The Costs of Counterrevolution,
Must We Ignore Imperialism?,
Against Imperialism
excerpted from the book
The Sword and the Dollar
Imperialism, Revolution, and the
Arms Race
by Michael Parenti
St. Martin's Press, 1989
The Costs of Counterrevolution
p117
Throughout the 1980s, the counterrevolutionary mercenaries who
have waged war against such countries as Nicaragua, Angola, and
Mozambique, were described as "guerrillas." In fact,
they won little support from the people of those countries, which
explains why they remained so utterly dependent upon aid from
the United States and South Africa. In an attempt to destroy the
revolutionary economy and thus increase popular distress and discontent,
these counterrevolutionaries attacked farms, health workers, technicians,
schools, and civilians. Unlike a guerrilla army that works with
and draws support from the people, the counterrevolutionary mercenaries
kidnap, rape, kill and in other ways terrorize the civilian population.
These tactics have been termed "self-defeating," but
they have a logic symptomatic of the underlying class politics.
Since the intent of the counterrevolutionaries is to destroy the
revolution, and since the bulk of the people support the revolution,
then the mercenaries target the people.
In Mozambique, for example, over a period
of eight years the South African-financed rebels laid waste to
croplands, reducing the nation's cereal production enough to put
almost 4 million people in danger of starvation. The rebels destroyed
factories, rail and road links, and marketing posts, causing a
sharp drop in Mozambique's production and exports. They destroyed
40 percent of the rural schools and over 500 of the 1,222 rural
health clinics built by the Marxist government. And they killed
hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children. But they set up
no "liberated" areas and introduced no program for the
country; nor did they purport to have any ideology or social goals.
Likewise, the mercenary rebel force in
Angola, financially supported throughout the 1980s by the apartheid
regime in South Africa and looked favorably upon by the Reagan
administration, devastated much of the Angolan economy, kidnapping
and killing innocent civilians, displacing about 600,000 persons
and causing widespread hunger and malnutrition. Assisted by White
South African troops, the rebels destroyed at least half of Angola's
hospitals and clinics. White South African military forces, aided
by jet fighters, engaged in direct combat on the side of the counterrevolutionaries.
The rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, offered no social program for
Angola but was lavish in his praise of the apartheid rulers in
Pretoria and critical of Black South African leaders.
So with the contra forces that repeatedly
attacked Nicaragua from Honduras for some seven years. In all
that time they were unable to secure a "liberated" zone
nor any substantial support from the people. They represented
a mercenary army that amounted to nothing much without US money-and
nothing much with it, having failed to launch a significant military
offensive for years at a time. Like other counterrevolutionary
"guerrillas" they were quite good at trying to destabilize
the existing system by hitting soft targets like schools and farm
cooperatives and killing large numbers of civilians, including
children. (While the US news media unfailingly reported that the
Nicaraguans or Cubans had "Soviet-made weapons," they
said nothing about the American, British, and Israeli arms used
by counterrevolutionaries to kill Angolans, Namibians, Black South
Africans, Western Saharans, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans.)
Like counterrevolutionaries in other countries,
the Nicaraguan contras put forth no economic innovations or social
programs other than some vague slogans. As the New York Times
reported, when asked about "the importance of political action
in the insurgency" the contra leaders "did not seem
to assign this element of revolutionary warfare a high priority."
They did not because they were not waging a "revolution"
but a counterrevolution. What kind of a program can counterrevolutionaries
present? If they publicize their real agenda, which is to open
the country once more to the domination of foreign investors and
rich owners, they would reveal their imperialist hand.
p120
Like most of the Third World, Nicaragua during the Somoza dictatorship
was one of imperialism's ecological disasters, with its unrestricted
industrial and agribusiness pollution and deforestation. Upon
coming to power, the Sandinistas initiated rain forest and wildlife
conservation measures and alternative energy programs. The new
government also adopted methods of cutting pesticides to a minimum,
prohibiting the use of the deadlier organochlorides commonly applied
in other countries. Nicaragua's environmental efforts stand in
marked contrast to its neighboring states. But throughout the
1980s, the program was severely hampered by contra attacks that
killed more than thirty employees of Nicaragua's environmental
and state forestry agencies, and destroyed agricultural centers
and reclamation projects.
p121
The US government is ready to accept just about anyone who emigrates
from a Communist country. In contrast, the hundreds of millions
of Third World refugees from capitalism, who would like to come
to this country because the conditions of their lives are so hopeless,
are not allowed to come in ...
*
Must We Ignore Imperialism?
p128
Woodrow Wilson, 1907
Since trade ignores national boundaries
and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market,
the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations
which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions
obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state,
even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the
process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no
useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.
p129
Ronald Reagan
What I want to see above all else is that this country remains
a country where someone can always be rich. That's the thing we
have that must be preserved.
p129
Jeff McMahan
U.S. reasons for wanting to control the
third world are to some extent circular. Thus third world resources
are required in part to guarantee military production, and increased
military production is required in part to maintain and expand
U.S. control over third world resources .... Instrumental goals
eventually come to be seen as ends in themselves. Initially the
pursuit of overseas bases is justified by the need to maintain
stability, defend friendly countries from communist aggression,
and so on-in other words, to subjugate and control the third world;
but eventually the need to establish and maintain overseas bases
becomes one of the reasons for wanting to subjugate and control
the third world.
p131
Henry Kissinger, June 27, 1970 about Chile
I don't see why we need to stand by and
watch a country go Communist because of the irresponsibility of
its own people.
*
Against Imperialism
p196
The people who make US foreign policy are known to us-and they
are well known to each other. Top policymakers and advisors are
drawn predominantly from the major corporations and from policy
groups like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Committee for
Economic Development, the Trilateral Commission, the Business
Roundtable, and the Business Council. Membership in these groups
consists of financiers, business executives, and corporate lawyers.
Some also have a sprinkling of foundation directors, news editors,
university presidents, and academicians.
Most prominent is the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR). Incorporated in 1921, the CFR numbered among
its founders big financiers such as John D. Rockefeller, Nelson
Aldrich, and J. P. Morgan. Since World War II, CFR members have
included David Rockefeller, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank (and
erstwhile CFR president); Allen Dulles, Wall Street lawyer and
longtime director of the CIA; and, in the 1970s, all the directors
of Morgan Guaranty Trust; nine directors of Banker's Trust; five
directors of Tri-Continental holding company; eight directors
of Chase Manhattan; and directors from each of the following:
Mellon National Bank, Bank of America, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler,
Standard Oil of New Jersey, General Electric, General Dynamics,
Union Carbide, IBM, AT&T, ITT, and the New York Times (a partial
listing).
One member of the Kennedy administration,
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., described the decision-making establishment
as "an arsenal of talent which had so long furnished a steady
supply of always orthodox and often able people to Democratic
as well as Republican administrations. 115 President Kennedy's
secretary of state was Dean Rusk, president of the Rockefeller
Foundation and member of the CFR; his secretary of defense was
Robert McNamara, president of Ford Motor Company; his secretary
of the treasury was C. Douglas Dillon, head of a prominent Wall
Street banking firm and member of the CFR. Nixon's secretary of
state was Henry Kissinger, a Nelson Rockefeller protégé
who also served as President Ford's secretary of state. Ford appointed
fourteen CFR members to his administration. Seventeen top members
of Carter's administration were participants of the Rockefeller-created
Trilateral Commission, including Carter himself and Vice President
Walter Mondale. Carter's secretary of state was Cyrus Vance, Wall
Street lawyer, director of several corporations, trustee of the
Rockefeller Foundation, and member of the CFR.
Reagan's first secretary of state was
Alexander Haig, former general and aide to President Nixon, president
of United Technologies, director of several corporations including
Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank, and member of the CFR. Reagan's
next secretary of state was George Shultz, president of Bechtel
Corporation, director of Morgan Guaranty Trust, director of the
CFR, and advisor of the Committee for Economic Development (CED).
Reagan's secretary of defense was Caspar Weinberger, vice president
of Bechtel, director of other large corporations, and member of
the Trilateral Commission. The secretary of treasury and later
chief of staff was Donald Regan, chief executive officer of Merrill,
Lynch, trustee of the CED, member of the CFR and of the Business
Roundtable. Reagan's CIA director, William Casey, was director
of the ExportImport Bank, head of the Securities and Exchange
Commission under Nixon, and partner in a prominent Wall Street
law firm. At least a dozen of Reagan's top administrators and
some thirty advisors were CFR members.
Members of groups like the Council on
Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission have served in
just about every top executive position, including most cabinet
and subcabinet slots, and have at times virtually monopolized
the membership of the National Security Council, the nation's
highest official policymaking body.' The reader can decide whether
they compose (1) a conspiratorial elite, (2) the politically active
members of a ruling class, or (3) a selection of policy experts
and specialists in the service of pluralistic democracy.
These policymakers are drawn from overlapping
corporate circles and policy groups that have a capacity unmatched
by any other interest groups in the United States to fill top
government posts with persons from their ranks. While supposedly
selected to serve in government because they are experts and specialists,
they really are usually amateurs and "generalists."
Being president of a giant construction firm and director of a
bank did not qualify George Shultz to be Nixon's secretary of
labor nor his secretary of the treasury. Nor did Shultz bring
years of expert experience in foreign affairs to his subsequent
position as Reagan's secretary of state. But he did bring a proven
capacity to serve well the common interests of corporate America.
Rather than acting as special-interest
lobbies for particular firms, policy groups look after the class-wide
concerns of the capitalist system. This is in keeping with the
function of the capitalist state itself. While not indifferent
to the fate of the overseas operations of particular US firms,
the state's primary task is to protect capitalism as a system,
bolstering client states and opposing revolutionary or radically
reformist ones.
p200
Far from being powerless, the pressure of democratic opinion in
this country and abroad has been about the only thing that has
restrained US leaders from using nuclear weapons in Vietnam, and
intervening with US forces in Angola, Nicaragua, and elsewhere.
How best to pursue policies that lack popular support is a constant
preoccupation of White House policymakers. President Reagan's
refusal to negotiate with the Soviets in the early 1980s provoked
the largest peace demonstrations in the history of the United
States. Eventually he had to offer an appearance of peace by agreeing
to negotiate. To give this appearance credibility, he actually
had to negotiate and even reluctantly arrive at unavoidable agreement
on some issues, including the 1987 INF treaty.
Evidence of the importance of mass democratic
opinion is found in the remarkable fact that the United States
has not invaded Nicaragua. Even though the US had a firepower
and striking force many times more powerful than the ones used
in the previous eleven invasions of Nicaragua, and a president
(Reagan) more eager than any previous president to invade, the
invasion did not happen. Not because it would have been too costly
in lives but because it would have been politically too costly.
President Reagan would not have balked at killing tens of thousands
of Nicaraguans and losing say 5,000 Americans to smash the Red
Menace in Central America. When 241 Marines were blown away in
one afternoon in Lebanon, Reagan was ready to escalate his involvement
in that country. Only the pressure of democratic forces in the
USA and elsewhere caused him to leave Lebanon and refrain from
invading Nicaragua. He did not have the political support to do
otherwise. Invasion was politically too costly because it was
militarily too costly even though logistically possible. It would
have caused too much of an uproar at home and throughout Latin
America and would have lost him, his party, and his policies I
too much support.
p203
The policies pursued by US leaders have delivered misfortune upon
countless innocents, generating wrongs more horrendous than any
they allegedly combat. The people of this country and other nations
are becoming increasingly aware of this. The people know that
nuclear weapons bring no security to anyone and that interventions
on the side of privileged autocracies and reactionary governments
bring no justice. They also seem to know that they pay most of
the costs of the arms race and many of the costs of imperialism.
From South Korea to South Africa, from Central America to the
Western Sahara, from Europe to North America, people are fighting
back, some because they have no choice, others because they would
choose no other course but the one that leads to peace and justice.
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