable forces of reaction, corruption, and repression in the Third World life the resolved short-term challenges to U.S. interests. but in the longer run it compounds the extent to which its credibility would be placed at stake and its economic ambitions frustrated, for its economic hegemony never created political stability because the socioeconomic conditions merging from export-oriented investment increasingly traumatized those nations in which the U.S. impact was greatest. The multilateral banks’ austerity policies which later paralleled and reinforced its influence, only deepened this pattern. / Ironically, the United States’ confrontation with the inevitable political consequences of its surrogates’ policies as well as its own economic penetration invariably strengthens the Left and anti-Yankee nationalist. But it has been capable of perceiving its own role as a major catalyst of radicalisation – and eventually challenge to itself. Although it economic and political interventions usually have no significant effect on the United States, which has literally dozens under way in various places at any given time, to a small nation of only minor interest to the United States its impact can be monumental and profoundly affect the quality of its life..
(6) Passim: But the failure of its efforts in a small country, and Washington’s introduction of credibility and domino calculations to parallel its economic losses, potentially can transform only one of its many involvements into a major challenge to itself, such as a Cuba or a Nicaragua. If then opens the temptation to an interventions that, like Vietnam, eventually exacts a very high price from U.S. society and power also. / For innumerable small or poor nations, coping with the United States’ real role and potential threat is a primordial issue to them as well as a precognition for obtaining the freedom to shape their own development. Each must tread a difficult path capable of bringing a society out of the institutional language is that its own exploitive ruling classes as well as the United States of other colonial powers have imposed. At the same time they have to avoid other provoking a direct American intervention that can endanger all hope of change and even traumatize, as in Vietnam or Nicaragua, the entire social and economic fabric of a nation. For while Washington has never sought to allocate to the Third World the central place in its global foreign relation, in reality it has itself played such a role in the affairs of innumerable nations since the late 1950s. The problem of the United States is one of the most crucial obstacles confronting proponents of change in the Third World, and in many countries the single most important issue that they must face. / By the mid-1980s the major growing challenges to U.S. power in Central America the Philippines, Iran, and elsewhere were the direct outcomes of the contradictions and dilemmas it increasingly confronted throughout the post-war era. Washington’s fatal dependency on its own dependent and extremely instabilities, ironically merged with the legacy of pat failures in Vietnam and elsewhere, the persistent hypnotic spell of credibility and domino theories on the thinking of American leaders, and the economic impurities v that gave rise to U.S. involvement in much of the Third World, to leave America in a fundamental and essentially self-destructive impasse. This was true not only in its relationship to the Third World but also in the basic definition and conduct of its foreign policy. The United States has managed only to compound the social, economic, and political roots of crises in the Third world, and the efficacy of its military and political resources for coping with them are not fundamentally in question. Time will only increase the difficulties the United States faces, as it has done the past three decades. //
(7) Passim: The United States’ role in the Third World has not only grown consistently since the early 1950s, but also both the form its interventions take and the justifications its leaders have always employed for them have become far more complex. The fundamental assumption that the United States retains the right and obligations intervene in the Third World in any way it ultimately deems necessary, including military, remains an article of faith among the people who guide both political parties, and they have yet to confront the basis of American failures in the past of the reasons for them. Indeed, the extent to which the United States has attend a measure of success until now has both goaded them and minimized their appreciation of the significance of its earlier defeats, causing them to believe they have the ability to triumph in the future. American leaders, in their congenial optimism have ignored the extent to which there victories, as in Iran or the Philippines, have been transitory, and they have glossed over the potentially decisive costs of just one loss, as in Vietnam, to be health of their entire international position. Employing a logic that is a historical and irrational, the United States still holds the Soviet Union, responsible for the dynamics of change and revolt in the Third World, refusing to see Communist and radical movements – The USSR included – as the effects rather than the causes of the sustained process of war and social transformations that has produced only defined the world’s historical experience in this century. /
(8) Passim: Those who run American foreign policy have still to realize that inflation may affect a nation’s politics more profoundly than all the radicals init combined. They often ascribe astonishing powers to the Left despite its repeated failures or frequently inept political talents. The Nixon and Carter administration increasingly sought to control trends in the Third Worked via the intermediary of détente and triangulation with China and Russia, as it change in the Third Word. But this strategy was testimony of their refusal after three decades of experience to comprehend the autonomous – and eventually more dangerous – nature of local rebellion. One can no longer attribute the origins of conflict and war in the modern era, and the factor attribute the origins of conflict and war in the modem era, and the factors that determine their eventual outcome, to the decisions of men and nations. Ultimately such events culminate the way they do because many of the same social and economic forces that created them in the first instance still play decisive roles as wars increasingly become struggles between rival social systems, their capacity to engage in extended struggle, and the political efficacy of the alternatives they present to the masses. / / Whiter our future will be as crisis-ridden as the past deepens greatly on whether the United States can live in a pluralist world and cease to confront and fight most of the movement s and developments that have emerged in the post-war era and have become more relevant since the irreversible collapse of Soviet and Chinese pretensions to lead international socialism. In addition to the many varieties of radicalism and socialism, it now faces all Latin America, and Asia (Wat we hier nu zien is een pleidooi om de V.S. te laten accepteren al seen ‘normale’ kapitalistische staat in een wereld vol ‘radicalen’. Hier word zoals gewoonlijk, in iedere burgerlijke analyse het feit verbloemd dat de V.S. een terroristische staatsvorm is geworden, die zich geroepen voelt om wereldwijd ieder vorm van vooruitgang te bestrijden.)
(9) Passim: Can the united Stated end its purely negative role since 1946 in inflicting incalculably great damage on the many divers parties of change in the Third Word, and cease deforming them by constraining their choice of tactics in their legitimate struggle for power.? The United Stats’ role as increasingly become far less one of creating or consolidating those social systems in the Third World it believes congenial with its own interests and needs then in imposing often painful obstacles on the route toward social transformation there. Needed changes will come one way or another, but they would be immeasurable more successful, humane, and after were U.S. backing for their surrogates and puppets not a constant menace to those seeing to end the poverty and injustice that so blights much of mankind. / At the present time it appears highly likely that America’s Reponses to these questions will reflect its inherited ideology, mimes vested interest in the status quo, and past failure, and that they will once again prove negative. The ability of the American political structure to adapt to the monumental changes occurring international relation, not to mention its domestic needs [which ultimately are far more important to the welfare of its society]. Has not increased sufficiently despite the significant debate and the few measures of use legislate the Vietnam war generated. (Anno 2020 ziet het ernaar uit dat de V.S. alleen nog maar een progressieve rol kan spelen in de wereld door zichzelf te ontbinden in een aantal kleinere staten, die minder gevaar zouden opleveren voor de wereld.)
(10) Passim: Ultimately, the major inhibitions on the United States remain its incapacity either to fight successfully or to pay for the potentially unlimited costs of attaining its goals in the Third World, and these constraints have grown far more quickly than the process of reason among the leaders of both parties on the Grave issues of war and change today. That America’s policies and goelags have increasingly tailed on their own terms, recording the quality of its domestic life and international strength in the process, has yet to penetrate seriously their thinking, much less their visions of alternatives and readiness to live with the dominant political realities of our era. / The third World had more than enough problems to confront without also having to face the United States as well. No one nation can regulated the world, and it would be tragic were it to occur even if it were possible. History is full of accounts of those nations that have tried to impose their will and failed. Mankind’s problems today is that while there have been many terrible wars between Siamese nations, and the French, Chinese, and Russians have also engaged in a number of deplorable interventions against weaker states, only engaged in a number of deplorable interventions against weaker states, only the United States among the major powers has embarked on a very large number of sustained interventions of varying magnitude and remains ready to do so in the future. More important yet, only the united states believes today that it still possesses sufficient material strength to play the role of the world’s policeman. What heavied the impact of its failures in Korea and Vietnam but also in many other nations, America’s political leadership has not abdicated the basic ideological principle that the United States has both the obligation and the right to intervene aggressively and not covertly and, if necessary, overtly in the affairs of nations throughout the third World. () Passim: Astonishingly, unlike its allies whose imperialist ambitions have ended, the United States has never confronted seriously the increasing risks of its failure inherent in the sheer complexity and magnitude of its global aspirations and great but nonetheless finite resources, much less calculated carefully the ultimately immense costs of its persistence to long-urn U.S. economic and political power and priorities both domestically and in the world. / We live constantly with the tensions and costs of the united States’ aggressive foreign policy, which not only affects profoundly the likelihood of war or peace throughout the world but also imposes monumental constraints on urgently needed social and economic changes in the Third World today. To comprehend the origins and character of the events, forces, and decisions that have brought modern history to this dangerous state is not only to understand the recent past but also the causes of today’s greatest problems and mankind’s prospects for the future.”
(11) Div, “Manifest – Krant van de Nieuwe Communistische Partij – NCPN 20 januari, Stichting HOC 2022 – C.P. Chandrasekhar ?& Jayati Ghosh, “Hoe opkomende machten arme landen schaden”; “It is now generally known that three decades of financial globalization have led to a huge increase in income and wealth inequality in the United States and Europe. But in developing countries, the consequences of financial globalization are even worse: in addition to new inequality and instability, the creation of 'emerging markets' to support investment in poor countries has undermined development projects and created a relationship in which poor countries provide financial resources to rich countries . .. This is precisely the opposite of what the calling was. However, the growing difference in population income per capita between the north and south of the world is not a fault in the system, but a consequence of the way the global financial markets function. / The great promise of the neoliberal financial system, initially promoted by economies like Ronald McKinnon from the late 1970s onward, as that countries deemed too poor to generate enough savings in their own economies to make the necessary investments financing, thereby gaining better and more secure access to development resources.
(12) Passim: At the same time, changes in the economies of the developed world in the late 1980s launched a mobile financial world willing to roam the world in search of higher yields. Deregulation made new financial 'instruments' possible, such as credit default swaps [which supposedly insure against default] and other derivatives, which suddenly made it possible to provide capital to activities and customers who had previously been excluded. In the underdeveloped countries, this led to the phenomenon of 'subprime' loans in the housing market, but it also stimulated the international financial world to strengthen loans to countries that previously had little access to private funds. Because the transfer of capital was an orderly route to a higher profitability in the financial sector. // These developments gave rise to the term 'incoming markets', which was first used in 1981 by economists of the private investment arm of the world bank, the International Finance Company [IFC], to promote investment of interest in developing countries. In the 2000s, more developing countries and former socialist economies opened up to cross-border financial investments. Whether in the 'emerging markets', the development countries were associated with a greater investment risk, as well as with a higher expected return. More recently, developing countries that were previously out of the interest of international investors have been included as 'frontier markets' ['colonial markets'] within the globally integrated capital markets."//
(13) Passim: Global investors entered risky markets in developing countries that had never been seen as attractive destinations before [not even when they liberalized their rules allowing easy entry and exit of foreign capital and purchase of domestic assets]. From the mid-1980s, so-called policy changes in these markets and in the structure of the global failure system ensure that these investments involve high returns and relatively low risks. They also collected new people from profits through commissions and fees charged on transactions in the developing countries. // In some circumstances, interest rates and other yields have been set higher, ostensibly to account for a higher risk of default, even though defaults on foreign debts are rare. During the foreign crisis in Latin America in the 1980s, the East Asian crises in the late 1990s, and other crises in the emerging markets, private investors who dwell on these markets generally benefited from higher returns and rarely had to worry about a refund.
(14) Passim: Indeed, global financial institutions have benefited the most from the roll-out of neo-liberal funding to developing countries, while developing countries and their neighbors have benefited the most. Like water pumped uphill, investment in emerging markets has effectively transferred financial resources from developing countries to advanced economies, exacerbating already existing wealth and income disparities. // This dynamic applies to developing countries with different types of economies: the poorest that depend on external financiers, such as the African countries south of Sahara; countries that have experienced foreign debt crises and have sought debt relief, such as Argentina and mixed "success stories" that are generally believed to have benefited from financial liberalization, such as the Asian countries. [...] / / Closer examination of some prominent examples has shown how financial liberalization, including opening the economy to cross-border capital storms, has increased financial fragility in developing countries and made them vulnerable to periodic financial and currency crises. Some of the results mirror those seen in advanced economies, such as the greater lack of transparency of financial settlements, "innovations" such as swaps ans secularization that disguise risks, and irresponsible behavior and excesses that have generally led to a greater number of financial crises.
(15) Passim: These wreak havoc on the real economy, employment and basic living conditions, while rescue operations keep the financial institutions responsible for the problem at bay. As in advanced economies, this leads to income and wealth equality. however, the neoliberal financial system has had worse effects in the developing world, as it undermines the development project itself, in four ways: First, it has limited the ability of governments to target key element of the industrialization process in all current advanced economies, from England during the industrial revolution to Germany, the United States, Japan and, more recently, South Korea and China. once the financial sector is 'liberalized' to allow private banks and other players to do what they want, the chances of financing long-term, potentially risky mar m-necessary projects [such as investment, green energy, health care and education] are greatly reduced. It is then difficult to promote interconnected key sectors, which are essential for economic diversification and job creation. Due to the ability to use targeted credit, the neoliberal system effectively binds the hands of standing in developing countries that want to promote industrialization. //
(16) Passim: Secondly, the financial liberalization forces governments to protect the financial interests as much as possible by reducing tax revenues on the profits and for the rich, so that when the liberalization of trade reduces the tax revenues from imports. The governments then have to keep budget deficits under control by cutting their own budgets. Governments in emerging markets therefore have an incentive to spend more in economic energy through the 'countercyclical tools' that are so common in the United States and the European Union. This means that an economic downturn in emerging markets lasts longer and is more severe. // Third, the integration in the global capital market exposes developing countries to boom and bust cycles, driven by macroeconomic processes in advanced economies. Even without the instability caused by the policies of advanced economies, a leading market, once "chosen" by the financial markets as an attractive destination, often results in a crisis. A wave of capital inflows then causes a confused struggle of the national currency, making imports cheaper and exports more expensive. As a result, the incentive for domestic investment in the production of tradable goods [for exports and import substitution] is diminishing and investment in non-tradable goods, especially in the stock market and around, is increasing. Developing countries that have a significant capital influx have to deal with hausses in the trading market and in the real estate and real estate sector.
(17) Passim: The latter can be interpreted as a sign of prosperity [even when total production and revenue is stagnating or even declining], but it is simply a reflection of the fact that the private sector is using the newly available cheap capital to increase its own debt. // Once this macroeconomic imbalance exists, any factor can trigger an outflow of capital. The influx of capital thus creates itself. The conditions for an ultimate turnaround when the current account deficits are suddenly experienced as too large or unsustainable. Global investing may suddenly realize that the current account deficit has widened, a crisis in a neighboring country may reduce investment risk appetite, political change may trigger instabilities, or changes in advanced countries may make it more attractive to mobile capitalists. The outflow of cash then leads to a financial crisis, which is not only reflected in the balance of payments, but also in the domestic banking system and the real economy. // The only way to avoid this pattern is to prevent the inflow of capital from affecting the exchange rate by having the central bank buy foreign exchange and store it in the form of reserves. The Asian emerging markets have done just this; the inflowing capital was not used to increase potential investment in the economy. //
(18) Passim: But this gives rise to the fourth problem of financial liberalization: for decades the net steam has gone the other way. Even emerging markets that received significant capital inflows did not see increases in total investment volumes, but built up their foreign exchange reserves. many developing regions became net exporters of capital to the developing world – especially to the United States, which at some point before the global financial crisis absorbed the world’s savings [in the form of American bonds]. The fact that emerging markets earn less from the money they send abroad than they pay out from the money they pour in means they carry investment income from the north of the world. Whether a developing country is a net recipient of capital or a net provider, it always suffers from financial integration. // That’s why emerging markets, which are now essentially subject to the whims of global investors, even in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst economic crisis of our lives, have hesitated to spend on their own economies and citizens. It is difficult to devise a more masochistic economic strategy of governments than complying with the rules of the neoliberal financial system.”
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(19) Gunnar Myrdal, “The challenge of world poverty – A world anti-poverty program in outline”, vintage Books 1971; “The Rockefeller Report, which I quote as the lasts available autorative American attempt at an overall assessment t Latin-American situation, takes a rather sinister outlook on what is now happening in Latin America: ‘Forces of anarchy, terror and subversion are loose in the Americas .. The inflation, urban terrorism, racial strife, overcrowding, poverty, violence and rural insurgency are all among the weapons available to the enemies of the systems of the free nations of the Western Hemisphere. These forces are quick to exploit for their own ends the freedoms afforded by democratic government ….’ // The Report is correct about the regrettable facts, although this analysis in terms of ‘forces’, ‘the nations’, and ‘freedoms afforded by democratic governments’ is topsy-turvy. It warns: ‘at the moment, there is only one Castro among the 26 nations of the hemisphere; there can well be more in the future. And a actor on the mainland, supported militarily and economically by the Communist world, would present the greavest kind of threat to the security of the western Hemisphere and pose an extremely difficult problem for the United States.’ // Under these circumstances the Report takes comfort in finding it possible to ‘predict’, though with some reservations for the difficulty of making any forecasts, the ‘continuation of the trend of the military to take power.’ /
(20) Passim: The welcoming of this trend toward military dictatorship can be asserted by no American without serious qualms of conscience, for as the Report stresses, quite correctly and I believe honestly: ‘Commitment to representative responsive democrative government is deeply imbedded in the collective political consciousness of the American people. We would like to see a strong representative government develop in the other nations of the hemisphere for both idealistic and practical reasons.’ / As the Report also foresees a rising trend of anti-Americanism’, is has certainly posed a most difficult problem for American policy-makers. // Apart from increased private United states investment, about which I have expressed grave doubt, the Report proposes measures to make it possible for Latin American exports to win easier access to the American market. This sound advice, particularly if action could be taken on a world scale favouring other underdeveloped countries’ express as well, it would be a move in the right direction. Unfortunately in this regard the United States government, if it chose to follow the advice, would meet the resistance of strong vested interests at home. It is not possible to believe in any very great change in United States commercial policies toward underdeveloped countries in the near future. / A third proposal of the Report is to turn the trend and increase development aid to the Latin American countries, to us multilateral agencies for that purpose to greater extent, to abolish a number of encumbering conditions for and restrictions on ad, to lower interest rates for loans, and to agree to a rescheduling of debt service requirements, etc. These are all excellent proposals, but it must be doubted to what extent they will be carried out by the Administration and Congress. /
(21) Passim: In regard to military aid the Report recommends a reversal of the recent trend by increasing assistance for training of security forces and make more finite direction for this training toward defence against the growing subversion at the same time, it recommended a withdrawal of the permanent military mission in some countries as ‘too visible’. / Although the Report, as is usually the case in the United States, looks upon the military establishment in Latin American countries as primarily a means against internal subversion, it proposes that the United States take a more permissive attitude toward the Latin American military establishments’ ambition to acquire modern, sophisticated weaponry such as the planes and the like Third proposal, as well as perhaps the Report’s demands for the increase of other military aid, though in line with the intents of the Nixon government, will probably meet resistance in the congress as it is presently composed. / One proposal that in itself is sound is that the United States government relinquish the pretension it has maintained, contrary to this practices, of wanting diplomatic relations only with democratic governments. ‘It should conveniences and not measures of moral judgment.’ / If the United States, for its worldwide diplomatic activity, were prepared to go back to this old principle established by the Vienna Conference after the Napoleonic wars and still adhered to by more conservative countries like Britain and Sweden this would simplify international relations very much As to its relations with Latin American countries it would not seem to introduce any change from present policies – except making the support of military juntas even more uninhibited. /
(22) Passim: When looking over the policy recommendations of the Rockefeller Report, and considering also the extent to which they have a chance of becoming realized, it is difficult to believe that they will change the gloomy trends as fairly realistically assessed in the Report. // In particular, the Report’s forecast of a continual trend toward military government may well be realized. / Generally speaking, the potential power of the military establishment in every country is in modern times tremendous As explanation, the Report develops a theory: ‘.. The military was traditionally a conservative force resistant to change. Most officers came from the landowners class. In recent years .. The military service has been less attractive to their sons. As a result, opportunities have opened up for young men of ambition and ability from poor families who have neither and nor professional and poor families who have neither land nor profession and business connections. These ambitions sons of the working classes have entered the military … This pattern has become also more universal throughout the American republics to the south … their emotional ties are often with the people. Increasingly, the concern and dedication is to be the eradication of poverty and the improvement of the lot of the oppressed, poverty in rural and urban areas.’ // According to what we know, both the assertion of very big change and eh class origin of military officers ant the other assertion that this is happening everywhere in Latin America are obvious exaggerations. The facile assumption of a strong and simple relationship between such a change and the social and political orientation for the officer corps does not, of course, stand up to scientific scrutiny. /
(23) Passim: But these are minor observations. Even without such a change in class origin for any important effect of such a change on political orientation it is indeed possible that a military establishment under progressieven leadership might undergo a change of heart and become interested in radical reforms and in activating the masses in support of it. / With the strong tendency toward political contagion within the region, if that happened in one or a few Latin American countries it could have spread effect to other countries – though I believe that the traditional tendency of military governmental to defend vested interest in most of these countries will get stronger, at least in the near future. / If fact, a different turn in a radical direction got now be happening in Peru. Whether the military government under General Juan Velasco Alvarado as President will prevail in it’s announce radical policy line is uncertain but, of course, possible. / If it does prevail, it will meet strong resistance form most of the upper-class, whose privileges will have to be curtailed. To overcome this resistance the military will l have to obtain mass support. We shall then see radical reforms carried out by military government that has gradually to involve and activate the masses. / With the rising anti-Americanism in the region, a military reform government would-be tempted to direct the American companies. This is watt happened in Peru. / The difficulties that a military reform government would meet would be immense. Many of these difficulties would come from almost automatic reactions oh the part of American business. No general declarations in favour of reforms would prevent the United States companies in the country from working along with the indigenous oligarchy to stop the reforms or else bring the government to collapse. /
(24) Passim: And no general declarations of continuing and speeding up private investment in Latin America would hinder the virtual hope of new investment in Latin America could hinder the virtual holdup of new investments in such a country. It is, moreover, difficult to believe that American aid to such a country would be continued, even if the Hickenlooper amendment should be abolished or put out of use. / These difficulties might cause the military government to slow down and compromise its reform activity. This would seem to be al likely course. If instead it should continue its reform policies, it would have to take ever more radical measures and ask for greater and greater sacrifices on the part of its people. It would then put an increasing distance between itself and the United States policies. IT would have to play on, and itself magnify, the anti-American resentments which any wan are on the rise and would be apt to increase still more – now partly because of the withholding of American capital investment and aid. // The vision, extremely unclear in its contours, of radical reform activity in the Latin American countries under military government – supported, as the Rockefeller report indicates, by the youth and the Church,, prevented from becoming to revolutionary, and ‘by ‘on management’ in business, bought to feel ‘a social concern or workers and the public’ – and, in particular, the idea that such a development would lead, against the rising trend of anti-Americanism, or the welcoming acceptance of an increased flow of private investment by United States corporations, while generally inaugurating an era of friendly understanding to the United states, seems illusory in the extreme. To Americans of good will it has sentimental and almost romantic overtones. But it does not belong to this world. /
(25) Passim: It is as illusory as the contrary vision of young rebels against the Establishment, in the United States as well as in Europe, – equally unclear, romantic, and sentimental – that Latin America now is inevitably driving toward a violent clash when the impoverished masses and the ruling oligarchies. The masses are too passive and the weapons in the hands of the military too efficient and plentiful / There will probably, as the report foresees, be still more military government. As I said, I do not exclude the possibility that one or several of them could be moved to try to carry out the social and economic revolution needed for development, though he difficulties, particularly the economic ones, would be formidable / If these difficulties did not rapidly stop such a military reform government short of going very far which is probable, there would be an attempt to overthrow with such attempt might involve the American government in clandestine activity through the CIA and the other ways. This would be in line with established traditions and existing machinery, the dismantling of which neither the Rockefeller report nor the Nixon administration proposes. Even open military intervention by the United States cannot be excluded -0 though after the experience of Vietnam resistance against such ventures is grown within the United States. / The regular was of overthrowing a military government bent upon reform would be to sow dissent in the military establishment itself. This would simply mean another military coup, though this time not directed against a civilian government. / It could be carries out without disturbing the masses or indeed the civilian population generally. The result would beat retreat on the reform front – if that retreat had not already been made under the pressure of mounting difficulties.”
Marx Caesar Asimov 