2

The Cultural-Historical Context

It is commonly supposed that the two Reagan “landslides” of the 1980s reflected a significant “right turn” in American politics and society, a rejection of the “disruptive” and “anarchic” mood of the sixties. In contrast to the war protestors, two commentators explain, “decent, patriotic Americans demanded—and in the person of Ronald Reagan have apparently achieved—a return to pride and patriotism, a reaffirmation of the values and virtues that had been trampled upon by the Vietnam-spawned counterculture.”1 These “values and virtues,” we are to understand, are exemplified in the Reagan Doctrine abroad and the Reaganite socioeconomic programs at home.

The “right turn” during the Reagan years is not unreal, but it is also not quite what it is often thought to be. Let us briefly consider two questions: first, what the “right turn” really is; and second, how it fits into deeper and more enduring features of American society and state policy. I will keep to foreign policy for the most part, though that is only one part of a much larger story.

To begin with, what is the “right turn”? Specifically, what are the policies of the Reagan administration, which are thought to exemplify them? Basically, they fall into three categories:

Transfer of resources from the poor to the wealthy

Increase in the state sector of the economy, and growth of state power in general

An “activist” foreign policy

The first of these goals was substantially achieved by fiscal measures and an attack on labor and the welfare system, both already weak by international standards. The second program on the agenda was conducted in the traditional way, by expanding the protected state market for high technology waste production and thus forcing a public subsidy to advanced sectors of industry; what is called euphemistically “defense spending.”2 This has been the most rapid military build-up in U.S. peacetime history. Concomitantly, state spending increased more rapidly than at any time since World War II, and the administration moved to protect the more powerful state from public scrutiny by such measures as censorship, limiting access to documents, and an enormous increase in clandestine activities designed to diminish still further any influence of the annoying public on affairs of state. It is entirely in keeping with this commitment to state power that the president should nominate for the Supreme Court a man described as “critical of virtually every Supreme Court case protecting individual liberties,” whose “constitutional decisions can be explained by a single principle: where there’s government versus the individual, the government always wins.”3

The third plank in the program, the “activist” foreign policy, is also of the traditional variety though again at an extreme of the spectrum: intervention, subversion, aggression, international terrorism, and general gangsterism and lawlessness, the essential content of the highly-praised “Reagan doctrine.” Its central achievement was the organization of an onslaught of state terrorism in El Salvador, which achieved its major goal: to avert the threat of democracy and social reform by destroying “the people’s organizations fighting to defend their most fundamental human rights,” in the words of Archbishop Romero (soon to be assassinated by elements of the U.S.-backed security forces) as he pleaded with President Carter not to send military aid to the junta, which would, of course, use it for exactly these purposes. Carter’s limited war was rapidly expanded under Reagan, yielding a notable increase in the level of slaughter and general terror. The operations were carried out by a U.S. mercenary army, trained, supplied and directed by the United States. U.S. forces also participated directly. U.S. air force units flying from foreign bases coordinated air strikes, an innovation that yielded an immediate improvement in the “kill rate” among defenseless villagers and fleeing peasants. Long-range reconnaissance patrols were conducted by CIA paramilitary agents who led and accompanied Salvadoran units, allowing “the Reagan administration to secretly exceed its publicly declared limit of 55 military advisers in El Salvador” and to overcome the ban on participation by U.S. personnel in field operations; these operations were “spectacularly successful,” according a U.S. official, in calling in “aircraft to hit the targets.”4

When the savage terror had achieved its aims, and was becoming an impediment to further funding for the U.S. mercenary army, Washington ordered that the scale be restricted and removed further from public view, as was done, demonstrating with great clarity just who was controlling the process from the outset. The commanders in Washington are much lauded for this display of moderation.

Reagan also launched a war against Nicaragua with another mercenary army, an operation that at the very least must be “characterized as terrorism, as State-sponsored terrorism” (former CIA director Stansfield Turner, testifying before Congress in April 19855), and possibly as the more serious crime of aggression, as implied in the World Court judgment. The general goal was to “fit Nicaragua back into a Central American mode” and compel it to observe the “regional standard,” as advocated by the doves who are critical of Reagan’s excessive zeal.6

The maximal objective in Nicaragua was to replace the Sandinista government by one more attuned to traditional U.S. standards for the region, one that will uphold the “Fifth Freedom,” a crucial doctrine well-illustrated in the historical and documentary record.7 The minimal objective, largely achieved, is dual: (1) to block and reverse social reform and diversion of resources to the needs of the poor majority, such measures as improvement of health services and production for domestic needs, involvement of the poor in the development process, literacy programs, and so on; (2) to force Nicaragua to rely on the Soviet Union for survival and thus to provide retrospective justification for the attack launched against it as punishment for the crime of undertaking social reforms. It was evident from the first days of the Reagan administration that its policies were designed to ensure that “Nicaragua will sooner or later become a Soviet client, as the U.S. imposes a stranglehold on its reconstruction and development, rebuffs efforts to maintain decent relations, and supports harassment and intervention,” the standard policy adopted in the case of an enemy the U.S. undertakes to subvert or destroy.8

To attain the second of these goals, the U.S. rejected a Sandinista request for arms and training, and pressured its allies to do the same, thereby ensuring that Nicaragua, lacking any other source, would become entirely dependent on Soviet arms; the U.S. blocked aid from international lending institutions to the same end. When the U.S. embargo was declared in May 1985, Nicaraguan trade with the Soviet bloc was about 20%, roughly the same as the U.S. and far less than Europe and the Third World, an intolerable situation that must be overcome so as to allow apologists for U.S. international terrorism to justify it as defense against Soviet imperialism.9 The same U.S. policies, with their predictable effects, enable the Free Press to refer to “the Moscow-backed Government in Nicaragua,” a phrase with appropriately ominous overtones and one that is literally correct, given the success of the Reagan administration in ensuring that Nicaragua must turn to the Soviet Union for defense against U.S. international terrorism. The Free Press may also proceed to characterize the U.S. war against Nicaragua as a conflict between “the Soviet-supported Sandinista regime” and “the United States backed rebels,” thus establishing the framework of East-West confrontation required by state propaganda.10 And it may invoke the frightening specter of “Soviet-supplied armaments” while bemoaning the fate of the poor contras, trying to fight “Soviet helicopters” with only “boots and bandages” (we return to the realities). These images help to instill the proper mood of fear and concern at home, even among liberal critics of the means adopted by the Reagan administration to defend ourselves from Soviet expansionism. Meanwhile commentators sagely ponder the Nicaraguan threat to conquer Central America as agents of Soviet imperialism, if not to invade Texas (as Reagan intimated) or provide bases for Soviet bombers attacking the United States (General John Singlaub).11

Elsewhere in the region, the “activist” policy included enthusiastic support for atrocities in Guatemala at a level unprecedented even by the standards that the U.S. has helped maintain since overthrowing Guatemalan democracy in 1954; the conversion of Honduras into a military base for U.S.-directed international terrorism; and the subversion of Costa Rican democracy by pressures upon Costa Rica, on pain of economic collapse, to line up in U.S. crusades against democracy and social reform in the region.

In Central America, the Reagan Doctrine deserves a large share of the credit for a most impressive slaughter. The death toll under Reagan in El Salvador passed 50,000 and in Guatemala it may approach 100,000. In Nicaragua, the terror was less successful, amounting to only some 11,000 civilians killed under Reagan by 198612; the problem is that in Nicaragua the population has an army to defend it from the U.S.-organized terrorist forces, whereas in El Salvador and Guatemala the terrorist force attacking the civilian population is the army. The death toll under Reagan in this region alone thus amounts to 150,000 or more. This was, furthermore, not ordinary killing, but rather Pol Pot-style atrocities, with extensive torture, rape, mutilation, “disappearance,” and similar measures to ensure that the populations would be properly traumatized. We may add over 20,000 killed during the U.S.-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, mostly civilians, and untold additional victims of international terrorism, starvation, disease and brutal labor.

Other exercises of the “activist” policy include the bombing of Libya in April 1986 with about 100 reported killed, the worst single act of international terrorism of the year; steps to ensure that South Africa would be able to maintain its illegal control over Namibia (virtually never discussed in the media) while disrupting its neighbors and preventing them from escaping the dependence on South Africa that is a legacy of the colonial system; support for continued Israeli terrorism in Lebanon, and so on.

In essence, that is the “right turn.” Now three observations.

First, these policies are as far from “conservatism” as one can imagine. We might refer to them as “reactionary jingoism,” or perhaps harsher terms are appropriate. There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term “conservatism” can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country’s future.

Second, this “right turn” is generally supported by elite opinion across the political spectrum, apart from tactical disagreements. The policies were initiated by the liberal Carter administration, including the military build-up which largely follows its projections, the dismantling of the welfare state, the terrorist slaughter in El Salvador, and so on. There are differences, but they are within a general tendency that has won wide agreement. The Democratic opposition has broadly supported these policies, even the attack against Nicaragua, the most controversial element of the Reagan program because of concern that it might prove costly to the United States. U.S. international terrorism in El Salvador also raised doubts when there was fear that it might be unsuccessful and too costly to us, but such criticism waned, replaced by avid enthusiasm, when the violence began to achieve its goals and could be concealed behind an electoral charade that merits comparison to the exercises in “democracy” in the Soviet sphere that are lauded by Pravda, though even this comparison may be too kind in the light of the circumstances.13

We should also bear in mind that the second and third plank of the Reagan program follow lines laid down by John F. Kennedy, whose administration did not have to adopt Reagan’s first plank because U.S. power led them to believe that the U.S. could construct “great societies at home and grand designs abroad” (Presidential adviser Walter Heller). With the relative decline in U.S. power, the great societies at home must now be abandoned, a fact recognized by Kennedy’s “neoliberal” descendants. Among these descendants are some of the most enthusiastic supporters of Reaganite atrocities, for example, the editors of the New Republic, still the major organ of American liberalism, who urged Reagan to proceed with the slaughter in El Salvador “regardless of how many are murdered” and now congratulate him, and themselves, on the successes achieved in this endeavor,14 a performance that passes without comment in a terrorist culture.

Third, the “right turn” is opposed by the general public. The vote for Reagan in his “landslide” victories reached some 30% of the electorate, and even that was largely an expression of discontent with things as they were and with the pallid Democratic alternatives; most voters hoped that Congress would not enact Reagan’s legislative program and a tiny percentage (about 1% of the electorate in 1984, down from 4% in 1980) voted for him because they took him to be a true “conservative.” As polls have consistently shown, the public has continued a slow drift towards support for New Deal-style policies, much preferring social to military spending, supporting the rights of women, workers, minorities and the poor, and so on.15 The public also overwhelmingly supports a nuclear freeze, and if more than a small fraction had been aware of such Soviet initiatives as their unilateral freeze, the public would undoubtedly have strongly advocated U.S. participation. Opposition to the attack against Nicaragua has also been high,16 even though there is an elite consensus on “containing Nicaragua” and positive comments about the Sandinistas have long been effectively barred from mainstream discourse, an important matter to which I return. By 1987, polls indicate, the public want “their next President to distance himself from President Reagan’s policies” by more than 2 to 1, “by a significant margin think Vice President Bush’s association with Reagan will hurt rather than help his chances to become President,” and “trust Congress over Reagan when it comes to solving the nation’s major problems by nearly a 2-1 margin”; and by a similar margin the public says that things in this country “have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track,” with “a resurgence of the cynicism and negativism that marked the Watergate/oil embargo/inflation-scarred years of the past decade.”17

In summary, the “Right Turn” surely exists, but it represents an elite consensus, tactical considerations aside, with few and scattered exceptions. And throughout, it has been in large measure inconsistent with the public mood. Furthermore, it is anything but “conservative.”

The “right turn” among elites began in the early 1970s, in response to problems caused in large measure by the Vietnam war. These problems fell into two major categories: economic and disciplinary.

The economic problem was that the war proved costly to the United States and beneficial to its industrial rivals. Canada, for example, became the largest per capita war exporter, enriching itself on the destruction of Indochina while deploring American brutality.18 The most important case was Japan. The Japanese economy began to recover with the stimulus of the Korean war, but it was the Vietnam war that really moved it into high gear thanks to U.S. military procurements. The Kennedy administration was concerned to find ways to ensure the viability of the Japanese economy, but that has not been the problem in the post-Vietnam years. In 1965, the trade balance shifted in favor of Japan, reaching serious proportions by the 1980s. As for Europe, the trade balance began to shift in Europe’s favor in the late 1950s,19 and the relative decline in U.S. power became noticeable, and disturbing to elite opinion, as a consequence of the Vietnam war. South Korean “take-off” also dates from that period, with the Vietnam war responsible for some 20% of its foreign exchange earnings during the war, including pay for some 300,000 Korean mercenaries introduced from January 1965 to “defend South Vietnam” by terrorizing its population.20

It was therefore necessary for the government to undertake measures to restore the profitability and power of U.S. business. Nixon began the process by suspending the convertibility of the dollar and imposing a 10% surcharge on imports, in violation of international commitments. These steps were unpopular among some business and financial circles, but the domestic measures of the following years received wide elite support: the attack on labor and social programs, the forced subsidy to advanced industry through the Pentagon system, and the other programs instituted as the Reagan administration undertook the required “right turn.”21

The disciplinary problems were of two types: international and domestic. Parts of the Third World were out of control with the collapse of the Portuguese Empire and the growing ferment in Latin America. These problems require an “activist” foreign policy, which in turn requires a jingoist consensus, at least among the elite and politically active segments of the population.

There were also disciplinary problems at home, where much of the population was also out of control. The Vietnam war contributed to the politicization of American society. The naive might call this democracy, but sophisticated Western thinkers understand that it is, as they called it, a “crisis of democracy,” which must be overcome by returning the generally marginalized population to the passivity that is their proper state. This is necessary if “democracy” is to survive in the Orwellian sense of proper discourse, where the term refers to unhampered rule by business-based sectors, a system of elite decision with periodic public ratification, but, crucially, no significant public role in the formation of state policy. It was thus necessary to return the population to apathy and obedience, to restore discipline in the institutions responsible for “the indoctrination of the young,” to exclude the limited forms of dissent that had appeared in the media, and in general, to bar any serious challenge to elite rule. These problems, in fact, had arisen worldwide. They were addressed in the first major publication of the Trilateral Commission, formed at the initiative of David Rockefeller to bring together liberal elites from the United States, Europe and Japan; it is their 1975 study of “the crisis of democracy” that I have been quoting and paraphrasing.22

Every major war of this century has evoked a similar reaction on the part of dominant social groups: business, the political elites that are primarily business-based, the corporate media, and the privileged intelligentsia generally, serving as ideological managers. During and after World War I, the Wilson administration, under the pretext of a Bolshevik threat, launched a “Red Scare” that succeeded in deterring the threat of democracy (in the true sense of the word) while reinforcing “democracy” in the technical Orwellian sense. With broad liberal support, the Red Scare succeeded in undermining the labor movement and dissident politics, and reinforcing corporate power. Two lasting institutional developments from that period, of great consequence, are the rise of the Public Relations industry, dedicated quite openly to controlling “the public mind,” and the national political police (the FBI). It was also at that time that liberal democratic theorists such as Walter Lippmann began to discuss the importance of “the manufacture of consent” as a means of controlling the population in societies in which the state lacks the requisite force for internal coercion. These ideas were to become a major theme in the academic social sciences and the Public Relations industry.

World War II had similar consequences, the most familiar being the phenomenon mislabelled “McCarthyism”—in fact, a broad-based effort spearheaded by business, its Public Relations industry and liberal Democrats to overcome the “crisis of democracy” then brewing. In 1938, the National Association of Manufacturers Board of Directors had observed that “the hazard facing industrialists” is “the newly realized political power of the masses”; “unless their thinking is redirected,” they warned, “we are definitely headed for adversity.” Substantial efforts were undertaken to overcome this threat, with considerable success. In 1947, State Department public relations officer Melton Davis commented that “smart public relations [has] paid off as it has before and will again,” moving “the public opinion climate” sharply to the right—“anti-social change, anti-economic change, anti-labor,” at the same time that “the rest of the world,” including Europe, “has moved to the left, has admitted labor into the government [and] passed liberalized legislation.” The climate in the United States “is not moving to the right, it has been moved—cleverly—to the right,” he observed, in contrast to Europe. These developments in the rest of the world caused much concern, and U.S. power was applied to reverse them.23

The point is that wars and other periods of turmoil tend to make people think, to involve them in social and political action, creating a “crisis of democracy,” that is, a threat that there might be meaningful steps towards democracy. Dominant elites must rally to prevent this threat to their privilege and power. The current “Right Turn” thus falls into a regular and natural pattern. It has been highly successful among educated elites, but much less so among the general population, in contrast to earlier exercises. Some of the central features of the Reagan Doctrine are a response to this problem, to which we now turn.