Is it America's coldwar hush-hush policy that did us in?

Great Debates
1

Well, I’ve seen a lot of posts about America’s foreign policy, however I think that our foreign policy has improved or at least tried for a better direction since the end of the cold war. I’ve been thinking about this a little bit and then this article that I’ve read brought it to the forefront of my mind.

http://atimes.com/ind-pak/CJ20Df01.html

Now I know there will be the usual cries of bias but I want to point out that CNN picks and chooses what to report, Time Magazine posted one of the most hateful vitriolic rants I’ve ever seen a couple days after the attacks and the New York Times has posted a picture of an Israeli soldier holding a gun over a bloodied man in an article about the beginnings of the conflict there in September of 2000 on their front page that just so happened that the bloody man was an Israeli soldier that the other guy was protecting and they posted a retraction somewhere in the middle of the paper. (No I’m not going to provide cites as this isn’t what my thread is about) The point is, I just want to keep this thread from being hijacked on the idea of bias, unless it fits the context as you cannot discuss anything without context.

So what I would like to discuss in this, is cold war foreign policy and how it may be a major factor in what’s going on as opposed to blaming ALL US foreign policy. While it may not matter to an Arab terrorist, the beginnings of the cold war were not a shining time for Americans either. We seem to paint the 50s and 60s with Nostalgia, but they brought out McCarthyism, Kent State, Hippies spitting on returning soldiers and many other ugly incidences here at home. So could it be all this policy in the cold war that we were kept mostly in the dark (well I wasn’t born yet) about, could they be more to blame than American foreign policy as a whole?

Erek

2

I think the coldwar policy of containment did us in more than the hush-hushness. Take Afghanistan for example, we armed an evil to defend themselves agianst the USSR. This latter blew up in our face. A great deal of our enemys are a result of trying to bottle communism up, Cuba for example.

3

I would have to agree with you on that treis. I think that sanctions on Cuba 40 years later are pretty disgusting. Castro is much more moderate than he once was, and if we aren’t gonna take him out, then how do we justify sanctioning his country?

Erek

4

It might be helpful to refer to The Spy Book’s entry on the CIA, subheading “THE COVERT ACTION ERA”:

“From 1950 to 1961, CIA covert operations ranged the globe. CIA talent and funds supported Chinese Nationalist guerrillas in Burma in the hope they would establish an anticommunist foothold in mainland China… [E]nded the Huk insurgency in the Phillipines… [O]verthrew Egyptian King Farouk in 1952 and brought in Gamel Abdul Nasser… [O]verthrew Iranian Premier Mohammed Mossadegh and restored Shah… [P]aramilitary operation to overthrow Guatemala’s leftist President, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman…” (p. 120)(Norman Polmar & Thomas B. Allen)

An evaluation commission was created by President Eisenhower, headed by none other than Lt. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, of GeeBee, Tokyo, and Mighty Eighth fame. His opinion, also quoted in the same source is chillingly familiar:

“If the United States is to survive, long standing American concepts of ‘fair play’ must be reconsidered. We must… learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us.” (p. 120)

Regrettably, I cannot find the exact figures, but it looks like the CIA had at least a hand in the overthrow of some two dozen governments worldwide during the Cold War. There seems to be little question that such destabilization led indirectly to the political realities we face today.

The perpetually unanswered question remains, what sort of political situation would we have faced if we hadn’t interfered with those governments?

Personally, I happen to think that you can take the government out of a shitty place, but you can’t take the shitty place out of the government. Nearly two decades of relative non-interference and rebuilding has left Iran, Burma and Guatemala pretty shitty places, while Egypt shines largely in contrast to its shitty neighbors.

(As an interesting aside, I find it interesting that the most corrupt, intractable places on earth seem to enjoy only one thing in common–rampant chauvinism. That, I think, is a topic for another thread.)

Did we ever “fix” anyplace that we previously interfered with? I’m not sure. Has any third-world nation fixed themselves? I’m not sure of that, either. One thing which seems pretty evident to me is that the crummiest places on earth in 1945 are still the crummiest places on earth today, whether the CIA had a hand in destabilizing those places or not. Perhaps Doolittle was right.

5

Sofa that may be correct but those shitty places would not be shitty places pissed at the U.S.A. if it weren’t for our involvement.

6

I always love these hypothetical life-in-a-vacuum questions in an effort to self-flagellate ourselves yet again over events of years gone by.

Would we have averted/broken communism’s hold on the USSR, China, North Korea, and/or Cuba had we turned against Stalin after the fall of Germany? Perhaps this is the first question to ask, as all later events may indeed have allowed a more peaceful future for much of the world’s population had this action been taken. Who knows what might have been achieved around the world had the Cold War never happened? This all operates on the presumption of a successful campaign against the Soviets, which itself is no small matter, of course.

I’m just curious that, so far, the OP and responses seem to take the view that post-WWII events were dominated by the the U.S., with little evaluation of opposing forces at the time and place. Did the U.S. operate a so-called “Cold War” unilaterally? Could/would we have?

7

NaSultainne: You are the one who is applying value judgements to what I asked. I am just asking for things to be re-examined for the future, not to “self-flagellate” as you put it. I know we can’t change the past, so what I want to know is where we went wrong, or where we bred hostility, if you don’t believe our actions were wrong. I never once implied we lived in a vacuum. I think British Imperialism and Soviet Imperialism all have a HUGE impact on the western influence in the Middle East. I am just asking to examine OUR involvement for better or worse. I’m not looking for a villain.

Erek

8

I can’t argue with you there, treis.

9

I think there has always been analyzing of the past actions. Aren’t there many companies like the Rand Corp. that do this stuff, as well as poli-sci experts, etc., etc.?

Also, I heard that there is anti-U.S. sentiment based on the Crusades!

10

The beloved U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt, was a rabid colonialist who had no problem murdering unarmed natives in the Phillipines and elsewhere to gain territories having raw materials of interest to the U.S. The U.S. had no qualms about waging a war against Mexico to take large expanses of land in what are now Texas and New Mexico. Thus, U.S. autrocities in foreign policy preceed the Cold War by many decades. I believe that big business has dominated U.S. foreign policy since the industrial revolution, with less than moral, humanistic results. The U.S. has been and continues to be highly hypocritical in its foreign policy; extolling the virtues of human rights, while ruthlessly orchestrating events in their foreign affairs to suit business interests.

11

Human rights are cherished within the States. But it seems they are not an export commodity. Of course American strategic and business interests come before the spread of freedom. I see no debate there.

The OP’s link was interesting, though, describing American lack of understanding and surprise over the impact of its foreign policies. I’m guessing that this is a flow-on effect of isolationism. Foreign relations were not interesting enough to the American people, so that in the last two elections the topic was not addressed in the Presidential candidates’ debates. I look forward to other people’s thoughts on this.

(The Athenians used to do the same thing, for what its worth, in the 5th century BC. The Athenians used to be big on democracy at home, but would instal pliant tyrants abroad.)