Rogue States

by Noam Chomsky

  The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. That ended the Cold War as far as any sane person was concerned. In October 1989, a month before, the Bush administration had released a secret national security directive, now public, in which it called for support for our great friend Saddam Hussein and other comparable figures in the Middle East in defense against the Russians. That was October 1989. In March 1990—that’s four months after the fall of the Berlin Wall—the White House had to make its annual presentation to Congress calling for a huge military budget, which was the same as in all earlier years, except for the pretexts. Now it wasn’t because the Russians are coming, because obviously the Russians aren’t coming, it was because of what they called the “technological sophistication” of Third World powers. With regard to the Middle East, instructions had been changed from October—then, it was: “the Russians are coming.” In March, it was: our intervention forces have to be aimed at the Middle East as before, where the threat to our interests “could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door,” contrary to the lies of the last 40 years. Case by case, the pretext changed, the policies remained—but were now without restraints.

  That was immediately obvious in Latin America. A month after the fall of the Berlin Wall the US invaded Panama, killing a couple of hundred or maybe a couple of thousand people, destroying poor neighborhoods, reinstating a regime of bankers and narcotraffickers—drug peddling and money laundering shot way up, as congressional research bureaus soon advised—and so on. That’s normal, a footnote to history, but there were two differences: one difference is that the pretexts were different. This was the first intervention since the beginning of the Cold War that was not undertaken to defend ourselves from the Russians. This time, it was to defend ourselves from Hispanic narcotraffickers. Secondly, the US recognized right away that it was much freer to invade without any concern that somebody, the Russians, might react somewhere in the world, as former Undersecretary of State Abrams happily pointed out.

  The same was true with regard to the Third World generally. The Third World could now be disregarded. There’s no more room for non-alignment. So forget about the Third World and their interests; you don’t have to make a pretense of concern for them. That’s been very evident in policy since.

  With regard to Cuba, it’s about the same. Right after the fall of the Soviet Union, the embargo against Cuba became far harsher, under a liberal initiative, incidentally: it was a Torricelli-Clinton initiative. And the pretexts were now different. Before, it was that the Cubans were a tentacle of the Soviet beast about to strangle us; now it was suddenly our love of democracy that made us oppose Cuba.

  The US does support a certain kind of democracy. The kind of democracy it supports was described rather frankly by a leading scholar who dealt with the democratic initiatives of the Reagan administration in the 1980s and who writes from an insider’s point of view because he was in the State Department working on “democracy enhancement” projects: Thomas Carothers. He points out that though the Reagan administration, which he thinks was very sincere, undermined democracy everywhere, it nevertheless was interested in a certain kind of democracy—what he calls “top-down” forms of democracy that leave “traditional structures of power” in place, namely those with which the US has long had good relations. As long as democracy has that form, it’s no problem.

  The real problem of Cuba remains what it has always been. It remains the threat of “the Castro idea of taking matters into [your] own hands,” which continues to be a stimulus to poor and underprivileged people who can’t get it driven into their heads that they have no right to seek opportunities for a decent living. And Cuba, unfortunately, keeps making that clear, for example, by sending doctors all over the world at a rate way beyond any other country despite its current straits, which are severe, and by maintaining, unimaginably, a health system that is a deep embarrassment to the United States. Because of concerns such as these, and because of the fanaticism that goes way back in American history, the US government, for the moment, at least, is continuing the hysterical attack, and will do so until it is deterred.

  And though foreign deterrents, which weren’t that effective, don’t exist anymore, the ultimate deterrent is where it always was, right at home. Two-thirds of the population oppose the embargo even without any discussion. Imagine what would happen if the issues were discussed in a serious and honest way—that leaves enormous opportunities for that deterrent to be exercised.

  7

  Putting on the Pressure Latin America

  At the end of the Second World War the US was creating an international order in which there were to be no regional systems that the US couldn’t penetrate and control, except for one, which was going to be separated from the world system, strengthened, and centralized under our control—namely, the western hemisphere, or, “our little region over here,” as it was called by Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

  So, what about “our little region over here”? It’s been on the front pages recently, with the release of the report by the UN commission on war crimes and atrocities in Guatemala. The report attributed virtually all of the atrocities—and they are monstrous, up to genocide—to the government. This is the ruling government system that was installed by the United States by a military coup in 1954; it has been maintained very strongly by the United States ever since, right through the worst atrocities, with increasing enthusiasm. In fact, the support has been bipartisan.

  Exercising Pressure

  Guatemala’s experiment with democracy, its first and only experiment, which went on for 10 years, was overthrown by the Eisenhower administration in 1954, opening a period of brutal repression and tortures supported strongly by the Kennedy administration, which essentially constructed the national security doctrine, not just for Guatemala but for the whole hemisphere. That led to a plague of repression over the hemisphere, with direct US involvement strongly supported by Johnson as atrocities mounted in the late ‘60s, and so it continued. The atrocities peaked in the early 1980s under the Reagan administration, which publicly and openly—and, in fact, rather passionately—supported the killers now identified by the UN commission. This was known at the time perfectly well. Congress compelled the administration to state repeatedly that the human rights condition was improving not only in Guatemala but in El Salvador and Honduras so that the US could continue to support the regimes. Congress knew they were hearing lies; that is now recognized. The UN commission gives a grim report on Guatemala; there is an equally grim one to be given on El Salvador.

  There’s more. In presenting the report, the chair of the commission emphasized that the US government and private companies “exercised pressure to maintain the country’s archaic and unjust socioeconomic structure.”1 The chair of the commission emphasized that because it’s at the core of the issue wherever there are atrocities and terror. These reflect the socioeconomic structure, which is one of brutal repression for a large majority of the population. When people try to gain and protect some rights, an iron fist comes down, with the hemispheric superpower backing it. That’s the story of “our little region over here.”

  Washington protested that this part of the report was unfair. It was, in a sense—it was far too polite and kind. It was not a mandate of the commission to look into this issue, so they just stressed it, but left it unanalyzed.

  On the same day as the report was announced, there was another announcement. The Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation closed its factory in Guatemala—not a random factory; it closed the only unionized factory among 200 export-oriented apparel factories in Guatemala.2 This union victory was finally won after a six-year struggle with plenty of support here from solidarity groups and boycotts. They finally got a union, so the factory was closed. The president of the US Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees said accurately that Philips-Van Heusen is sending a message to workers in Guatemala: “if you fight for justice, if you fight for a union, we will not honor your contract. We will walk away.�
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  That’s a message to workers in Guatemala and, in fact, everywhere. It is a message that reinforces the archaic and unjust socioeconomic structure that is at the core of the generations of terror and violence, as the UN commission reported on the same day. So the US government and private companies continue to exercise pressure to maintain that archaic and unjust socioeconomic structure, which, incidentally, is in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 23 guarantees the right to form unions in principle, but not in fact. “Exercise pressure” is an understatement. The term “exercise pressure” refers to years and years of massacres and slaughters and torture and mutilation and, in fact, genocidal attacks; it’s describing 45 years of state terror. Again, it was not within the mandate of the commission to investigate how the maintenance of the archaic socioeconomic structure leads to terror.

  One thing that ought to have been discussed—and that would have been discussed by any journalists or commentators who wanted to meet minimal standards of honesty—is why it all happened. Why did the United States overthrow the one democratic capitalist government in Guatemala, and why has it maintained support for state terror ever since? It’s not enough to just say it was a mistake due to Cold War excesses. There were reasons, and it’s not hard to find them.

  There’s a rich documentary record of internal US planning documents. In the early 1950s there was a lot of talk about the Russians and communism. Here’s what was said internally. In 1952 US intelligence warned of “Communist influence . . . based on militant advocacy of social reforms and nationalistic policies identified with the Guatemalan revolution of 1944,” which initiated the 10-year democratic interlude that was terminated by the US coup. “The radical and nationalist policies” of this democratic capitalist government, including the “persecution of foreign economic interests, especially the United Fruit Company,” had gained “the support or acquiescence of almost all Guatemalans.” The government was creating “mass support for the present regime” by labor organization and agrarian reform, and proceeding “to mobilize the hitherto politically inert peasantry” while undermining the power of large landholders. Furthermore, “Guatemalan official propaganda, with its emphasis on conflict between democracy and dictatorship and between national independence and ‘economic imperialism,’ is a disturbing factor in the Caribbean area.”3 The background is US support for dictatorships and its natural fear of independent democratic tendencies.

  Also disturbing was Guatemalan support for the democratic elements of other Caribbean countries and their struggles against dictatorships. They had in mind the democratic revolution that was taking place in Costa Rica at the time, which was getting support, the US alleged, from the terrible government in Guatemala. US intelligence reported further that the 1944 democratic revolution had aroused “a strong national movement to free Guatemala from the military dictatorship, social backwardness, and ‘economic colonialism,’ which had been the pattern of the past,” and it “inspired the loyalty and conformed to the self-interest of most politically conscious Guatemalans.” Social and economic programs of the elected government met the aspirations of labor and the peasantry; hence “neither the landholders nor the [United] Fruit Company can expect any sympathy in Guatemalan public opinion.”4 That’s the background for the military coup in 1954.

  Guatemala was becoming what’s called a “virus” which might infect others. It was threatening what’s called “stability.” “Stability” was defined by the US embassy as follows: Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador.

  Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail.5

  And that’s unacceptable. That’s undermining stability. The US coup restored “stability,” restored the traditional social order, by violence. It’s been maintained by extreme violence. The coup was undertaken and the terrorist regimes have been maintained for exactly the reasons just stated very clearly: to contain the threat of democracy and to roll back the social programs that were undermining stability because of their strong appeal to the population, not only in Guatemala, but in other countries of the region.

  If you read the newspapers where the UN Commission study is reported, there’s an explanation. It says, yes, we made a mistake. Cold War excesses, you know. We won’t make that mistake again. There are several problems with that. The “mistake” was not a mistake. It was planned. It was planned and explained and justified on rational grounds, namely those I’ve just excerpted. Furthermore, since the grounds were rational, the same so-called mistake was made consistently in different places in different times with the same internal justifications. Furthermore, the Cold War had virtually nothing to do with it, as this account illustrates.

  It’s pretty obvious just by looking at the relations of power in “our little region over here” that the Cold War was scarcely relevant. There was a Cold War connection, however. As the US was preparing to kill the virus of independent capitalist democracy, the US cut off military aid to Guatemala, and it threatened to attack. The purpose was to compel Guatemala to turn to other sources for support, for military aid to protect it from the impending US attack. Other countries were perfectly willing to give aid, but the US prevented European countries from giving any, so Guatemala was compelled to turn to the Soviet bloc, exactly as the US wanted.

  At that point the US embassy in Guatemala advised that the US could now take steps to bar the “movement of arms and agents to Guatemala,” stopping ships in international waters—which is, of course, illegal—“to such an extent that it would disrupt Guatemala’s economy.” That was the next step, and its purpose was to “encourage the Army or some other non-Communist element to seize power”—that is, to encourage a military coup that would overthrow and destroy the democratic virus. Or, alternatively, “the Communists will exploit the situation to extend their control,” which would “justify the American community—or if they won’t go along, the US [alone]—to take strong measures.”6

  So, the logic was, we compel Guatemala to defend itself from our threatened attack, thereby creating a threat to our security, which we exploit by destroying the Guatemalan economy so as to provoke a military coup or an actual communist takeover, which will then justify our violent response in self-defense. That’s the real meaning of self-defense and of the Cold War, spelled out with brutal clarity, a lesson taught over and over again.

  The Tombstone of Debt

  Let’s move on to other examples of maintaining socioeconomic supremacy in “our little region over here.” Recently in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, there was a meeting of 17 Latin American countries on the debt. The archbishop of Tegucigalpa, president of the Latin American Conference of Bishops, speaking of the debt, said that it “is not one more problem for us to face—it is the problem. The foreign debt is like a tombstone.”7 Latinamerica Press, which comes from Peruvian liberation theology circles, reported what I’m now quoting, but it ought to be on the front pages here. It’s a problem that we’re creating and we’re maintaining. But the conference was not even reported.

  Then come the data. These are World Bank figures. The data roughly are the following: in the 1970s the Latin American debt was about $60 billion. By 1980 it had reached $200 billion. That’s the result of very explicit World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies that were urging banks to make huge loans and urging countries to accept those loans. Their economic theories ensured everyone that that was going to work great.

  Those recommendations continued virtually right up to the day on which Mexico defaulted and the Latin American system collapsed. Up till then there was strong advice from the World Bank and the IMF to continue pouring in the loans. By 1990 the debt had gone from $200 billion to about $433 billion; by the end o
f 1999 it was expected to be about $700 billion. Meanwhile, from 1982 to 1996, about $740 billion has been sent back to the Northern banks and the international financial institutions in debt payment. In 1999, debt service alone amounted to about $120 billion. Just take a look at these numbers. It’s clear that the debt will never be paid. It’s impossible to pay. It’s getting bigger and bigger, it’s more and more of a capital drain from the poor to the rich, and that will continue and escalate without any change.8

  I’ll give a final example, from the Wall Street Journal, a very enlightening front-page article.9 It’s about Mexico since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA came along, and then the 1994 debacle occurred, when the Mexican economy went into a tailspin. The article starts out conventionally, reporting that since NAFTA, Mexico has been an economic miracle. It “enjoys a stellar reputation.” It’s a model that should be followed by other countries. The reason is that Mexico is following all the rules, doing just what the IMF tells it—meaning just what the US tells it, because the US decides what the IMF tells it. It’s following all the rules, the macroeconomic statistics look great, foreign investors and wealthy Mexicans are prospering, everything is just perfect.

  But. To the credit of the Wall Street Journal, it points out that there’s a “but.” Mexico has “a stellar reputation,” and it’s an economic miracle, but the population is being devastated. There’s been a 40 percent drop in purchasing power since 1994. The poverty rate is going up and is in fact rising fast. The economic miracle wiped out, they say, a generation of progress; most Mexicans are poorer than their parents. Other sources reveal that agriculture is being wiped out by US-subsidized agricultural imports, manufacturing jobs have actually declined, manufacturing wages have declined about 20 percent, general wages even more.10 In fact, NAFTA is a remarkable success: it’s the first trade agreement in history that’s succeeded in harming the populations of all three countries involved. That’s quite an achievement.