The death of Kennedy came at the peak of his power and appeal. Yet if he had stayed in power much longer he probably would not have been remembered so fondly. Kennedy was a man of exceptional personal charm and charisma, I am sure his serial affairs could testify to that. Furthermore he was certainly not a polarising figure. Although his election was one of the closest in US history; Kennedy sought to unite the country in a number of ways. Its funny although I do accept that there is a great deal of truth to the 'Cultural Industry' theory of capitalist societies this does not mean that people do not have freedom to make a choice. Most people follow which section of the elite they chose to blindly trust (I.E. the choice between slightly lefter elites and righter); but nonetheless there is a choice, and the choice is constantly can always change. Kennedy sought to follow the elite consensus of hawkishness towards the Soviets. He scaremongered about a 'missile gap' between the Soviet Union and the United States (one did exist but in the opposite direction). When in charge he pursued a reactionary policy towards Castro, trying to topple his regime repeatedly. Then when it came to the Cuban missile crisis, rather than seeing Khrushchev as merely copying similar US nuclear weapon placements in Turkey (next to the Soviet Union) he pursued a policy that risked Nuclear War. This is classic nuclear brinkmanship of the North Korean style though no one calls it that in the history books because of our all too rosy, naive view of the US place in the world.
Furthermore on the domestic front Kennedy sought to temper the call for civil rights and equality. He was not a vocal advocate of black emancipation, although he met with Martin Luther King advised him to not pursue full emancipation, he thought it would be a pyrrhic victory. Yet again this was classic Kennedy horse trading to appear popular, luckily it worked because the United States remained in a period of unparalleled prosperity. US economic power was largely unopposed in the world, it was at the cutting edge of world manufacturing and the global cultural leader (think Hollywood). By contrast Obama who now seeks to emulate Kennedy faces an elite racked by late imperial profligacy, a nation economically in crisis and politically divided. Therefore a consensus style just appears weak, and rather pathetic. Kennedy's style can also be seen in the massive tax cuts that he pushed through for the rich; his rhetorical device for this was 'A rising tide lifts all boats'. A rather seductive and beguiling phrase; reflexively coming from Socialist roots I disagree. The War on poverty did more to lift boats through redistribution than Kennedy's effective redistribution from the state which predominantly enriches the poor, directly to the rich. Nonetheless in a society founded on a dream of becoming prosperous one can understand why Kennedy's policy would be popular even to those who it did not directly benefit. The aspirant middle class is a phenomenon that all good pollsters talk about nowadays; they are a large bloc of voters who aspire to have a life just like the upper class, therefore they think of themselves in those terms when it comes to government policy even though those policies will give them no short term economic benefits.
There is of course a more old fashioned left wing way of looking at this. The cultural industry is owned by the elite, the elite benefits from tax cuts so therefore sets up foundations, institutes, research centres to educate people in the economic science of why tax cuts are not only good for the rich but for everyone. In a real sense the people who are educated in the goodness of tax cuts can probably see why they are good, they can get a job at a newspaper or university promoting them. So therefore tax cuts are good for them, it gives them a guaranteed income from a rich source! But more importantly these ideas begin to spread throughout civil society, they become a reputable opinion held at least by a substantial minority. These people can then start to create 'false consciousness' amongst the masses, so they start to see tax cuts as in their interests, they start to identify the economic interests of a few rich people as being in the interests of everyone. The national economy itself will benefit, the money will trickle down and everyone will be better off. Its all too funny, whilst this explanation is too simplistic it is undoubtedly true that more heavily taxed developed economies have better social services and lower levels of income inequality (compare Finland with the USA).
The Kennedy presidency ended gruesomely. Yet if he had lived longer it would have ended in a similar way for many other Americans. There was choices that had to be made that were made by his successor. Unresolved foreign policy questions hung in the air, decolonisation (think Africa and Vietnam). Massive unresolved domestic policy questions (health policy, social welfare and racial questions). Lyndon Johnson is not fondly remembered by history, all his successes are forgotten by most people who know his name. He is merely remembered for one reason, Vietnam. For good reason in actual fact, at least in some ways.
When we think of government profligacy surely we must look to George W. Bush in cutting taxes for the rich whilst seeking to wage two wars. Lyndon Johnson went even further, he deployed more troops in Vietnam at the height of the War than the US has at any time in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, this after his predecessor had cut taxes for the rich. Concurrently he pursued some of the most Whiggish policies on the home-front of any US imperial president. He was the David Lloyd George of domestic policy and Cecil Rhodes of foreign policy. The Great Society program was one of the most enlightened programs of the post-war era, it involved a massively redistributive war on poverty and concurrently sought to breakdown one of the biggest courses of privation, discrimination. I do not consider it necessary to tell the complete story of blacks in America, suffice it to say, they were systematically and legally discriminated against. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did much to change this. In this regard Johnson was far less scared than his predecessors' of white opinion. As a result however the democratic party and the white population of America was politically transformed. The American equivalent of the working class Tory (or blue collar reactionary!) emerged. A group of people whose economic interests were almost identical to an ethnic minority, but who empathised with the contrary interests of others in their ethnic group. In real terms the Democratic Party was a coalition of elite interests, northern and southern whites who saw their economic and social interests represented in a progressive and socially conservative Democratic party. This coalition began to crack as blacks started to join the party. It was evident that there would eventually be a fateful choice; in 1948 Hubert H. Humphrey who would become Johnson's vice-president added black emancipation to the Democratic political platform. The result of Johnson's progress was that the Democrats lost the south. They also lost many white voters. They became a minority white party in a nation where the whites were the dominant ethnic group. Thus the American empire would become more reactionary at home and abroad.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Sunday, 20 June 2010
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
American Empire: Part Two
It started inauspiciously at the Bretton Woods conference but this is often forgotten. Instead when many of us think of the unbridled use of force that marks the start of an imperial expansion, we think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is certainly the second key event in the foundation of the US Empire. It was the ultimate expression of imperial power. A symbol of unrestrained global dominance. It also more tangibly created a US strategic bridgehead in East Asia, Japan became a home to US troops. Yet the use of the bomb was the apex of US power that would never be repeated, and hopefully never will. The United States lost its nuclear monopoly in 1949 and now Nuclear proliferation is a serious concern to the Pentagon as it threatens a key pillar of US power, its first-strike capability.
The first event that demonstrated the limits of US imperial power was the Korean War. An American client the Republic of Korea almost ceased to exist as Kim Il Sung launched a surprise invasion on 25th June 1950. The 'Police Action' the United States launched to defend its client resulted in the liberation of South Korea. Yet America sought to expand its imperial dominance of the Korean peninsula by conquering the North, this choice immediately demonstrated the limits of US power as China intervened on behalf of their North Korean allies. The war lasted three years and ended in stalemate. The leader of US forces until 1951, General Douglas MacArthur, wanted to use Nuclear weapons to break the stalemate. He was a man before his time, a proto-Neocon; a man of great imperial hubris. If he had become president the world may have been annihilated before the end of his first term. Yet the man in the White House at that time was a sane man of Realpolitik. President Truman who is hated by history, saw the immense danger of using Nuclear weapons. It would set a dangerous precedent, and could potentially spark a Third World War. It would create immense insecurity in the international system, Soviet clients would fear the irrational and rampant US imperial hoards. The Soviets may feel obligated to retaliate. Thus Truman did not use Nuclear weapons in Korea, nor did his successor Dwight Eisenhower.
It demonstrated an unwillingness to use scorched earth policies that are the hallmark of absolute imperial domination. If we look at any of the empires of world history, for instance Ancient Rome, the Mongolian Yuan empire, or the French Empire, their was an understanding that overwhelming and brutal force would be used if necessary in order to maintain power. Yet Truman cringed at the thought, he was not prepared to be an American Genghis Khan. Yet this was not the case for all American Imperial presidents. In the fight for 'freedom', anything and everything was on the table. This is not to say that in other ways America didn't use such tactics in Korea. As Bruce Cumings points out, Napalm was first used by the US army in Korea; we usually associate Napalm with Vietnam, but it was actually used against innocent North Korean civilians before the Vietnamese.
Eisenhower's presidency ended with a prescient, prophetic vision of what would become undoing of this growing Empire of freedom. In his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower warned of the danger of a permanent military-industrial complex which sought war not as a last resort but as an economic imperative. This complex is still with us today, in fact it is far larger today than it was when Eisenhower was warning of it. It remains a major reason why America fights so many wars; American imperial power is expressed not merely to maintain the perception of its hegemony but also in order to continue the flow of dollars from the US taxpayer to the massive arms cartels.
Interest groups are the natural product of a pluralistic society like the United States. Interest groups include unions, parties, demographics, and corporations. They shape the political process in their favour through lobbying. Lobbying usually involves what a preacher would call sin, what I would call legalised corruption. In order to demonstrate to a politician or a bureaucrat the value of their own concerns and interests, interest groups usually have to appeal to the base desires of their politicians. The military-industrial complex is no different in this regard and its lobbying pressure is crucial in the rise of American empire. But there is a degree of mistaking cause for effect amongst some left-wing scholars. What seems clear is that the threat from Soviet expansion necessitated a massive increase in military spending in order to deter Soviet expansion. The lobby itself grew from increased defence procurement, rather than being an attempt to merely expand the defence budget, it was an attempt by individual companies to expand their market share. Yet we must also remember that increases in military spending usually coincide with the perception of increased insecurity. So therefore it would be natural for arms companies to attempt to build a sense of insecurity in order to increase the size of their market (in this case the US government).
Much is made of the corrupting influence on the contemporary American political process. Both Left and Right blame what they perceive to be the interest groups of the latter for the failure of the US government in pet policy arenas. Here are two examples to illustrate the point. The Left blames 'Big Oil' for the current energy crisis that America faces, this crisis is manifold, multi-dimensional; its the crisis facing an society founded on industrialised mass consumption. Furthermore in the age of plastics, and the age of the internal combustion engine, oil is a necessary foundation to our consumption. Even if we ignore/curtail frivolous consumption on consumer goods like IPODs, and stop using plastic packaging, and walk everywhere the problem remains. Freight uses oil, and plastics are an irreplaceable component of 21st Century high-tech industry. Sadly it is not so simple to blame the Oil lobby for these problems. Oil's stranglehold on the world is not founded on lobbying; country's without a Oil lobby still have massive oil dependency issues. Rather the lobby can only exacerbate the problem for example by demanding less rigorous pollution standards.
The Right makes a similar mistake. The permissive liberalism at the heart of US immigration policy has resulted in an explosion of illegal immigration. Undoubtedly the Latino immigrant community is a very powerful lobby with the Democratic Party. They vote Democrat by large margins, and they have become increasingly important in winning elections for the Democrats. Nonetheless whilst this is certainly the case, we must not forget who illegal immigration actually benefits. Illegal immigrants are usually employed at very low wages in unskilled jobs; the wages they are paid no legal worker would accept. Furthermore given the expectations engineered by the post-war boom of American consumer capitalism its easy to understand why a white American would not settle for such pay. However a Mexican citizen with a family in Mexico who need cash to survive (in a country with a failed state) such pay is enough. The American system itself has a great use for this labour power. To simply blame the Latino vote is obviously very simplistic.
This brings us back to interest group politics. Are interest groups the reason why the American empire became chronically overstretched; are they the reason that the United States cannot afford to provide jobs to over 10% of its citizens. Are they the reason why over 50 million Americans do not have health insurance? The simple answer is yes and no. Who decides government policy? Politician, bureaucrats and their advisers. Interest groups of course shape the perceptions of politicians, but their ideologies and circumstances are also equally important. The current structure of the US health industry for instance can be traced back to Richard Nixon. He made a decision to go with the market because of his ideology, lobbying from friends in the health industry but also circumstances. The US budget was overstretched in the early 1970s, it seemed fiscally advisable to allow the market to sort out provision when the alternative was to further strangle the US taxpayer. In retrospect this was the wrong decision, but it probably was not made out of malice, but out of pragmatism.
The first event that demonstrated the limits of US imperial power was the Korean War. An American client the Republic of Korea almost ceased to exist as Kim Il Sung launched a surprise invasion on 25th June 1950. The 'Police Action' the United States launched to defend its client resulted in the liberation of South Korea. Yet America sought to expand its imperial dominance of the Korean peninsula by conquering the North, this choice immediately demonstrated the limits of US power as China intervened on behalf of their North Korean allies. The war lasted three years and ended in stalemate. The leader of US forces until 1951, General Douglas MacArthur, wanted to use Nuclear weapons to break the stalemate. He was a man before his time, a proto-Neocon; a man of great imperial hubris. If he had become president the world may have been annihilated before the end of his first term. Yet the man in the White House at that time was a sane man of Realpolitik. President Truman who is hated by history, saw the immense danger of using Nuclear weapons. It would set a dangerous precedent, and could potentially spark a Third World War. It would create immense insecurity in the international system, Soviet clients would fear the irrational and rampant US imperial hoards. The Soviets may feel obligated to retaliate. Thus Truman did not use Nuclear weapons in Korea, nor did his successor Dwight Eisenhower.
It demonstrated an unwillingness to use scorched earth policies that are the hallmark of absolute imperial domination. If we look at any of the empires of world history, for instance Ancient Rome, the Mongolian Yuan empire, or the French Empire, their was an understanding that overwhelming and brutal force would be used if necessary in order to maintain power. Yet Truman cringed at the thought, he was not prepared to be an American Genghis Khan. Yet this was not the case for all American Imperial presidents. In the fight for 'freedom', anything and everything was on the table. This is not to say that in other ways America didn't use such tactics in Korea. As Bruce Cumings points out, Napalm was first used by the US army in Korea; we usually associate Napalm with Vietnam, but it was actually used against innocent North Korean civilians before the Vietnamese.
Eisenhower's presidency ended with a prescient, prophetic vision of what would become undoing of this growing Empire of freedom. In his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower warned of the danger of a permanent military-industrial complex which sought war not as a last resort but as an economic imperative. This complex is still with us today, in fact it is far larger today than it was when Eisenhower was warning of it. It remains a major reason why America fights so many wars; American imperial power is expressed not merely to maintain the perception of its hegemony but also in order to continue the flow of dollars from the US taxpayer to the massive arms cartels.
Interest groups are the natural product of a pluralistic society like the United States. Interest groups include unions, parties, demographics, and corporations. They shape the political process in their favour through lobbying. Lobbying usually involves what a preacher would call sin, what I would call legalised corruption. In order to demonstrate to a politician or a bureaucrat the value of their own concerns and interests, interest groups usually have to appeal to the base desires of their politicians. The military-industrial complex is no different in this regard and its lobbying pressure is crucial in the rise of American empire. But there is a degree of mistaking cause for effect amongst some left-wing scholars. What seems clear is that the threat from Soviet expansion necessitated a massive increase in military spending in order to deter Soviet expansion. The lobby itself grew from increased defence procurement, rather than being an attempt to merely expand the defence budget, it was an attempt by individual companies to expand their market share. Yet we must also remember that increases in military spending usually coincide with the perception of increased insecurity. So therefore it would be natural for arms companies to attempt to build a sense of insecurity in order to increase the size of their market (in this case the US government).
Much is made of the corrupting influence on the contemporary American political process. Both Left and Right blame what they perceive to be the interest groups of the latter for the failure of the US government in pet policy arenas. Here are two examples to illustrate the point. The Left blames 'Big Oil' for the current energy crisis that America faces, this crisis is manifold, multi-dimensional; its the crisis facing an society founded on industrialised mass consumption. Furthermore in the age of plastics, and the age of the internal combustion engine, oil is a necessary foundation to our consumption. Even if we ignore/curtail frivolous consumption on consumer goods like IPODs, and stop using plastic packaging, and walk everywhere the problem remains. Freight uses oil, and plastics are an irreplaceable component of 21st Century high-tech industry. Sadly it is not so simple to blame the Oil lobby for these problems. Oil's stranglehold on the world is not founded on lobbying; country's without a Oil lobby still have massive oil dependency issues. Rather the lobby can only exacerbate the problem for example by demanding less rigorous pollution standards.
The Right makes a similar mistake. The permissive liberalism at the heart of US immigration policy has resulted in an explosion of illegal immigration. Undoubtedly the Latino immigrant community is a very powerful lobby with the Democratic Party. They vote Democrat by large margins, and they have become increasingly important in winning elections for the Democrats. Nonetheless whilst this is certainly the case, we must not forget who illegal immigration actually benefits. Illegal immigrants are usually employed at very low wages in unskilled jobs; the wages they are paid no legal worker would accept. Furthermore given the expectations engineered by the post-war boom of American consumer capitalism its easy to understand why a white American would not settle for such pay. However a Mexican citizen with a family in Mexico who need cash to survive (in a country with a failed state) such pay is enough. The American system itself has a great use for this labour power. To simply blame the Latino vote is obviously very simplistic.
This brings us back to interest group politics. Are interest groups the reason why the American empire became chronically overstretched; are they the reason that the United States cannot afford to provide jobs to over 10% of its citizens. Are they the reason why over 50 million Americans do not have health insurance? The simple answer is yes and no. Who decides government policy? Politician, bureaucrats and their advisers. Interest groups of course shape the perceptions of politicians, but their ideologies and circumstances are also equally important. The current structure of the US health industry for instance can be traced back to Richard Nixon. He made a decision to go with the market because of his ideology, lobbying from friends in the health industry but also circumstances. The US budget was overstretched in the early 1970s, it seemed fiscally advisable to allow the market to sort out provision when the alternative was to further strangle the US taxpayer. In retrospect this was the wrong decision, but it probably was not made out of malice, but out of pragmatism.
American Empire: Part One
When did it all go badly wrong for the US empire. I suppose it is best to start at the beginning; the term itself is of course a tad problematic for many English speakers, especially residents of that ‘Beautiful country’ as it is known in Korean (via the medium of Chinese characters). I will use it because I hail from firmly left-wing roots of a lower middle-class teenager who subconsciously resented the fact he didn’t go to private school. Being an ex-Marxist, turned pragmatist I have noticed a tendency in many left-wing writings to attribute to mendacious agency what is far more adequately explained through foolishness and blind luck. Thus that is how I interpret the rise of the US empire. We could class the first white settler state as the start, conquering what they called ‘virgin fields’ but which were actually nothing of the sort. America was a land with a people long before my forefathers took it upon themselves to colonise the place. Nonetheless whilst this was part of a vast British imperial project, and could (probably should) be classed as an empire from the beginning of its existence, I will ignore this anomaly.
Rather then, the American empire started by accident in 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire. This is a rather famous, and yet far more seminal event in world history than most historians give it credit. Here is where the post-war global financial architecture was formed. We should not forget that to have an empire you must have a dominant currency. British imperial power rested on the pound. The imperial power of the United States rested and still rests on the fact that the dollar is the global reserve currency, universally convertible and usable in any commercial level transaction even in North Korea. Bretton Woods marked the start of America’s pre-eminent status as the world’s banker, both as a sovereign entity and on Wall Street in the private sector. Sovereign nations who needed credit had serious problems during the Great Depression, thus a series of financial institutions were created at Bretton Woods which would insure that the Great Depression would not recur. These included the IMF and World Bank which remain with us today and are key instruments of US imperial power. The way they work is well known so I will not dwell on their functioning suffice it to say most of the capital that the IMF lends is US money. Thus it gives a great deal of leverage to the United States over any country that requires IMF loans.
Bretton Woods was itself the product of British imperial eclipse. Our Empire began to break away as we became deeply indebted and no longer able to finance the huge cost of an empire of diminishing returns. Furthermore the appetite for independence amongst the ‘natives’ should not be underestimated. Anyway suffice it to say America stepped into the breach as did the Soviet Union. Britain whilst having the largest empire, was not the only imperial power in continental Europe. The French, Portugese, Spanish, Belgium’s and Italians all had large empires stretching across what we call the Third World. As these empires collapsed in the 1950s and 1960s they were replaced by states that sought to align with either the Soviet Union or the United States in the cold war. There were of course a few exceptions, there always are; they formed what became known as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which included truly neutral states like Yugoslavia and India, weird places like North Korea, and then erstwhile Soviet allies like Cuba (for some bizarre reasons). Nonetheless lets back to the main topic when did it all start to go wrong for the American empire? When did the decline begin?
The US empire is founded on a number of simple principles. First, US policy makers believe in the benevolence of US power and the benefits to the world of its hegemonic ubiquity far beyond the corridors of power in Washington. Second, they believe in the need to maintain a world market dominated by Liberal states, which have ‘free’ economies. These principles in themselves are not as quintessentially American as you might think; in fact the idea of maintaining an Empire was anathema to the United States well into the twentieth century. Isolationism remained the dominant paradigm of US foreign policy up until 1914. Many did not want to become entangled in a European war or part of the European global system beyond trade. Nonetheless there were imperialists in America going back to its foundation; America did invade Mexico and the Philippines in the 19th/20th Centuries. Closer to home let us not forget the ‘General Sherman incident’ where an American ship tried to forcibly open Pyongyang to trade in the 1860s. Nonetheless it was only as a result of the Great Depression that US thinking was fundamentally altered. The Great Depression was prolonged by the breakdown of the global market, countries across Europe erected trade barriers and implemented capital controls in order to try and stop runs on their currencies and economic failure. A lack of mutual economic dependence was also blamed for the outbreak of the Second World War. Thus America sought to reconstruct the world in its own image. Also remember the threat of the Soviet Union was a pressing concern for the United States. America was to be a reluctant imperialist who was handed its role because of an internecine Europe war that resulted in the spread of Communism and a Third World power vacuum.
Rather then, the American empire started by accident in 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire. This is a rather famous, and yet far more seminal event in world history than most historians give it credit. Here is where the post-war global financial architecture was formed. We should not forget that to have an empire you must have a dominant currency. British imperial power rested on the pound. The imperial power of the United States rested and still rests on the fact that the dollar is the global reserve currency, universally convertible and usable in any commercial level transaction even in North Korea. Bretton Woods marked the start of America’s pre-eminent status as the world’s banker, both as a sovereign entity and on Wall Street in the private sector. Sovereign nations who needed credit had serious problems during the Great Depression, thus a series of financial institutions were created at Bretton Woods which would insure that the Great Depression would not recur. These included the IMF and World Bank which remain with us today and are key instruments of US imperial power. The way they work is well known so I will not dwell on their functioning suffice it to say most of the capital that the IMF lends is US money. Thus it gives a great deal of leverage to the United States over any country that requires IMF loans.
Bretton Woods was itself the product of British imperial eclipse. Our Empire began to break away as we became deeply indebted and no longer able to finance the huge cost of an empire of diminishing returns. Furthermore the appetite for independence amongst the ‘natives’ should not be underestimated. Anyway suffice it to say America stepped into the breach as did the Soviet Union. Britain whilst having the largest empire, was not the only imperial power in continental Europe. The French, Portugese, Spanish, Belgium’s and Italians all had large empires stretching across what we call the Third World. As these empires collapsed in the 1950s and 1960s they were replaced by states that sought to align with either the Soviet Union or the United States in the cold war. There were of course a few exceptions, there always are; they formed what became known as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which included truly neutral states like Yugoslavia and India, weird places like North Korea, and then erstwhile Soviet allies like Cuba (for some bizarre reasons). Nonetheless lets back to the main topic when did it all start to go wrong for the American empire? When did the decline begin?
The US empire is founded on a number of simple principles. First, US policy makers believe in the benevolence of US power and the benefits to the world of its hegemonic ubiquity far beyond the corridors of power in Washington. Second, they believe in the need to maintain a world market dominated by Liberal states, which have ‘free’ economies. These principles in themselves are not as quintessentially American as you might think; in fact the idea of maintaining an Empire was anathema to the United States well into the twentieth century. Isolationism remained the dominant paradigm of US foreign policy up until 1914. Many did not want to become entangled in a European war or part of the European global system beyond trade. Nonetheless there were imperialists in America going back to its foundation; America did invade Mexico and the Philippines in the 19th/20th Centuries. Closer to home let us not forget the ‘General Sherman incident’ where an American ship tried to forcibly open Pyongyang to trade in the 1860s. Nonetheless it was only as a result of the Great Depression that US thinking was fundamentally altered. The Great Depression was prolonged by the breakdown of the global market, countries across Europe erected trade barriers and implemented capital controls in order to try and stop runs on their currencies and economic failure. A lack of mutual economic dependence was also blamed for the outbreak of the Second World War. Thus America sought to reconstruct the world in its own image. Also remember the threat of the Soviet Union was a pressing concern for the United States. America was to be a reluctant imperialist who was handed its role because of an internecine Europe war that resulted in the spread of Communism and a Third World power vacuum.
Friday, 18 June 2010
The World Cup, expats and Korean nationalism
There is nothing that seems so bizarre and yet so normal to all my friends in Korea than dressing in Red and supporting the Korean national team. During the World Cup Korea becomes football crazy; when Korea plays, the world stops, 75% of all people put on a red shirt with English language slogans on them about Korea's victory or 'fighting'. Its kitsch, silly and stupid, I hate cheap patriotism. But there are massive anomalies in this, that none of my foreign friends seem to recognize or care to notice.
Korean patriotism is merely a softer form of Korean nationalism; Koreans are one, racially homogeneous master race according to the grand narrative of Korean nationalism. They stand apart from a globalizing world, defined by the enmity towards the brutal, cunning Japanese and dirty, uncivilized Chinese. Korean's are naive, simple and civilized people as Brian Myers says of North Korean literature, South Korean nationalists perceive themselves in the same way. This sea of red is an exclusionary, exclusive, ethno-nationalist group expression. It is not for us foreigners; in fact it is defined by the dichotomy of 'insider' Koreans and 'outsider' foreigners.
My foreign friends who wear their red and participate in the Korean nationalist wave all give me a similar reason for it. They're trying to get to know a culture, and participate in a harmless sporting event. Yet what's forgotten by them is that most Koreans do not care about football itself. Most Koreans do not watch football except during the world cup, and do not play football. This is just a nationalistic (and commercial) fetish; participating in such events makes no sense to me. Furthermore I doubt it makes much sense to most Koreans seeing foreigners participate in something that is explicitly not for them. It almost appears patronizing to try to imitate a nationalist group wave. If I were Korean nationalist, I would find it offensive, in the same way as I would find it offensive if someone thought I was so stupid that they had to talk to me slowly in my own language.
Before I sound like a hypocritical racist. I would say the same things about any ethno-nationalist or even just patriotic wave. When English people don their shirts and support the national team they do not do so in racial terms. Britain is still a multi-ethnic state; England used to be the metropolitan centre of an inclusive multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan, global empire. So we have black, and white players. I much prefer this, I really hate ethno-nationalism, it reminds me of fascism because of my European cultural roots. Nonetheless its still ridiculous to me. It's something I find very discomforting. Why does a state deserve to be treated like a parent, with loyalty and respect? Its an inhuman structure of symbols, ideas, bureaucratic processes and institutions. It does things which are good and things which are bad. We do not owe it unconditional allegiance and we should not take pride in it, it does many terrible things. Korean nationalism is far more discomforting to me, it reminds me of Nazism, although it must be said it is not at present expansionist. Many Koreans do care about Dokdo, and I would class this as somewhat expansionist. But I doubt Korean nationalists will succeed in making war out of this.
Yet it is also truly paradoxical and bizarre. Why do Koreans don t-shirts that are written in the language of the United States, a country that so many progressives blame for dividing their country. Korean nationalism's greatest pride is King Sejong, the man who invented the Korean alphabet. The alphabet one of the ultimate symbols of ethnic particularity. It seems ever so strange and contradictory. Why are the slogans in Konglish, a Koreanisation of American English words; Koreans often say Paiting (fighting), and go K'ori'a.
Its even more ironic that the word 'Korea' is used. The word is a bastardized Romanisation of the word Koryŏ, the name of the dynasty that ruled Korea from 918-1392. I have not been able to trace its precise origins, but the name Corea/Korea appeared on western maps before 1392 so the name stuck in English before a new dynasty called Chosŏn was founded in 1392. Anyways the reason why this is so bizarre is that the name of Korea in the Korean language is Han'guk. This name is a shorted form of Taehanmin'guk, the name itself means 'Great Han People's Nation'. The word Han is very significant in this, it is associated with a group of states that existed on the Korean peninsula in ancient times, the so-called 'Three Han states period'. Han therefore is used to harken back to a great time of independence for the Korean race. Furthermore the name was chosen in 1897 (at that time Taehanjaeguk) when Korea switched from being a tributary nation of Confucian China to being an empire (in name only). The choice of name reflected the desire of the Korean court to rid itself of the legacy of dependence on China (in Korean 'Sadaejuui'). In 1392 when the new Korean dynasty asked China what it should name itself China chose the name Chosŏn over the name 'Han'. So in a symbolic act of retroactive defiance the court changed the name.
The Japanese when they colonized Korea in 1910 eliminated the name, reverting it back to Chosŏn. Nonetheless the name was resurrected by the South Koreans in 1945. The word Korea is a bad western translation of a dynasty that has not existed in Korea since 1392. Why is it now being used as a slogan of popular Korean nationalism?! The word Koryŏ is now associated with the North Korean reunification policy of the 'Democratic Republic of Koryŏ' so to me it seems even more ironic that Korean people should use a bad romanisation of a word now used by North Koreans in their bid for unification.
This is an ever so strange contradictory blend of racial hatred of outsiders, plus an almost slavish adoption of so many foreign cultural symbols. Many Korean parents would hate the idea of their children marrying foreigners. Most Korean girls think western men are dangerous, I got accused of sexual harassment two days ago for doing little more than ask a girl why she was wearing a formal evening gown during the afternoon. (She probably misunderstood my words are nighty, but still the assumption is that I am a pervert gagging for sex.)
I just do not understand, and I am starting to feel the same way about South Korean nationalism as I do about English patriotism. Am I supposed to accept it for what it is? Should I allow my back to break into cultural relativism, and just accept another culture on its own terms? This is a cynical ploy by media executives in the pay of a number of vast corporations who sell their products through appeals to nationalist sentiment (just look at SK telecom, how much more brazen can you get?!). Its also an ideology of national unity that is so important for the South Korean state to rap itself in. Why should it not be criticized? Why should it be respected? Its not a personal choice, its an ideology of the cultural industry; an ideology of a state that does good and bad things and attempts to make itself above criticism through appeals to the imagined idea of race. Its thoroughly worthy of critique.
Post-mortem:
I suppose I maybe attributed a tad too much malice to something that whilst infuriating is quite harmless. Nationalism is blind, bumbling and stupid, yet it needn't end in confrontation or war. Moreover most of the people who were watching the game were probably just there to have a good time, not to partake in some kind of fascist parade.
Korean patriotism is merely a softer form of Korean nationalism; Koreans are one, racially homogeneous master race according to the grand narrative of Korean nationalism. They stand apart from a globalizing world, defined by the enmity towards the brutal, cunning Japanese and dirty, uncivilized Chinese. Korean's are naive, simple and civilized people as Brian Myers says of North Korean literature, South Korean nationalists perceive themselves in the same way. This sea of red is an exclusionary, exclusive, ethno-nationalist group expression. It is not for us foreigners; in fact it is defined by the dichotomy of 'insider' Koreans and 'outsider' foreigners.
My foreign friends who wear their red and participate in the Korean nationalist wave all give me a similar reason for it. They're trying to get to know a culture, and participate in a harmless sporting event. Yet what's forgotten by them is that most Koreans do not care about football itself. Most Koreans do not watch football except during the world cup, and do not play football. This is just a nationalistic (and commercial) fetish; participating in such events makes no sense to me. Furthermore I doubt it makes much sense to most Koreans seeing foreigners participate in something that is explicitly not for them. It almost appears patronizing to try to imitate a nationalist group wave. If I were Korean nationalist, I would find it offensive, in the same way as I would find it offensive if someone thought I was so stupid that they had to talk to me slowly in my own language.
Before I sound like a hypocritical racist. I would say the same things about any ethno-nationalist or even just patriotic wave. When English people don their shirts and support the national team they do not do so in racial terms. Britain is still a multi-ethnic state; England used to be the metropolitan centre of an inclusive multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan, global empire. So we have black, and white players. I much prefer this, I really hate ethno-nationalism, it reminds me of fascism because of my European cultural roots. Nonetheless its still ridiculous to me. It's something I find very discomforting. Why does a state deserve to be treated like a parent, with loyalty and respect? Its an inhuman structure of symbols, ideas, bureaucratic processes and institutions. It does things which are good and things which are bad. We do not owe it unconditional allegiance and we should not take pride in it, it does many terrible things. Korean nationalism is far more discomforting to me, it reminds me of Nazism, although it must be said it is not at present expansionist. Many Koreans do care about Dokdo, and I would class this as somewhat expansionist. But I doubt Korean nationalists will succeed in making war out of this.
Yet it is also truly paradoxical and bizarre. Why do Koreans don t-shirts that are written in the language of the United States, a country that so many progressives blame for dividing their country. Korean nationalism's greatest pride is King Sejong, the man who invented the Korean alphabet. The alphabet one of the ultimate symbols of ethnic particularity. It seems ever so strange and contradictory. Why are the slogans in Konglish, a Koreanisation of American English words; Koreans often say Paiting (fighting), and go K'ori'a.
Its even more ironic that the word 'Korea' is used. The word is a bastardized Romanisation of the word Koryŏ, the name of the dynasty that ruled Korea from 918-1392. I have not been able to trace its precise origins, but the name Corea/Korea appeared on western maps before 1392 so the name stuck in English before a new dynasty called Chosŏn was founded in 1392. Anyways the reason why this is so bizarre is that the name of Korea in the Korean language is Han'guk. This name is a shorted form of Taehanmin'guk, the name itself means 'Great Han People's Nation'. The word Han is very significant in this, it is associated with a group of states that existed on the Korean peninsula in ancient times, the so-called 'Three Han states period'. Han therefore is used to harken back to a great time of independence for the Korean race. Furthermore the name was chosen in 1897 (at that time Taehanjaeguk) when Korea switched from being a tributary nation of Confucian China to being an empire (in name only). The choice of name reflected the desire of the Korean court to rid itself of the legacy of dependence on China (in Korean 'Sadaejuui'). In 1392 when the new Korean dynasty asked China what it should name itself China chose the name Chosŏn over the name 'Han'. So in a symbolic act of retroactive defiance the court changed the name.
The Japanese when they colonized Korea in 1910 eliminated the name, reverting it back to Chosŏn. Nonetheless the name was resurrected by the South Koreans in 1945. The word Korea is a bad western translation of a dynasty that has not existed in Korea since 1392. Why is it now being used as a slogan of popular Korean nationalism?! The word Koryŏ is now associated with the North Korean reunification policy of the 'Democratic Republic of Koryŏ' so to me it seems even more ironic that Korean people should use a bad romanisation of a word now used by North Koreans in their bid for unification.
This is an ever so strange contradictory blend of racial hatred of outsiders, plus an almost slavish adoption of so many foreign cultural symbols. Many Korean parents would hate the idea of their children marrying foreigners. Most Korean girls think western men are dangerous, I got accused of sexual harassment two days ago for doing little more than ask a girl why she was wearing a formal evening gown during the afternoon. (She probably misunderstood my words are nighty, but still the assumption is that I am a pervert gagging for sex.)
I just do not understand, and I am starting to feel the same way about South Korean nationalism as I do about English patriotism. Am I supposed to accept it for what it is? Should I allow my back to break into cultural relativism, and just accept another culture on its own terms? This is a cynical ploy by media executives in the pay of a number of vast corporations who sell their products through appeals to nationalist sentiment (just look at SK telecom, how much more brazen can you get?!). Its also an ideology of national unity that is so important for the South Korean state to rap itself in. Why should it not be criticized? Why should it be respected? Its not a personal choice, its an ideology of the cultural industry; an ideology of a state that does good and bad things and attempts to make itself above criticism through appeals to the imagined idea of race. Its thoroughly worthy of critique.
Post-mortem:
I suppose I maybe attributed a tad too much malice to something that whilst infuriating is quite harmless. Nationalism is blind, bumbling and stupid, yet it needn't end in confrontation or war. Moreover most of the people who were watching the game were probably just there to have a good time, not to partake in some kind of fascist parade.
Friday, 11 June 2010
"The Shapelessness of Macro-Political Organisation" What the hell does that mean?!
I was reading an article on the collapse of North Korean Stalinism by Andrei Lankov (http://www.nbr.org/publications/element.aspx?id=198). The man is my biggest hero; if I had to whittle his work down to a few salient points he uses technical vocabulary only when absolutely necessary, he is very insightful, witty and he uses the word 'Stalinist' with some provisos to describe Kim Il Sung era North Korea.
But although the man is an excellent writer, he did cite another rather less transparent man when he was defining Stalinism as a concept. I doubt many people have heard of Seweryn Bialer, but he in his scholarly definition of Stalinism he uses the phrase in the title of this blog. Whilst the phrase is rather difficult of get a handle on I think I have finally understood what it means in practice.
The idea of 'Totalitarianism' as a scholarly term, has fallen out of fashion. In the Cold War it became a term of abuse for any regime that those on the democratic left and right chose to vilify; classic examples of totalitarianism that are often given are Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany etc. But in practice whilst these regimes erected impressive propaganda façades of monolithic unity, total control and submission of their peoples, the reality was obviously more complex. The first people I could find who used the term were Italian Fascists, whose own dictatorship whilst very brutal, was economically and politically laughable. The term was part of the aforementioned ideological fiction. Yet this fiction was believed ex post facto by many political theorists and historians; Hannah Arendt, one of the great post-war European public intellectuals used the term in her understanding of Communism and Fascism. Karl Popper who hailed from similar ideological roots, and from the same time also used the term in the same context. Outside the realm of political philosophy, the more events focused Zbigniew Brzezinski used the term in his analysis of the Soviet Union.
Yet these regimes were administratively and politically anarchic. Whilst certainly they were one-man dictatorships in principle, in reality, whilst power was concentrated in the hands of a few people, there was a great deal of confusion. This confusion was caused by the 'Shapelessness of Macro-political organisation'. This term translates into reality as conflict and overlap between the political party, the state/government and the military. To give a Soviet example, there was both a government cabinet and the more famous party duplicate the 'Politburo' or Political Committee. In Hitler's Reich there were two agencies that undertook espionage activities, the SS and the Abwehr (military intelligence). The SS obviously has infamous cult status, but the Abwehr is not widely known outside historical circles as a hot bed of anti-Nazi resistance. This is a classic example of administrative anarchy which empowers individuals within the state to act on their own for their own advantage or even 'worse', actively against the state.
In the North Korean context the situation is far more opaque, but nonetheless we know rather more than the 'nothing' that the western media sometimes says. The North Korean political structure has three major, and overlapping structures; the party, state and military. There overall power and the difference between them is not widely known in English language publications. What appears clear is that there is a small oligarchy that surrounds Kim Jong Il who have their power through their loyalty, family backgrounds and I am sure to a small degree their competence. Much has been made of North Korea's military first 'Songun' Politics (선군정치), what this means in practice is that the top organ of state is the National Defence Commission (국방위원회). Yet this doesn't mean that the country is just run by a bunch of geriatric generals. So far as we know Kim Jong Il is the man who runs the country, this is what defectors like Hwang Jang Yop say. Yet control of the economy and the army itself at an every day level cannot merely be managed by one man. This is the same for all one-man dictatorships, there has to be a degree of delegation to trusted confidantes. Yet in the North Korean context, some party agencies for instance the 'Organisation and Guidance Department' are reputed to have a great deal of power. Whilst the apex of the military hierarchy is said to manage and control most of the State Corporations. Concomitantly there barons of the state as well, economic policy itself is not merely set by Kim, or the generals, but there are economic technocrats in the state who are also heavily involved. The currency re-denomination of last year for instance is widely thought to have been the work of a number of high level state technocrats. This is one dimension of the so-called 'Shapelessness of Macro-political organisation'. There is no clear division of labour between party, state and military. All three seem to be intermeshed in their control of the key functions of what I would collectively call the 'regime'.
The second dimension of this 'Shapelessness' is the overlap that I already mentioned in the Nazi context. There are actual institutional overlaps and competition between institutions that share the same basic functions and roles in the regime. A good example of this is the security agencies; there is The Central Committee Secretary in Charge of South Korean Affairs (CCSCSKA), which is an agency of the Korean Workers Pary (KWP). Then there is the State Security Department (SSD) which is controlled by the National Defence Commission. And last and most important now is the Ministry of People’s Security (MPS). There has been some interesting things written about this in English. I can imagine from what I'm told that the Korean language stuff is compulsive reading...
Nonetheless North Korean watchers use rather sophisticated and at the same time crude guess work to try and work out who is influential in the leadership. Checking the order of lists, photographs etc. in the official media. Its quite amusing, and often yields similar results to interviews with defectors. The shapelessness makes any straight faced look at the North Korean political structure rather useless however.
But although the man is an excellent writer, he did cite another rather less transparent man when he was defining Stalinism as a concept. I doubt many people have heard of Seweryn Bialer, but he in his scholarly definition of Stalinism he uses the phrase in the title of this blog. Whilst the phrase is rather difficult of get a handle on I think I have finally understood what it means in practice.
The idea of 'Totalitarianism' as a scholarly term, has fallen out of fashion. In the Cold War it became a term of abuse for any regime that those on the democratic left and right chose to vilify; classic examples of totalitarianism that are often given are Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany etc. But in practice whilst these regimes erected impressive propaganda façades of monolithic unity, total control and submission of their peoples, the reality was obviously more complex. The first people I could find who used the term were Italian Fascists, whose own dictatorship whilst very brutal, was economically and politically laughable. The term was part of the aforementioned ideological fiction. Yet this fiction was believed ex post facto by many political theorists and historians; Hannah Arendt, one of the great post-war European public intellectuals used the term in her understanding of Communism and Fascism. Karl Popper who hailed from similar ideological roots, and from the same time also used the term in the same context. Outside the realm of political philosophy, the more events focused Zbigniew Brzezinski used the term in his analysis of the Soviet Union.
Yet these regimes were administratively and politically anarchic. Whilst certainly they were one-man dictatorships in principle, in reality, whilst power was concentrated in the hands of a few people, there was a great deal of confusion. This confusion was caused by the 'Shapelessness of Macro-political organisation'. This term translates into reality as conflict and overlap between the political party, the state/government and the military. To give a Soviet example, there was both a government cabinet and the more famous party duplicate the 'Politburo' or Political Committee. In Hitler's Reich there were two agencies that undertook espionage activities, the SS and the Abwehr (military intelligence). The SS obviously has infamous cult status, but the Abwehr is not widely known outside historical circles as a hot bed of anti-Nazi resistance. This is a classic example of administrative anarchy which empowers individuals within the state to act on their own for their own advantage or even 'worse', actively against the state.
In the North Korean context the situation is far more opaque, but nonetheless we know rather more than the 'nothing' that the western media sometimes says. The North Korean political structure has three major, and overlapping structures; the party, state and military. There overall power and the difference between them is not widely known in English language publications. What appears clear is that there is a small oligarchy that surrounds Kim Jong Il who have their power through their loyalty, family backgrounds and I am sure to a small degree their competence. Much has been made of North Korea's military first 'Songun' Politics (선군정치), what this means in practice is that the top organ of state is the National Defence Commission (국방위원회). Yet this doesn't mean that the country is just run by a bunch of geriatric generals. So far as we know Kim Jong Il is the man who runs the country, this is what defectors like Hwang Jang Yop say. Yet control of the economy and the army itself at an every day level cannot merely be managed by one man. This is the same for all one-man dictatorships, there has to be a degree of delegation to trusted confidantes. Yet in the North Korean context, some party agencies for instance the 'Organisation and Guidance Department' are reputed to have a great deal of power. Whilst the apex of the military hierarchy is said to manage and control most of the State Corporations. Concomitantly there barons of the state as well, economic policy itself is not merely set by Kim, or the generals, but there are economic technocrats in the state who are also heavily involved. The currency re-denomination of last year for instance is widely thought to have been the work of a number of high level state technocrats. This is one dimension of the so-called 'Shapelessness of Macro-political organisation'. There is no clear division of labour between party, state and military. All three seem to be intermeshed in their control of the key functions of what I would collectively call the 'regime'.
The second dimension of this 'Shapelessness' is the overlap that I already mentioned in the Nazi context. There are actual institutional overlaps and competition between institutions that share the same basic functions and roles in the regime. A good example of this is the security agencies; there is The Central Committee Secretary in Charge of South Korean Affairs (CCSCSKA), which is an agency of the Korean Workers Pary (KWP). Then there is the State Security Department (SSD) which is controlled by the National Defence Commission. And last and most important now is the Ministry of People’s Security (MPS). There has been some interesting things written about this in English. I can imagine from what I'm told that the Korean language stuff is compulsive reading...
Nonetheless North Korean watchers use rather sophisticated and at the same time crude guess work to try and work out who is influential in the leadership. Checking the order of lists, photographs etc. in the official media. Its quite amusing, and often yields similar results to interviews with defectors. The shapelessness makes any straight faced look at the North Korean political structure rather useless however.
Saturday, 5 June 2010
The South Korean Personality Cult
Its fair to say that the term 'Cult of Personality' has very unsavoury and totalitarian overtones. In fact I cannot think of a single positive instance of the application of the term. Just dissecting the term itself, it makes perfect sense that it should only have a negative meaning. Cults are small sect organisations that are founded on the worship of some being that is not credible enough due to popularity of said being to for these organisations to be large. Cult as a word also implies a level of unreasonable fanaticism and superstition. No organisation would want to be termed a cult, any organisation that is usually tries to dispute the application of the term. Think of Scientology; its the perfect example of an organisation that vigorously disputes the allegation of the word cult. And for good reason, its used as a derogatory term.
Therefore the term 'Cult of Personality' conjures up two concurrent meanings, the fanatical, sectional, irrationality of cults linked to the physical, and/or mental characteristics real and/or imaged of a person (usually a man). This is what Max Weber termed the 'Charismatic' type of political authority. The alleged greatness of an individual gives them political legitimacy, and thus authority in addition to the power they possess from control of the state's coercive apparatus e.g. the police, military, tax collectors etc.
Classic examples of the Cult of Personality that immediately spring to mind are Stalin, Mao and Hitler. The world today is still littered with such political authority however. When I look at Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan though, I wonder if the cult of personality has any real resonance with the people who are forced to be a part of such a shallow and obviously silly ideology. Yet in historical contexts personality cults are actually genuine loci of political group cohesion; they actually unite communities and strengthen them. They actually aid in political legitimacy and in control. Look no further than North Korea, the perfect example. Many North Koreans still like Kim Il Sung, and whilst most loathe or merely tolerate his son even some North Korean refugees in the south have a respect for his late father.
Yet are all personality cults so totalitarian and evil? I think immediately of three 'great' figures of history, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, and George Washington. I guarantee you this, the popular biography is a mythology. They all had their flaws and made their mistakes. Popular percepts of these figures are founded on almost slavish and irrational half-pictures of sinless saints. Now don't get me wrong, these are not bad people who we should exhume and subject to posthumous burning. But nonetheless the popular perception of these men is akin to a cult of personality, and not posthumous in the cases of Mandela and Washington.
When we think of Kim Il Sung, if you know the man's history, it is truly vile that such a grisly dictator should have such an equally grotesque personality cult. So a second proviso, I am not in any way comparing the rather nice, and men of great deeds to Kim. Its amusing to note though; in South Korea there is one man of almost equal stature to Kim's in the North. He is almost worshipped by historians as the greatest man of Korean history. He is held up as South Korea's symbol of modernity before the concept existed, and as South Korea's first man-of-the-people. A man who was so egalitarian and such a proto-welfare liberal that he invented an alphabet of such simplistic beauty (here I wholly agree!). If you have ever held a 10,000won note in your hand then you have seen him! His name is King Sejong (세종대왕). Now don't get me wrong, the Hunminjŏngŭm writing system (훈민정음) now known as Hangeul (한글) or Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글) is incredible. In fact it has become more and more incredible as the linguistic authorities have made it so. Sejong should be lauded for it.
But let me point out some often forgotten and glaringly obvious problems with this story. Sejong was like any other 15th Century monarch, you would not know it if you went to the Gwanghwamun area of Seoul where the man has a Museum, Cultural Centre and a Kim Il Sung sized statue of himself. Not his doing, but certainly if I were him I would be very pleased to have such landmarks dedicated to my memory. Nonetheless, this alphabet was not designed just to please the peasants and slaves who remained part of the quasi-feudal system for another 500 years. If the man was really so concerned with welfare then such a system would have surely been abolished by one of the most powerful monarchs in Korean history. Concurrently, he was a bloody king who rather enjoyed punitive raids on the nomadic tribes north of the Korean peninsula. A man of his time yes, we should not be too quick to judge him by our modern standards. But surely then, we should not lionise either, or disingenuously interpret his actions as those of a 20th Century social reformer before his time.
However the other major concern is that the man is not only lionised, but the purpose this cult of personality serves. It serves the racially nationalistic purpose. Hangeul is a symbol of Korean uniqueness, a language is a key identifier of ethnic particularity. Therefore the pride that is expressed in Hangeul is part of a narrative of national uniqueness and autonomy from the outside world. These narratives are to be found in all ethnic groups, but in South Korea this narrative remains very strong. South Korean nationalism is strong and still prone to bouts of popular, irrational and convulsive mass emotion, just like a cult. This cult is part of that nationalism and therefore it would be best to tone it down a bit.
On a side note, I was talking to someone yesterday about the cult of Sejong when a thought dawned on me. Park Chung-hee the 'greatest' leader South Korea has had since the Korean War could have had a cult like Sejong's. He tried to create a shallow and silly version of Kim Il Sung's cult in the late 1970s without much success. Civil Society and popular perceptions were rather weighted against this increasingly illegitimate authoritarian dictator. Yet what would have happened if he had stepped down when his time was up in 1972 and not become a proper dictator? Well he may have very well be thanked unconditionally by history (rather than extremely conditionally) for his massive part in the creation of South Korea. He may very well have had a cult that was as large and unquestioned as Kim Il Sung's; and the difference is that people would not now be rethinking it and doubting it as many North Koreans are starting to doubt Kim's now.
Therefore the term 'Cult of Personality' conjures up two concurrent meanings, the fanatical, sectional, irrationality of cults linked to the physical, and/or mental characteristics real and/or imaged of a person (usually a man). This is what Max Weber termed the 'Charismatic' type of political authority. The alleged greatness of an individual gives them political legitimacy, and thus authority in addition to the power they possess from control of the state's coercive apparatus e.g. the police, military, tax collectors etc.
Classic examples of the Cult of Personality that immediately spring to mind are Stalin, Mao and Hitler. The world today is still littered with such political authority however. When I look at Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan though, I wonder if the cult of personality has any real resonance with the people who are forced to be a part of such a shallow and obviously silly ideology. Yet in historical contexts personality cults are actually genuine loci of political group cohesion; they actually unite communities and strengthen them. They actually aid in political legitimacy and in control. Look no further than North Korea, the perfect example. Many North Koreans still like Kim Il Sung, and whilst most loathe or merely tolerate his son even some North Korean refugees in the south have a respect for his late father.
Yet are all personality cults so totalitarian and evil? I think immediately of three 'great' figures of history, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, and George Washington. I guarantee you this, the popular biography is a mythology. They all had their flaws and made their mistakes. Popular percepts of these figures are founded on almost slavish and irrational half-pictures of sinless saints. Now don't get me wrong, these are not bad people who we should exhume and subject to posthumous burning. But nonetheless the popular perception of these men is akin to a cult of personality, and not posthumous in the cases of Mandela and Washington.
When we think of Kim Il Sung, if you know the man's history, it is truly vile that such a grisly dictator should have such an equally grotesque personality cult. So a second proviso, I am not in any way comparing the rather nice, and men of great deeds to Kim. Its amusing to note though; in South Korea there is one man of almost equal stature to Kim's in the North. He is almost worshipped by historians as the greatest man of Korean history. He is held up as South Korea's symbol of modernity before the concept existed, and as South Korea's first man-of-the-people. A man who was so egalitarian and such a proto-welfare liberal that he invented an alphabet of such simplistic beauty (here I wholly agree!). If you have ever held a 10,000won note in your hand then you have seen him! His name is King Sejong (세종대왕). Now don't get me wrong, the Hunminjŏngŭm writing system (훈민정음) now known as Hangeul (한글) or Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글) is incredible. In fact it has become more and more incredible as the linguistic authorities have made it so. Sejong should be lauded for it.
But let me point out some often forgotten and glaringly obvious problems with this story. Sejong was like any other 15th Century monarch, you would not know it if you went to the Gwanghwamun area of Seoul where the man has a Museum, Cultural Centre and a Kim Il Sung sized statue of himself. Not his doing, but certainly if I were him I would be very pleased to have such landmarks dedicated to my memory. Nonetheless, this alphabet was not designed just to please the peasants and slaves who remained part of the quasi-feudal system for another 500 years. If the man was really so concerned with welfare then such a system would have surely been abolished by one of the most powerful monarchs in Korean history. Concurrently, he was a bloody king who rather enjoyed punitive raids on the nomadic tribes north of the Korean peninsula. A man of his time yes, we should not be too quick to judge him by our modern standards. But surely then, we should not lionise either, or disingenuously interpret his actions as those of a 20th Century social reformer before his time.
However the other major concern is that the man is not only lionised, but the purpose this cult of personality serves. It serves the racially nationalistic purpose. Hangeul is a symbol of Korean uniqueness, a language is a key identifier of ethnic particularity. Therefore the pride that is expressed in Hangeul is part of a narrative of national uniqueness and autonomy from the outside world. These narratives are to be found in all ethnic groups, but in South Korea this narrative remains very strong. South Korean nationalism is strong and still prone to bouts of popular, irrational and convulsive mass emotion, just like a cult. This cult is part of that nationalism and therefore it would be best to tone it down a bit.
On a side note, I was talking to someone yesterday about the cult of Sejong when a thought dawned on me. Park Chung-hee the 'greatest' leader South Korea has had since the Korean War could have had a cult like Sejong's. He tried to create a shallow and silly version of Kim Il Sung's cult in the late 1970s without much success. Civil Society and popular perceptions were rather weighted against this increasingly illegitimate authoritarian dictator. Yet what would have happened if he had stepped down when his time was up in 1972 and not become a proper dictator? Well he may have very well be thanked unconditionally by history (rather than extremely conditionally) for his massive part in the creation of South Korea. He may very well have had a cult that was as large and unquestioned as Kim Il Sung's; and the difference is that people would not now be rethinking it and doubting it as many North Koreans are starting to doubt Kim's now.
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