Cold War? I've Got Some Cream for That! posted by Richard Seymour

It turns out all that bad shit the US got up to was because of the Cold War . Yeah, see, all that stuff about overturning democracies and sponsoring a network of Third World sub-fascist regimes was actually an exercise in containment, deterring the Soviet Union from marching across Europe, flying to Central America, approaching the Texan border and killing the firstborn of every American family. It's as well we found this out, because it means we can relax and trust the US to intervene wherever its reach will allow it, secure in the knowledge that its purpose will be to protect the innocent and create a front of lively democracies to drive back terrorism and bring down tyrannies wherever they may be.

Naturally, there isn't a hint of sarcasm intended here because, as Joseph Conrad pointed out, "revolutionaries have no taste for irony". I mean it. So when I say that a few things about the Cold War and the subsequent Balmy Peace confuse me, you better take my word for it. For instance, we commonly hear that the Cold War started because of Soviet "aggression", with Stalin carving Germany into two chunks and trying to drive the US out of "their" half. Somewhat confounding this obvious truth, Carolyn Eisenberg makes the bewildering claim that "the United States had abandoned Yalta and Potsdam, that it was pushing the formation of a Western German state against the misgivings of many Europeans" and that "the Soviets had launched the blockade to prevent partition". (Carolyn Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949, 1996). Dean Acheson , Under Secretary of State at the time, claimed the credit for the "containment" policy, convincing Congressional leaders that the Soviets were about to take Greece as well as Yugoslavia, turn their influence into political bedrocks in Italy and France, advance their zone of influence through the Straits, into Iran, Asia Minor and then Africa. This early articulation of a "domino theory" certainly has to be true, even though the facts say something different. The Soviet Union had already been rebuffed in the Straits and Iran, had urged moderation on the Greek guerillas, and had urged their supporters in the Western communist parties to devote themselves to the reconstruction of capitalist democracies, and the pursuit of a national, reformist road to socialism. According to John Lewis Gaddis, US officials noted that Stalin had long given up any notion of exporting revolution, and was well on its way to abandoning socialism for good . The Comintern had not held a congress since 1935 and, at any rate, was later dissolved by Stalin. General Patrick J Hurley had informed Chiang Kai-shek in November 1943 on behalf of Roosevelt that Stalin had renounced world revolution. Representative John W. McCormack of Massacheusetts told the House of Representatives that the dissolution of the Comintern signalled the "renunciation of world revolution". (John Lewis Gaddis, "The Origins of the Cold War, 1941-47", 1977, p33 & pp48-9).
And somehow it seems that the main concern was not "Russian military power ... it is Russian political power which is threatening us", or so claimed George Kennan , probably one of the many Communists to have infiltrated the US government. The even more fanatically leftist John Foster Dulles claimed to his brother Allen, director of the CIA, that the communists appealed to "the poor people" who "have always wanted to plunder the rich". Obviously, such claims are laughable since they would suggest that the US was primarily interested in preventing "the poor people" from plundering the rich.

Well, we can discount all of the above as so much Commie rhetoric, but yet I confess my continued befuddlement - which, you will pardon me, is certainly licensed when you consider what the history books say. The US only ever exercised its power in the interests of democracy. That is axiomatic. Yet if this is so, I cannot account for What Happened Next. Brazil , for instance, was a splendid example of democracy in action in the 1950s and early 1960s, a Rooseveltian land of reforms to the benefit of civil society. Kubitschek, Quatros and then Goulart all presided over administrations which strengthened labour and peasant organisations, much as a true democracy would – no Soviet-style repression here. Yet, somehow, the United States seems to have blundered into collaboration in an ugly military coup in 1964, precipitating a sinister era of starvation, beatings, expulsions from land, and murder. (Bishop Dom Pedro Casaldaliga, "The Gospel is My Weapon", 12th December, 1975, Latin American Press). Shurely shome mishtake?

And it doesn't stop there! Why, they seem to have mistaken the dictators Somoza, Trujillos, Duvalier, Marcos, Suharto and Diem for Jeffersonian democrats, eagerly implementing the programme of the Founding Fathers. General Suharto, it seems, was sat in a room with Henry Kissinger on the day he decided to launch a massive assault on East Timor, culminating in the slaughter of up to 700,000 people. Kissinger bewilderingly claims that he was not aware that Suharto was about to launch a campaign of genocide against the East Timorese, but transcripts of the meeting have Kissinger and a Mr Newsome from the State Department being specifically informed of those intentions. Moreover, they discussed how they could help cover up those crimes in the US and continue to supply weapons to the regime throughout the assault . The Indonesian military proceeded to march people into fields, only to machine gun them down, herd thousands into schools and set fire to them, shooting anyone who tried to escape the blaze, and rampage through the mountain slopes, killing anyone in their path. Kissinger then secretly and illegally reopened normal relations with Indonesia and continued the flow of arms to the regime, in violation of Congressional legislation. Why would such a patent democrat and friend of freedom engage such a course of action? A mistake? A misperception of what was involved? Did he believe the Indonesian Generals were warding off a Soviet threat? Of course! It was because the manky little Timorese bastards were turning communist, leaning their weight behind the marxist Freitilin instead of the fascist UDT! (Robin Osborne, Australian, 26th February 1975). Obviously, this Soviet aggression in the heart of South East Asia had to be repelled, and if the General was good enough to do it, I'm good enough to say a hearty thank you.

Still, I am still puzzled by the other examples I raised and even more worried by what I am about to tell you. In 1972, the minority administration in Burundi sought "to kill every possible Hutu male of distinction over the age of fourteen". (Michael Bowen, Gary Freedman, Kay Miller & Roger Morris, "Passing By, The United States and Genocide in Burundi", Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1972). You will hardly believe what I am about to tell you, but the United States government apparently refused to raise any protest about the massacre, even though it was the major trading partner with Burundi at the time. They had a busy schedule, of course, I completely understand. But the communists wouldn't! They would try and make something of it, as if the US didn’t really care about atrocities and the exigencies of tyranny. And isn't that the real tragedy here?

Oh, but darlings, sweet freedom-loving bunnies, prepare your ears for this! The American government seems to have stumbled into the terrorism business! Oh, I know it will shock and awe you to hear this from one of your own brethren, but I assure you it's true. I know it must be some accident of history, or some poor, misguided attempt to contain Soviet aggression. But in the 1980s, the CIA began an attempt to systematically undermine the new regime that had overthrown the Somozist dictatorship (which, remarkably, the United States supported!). They formed a terrorist army, collectively known as the Contras, but operating under distinct names and different commands. Many of their fighters were conscripts - kidnapped, removed to Honduras, and trained at a CIA camp. Drugs - drugs! - were used to fund these evil bastards as they tore across Nicaragua, slaughtering teachers and pupils, nurses and patients, raping and torturing, slicing off womens' breasts, leaving hacked bodies by the roadside. 30,000 died in what Oxfam called "The Threat of a Good Example". Friends, I am physically shaking. I have no idea what Oxfam meant by that infelicitous phrase since the United States seeks nothing more than to provide a Good Example to the rest of the world. But this action, surely, was not - well, you know, I do wonder if perhaps the Soviets didn't have a hand in all this. Being the evil bastards that they were, they probably put the Sandinista regime in power and ensured it won 67% in the 1984 election. Yes, probably in a deliberate attempt to provoke our American friends into acting out of turn. And, yes, somewhere I read that the Nicaraguans were taking migs from the Soviets - but that, very tragically, turns out to be a lie. (Miami Herald, 21st December 1986). Can we judge the US for this? Is it fair to slander so benevolent a power with the charge that it is run by a band of vicious mercenaries, dedicated to shoring up their own power no matter how much blood accrues at their feet? Surely not.

And yet, my avid little coalition-of-the-willing, there is more. It has engaged in terrorist activities against Libya, Angola, Morroco, Cuba, El Salvador, assaults on democracy in Suriname, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Iran, Greece, Italy, Albania, Australia, Bulgaria, Jamaica, even our darling Great Britain, support for dictatorships like Ecuador, Thailand, the Phillipines, Haiti, South Korea, Noriega in Panama, Mobutu in Zaire, Hussein in Iraq, the Shah in Iran and military assaults on non-aggressive states like Grenada, the Seychelles and virtually everywhere else it has chosen to invade. In only a fraction of these cases was the Soviet Union involved, and then usually as a bit player.

Friends, allies, I wish I knew how to express the parlous state I'm in. My stomach feels like it is being sucked into hell, and my soul is rushing to join it. Who but a lunatic, a heretic, an anti-American traitor, a terrorist sympathiser, a liberal bedwetter, a communist could entertain such facts - by which I mean, thoughts? Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. I have dreamed that the world is ruled by corrupt, violent, power-brokers interested in sustaining their own privileges. I have imagined that the men we know to be holy and wise are little more than high class crooks, Mafia dons, Shakespearean villans with none of the poetry or grandeur.

Still, that was in the bad old days! Even if it's all true - and it bloody well certainly probably isn't! - that's in the past. The world was balanced on a knife-edge, Soviet aggression and, er, my tactics only help the evil-doers. Or something. But there's more. I hasten to say that I cannot credit a word that is coming out of my morose little gob right now, but some evil, Cartesian demon has hold of me, is feeding me illusion, deceit, compelling me to perceive what cannot be. I must communicate my fears.

They didn't stop with the terrorism already, even when the Cold War finished. I can't understand why, but they started to interfere in countries which didn't have any communist threat in them. In Colombia, they've been funding the government and far right paramilitaries in their endless war on trade unionists, workers and peasants. In Turkey, they sponsored the massacre of the Kurds during the mid-Nineties . In Indonesia, Clinton helped train the military in the "Iron Balance" programme, in direct violation of existing US legislation. He then helped block any response to the increasing Indonesian massacre in Timor, following the massive Timorese vote for independence, until they had finished their job and were pulling out. In Haiti, they supported military forces as they overthrew the democratically elected Aristide, until they had obtained from Aristide a promise not to fulfill any of the crazy promises he'd been making to the poor. Of course, of course! I know Aristide was a communist. Yes, of course. And the Timorese were communists too, we remember. And the Kurds have a pretty big communist party. But... dearies, I hate to ask these questions... what possible threat do these commie scum pose to America's Divine Splendour?

I am lost. I am at sea. Send the marines! Help! Help!!