Preface

This study, consisting of two related volumes, deals with relations between the United States and the Third World. It has a dual focus: on facts and on beliefs. The basic fact is that the United States has organized under its sponsorship and protection a neocolonial system of client states ruled mainly by terror and serving the interests of a small local and foreign business and military elite. The fundamental belief, or ideological pretense, is that the United States is dedicated to furthering the cause of democracy and human rights throughout the world, though it may occasionally err in the pursuit of this objective.

Since 1960 over 18 Latin American regimes have been subjected to military takeovers—a “domino effect” neglected in the West. U.S. influence has been crucial in this process, in some cases by means of deliberate subversion or even direct aggression, but invariably important given the substantial economic and military penetration and presence of the superpower. The phenomenon itself is neither new nor confined to Latin America. The fate of Guatemalan democracy, subverted by the CIA in 1954 in favor of a regime of torture and oppression, can be matched with that of Iran a year earlier; and the Philippines, brutally subjugated at the turn of the century, has now been stripped of its short-lived democratic facade without a word of protest by the United States. This, and the subsequent sharp increases in economic and military aid to the martial law government of Marcos, not only reflect a familiar and traditional pattern, they are also compelling evidence of approval and support.

The ugly proclivities of the U.S. clients, including the systematic use of torture, are functionally related to the needs of U.S. (and other) business interests, helping to stifle unions and contain reformist threats that might interfere with business freedom of action. The proof of the pudding is that U.S. bankers and industrialists have consistently welcomed the “stability” of the new client fascist order, whose governments, while savage in their treatment of dissidents, priests, labor leaders, peasant organizers or others who threaten “order,” and at best indifferent to the mass of the population, have been most accommodating to large external interests. In an important sense, therefore, the torturers in the client states are functionaries of IBM, Citibank, Allis Chalmers and the U.S. government, playing their assigned roles in a system that has worked according to choice and plan.

With the spread and huge dimensions of the empire of Third World fascism, complete with death squads, torture and repression, the gap between fact and belief has become a yawning chasm. The ideological institutions—the press, schools and universities—thus face a growing challenge. It is, one might have thought, a formidable task to transmute increasing numbers of fascist thugs into respectable “leaders” worthy of our subsidies and active support. Equally serious is the problem of depicting the United States itself as fit to judge and assess the human rights record of other states, in this context of sponsorship of an international mafia, and immediately after its prolonged and brutal assault on the peasant societies of Indochina. Nevertheless, these formidable tasks have been accomplished without notable difficulty, and the credibility gap has been successfully bridged by a very effective system of rewriting recent history and selecting, processing and creating current “information”. As we describe in detail throughout this work, on fundamental issues the mass media in the United States—what we will refer to as the “Free Press”—function very much in the manner of a system of state-controlled propaganda, and their achievements are, in fact, quite awesome.

The first volume is devoted to analyzing the forces that have shaped the U.S.-sponsored neo-colonial world, the nature of the client states, and the processes and rationales that the ideological institutions have employed to defend and justify the proliferating terror. The coverage is far from exhaustive; we have selected only a few instances to explore in varying degrees of detail. Our primary concern is the United States: its global policies, their institutional basis in the domestic society and its mechanisms of propaganda. We do not discuss at all the important matter of relations among the powers within the First World of industrial capitalism, or relations between these powers and the Soviet Bloc or China. We also will not consider the background and nature of the movements called “socialist” or “Communist” in the Third World. Nor do we discuss the Soviet empire and the characteristics and effects of that lesser system of Sun and Planets.

Volume II, entitled After the Cataclysm, is devoted to “postwar Indochina and the reconstruction of imperial ideology” (the subtitle). It deals with the postwar condition of Indochina, the sources of its problems, Western responses to the travail of its populations emerging from the wreckage. In addition to considering each of the three Indochinese states, we look at the question of refugees and postwar retribution in historical context and give considerable attention to the Western media’s use and misuse of the Indochinese experience to rehabilitate the bruised doctrinal system of the imperial powers.

The picture that emerges from this inquiry seems to us a very grim one, both at the level of fact and with regard to the capacity of Western ideological institutions to falsify, obscure and reinterpret the facts in the interest of those who dominate the economy and political system. But this system is not all-powerful, as millions of people learned from their own experience during the U.S. war in Indochina. Until 1965, it was virtually impossible to gain a hearing for any principled opposition to the U.S. military intervention in Indochina, already well-advanced by that time. By “principled opposition” we mean opposition based not on an estimate of national costs and benefits but on the view that the United States has no unique right to exercise force and violence to gain its objectives. Later, a hearing of sorts did become possible, partly through organizations and publications associated with the peace movement itself, and partly as a result of the news value of peace activism as it assumed mass proportions. The Free Press remained largely closed to direct access by the movement throughout the war. The peace movement also had to overcome the obstacle of active state hostility to its efforts. It is now well known that the U.S. government deployed its national political police in a major effort to undermine and destroy the mass movements of the 1960s. Nevertheless, they continued to grow and undoubtedly had an impact on the decisions ultimately taken at the center, without, however, modifying the structure of domestic power in any meaningful way.

This experience shows that even the effective system of ideological controls of the United States has its limitations. It is not impossible for substantial groups to gain some real understanding of social and political reality and to organize and act to modify state policy. The large interests of the country dominate foreign policy, which cannot be altered in its essentials without a change in the internal structure of power or the environment. But while far-reaching internal changes are not likely in the short-run, organized opposition at home can sometimes make enough of a difference to allow struggling peoples a little breathing space. U.S. failures in Indochina and the 1978 upheavals in Iran are two examples out of many showing the very real possibilities of loss of control in the outer reaches of the empire.

While the U.S. and its allies have armed the neo-fascist elites of the Third World to the teeth, and saturated them with counterinsurgency weaponry and training, long-term elite control of the underlying populations is by no means assured. The abuse of Third World majorities in the empire is so flagrant, and their leaderships are so corrupt, inept and visionless, that explosions and loss of control are highly likely in many states over the next several decades. The voiceless majorities can be helped by outsiders in many ways: among them, maximum world-wide exposure of the actual impact of the West on these peoples; strenuous efforts to stem the huge flow of aid and support to official terrorists; and helping to create an ideological and political environment that will make open intervention difficult when explosions do occur.

It is possible that developments in the United States and other industrialized states might alter the present pattern of sponsorship and support for Third World tyrannies. The arms race and the struggle to control Third World countries are contrary to the interests of the majorities of the developed countries, and while the system of indoctrination makes it difficult for them to break out of the machine’s ideological control, the growing irrationalities and problems of the West, including the extravagant use of energy, the difficulty of controlling externalities, inflation, inadequate work opportunities for increasing numbers, and the enormous waste on arms may create pressures that will increase awareness or cause systemic shocks that may bring real issues to the fore. It is most probable, unfortunately, that a real crisis would result in a shift toward rightist totalitarianism, a “Brazilianization” of the home country. But prediction in this dynamic era has not been notable for its successes. Educational efforts on the true workings of the machine, and organizational actions that build toward altering its basic mechanisms, may yet yield their benefits, even without the major structural changes required to establish democratic control over the basic social and economic institutions, a prerequisite to a truly democratic politics.

The post-Vietnam War collapse of the movement has relieved U.S. imperial authorities of much of the earlier constraining pressure, and they have been able to continue the enlargement and protection of the neo-fascist empire without significant internal impediment. This can only be changed by a renewal of active involvement of large numbers. It is hoped that this book will show that serious concern is urgently demanded by the facts of the situation.

This book is a major revision of a small monograph written in 1972-73 and then suppressed by the corporation that owned the publisher, as described in the Prefatory Note that follows. Many friends and associates have read parts of earlier drafts of the manuscript and have provided information and critical comment that have helped us immeasurably. We will refer to some of them, quite inadequately, in separate sections that follow. Special mention should be made of Josh Markel for his research assistance and Bonnie Wilker for both research and general help in preparation of the manuscript. Finally we would like to express our thanks to the South End Press collective for their assistance throughout, and in particular, for their care, efficiency, and dedication in producing these books under unusually difficult conditions.