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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 22:07:31 -0500 (EST)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Turmel)
Subject: TURMEL: TRAGEDY AND HOPE chapter XIX-XX
by Dr. Carroll Quigley
ISBN 0913022-14-4
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION: WESTERN CIVILIZATION IN ITS WORLD SETTING
II. WESTERN CIVILIZATION TO 1914
III. THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE TO 1917
IV. THE BUFFER FRINGE
V. THE FIRST WORLD WAR
VI. THE VERSAILLES SYSTEM AND RETURN TO NORMALCY 1919-1929
VII. FINANCE, COMMERCIAL POLICY AND BUSINESS ACTIVITY 1897-1947
VIII. INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM AND THE SOVIET CHALLENGE
IX. GERMANY FROM KAISER TO HITLER 1913-1945
X. BRITAIN: THE BACKGROUND TO APPEASEMENT 1900-1939
XI. CHANGING ECONOMIC PATTERNS
XII. THE POLICY OF APPEASEMENT 1931-1936
XIII. THE DISRUPTION OF EUROPE
XIV. WORLD WAR II: THE TIDE OF AGGRESSION 1939-1941
XV. WORLD WAR II: THE EBB OF AGGRESSION 1941-1945
XVI. THE NEW AGE
XVII. NUCLEAR RIVALRY AND COLD WAR, AMERICAN NUCLEAR SUPERIORITY 1950-
1957
XVIII. NUCLEAR RIVALRY AND COLD WAR, RACE FOR THE H-BOMB 1950-1957
XIX. THE NEW ERA
XX. TRAGEDY AND HOPE: THE FUTURE IN PERSPECTIVE
CHAPTER XIX: THE NEW ERA, 1957-1964
THE GROWTH OF NUCLEAR STALEMATE
Page 1088
Dulles refused to recognize the right of anyone to be neutral and
tried to force all states to join the American side of the Cold War or
be condemned to exterior darkness.
Page 1090
The so-called "missile gap" was a mistaken idea for the U.S. was
in a condition of "nuclear plenty" and of "overkill capacity" that
posed a serious problem for the Soviet Union. It was, strangely
enough, just at that time (end of 1957) that two American studies (the
Gaither Report and the Special Studies Project of the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund) suggested the existence of a missile gap or inferiority
in missile capacity of the United States compared to the Soviet Union
based on the overemphasis on the "size" of Soviet rocket boosters. In
this pleasant period of self-deception, the Soviet Union entered upon
an unofficial international suspension of nuclear bomb testing from
1958 until 1961.
Page 1097
As a result of NASA's $5 billion budget, the educational system
was brought into the tempestuous atmosphere of the frantic American
marketplace and was being ransacked from the highest levels down to
high school and even below for talented, trained, or merely eager
people. As the demands for such people grew and their remunerations
and opportunities increased, the substantial minority who were not
talented, trained or eager found fewer and fewer opportunities to make
a living and began to sink downward toward a steadily growing lower
class of social outcasts and underprivileged, the socially self-
perpetuating group of the impoverished.
Page 1098
In 1959, Red China began making increasingly unfavorable comments
about Khrushchev's doctrines of "peaceful coexistence with capitalism"
and the "inevitable victory of Socialism without war." He ruled out
the need for war and the Soviet Union was willing to reach complete
disarmament supervised by mutual controls including aerial
photography.
Page 1101
As late as 1960, only 38,000 man-days of labor were lost by
strikes and lockouts in West Germany compared to almost half a million
in the Netherlands, 3 million in the U.K. and 19 million in the U.S.
In Germany in 1958, eight great trusts still controlled 75
percent of crude steel production, 80 percent of raw iron, 60 percent
of rolled steel, and 36 percent of coal output.
The ten percent increase each year in the West German gross
national product was something that could not be denied or
disbelieved.
Page 1102
In East Germany in 1960, almost a million farmers were forced
into less than 20,000 collective farms by methods of violence and
social pressure similar to those Stalin had used. And the consequences
were similar: agricultural production collapsed. Shortages of food
were soon followed by other shortages.
Page 1103
Khrushchev's talk about "peaceful co-existence" was sincere and
he sincerely wished to divert the Communist-Capitalist struggle into
non-violent areas. Thus he was sincere in his disarmament suggestions.
Page 1105
Metternich said, "A diplomat is a man who never allows himself
the pleasure of a triumph," and does so simply because it is to the
interest of the stronger that an opponent who recognizes the victor's
strength and is reasonable in yielding to it not be overthrown or
replaced by another ruler who is too ignorant or too unreasonable to
do so.
Page 1108
After Russia backed down on the Cuban missile crisis, the White
House received a long and confused letter from Khrushchev whose tone
clearly showed his personal panic and, to save his reputation, it was
not released to the public. The next morning, the Soviet Foreign
Office published a quite different text, suggesting that a deal be
made dismantling both the American missile sites in Turkey and the
Soviet missile sites in Cuba. To those inside both governments, this
was recognized as a Soviet surrender since they knew that the Turkish
sites were obsolete and were already scheduled to be dismantled. It
was rejected by the White House because it would have represented to
the world a surrender of Turkey. Instead, the White House replied to
an offer to remove the Russian missiles if we would lift the blockade
and promise not to invade Cuba.
THE DISINTEGRATING SUPERBLOCS
LATIN AMERICA: A RACE BETWEEN DISASTER AND REFORM
Page 1109
The Brazilian cost of living rose 40% in 1961, 50% in 1962, and
70% in 1963.
Page 1110
Latin America is not only poverty-ridden but the distribution of
wealth and income is so unequal that the most ostentatious luxury
exists for a small group side by side with the most degrading poverty
for the overwhelming majority. Four fifths of the population of Latin
America get about $53 a year, while a mere 100 families own 90% of the
native-owned wealth of the whole area and only 30 families own 72% of
that wealth. In Brazil, half of all and is owned by 2.6% of the
landowners while 22.5% is owned by only 1/2% of the owners. In Latin
America, at least two thirds of the land is owned by 10% of the
families.
Page 1111
As things stood in 1960, infant mortality varied between 20% and
35% in different countries.
Page 1112
While such conditions may rouse North American to outrage or
humanitarian sympathy, no solution can be found by emotion or
sentimentality. The problems are not based on lack of anything but on
structural weaknesses. Solutions will not rest on anything that can be
done to or for individual people but on the arrangements of peoples.
Latin American lacks the outlook that will mobilize its resources in
constructive rather than destructive directions.
Obviously, the birthrate must decrease or the food supply must be
increased faster than the population. And some provision must be made
to provide peasants with capital and know-how before the great landed
estates are divided up among them. A more productive organization of
resources should have priority over any effort to raise standards of
living.
Page 1113
We hear a great deal about Latin America's need for American
capital and American know-how, when in fact the need for these is much
less than the need for utilization of Latin America's own capital and
know-how. The wealth and income of Latin America, in absolute
quantities, is so great and it is so inequitably controlled and
distributed that there is an enormous accumulation of incomes, far
beyond their consumption needs, in the hands of a small percentage of
Latin Americans. Much of these excess incomes are wasted, hoarded, or
merely used for wasteful competition in ostentatious social display
largely due to the deficiencies of Latin American personalities and
character.
The solution is not to redistribute incomes but to change the
patterns of character and of personality formation so that excess
incomes will be used constructively and not wasted.
Page 1114
At least half the value of American aid has been wiped away by
the worsening of Latin America's terms of trade which made it
necessary for it to pay more and more for its imports at the same time
that it got less and less for its exports made worse by much of the
available supply of foreign exchange spent for self-indulgent and non
constructive spending abroad or simply to hoard their money in New
York, London or Switzerland. The solution must be found in more
responsible, more public-spirited, and more constructive patterns of
outlook, of money flows, and of political and social security. A
similar solution must be found for social deficiencies like inadequate
housing, education, and social stability.
Page 1115
An Asian despotism is a two-class society in which a lower class
consisting of nine tenths of the population supports an upper ruling
class consisting of a governing bureaucracy of scribes and priests
associated with army leaders, landlords, and moneylenders. The
essential character of an Asian despotism rests on the fact that the
ruling class has legal claim on the working masses and possesses the
power to enforce these claims.
Page 1119
Arabic boys grow up egocentric, self-indulgent, undisciplined,
immature, spoiled, subject to waves of emotionalism, whims, passion,
and pettiness. Another aspect of Arabic society is its scorn of
honest, steady manual work, especially agricultural work. There is a
lack of respect for manual work that is so characteristic of the
Pakistani-Peruvian axis. The Bedouin outlook include lack of respect
for the soil, for vegetation, for most animals, and for outsiders.
These attitudes are to be seen constantly as erosion, destruction of
vegetation and wild life, personal cruelty and callousness to most
living things, including one's fellow man, and a general harshness and
indifference to God's creation.
Page 1120
The ethical sides of Judaism, Christianity and Islam sought to
counteract harshness, egocentricity, tribalism, cruelty, scorn of work
and one's fellow creatures but these efforts have met with little
success.
Page 1122
The method for the reform of Latin America rest in the upper
class of that society. Such reform can come about only when the
surpluses that accumulate in the hands of the Latin American oligarchy
are used to establish more progressive utilization of Latin American
resources.
Page 1123
The whole system is full of paradox and contradiction. The
obstacle to progress and hope rests in the oligarchy because it
controls wealth and power, and also because there is no hope at all
unless it changes its ideology.
Page 1124
World War II, by increasing demand for Latin America's mineral
and agricultural products, pushed starvation and controversy away from
the immediate present. Latin American boomed: the rich got richer; the
poor had more children. A few poor became rich, or at least richer.
But nothing was done to modify the basic pattern of Latin American
power, wealth, and outlook.
Page 1127
Until the 1952 revolution, the Bolivians, mostly of Indian
descent, who were treated as second-class persons working as
semislaves in the mines or as serfs on the large estates, had a per
capita annual outcome of about $100. As might be expected, the
majority were illiterate, sullen and discouraged.
Page 1128
The Junta was overthrown in 1952. Paz Estenssoro returned from
exile to become president. Pressure from the tin miners and from the
peasants forced the new regime to nationalize the mines and to break
up many of the large estates. Production costs of tin rose above
market price thus wiping out their foreign exchange earnings. Worse,
the world price of tin collapsed in 1957.
The problems could hardly be handled because of popular pressures
in a democratic country to live beyond the country's income. The final
collapse did not occur because of the efforts of President Siles and
assistance from the United States.
Page 1129
If any proof were needed that radical reform for sharing the
wealth of the few among the many poor is not an easy, or feasible
method, Bolivia's hard-working Indians, once hopelessly dull, morose,
and sullen, are not bright, hopeful, and self-reliant. Even their
clothing is gradually shifting from the older funereal black to
brighter colors and variety.
Few contrasts could be more dramatic than that between the
Bolivian revolutionary government (in which a moderate regime was
pushed toward radicalism by popular pressures and survived, year after
year, with American assistance) and the Guatemala revolution where a
Communist-inspired regime tried to lead a rather inert population in
the direction of increasing radicalism but was overthrown by direct
American action within three years (1951-1954).
Guatemala is one of the "banana republics." The retail value of
Latin America's part of the world's trade in bananas is several
billion dollars a year but Latin America's gets less than 7% of that
value. One reason for this is the existence of the United Fruit
Company which owns two million acres of plantations in six countries
and handles about a third of the world's banana sales. It pays about
$145 million a year into the six countries and claims to earn about
$26 million profits on its $159 million investment but this profit
figure of about 16.6% is undoubtedly far below the true figure. In
1970, 95% of the land held by United Fruit was uncultivated.
Page 1130
Guatemala, like Bolivia, has a population that consists largely
of impoverished Indians and mixed bloods (mestizos). From 1931 to 1944
it was ruled by the dictator Jorge Ubico, the last of a long line of
corrupt and ruthless tyrants. When he retired to New Orleans in 1944,
free elections chose Juan Jose Arevalo (1945-1950) and Jacobo Arbenz
Guzman (1950-1954) as presidents. Reform was long overdue and these
two administrations tried to provide it, becoming increasingly anti-
American and pro-Communist over their nine-year rule. When they began,
civil or political rights were almost totally unknown and 142 persons
(including corporations) owned 98% of the arable land. Free speech and
press, legalized unions, and free elections preceded the work of
reform but opposition from the United States began as soon as it
became clear that the Land Reform Act of June 1952 would be applied to
the United Fruit Company. This act called for redistribution of
uncultivated holdings above a fixed acreage or lands of absentee
owners, with compensation from the twenty year 3 percent bonds equal
to the tax value of the lands. About 400,000 acres of United Fruit
lands fell under this law and were distributed by the Arbenz Guzman
government to 180,000 peasants. This was declared to be a Communist
penetration by Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA, which soon found an
American-trained and American-financed Guatemalan Colonel, Carlos
Castillo Armas, who was prepared to lead a revolt against Arbenz. With
American money and equipment, and even some American "volunteers" to
fly "surplus" American planes, Armas mounted an attack of Guatemalan
exiles from bases in two adjacent dictatorships, Honduras and
Nicaragua." Both these countries are horrible examples of everything a
Latin American government should not be, corrupt, tyrannical, cruel,
and reactionary, but they won the favor of the United States State
Department by echoing American foreign policy at every turn.
Nicaragua, often a target of American intervention in the past, was
decayed, dirty, and diseased under the twenty-year tyranny of
Anastasio Somoza (1936-1956). His assassination handed the country
over to be looted by his two sons, one of whom became president while
the other served as commander of the National Guard.
Page 1131
From these despotic bases, the CIA-directed assault of Colonel
Armas overthrew Arbenz Guzman in 1954 and established in Guatemala a
regime similar to that of the Somozas. All civil and political
freedoms were overthrown, the land reforms were undone, and corruption
reigned. When Armas was assassinated in 1957 and a moderate elected as
his successor, the army annulled those elections and held new ones in
which one of their own, General Fuentes, was "elected." He liquidated
what remained of Guatemala's Socialist experiments by granting these
enterprises, at very reasonable prices, to his friends while
collecting his own pay of a $1 million a year. Discontent from his
associates led to a conservative army revolt but American pressure
secured his position. The U.S. could not afford a change of regime
since that country was the chief aggressive base for the Cuban exiles'
attack on Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1962.
The CIA success in attacking "Communist" Guatemala from
dictatorial Nicaragua in 1954 was not repeated in its more elaborate
attack on "Communist" Cuba from dictatorial Guatemala in 1962. In
fact, the Bay of Pigs must stand as the most shameful event in U.S.
history since the end of World War II.
The causes of the Cuban disaster, if we oversimplify, may be
organized in terms of two intersecting factors:
1) the personality deficiencies of the Cubans themselves such as their
lack of rationality and self-discipline, their emotionalism and
corruptibility;
2) the ignorance and ineptitude of the American State Department which
seems incapable of dealing with Latin America in terms of the real
problems of the area but instead insists on treating it in terms of
America's vision of the world, which is to day, America's political
preconceptions and economic interests.
Cuba is more Spanish than much of Latin America and only obtained
its independence in 1898, two generations later than the rest of Latin
America. Then, for over thirty years, until the abrogation of the
Platt Amendment in 1934, Cuba was under American occupation or the
threat of direct American intervention. It fell under American
economic domination by American investments on the island and by
becoming deeply involved in the american market, especially for sugar.
A local oligarchy of Cubas was built up including an exploitative
landlord group that had not existed previously.
With the establishment of the Good Neighbor Policy in 1933 and
ending the threat of American direct intervention, it became possible
for the Cubans to overthrow the tyrannical and bloody rule of General
Machado which had lasted for eight years (1925-1933).
Page 1132
The opportunity to begin a series of urgently needed and widely
demanded social reforms under Machado's successor, San Martin, was
lost when the United States refused to recognize or to assist the new
regime. As a result, a ruthless Cuban army sergeant, Fuegencio
Batista, was able to overthrow San Martin and begin a ten-year rule
through civilian puppets chosen in fraudulent elections, and then
directly as president himself. When San Martin was elected president
in 1944, he abandoned his earlier reformist ideas and became the first
of a series of increasingly corrupt elected regimes over the next
eight years. The fourth such election for 1953 was prevented when
Batista seized power once again in 1952.
The next seven years were filled with Batista's efforts to hold
his position by violence and corruption against the rising tide of
discontent against his rule.
One of the earliest episodes in that tide was an attempted revolt
by a handful of youths, led by 26-year-old Fidel Castro in eastern
Cuba on July 26, 1953. The failure of the rising gave Castro two years
of imprisonment and more than a year of exile but at the end of 1956,
he landed with a handful of men to begin guerrilla operations.
Batista's regime was so corrupt that many segments of the army and
middle class were neutral or favorable to Castro's operations. The
necessary arms and financial support came from these groups although
the core of the movement was made up of peasants and workers led by
young middle-class university students.
This Castro uprising was not typical because of Castro's
fanatical thirst for power, his ruthless willingness to destroy
property or lives in order to weaken the Batista regime, and his
double method of operation, from within Cuba rather than from abroad
and from a rural base, the peasants, rather than the usual urban base,
the army, used by most Latin American rebels.
On New Year's day of 1959, Castro marched into Havana. Within two
weeks, the supporters of the Batista regime and dissident elements in
Castro's movement began to be executed by firing squad.
For a year, Castro's government carried on reforms aimed at
satisfying the more obvious demands of the dispossessed groups.
Military barracks were converted into schools; the militia was
permanently established to replace the regular army; rural health
centers were set up; a full-scale attack was made on illiteracy; new
schools were constructed; urban rents were cut in half; utility rates
were slashed; taxes were imposed on the upper classes; the beaches,
once reserved for the rich, were opened to all; and a drastic land
reform was launched.
Page 1133
These actions were not integrated into any viable economic
program but they did spread a sense of well-being in the countryside
although they curtailed the building boom in the cities, largely
rooted in American investment, and they instigated a flight of the
rich from the island to refuge in the U.S.
Castro sought to export revolution to the rest of Latin America.
Arms and guerrilla fighters were sent, and lost, in unsuccessful
efforts to invade Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican
Republic. Failure of these turned him to methods of more subtle
penetration, largely worked by propaganda and the arming and training
of small subversive groups, especially where democratic or progressive
regimes seemed to be developing as in Venezuela or Colombia. At the
same time, an unsuccessful effort was made to persuade all Latin
America to form an anti-Yankee front.
Although the U.S. had promised in 1959 to follow a policy of non-
intervention toward Cuba, these changes within the island and a visit
of Soviet Deputy Premier Mikoyan in February 1960 forced a
reconsideration of this policy. The Mikoyan agreement promised Cuba
petroleum, arms and other needs for its sugar followed by
establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in May and
with Red China later in the year. The Soviet embassy in Havana became
a source of Communist subversion for all Latin America almost at once,
while in September Khrushchev and Castro jointly dominated the annual
session of the General Assembly of the U.N. in New York.
Castro obtained petroleum for Cuban sugar. When he insisted that
American-owned refineries in Cuba process this oil, they refused and
were at once seized by Castro.
Page 1134
The U.S. struck back by reducing the Cuban sugar quota in the
American market which led, step by step, to Castro's sweeping
nationalization of foreign-owned factories on the island. The United
States retaliated by establishing a series of embargoes on Cuban
exports to the U.S. These controversies led Castro into an economic
trap similar to that into which Nasser had fallen with Egypt's cotton.
Each nationalist leader committed his chief foreign-exchange-earning
product (sugar and cotton) to the Soviet Union as payment for
Communist (often Czech) arms. This tied these countries to the Soviet
Union and deprived them of the chance to use their own source of
foreign money for equipment so urgently needed for economic
improvement. By December when American diplomatic relations with Cuba
were broken off, the Cuban economic decline had begun and soon reached
a point where standards of living were at least a third below the
Batista level except for some previously submerged groups.
At the end of 1960, the Eisenhower Administration decided to use
force to remove Castro. This decision was a major error and led to a
totally shameful fiasco. The error apparently arose in the CIA and was
based on a complete misjudgment of the apparent east with which that
agency had overthrown the Arbenz regime in Guatemala in 1954 by
organizing a raid of exiles, armed and financed by the CIA, into
Guatemala from Nicaragua. The CIA analyzed this apparently successful
coup quite incorrectly,since it assumed that Arbenz had been
overthrown by the raiding exiles when he had really been destroyed by
his own army which used the raid as an excuse and occasion to get rid
of him. But on this mistaken basis, the CIA decided to get rid of
Castro by a similar raid of Cuban exiles from Guatemala.
This decision was worse than a crime; it was stupid. A
unilateral, violent attack on a neighboring state with which we were
not at war, in an area where we were committed to multilateral and
peaceful procedures for settling disputes, was a repudiation of all
our idealistic talk about the rights of small nations and our devotion
to peaceful procedures that we had been pontificating around the world
since 1914. It was a violation of our commitment to non-intervention
in the Americas and specifically in Cuba. In sequence to our CIA
intervention in Guatemala, it strengthened Latin American picture of
the U.S. as indifferent to Latin America's growing demand for social
reform.
The whole operation, patterned on Hitler's operations to subvert
Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 was bungled as Hitler could never
have bungled anything. The project was very much a Dulles brothers'
job and its execution was largely in the hands of the CIA.
Page 1135
The plan of invasion of Cuba seems to have been drawn on typical
Hitler lines: the expeditionary force was to establish a beachhead in
Cuba, set up a government on the island, be recognized by the U.S. as
the actual government of Cuba, and ask Washington for aid to restore
order in the rest of the island which it did not yet control. The CIA
assured President Kennedy that if matters were allowed to go on as
they were, Castro would be strengthened in power (which was untrue)
and that the invasion would be success because of the Cuban people,
led by the anti-Castro underground, would rise against him as soon as
they heard of the landing.
The executive committee of Cuban refugees in the U.S., mostly
representatives of the older ruling groups in Cuba, were eager to
restore the inequitable economic and social system that had existed
before Castro. They were alienated from the most vigorous anti-Castro
groups in the Cuban underground who had no desire to turn back the
clock to the Batista era. The CIA would not cooperate with the anti-
Castro underground because it was opposed to their wish for social and
economic reform. Accordingly, the CIA launched the invasion without
notifying the Cuban underground. Then the attack was bungled.
Page 1136
This greatly strengthened Castro's prestige in Latin American
more than in Cuba itself. This in turn permitted him to survive a
deepening wave of passive resistance and sabotage within Cuba itself,
chiefly from the peasants to recapture control of the Cuban
revolutionary movement.
Page 1138
In May 1961, Castro proclaimed that Cuba would be a socialist
state but despite his statements, he was not in any way a convinced
Communist or a convinced anything else, but was a power-hungry and
emotionally unstable individual, filled with hatred of authority
himself, and restless unless he had constant change and megalomaniac
satisfactions. His tactical skill, especially in foreign affairs, is
remarkable, and shows similarity to Hitler's.
Page 1139
On the whole, the role of the U.S. in Latin America has not been
such as to help either patterns or priorities, largely because our
concern has been with what seems to be useful or better for us rather
than with what would be most helpful to them.
Page 1140
Despite the enthusiasm and energy that make it possible for them
to overthrow corrupt and tyrannical regimes,it soon becomes clear that
they have little idea what to do once they get into power. As a
result, they fall under the personal influence of unstable and
ignorant men, the Nassers, the Perons, and the Castros who fall back
on emotionally charged programs of hatreds and spectacular displays of
unconstructive nationalism that waste time and use up resources while
the real problems go unsolved.
A heavy responsibility rests with the United States for this
widespread failure to find solutions to problems all the way from
Pakistan to Peru. The basic reason for this is that our policies in
this great area have been based on efforts to find solutions to our
own problems rather than theirs; to make profits, to increase supplies
of necessary raw materials, to fight Hitler, to keep out Communism and
prevent the spread of neutralism. The net result is that we are now
more hated than the Soviet Union and neutralism reveals itself as
clearly as it dares through the whole area.
Page 1141
The sole consequence of the Dulles efforts to do the wrong thing
along the Pakistani-Peruvian axis has been to increase what he was
seeking to reduce: local political instability, increased Communist
and Soviet influence, neutralism, and hatred of the U.S.
Although the Dulles period shows most clearly the failures of
American foreign policy in Latin America, the situation was the same,
both before and since Dulles. American policy has been determined by
American needs and desires and not by the problems of Latin Americans.
There are four chief periods in U.S. policy in Latin America in the
20th century:
1) a period of investment and interventionism (until 1933) and was
basically a period of American imperialism. American money came as
investments seeking profits out of the exploitation of the areas
resources. There was little respect for the people themselves and
intervention by American military and diplomatic forces was always
close at hand as a protection for American profits and investments.
2) the Good Neighbor Policy in 1933 reduced intervention while
retaining investment.
3) from 1940 until 1947, our efforts to involved the are in our
foreign policy against Hitler and Japan;
4) since 1947, against the Soviet Union.
Both these efforts have been mistakes.
Page 1142
That this failure continued into the 1960s was clear in
Washington's joy at the military coup that ejected the left-of-center
Goulart government from Brazil in 1964 for that government, however
misdirected and incompetent, at least recognized that there were
urgent social and economic problems in Brazil demanding treatment. No
real recognition that such problems existed was achieved in Washington
until Castro's revolution forced the realization.
The formal agreement for the Alliance for Progress aims and
attitudes were admirable but required implementation features that
were not covered in the Charter itself.
"We, the American Republics, hereby proclaim our decision to
unite in a common effort to bring our people accelerated economic
progress and broader social justice within the framework of personal
dignity and personal liberty. Almost two hundred years ago we began in
this hemisphere the long struggle for freedom which now inspires
people in all parts of the world. Now we must give a new meaning to
that revolutionary heritage. For America stands at a turning point in
history. The men and women of this hemisphere are reaching for the
better life which today's skills have placed within their grasp. They
are determined for themselves and their children to have decent and
ever more abundant lives, to gain access to knowledge and equal
opportunity for all, to end those conditions which benefit the few at
the expense of the needs and dignity of the many."
Page 1144
These were fine words but the methods for achieving these
desirable goals were only incidentally established in the Charter. On
the whole, it cannot be said that it has been a success. It's
achievement has been ameliorative rather than structural, and this
alone indicates that it has not been a success. For unless there are
structural reforms, its economic development will not become self-
sustaining or even manage to keep up with the growth of population on
the basis of income per capita.
Page 1145
The failure of the Alliance for Progress to achieve what it was
touted to achieve was a result that it was not intended primarily to
be a method for achieving a better life for Latin Americans but was
intended to be a means of implementing American policy in the Cold
War. This became clearly evident at the second Punta del Este
Conference in 1962 where Washington's exclusive control over the
granting of funds was used as a club to force the Latin American
states to exclude Cuba from the Organization of American States. The
original plan was to cut off Cuba's trade with all Western Hemisphere
countries. A two-thirds vote was obtained only after the most intense
American "diplomatic" pressure and bribery involving the granting and
withholding of American aid to the Alliance. Even at that, six
countries, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador,
representing 70% of Latin America's population refused to vote for the
American motions.
The aid takes the form not of money which can be used to buy the
best goods in the cheapest market but as credits which can be used
only in the U.S. Much of these credits goes either to fill the gaps in
the budgets or the foreign-exchange balances which provides the
maximum of leverage in getting these governments to follow America's
lead but provides little or no benefit to the impoverished peoples of
the hemisphere.
THE JAPANESE MIRACLE
Page 1148
The post-war agrarian reform redistributed the ownership of land
by the government taking all individual land holdings beyond 7.5
acres, all rented land over 2.5 acres, and the land of absentee
landlords. The former owners were paid with long-term bonds. In turn,
peasants without land or with less than the maximum permitted amount
were allowed to buy land from the state on a long-term low-interest-
rate basis. Cash rents for land were also lowered. As a result, Japan
became a land of peasant owners with about 90% of the cultivated land
worked by its owners.
Page 1151
Agrarian reform has driven Communism out of the rural areas and
restricted it to the cities, chiefly to student groups.
Page 1153
Under the Czar, Russia produced great surpluses, especially of
food.
COMMUNIST CHINA
Page 1159
Previous to the Land Reform Law of 1950, 10% of families owned
53% farm land while 32% owned 78% of the land. This left over two
thirds of such families with only 22% of the land. The first stage in
agrarian reform had been the "elimination of landlordism." The
landlords were eliminated with great brutality in a series of
spectacular public trials in which landlords were accused of every
crime in the book. At least 3 million were executed and several times
that number were imprisoned but the totals may have been much higher.
The land thus obtained was distributed to poor peasant families with
each obtaining about one-third of an acre.
The second stage sought to establish cooperative farming. In
effect, it took away from the peasants the lands they had just
obtained. The third stage constituting the basic feature of the "Great
Leap Forward" merged the 750,000 collective farms into about 26,000
agrarian communes of about 5,000 families each. This was a social
rather than simply an agrarian revolution since its aims included the
destruction of the family household and the peasant village. All
activities of the members, including child rearing, came under the
control of the commune.
Page 1160
The Communist government was not involved in corruption, self-
enrichment, and calculated inefficiency as earlier Chinese governments
were and had both greater power and greater desire to operate a fair
rationing system but the fact remains that the inability of communized
agricultural system to produce sufficient food surpluses to support a
communized industrial system at a high rate of expansion is now
confirmed and the need for all Communist regimes to purchase grain
from the Western countries confirms that there is something in the
Western pattern of living which does provide a bountiful agricultural
system.
Page 1164
A source of alienation between Moscow and Peking is concerned
with the growing recognition that the Kremlin was being driven toward
a policy of peaceful coexistence with the U.S. not as a temporary
tactical maneuver (which would have been acceptable to China) but as a
semipermanent policy since Marxist-Leninist theory envisioned the
advanced capitalist states as approaching a condition of economic
collapse from "the internal contradictions of capitalism itself." This
crisis would be reflected in two aspects: the continued impoverishment
of the working class with the consequent growth of the violence of the
class struggle in such countries and increasing violence of the
imperialist aggressions of such countries toward each other in
struggles to control more backward areas as markets for the industrial
products that the continued impoverishment of their own workers made
impossible to sell in domestic market. The falseness of these theories
was fully evident in the rising standards of living of the advanced
industrial countries. This evidence of the errors of Marxist-Leninist
theories was increasingly clear to the Kremlin, although it could not
be admitted, but it was quite unclear to Peking.
Page 1165
Mao Tse-tung, son of a peasant who became wealthy on speculation
and moneylending was born in 1893 in Hunan province.
Page 1168
There are at least half a dozen legal, minor political parties in
Red China today (1966). These not only exist and are permitted to
participate in the governing process in a very minor way, but they are
subject to no real efforts at forcible suppression, although they are
subject to persistent, rather gentle, efforts at conversion.
Page 1170
French expenditure of $7 billion and about 100,000 lives during
the eight-year struggle ended at Geneva in 1954. The Geneva agreements
provided that all foreign military forces, except a French training
group, be withdrawn from Laos. When the Pathet Lao showed increased
strength in the elections of May 1958, the anti-Communist group
combined to oust Premier Phouma and put in the pro-Western Sananikone.
This government was then ejected and replaced by a Right-wing military
junta led by General Nosavan in 1960; but within seven months a new
coup led by Kong Le brought Phouma back to office. Four months later,
Nosavan once again replaced Phouma by military force. The Communist
countries refused to recognize this change and increased their
supplies to the Pathet Lao by Soviet airlift.
Page 1172
The Geneva agreement of 1954 had recognized the Communist
government of North Vietnam dividing the country at the 17th parallel
but this imaginary line could not keep discontent or Communist
guerrillas out of South Vietnam so long as the American-sponsored
southern government carried on its tasks with corruption, favoritism
and arbitrary despotism. These growing characteristics of the South
Vietnam government centered around the antics of the Diem family.
President Diem's brother Nhu was the actual power in the government
heading up a semi-secret political organization that controlled all
military and civil appointments. On the Diem family team were three
other brothers, including the Catholic Archbishop of Vietnam, the
country's ambassador to London, and the political boss of central
Vietnam who had his own police force.
While the country was in its relentless struggle with the
Vietcong Communist guerrillas who lurked in jungle areas, striking
without warning at peasant villages that submitted to the established
government or did not cooperate with the rebels, the Diem family
tyranny was engaged in such pointless tasks as crushing Saigon high
school agitations by secret police raids or efforts to persecute the
overwhelming Buddhist majority and to extend favors to the Roman
Catholics who were less than 10% of the population.
When Diem became president in 1955, after the deposition of the
pro-French Emperor Bao Dai, the country had just received 800,000
refugees from North Vietnam which the Geneva conference had yielded to
Ho Chi Minh's communists, the overwhelming majority of which were
Roman Catholics, raising their number to over a million in a
population of 14 million. Nevertheless, Diem made these Catholics the
chief basis of his power, chiefly recruiting the refugees into various
police forces dominated by the Diem family.
Page 1173
By 1955, these were already beginning to persecute the Buddhist
majority, at first by harassing their religious festivals and parades
but later with brutal assaults on their meetings. An attempted coup by
army units was crushed and the Diem rule became increasingly
arbitrary.
American military assistance tried to curtail the depredations of
the Communist guerrillas. The intensity of the guerrilla attacks
steadily increased following Diem's re-election with 88% of the vote.
American intervention was also stepped up and gradually began to shift
from a purely advisory and training role to increasingly direct
participation in the conflict. From 1961 onward, American casualties
averaged about one dead a week, year after year. The Communist
guerrilla casualties were reported to be about 500 per week but this
did not seem to diminish their total number or relax their attacks.
These guerrilla attacks consisted of rather purposeless
destruction of peasant homes and villages, apparently designed to
convince the natives of the impotence of the government and the
advisability of cooperating with the rebels. To stop these
depredations, the government undertook the gigantic task of organizing
the peasants into "agrovilles" or "strategic hamlets" which were to be
strongly defended residential centers entirely enclosed behind
barricades. The process, it was said, would also improve the economic
and social welfare of the people to give them a greater incentive to
resist the rebels. There was considerable doubt about the
effectiveness of the reform aspect of this process and some doubt
about the defence possibilities of the scheme as a whole. Most
observers felt that very little American economic aid ever reached the
village level but instead was lost on much higher levels. By the
summer of 1963, guerrillas were staging successful attacks on the
strategic hamlets and the need for a more active policy became acute.
Page 1175
This final crisis in the story of the Diem family and its
henchmen arose from religious persecution of the Buddhists under the
guise of maintaining political order. On November 1, 1963, an
American-encouraged military coup led by General Minh overthrew the
Diem family. A new government with a Buddhist premier calmed down the
domestic crisis but was no more able to suppress guerrilla activities.
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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