American Empire: Part Four

To round off Eisenhower's successful imperial presidency we would see the limits of US imperial power long before Vietnam became a quagmire. Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959 from a US client. He managed to stay in power until the 21st Century. His regime has outlasted him and may last for years to come. The US sought to use Cuba as a sugar plantation for their food companies. Unfortunately a vanguard of Cubans successfully overthrew their greedy, corrupt government and instituted classical Leninism (in all its normal horrors!). Eisenhower and his successors tried to subvert this glorious socialist state (I hope I don't need to tell you that's sarcasm), but to no avail. This brings us nicely on to the rather too brief and exceptionally overrated Kennedy presidency. Kennedy is loved still today by most educated Americans as some kind of beach of hope gunned in the prime of youth. I can understand why, he was one of the youngest US presidents in American history. He was exceptionally handsome, dapper, a great speaker, the man was very unlike his aged (and rather good) predecessor. And when you look at his bald, hapless/paranoid successors (until Carter) you can understand why in context he was a 'blue sky' president. Nonetheless the man was far less liberal on the homefront than his successor and started the second phase of that war.

There is a debate that rages between historians over whether Kennedy gave Johnson no choice but to escalate the war in Vietnam. I wonder if Eisenhower would have been so foolish as to listen to the foolhardy advice of a bunch of Generals who had not commanded any major wars. They were a new generation, these generals had gained the seniority after the Korean war and therefore didn't have much in the way of command experience in the heady Pax Americana of the period of 1953-1964. Moreover the Vietnam War was even more of a fools errand if we remember that the French had fought a losing battle since the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Kennedy's policy of exponentially increasing financial aid and the number of military advisers made sense to him and his Pentagon advisers. They were labouring under a Cold War theory, the so called 'Domino Theory'. The logic of escalation, of as Kennedy put it in his inaugural address

'Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'

If one state fell there was a high probability that others would follow suit. In this context if Vietnam fell then the Communist movements in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand would gain a significant ally and safe house in the form of United Communist Vietnam. I am trying not to start the unending discussion of Vietnam, this will be Johnson's part (coincidentially, Korean guys use the word Johnson as slag for their penises here is my friend talking about it: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150177285405517).

The other major imperial disaster of Kennedy's presidency was the Cuba situation. It didn't disappear with Eisenhower's rather wonderful farewell address to the nation. In fact the situation escalated, Kennedy sent a bunch of anti-Communist Cuban guerrillas to try and overthrow the Castro regime, this is what is now known as the Bay of Pigs fiasco. US power was again checked, the virtuous rhetoric and fact that the mercenaries were Cubans did not disguise that it was an embarrassing defeat in the naked pursuit to maintain absolute power over US's sovereign domain of the Americas. Castro would continue to embarrass the US government who for one reason or another would not modify their policies towards his regime. Having thought about this it must have made a lot of sense to blockade a hostile communist regime in the 1960s. Giving the comfort of American goods and access to American markets (and the resultant possibility of accumulating Hard currency) was of course something to be avoided. Furthermore it would send a powerful signal to other third world statesmen that the hegemon could tangibly punish your disobedience. The third reason that I have heard offered is that the powerful domestic lobby of Cuban Americans perpetuate this policy. The argument goes that they are an important bloc in a swing state (Florida) who exert a disproportionate influence over this area of policy because of their lobbying power, and their votes. This does not seem all that convincing, there are plenty of minorities with such powers who should have stopped their US from opening relations. Consider the Vietnamese lobby, the Taiwanese lobby etc. The tail wagging the dog does not seem that convincing. Rather I believe it must still be a principled stand; the United States does not tolerate disobedience in one of its central spheres of interest.

The Soviet's response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco was to up the ante. The resultant Cuban missile crisis was a far more major victory for the US empire than most people realise. It solidified a number of disagreements in the Soviet bloc between the Chinese and the Soviet Union. It was also the turning point in relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union. These states would never again be part of the Soviet bloc in their foreign policies, they would to a large degree take their own independent line in foreign and domestic policies. This was important as not only meant that the Kremlin had a socialist competitor in China but they also had another disobedient client state in North Korea. For the United States this mean that it could enjoy the fruits of divided Marx-Leninist movements across the third world. This made it much easier to install friendly client states in third world. Furthermore Chinese aligned states were usually perceived as far less threatening and worthy of US attention than Soviet aligned states. Think no further than the Rhodesian Bush War where two liberation movements, representing two ethnicities, one aligned with the Soviet Union and one aligned with the Chinese. Think also of Cambodia under Pol Pot (aligned with the PRC) and Vietnam (aligned with the USSR), and the war of 1979 between the two. So much seemingly unnecessary political factionalism and war within the socialist bloc which could only weaken it. Much to the advantage of the US empire.