January 22, 2002

The United States has emerged as the world’s most powerful state which can throw its weight around. William Blum compiles a record of American intervention in different countries

PRESENTED here is the most extensive compilation ever of serious post-second world war American interventions into the life of other nations....

 

The Roman Empire
There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest — why, then it was the national honour that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours... The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs... Even less than in the cases that have already been discussed, can an attempt be made here to comprehend these wars of conquest from the point of view of concrete objectives. Here there was neither a warrior nation in our sense, nor, in the beginning, a military despotism or an aristocracy of specifically military orientation. Thus there is but one way to an understanding: scrutiny of domestic class interests, the question of who stood to gain.
Joseph Schumpeter, 1919



America is today the leader of a world-wide anti-revolutionary movement in the defence of vested interests. It now stands for what Rome stood for. Rome consistently supported the rich against the poor in all foreign communities that fell under its sway; and, since the poor, so far, have always and everywhere been far more numerous than the rich, Rome’s policy made for inequality, for injustice, and for the least happiness of the greatest number.
Arnold Toynbee, 1961

 

China, 1945-51
At the close of World War II, the US intervened in a civil war, taking the side of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists against Mao Zedong’s Communists, even though the latter had been a much closer ally of the United States in the war. To compound the irony, the US used defeated Japanese soldiers to fight for its side. After their defeat in 1949, many Nationalist soldiers took refuge in northern Burma (now Myanmar), where the CIA regrouped them, brought in other recruits from elsewhere in Asia, and provided a large supply of heavy arms and planes. During the early 1950s, this army proceeded to carry out a number of incursions into China, involving at times thousands of troops, accompanied by CIA advisers (some of whom were killed), and supplied by air-drops from American planes.

 

Iran, 1953
Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint US-British operation. Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority in parliament, but he had made the fateful mistake of spearheading the movement to nationalize a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in Iran. The coup restored the Shah to absolute power, initiating a period of 25 years of repression and torture, while the oil industry was restored to foreign ownership, with the US and Britain each getting 40 per cent.

 

Guatemala, 1953-1990s
Humorist Dave Barry boils the Monroe Doctrine down to three simple precepts: 1) Other nations are not allowed to mess around with the internal affairs of nations in this hemisphere. 2) But we are. 3) Ha ha ha.

A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of military government, death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions and unimaginable cruelty, totalling more than 200,000 victims — indisputably one of the most inhumane chapters of the twentieth century. The justification for the coup that has been put forth over the years is that Guatemala had been on the verge of the proverbial Soviet takeover. In actuality, the Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn’t even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem was that Arbenz had taken over some of the uncultivated land of the US firm United Fruit Company, which had extremely close ties to the American power elite. Moreover, in the eyes of Washington, there was the danger of Guatemala’s social-democracy model spreading to other countries in Latin America.

Despite a 1996 “peace” accord between the government and the rebels, respect for human rights remains as only a concept in Guatemala; death squads continue to operate with a significant measure of impunity against union activists and other dissidents; torture still rears its ugly head; the lower classes are as wretched as ever; the military endures as a formidable institution; the US continues to arm and train the Guatemalan military and carry out exercises with it; and key provisions of the peace accord concerning military reform have not been carried out.

 

Middle East, 1956-58
The Eisenhower Doctrine stated that the United States “is prepared to use armed forces to assist” any Middle Eastern country “requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism”. The English translation of this was that no one would be allowed to dominate, or have excessive influence over, the Middle East and its oil fields except the United States, and that anyone who tried would be, by definition, “communist”. In keeping with this policy, the United States twice attempted to overthrow the Syrian government, staged several shows-of-force in the Mediterranean to intimidate movements opposed to US-supported governments in Jordan and Lebanon, landed 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspired to overthrow or assassinate Nasser of Egypt and his troublesome Middle-East nationalism.

 

Soviet Union, 1940s-1960s
The US infiltrated many hundreds of Russian emigres into the Soviet Union to gather intelligence about military and technological installations; commit assassinations; obtain current samples of identification documents; assist Western agents to escape; engage in sabotage, such as derailing trains, wrecking bridges, actions against arms factories and power plants; or instigate armed political struggle against Communist rule by linking up with resistance movements. There was also a mammoth CIA anti-Soviet propaganda campaign, highlighted by the covert publishing of well over a thousand books in English, a number by well-known authors, which were distributed all over the world, as well as hundreds in foreign languages.

 

Vietnam, 1945-73
“What we’re doing in Vietnam is using the black man to kill the yellow man so the white man can keep the land he took from the red man.” - Dick Gregory.

The slippery slope began with the US siding with the French, the former colonizers, and with collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers, who had worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of “communist” (one of those bad-for-you label warnings). He had written numerous letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America’s help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful solution for his country. All his entreaties were ignored. For he was some kind of communist. Ho Chi Minh modelled the new Vietnamese declaration of independence on the American, beginning it with “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with...” But this would count for nothing in Washington. Ho Chi Minh was some kind of communist.

More than twenty years and more than a million dead later, the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam. Most people believe that the US lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, by poisoning the earth, the water and the gene pool for generations, Washington had in fact achieved its primary purpose: preventing what might have been the rise of a good development option for Asia. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist.

 

Nicaragua, 1978-90
When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1978, it was clear to Washington that they might well be that long-dreaded beast — “another Cuba”. Under President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took diplomatic and economic forms. Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Washington’s proxy army, the Contras, formed from Somoza’s vicious National Guardsmen and other supporters of the dictator. It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programmes of the government, burning down schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbours, bombing and strafing. These were the charming gentlemen Ronald Reagan liked to call “freedom fighters”.

In 1990, the US seriously interfered in national elections, resulting in the defeat of the Sandinistas.

As with Cuba, we’ll never know what kind of progressive society the Sandinistas might have created if allowed to live in peace and not have to spend half their budget on fighting a war. Oxfam, the international development organization, said that from its experience of working in 76 developing countries, Nicaragua under the Sandinistas was “exceptional in the strength of that government’s commitment... to improving the condition of the people and encouraging their active participation in the development process”.

A decade after returning to the rule of the free market, Nicaragua had become one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere, with more than half its people suffering from malnutrition and with illiteracy widespread.

 

Afghanistan, 1979-92
The striking repression of women in Afghanistan carried out by the Taliban Islamic fundamentalists is well known. Much less publicized is that in the late 1970s and most of the 1980s Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the incredibly underdeveloped country into the twentieth century (never mind the 21st), including giving women equal rights. The United States, however, poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union. By aiding the fundamentalist opposition, Washington knowingly and deliberately increased the probability of a Soviet intervention. And when that occurred, the CIA became the grand orchestrator: hitting up Middle Eastern countries for huge financial support, on top of that from Washington; pressuring and bribing neighbouring Pakistan to rent out its country as a military staging area and sanctuary; supplying a great arsenal of weaponry and military training.

In the end, the United States and the Taliban “won”, and the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million were dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.

 

Iraq, 1990s
Mental hospitals and prisons are filled with people who claim to have heard voices telling them to kill certain people, often people they’ve never met before, people who’ve never done them any harm, or threatened any harm.

American soldiers went to the Middle East to kill the same kind of people after hearing a voice command them: the voice of George Bush.

Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights, against one of the most advanced nations in the Middle East, devastating its ancient and modern capital city; 177 million pounds of bombs falling on the people of Iraq, the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world to that time; depleted uranium weapons incinerating people, causing cancers and sundry congenital problems; blowing up chemical and biological weapon and oil facilities, a terrible poisoning of the atmosphere; burying soldiers alive, deliberately; the infrastructure destroyed, with dreadful effects on health; sanctions continued into the 21st century, multiplying the health problems; more than a million children dead from all of these factors, even more adults. UNICEF, in an August 1999 report, stated that in southern and central Iraq, the death rate for children under five had more than doubled in the years of the sanctions.

Until the present day, the US and Great Britain have continued to launch missiles against the burned-out ash called Iraq, as their planes fly over the country on virtually a daily basis, the authority for which Washington and London derive from each other. In the first eight months of 1999, the two countries flew some 10,000 sorties over Iraq, unleashing more than 1,000 bombs and missiles on more than 400 targets, killing or wounding many hundreds of people. Said US General William Looney, a director of this operation:

If they turn on their radars we’re going to blow up their goddamn SAMs. They know we own their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a good thing, specially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need.

It can be said that the United States has inflicted more vindictive punishment and ostracism upon Iraq than upon Germany or Japan after the second world war.

Noam Chomsky has written: “It’s been a leading, driving doctrine of US foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price.”

This may have been Iraq’s crime not that they invaded Kuwait in 1990, an invasion encouraged by the United States and provoked by Washington’s close ally, Kuwait, itself; an invasion that gave the US all the pretext it needed to take action. Iraq’s invasion was, after all, no more than Indonesia had done to East Timor, with Washington’s blessing.

 

Excerpts from

Rogue state: a guide to the world’s only superpower

By William Blum

Zed Books, London

Available in Pakistan with Vanguard Books, 45 The Mall, Lahore Tel: 042-7243783

Email: vbl@brain.net.pk

ISBN 1-84277-015-2 308pp. Rs595

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