American Empire: Part Three

To get back to history and events, Eisenhower successfully ended the Korean War which was his campaign pledge. Actually the exact pledge was 'I will go to Korea'. Eisenhower was a smart man, a former general, a conservative of the pragmatic mold. Many people who today vote for the Democrats would probably have voted for Eisenhower if he had been on the ballot in 2008. He appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court. The Warren Court would become the most Liberal of American history, reinterpreting the constitution in order to end segregation, bans on mixed marriages, and many other landmark decisions. Eisenhower said he regretted his appointment in retrospect, but maybe we should understand the context in which Eisenhower made this remark. America began to tear itself to pieces in the 1960s, as President Johnson said 'Law and Order have broken down in (I can't remember the place name!)'. Eisenhower seeing this, with his Burkean conservative views would have blamed the Warren court for moving to rapidly in trying to correct social ills. When a judicial elite tries to engineer a better society they more often break the social bonds and norms which keep society at peace.

Getting back to Eisenhower, he should not be credited with ending the war. This was a matter of changes in the Kremlin. Stalin's death in 1953 changed the Cold War. Beria, Khrushchev and Malenkov formed a tripartite collective leadership in the Kremlin; they immediately sought to end the fruitless war in Korea. They had the support of their soon-to-be ex-client Kim Il Sung who knew that his countrymen were almost at breaking-point. US aerial bombardment had destroyed the vast majority of North Korean homes and factories, the North Koreans had become an underground dwelling people, living on starvation rations in a latter day, subterranean Sparta. So the truce was not so much Eisenhower's success as it was the Kremlin giving a reprieve to this shattered land.

In Imperial terms the rest of his presidency was for the most part highly successful with a few notable incidents. The first is held up in many Left wing narratives of US history as proof of the domineering power of Corporate interests over the US government. Guatemala in 1954 was led by a Socialist, but democratic government which sought to put into public ownership a number of plantations owned by the United Fruit company. John Foster Dulles who was Secretary of State at that time had been on the board of directors of the United Fruit Company before becoming Secretary of State. And maybe for that reason he was instrumental in organising a CIA-led coup against the Guatemalan Socialists. This seems scandalous, and quite frankly in some ways it is. But one must remember that the Soviet Union in the same position would have behaved in the same way. In fact it did, in 1956 when Imry Nagy declared Hungarian independence from the Socialist bloc the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union invaded and toppled this radical reformist government.

US policies towards South America are classically imperialist. They date back to the Monroe doctrine of 1812; James Monroe the president at that time, defined South America as a sphere of US imperial interests. This doctrine remains the foundation of US foreign policy in South America. Although as a side note, South America becomes less and less pliant as China rises and US power in relative terms wanes. Furthermore the policy has to a large extent been self defeating, the Coups, drug cartels and terrorist organisations (sorry should I say liberators?!) that have either been directly backed by the Pentagon or arisen in opposition have created a number of failed states in the region and a number of hostile anti-American states. When I think of state failure, I think of Mexico, Haiti, and Columbia. When I think of hostile states I think of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Terrorist organisations that spring to mind include the Shining Path (Peru), the Zapatistas (Mexico, they are almost freedom fighters, I just can't help myself!), and the FARC (Columbia). To be sure there have been notable latter day democratisation success stories; Brazil, Chile, Venezuela (yes Hugo Chavez is not a dictator!) and others. Yet the pathetic level of development in South America must be partly blamed on CIA interference and US corporate neo-Colonialism in the legitimately sovereign affairs of these people. And yet, whilst this Left-wing narrative is bewitching and ever so correct in many respects we should not forget the other side. Park Chung-hee was a US client, he led a coup that deposed an at least partially democratic government. His favourite saying about America was 'What do the US bastards know?!', yet he was staunchly pro-American. He was also a far more enlightened man than any of these brutal dictators that the Americans installed in South America. The elite itself in this part of the world seems to be half the problem; they have no enlightened sense of self-interest, nor do they seem to want to develop their countries. Rather they preferred to cream off the fruits of their countrymen's hard labour for US corporations, and use it to enrich themselves and perpetuate the neo-Colonial wage slavery. Certainly the US empire should be partially blamed but do not forget who aided and abetted them at every turn.

Eisenhower was also the man who started the Vietnam War. This is a point that many people outside academic circles who are not French do not know. The French had colonised Vietnam in the 19th Century, they regained control after World War Two and had to fight a battle with the Vietminh for control of their colonial possession. The Vietminh were a revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist organisation; the bulk of the Vietnamese people perceived them as liberators and for good reason. The French backed the King, his criminal syndicates, Feudal privileges and mercenary armies. The colonial masters not only sought to maintain foreign hegemony but they also sought to maintain a state that had no legitimacy and was the bane of all common Vietnamese people. Eisenhower thinking in classical realpolitik terms sought to help his friends in Vietnam (the French) and maintain a friendly nation, and understandably so. So he began to fund French anti-Guerilla operations. This was the start of the unwinnable war.

In a classically ironic double stroke Eisenhower did quite the opposite during the Suez crisis. Gamel Abdel Nassar the very popular President of Egypt (who was a dictator) tried to nationalise his country's oil supplies, it provoked the British, French and Israelis to invade to try and stop him. They were doing no worse than what Eisenhower's administration had done in South America but it was against US interests in the third world at the time. The US empire was not the lips to Israel's teeth at this time, the close Israeli-US alliance was actually not that close at this time. Concurrently Nasser was a symbol of post-colonial Arab and third-world nationalism; he was a potent symbol for the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) and this invasion smacked too much of colonialism. It would just push many decolonising movements further into the arms of the KGB and the Soviet Union. Some rather naive historians portray Eisenhower's motives as being that of a man who believed in the 'American' values of universal freedom and sovereignty. Let us not kid ourselves, this was a realpolitik decision born out of the need to win the competition for the third world. Eisenhower pressured the UK to withdraw, threatening to sell all of the US treasury's sterling holdings. It worked. Egypt emerged victorious, Nasser would live until 1967, and is still loved across Arabia. I can't help but rather like him too. He was an ardent secularist, and a pan-Arab nationalist. Meaning that he wanted to create a more confederal, secular middle east.