Gautam Mukunda wrote:
The most recent example that still hurts was the
replacement of the Communist regime of Afghanistan
by the Talibans. It was a replacement of _bad_ by _worse_,
and it was fully supported by the USA.
Me:
Not true. That's one of those nice pieces of mythology that has been
created over the last year because it makes people like Jeroen happy, but
it's not true. The US never supported the Taliban in Afghanistan in any
meaningful fashion at all. Up until about 1989 or so we supported the
people who would eventually become the Northern Alliance. After that we
completely ignored Afghanistan. I'm fairly sure that I posted a New
Republic article that disposed of this entirely scurrilous accusation.
Alberto:
The purpose of WW2 was destroying the Nazi regime.
The price of this destruction was giving Poland etc to
Stalin.
Me:
So you're comfortable with that, but not when a similar choice is made in
other places. Well, I'm not comfortable with that choice _anywhere_, but
sometimes, hard choices do have to be made.
Alberto:
I have none - I watched a documentary on TV, where images
of damaged children were shown, and their parents were
interviwed.
> I'm pretty familiar with our
> Colombia deployment and I don't think we have anything
> approaching the men available to do what you are
> describing.
>
Therea are just half a dozen pilots that spread the poison
over the rain forest.
Me:
I still want proof of that - as I said, I'm pretty familiar with our
deployment in Colombia, and I don't think we're doing that. I also think
that our actions in Colombia are, on the whole, entirely defensible. If
Colombia collapses into anarchy, it will probably take the entire Northern
tier of South America with it. Andres Pastrama - whom we are supporting -
is a democratically elected reformist President who seems to be that poor
country's last hope. Some of my friends know him and speak very highly of
him. I've never even been to Colombia, but my analysis of the country at a
distance is that he's all they've got, and we should be behind him pretty
much 100%. So anything we're doing we're doing in cooperation with the
democratically elected government of Colombia, where they are doing almost
everything involved. Again, take some responsibility for your own part of
the world, Alberto. We're not God. Colombia is screwed up, and it's not
the fault of the American government. Now, it _is_ largely the fault of
the American people, who keep buying drugs and funding the guerrillas.
Colombia's problems are, to some extent, our fault, and we have a
responsibility to help it because of that fact. But as far as I can tell,
the best way to help Colombia is to support Pastrama, which is what we are
doing. So what would you have us do differently?
Alberto:
My point in bringing up Vietnam is that this is an example
of the policy of chosing a corrupt ally instead of a
moderately evil enemy.
Me:
But our corrupt ally was a lot better than the evil enemy. A simple note -
during 20 years of war, very few refugees left South Vietnam. When the
North Vietnamese took over - tens of thousands fled the country at great
risk to their lives. This should tell you something about the North
Vietnamese government.
> It's simply not true. While the economy was not
> nearly as good in Latin America (well, depending on where
> you were) in just about every country political freedom
> was considerably greater than it was in Eastern Europe.
>
But the mass-murders weren�t. Take again Argentina, with
a minuscule population, that mass-murdered about 30,000
people in less than 10 years, because of political crimes.
There�s no Eastern European country that comes even two
orders of magnitude to that. Even "Democratic" Germany
killed _hundreds_ of people.
Me:
I'm fairly certain that this is not the case, actually. Hungary lost
thousands, if not tens of thousands. Czechoslovakia the same in 1968
_alone_, and certainly many more in the decades before and after. Romania
- easily into the tens of thousands. The Soviet Union, of course,
somewhere between 20-40 million. On the whole, I'd rather have lived in
most Latin American countries. At least there you had a chance to leave,
if nothing else. You couldn't do that from Eastern Europe.
>> I agree with that. Again, this is not my point. I question
>> the morality of "destroy my enemies and replace them by
>> allies". This policy is amoral, and makes the USA no
>> better than the USSR or the Roman Empire, because
>> sometimes it will make the USA replace benevolent
>> dictators by genocidal maniacs.
>
> When my enemies are immoral, then it's a perfectly moral
> policy.
>
Only if the replacement is less immoral than the replaced.
Me:
And they pretty consistently have been.
> During the Second World War we fought to destroy our
> enemy (Nazi Germany) and replace it with our ally
> (what would become the Federal Republic of Germany).
> By _your_ standard, this makes the Allies in the Second
> World War no better than the Roman Empire, and makes
> the Western allies no better than the USSR.
> For that matter, it makes the Nazis the same as the allies.
> I can play WW2 games too, Alberto :-)
>
:-)
But I didn�t say that replacing enemy X by ally Y was amoral,
I said that _if_ the unique criterium for replacing X by
Y is ally-ness than it is an amoral criterium.
Me:
But no one is arguing that it is, otherwise I'd be advocating bombing
France. Well, maybe that's not such a bad idea, come to think of it :-)
But in all seriousness, I'm not saying that it is. I'm saying that it is
_one_ criteria, a very important criteria, but not the only criteria. I
have no particular desire to overthrow governments that are friendly to us,
when there are so many governments that are our enemies that are far worse.
It's also nice that, in general, governments that are friendly towards the
United States are far better for their own people than ones that are not.
But in borderline cases, _of course_ I'm going to cut my friends some
slack. I'm not crazy - that's what you do.
> Now, I'm not a universal defender of the IMF. I
> think it's made a lot of mistakes. But it's an
> indepedent institution, not an arm of the American
> government.
>
Whose members are majoritarily indicated by the gov.USA.
Me:
I believe that this is not the case. I think we get a plurality, but not a
majority, of the seats. JDG? You know these things.
> Why, for that matter, do you think industrialization
> will be painless?
>
I don�t.
But the way the IMF behaved in the Argentinian crisis
was a perfect example for those that equate IMF to Satan:
they supported Argentina until they _really_ needed
support, and in that moment they withdrew all support.
Alberto Monteiro
Me:
But I think that's a very one-sided reading of what happened. I spoke to
Stanley Fischer about the IMF's policy in Argentina some months ago, and
while I certainly could be remembering him incorrectly, his argument was
that the IMF was offering contingent aid - do these things, and we'll
continue to help you. Don't and we won't. They didn't, so they didn't.
The IMF doesn't go around writing blank checks - it tends to impose
significant demands for structural reform. This makes sense. Countries
that are collapsing usually _need_ structural reform. You don't see the US
going to the IMF for loans. In the case of India, for example, the current
liberalization was largely a product of IMF demands - which means that the
IMF, through that one action, significantly improved the lives of over a
billion people. It's not often that _any_ organization can make that claim
for its entire history, much less a single decision. Argentina pretty much
committed suicide from what I can tell, Alberto, and I think the IMF is
little more than a convenient scapegoat for largely internal failures - as
it was in Malaysia, for example, where Mahathir alternated between blaming
the IMF and a conspiracy of Jewish bankers.
Gautam
