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Abstract
*
This is an excerpted version of a paper prepared for presentation at the Fourteenth
Annual Meeting of the Global Awareness Society International (GASI), held in Rome, Italy,
May 26-29, 2005. The author wishes to thank the Saint Joseph’s College for its assistance
under the Small Grants Program which enabled the presentation of this paper at this
Conference. Comments welcome. Author may be contacted at Kbauzon@sjcny.edu.
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I. Introduction
Nearly fifteen years ago, this author noted certain signs that pointed to the
apparent reversal of democracy in the Third World. 1 This observation was in stark
contrast to the clearly manifest sense of triumphalism among mainstream
academics and political leadership in the West in the wake of the collapse of the
former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. This sense of triumphalism,
represented at the extreme by Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the
Last Man, left no doubt as to which ideology prevailed at the end of the Cold War,
and which superpower has prevailed. 2 These commentators, mainly in the West
and in North America, were effusive about what they saw as a triumphant victory
and superiority of the Western industrial countries and their liberal democratic
ideology in the battle for the hearts and minds of the peoples of the world. In that
piece, I wrote in response:
It is ironic that in Third World countries where
democracy was proclaimed to have returned (e.g.,
Argentina, Chile, Pakistan, the Philippines, Nigeria, and
Uganda, among others) democracy has, in fact, seen a
reversal. What happened in these countries is merely a
reflection of a persistent pattern throughout the rest of
the Third World in which civilian populations are
progressively marginalized and governments lose their
ability to defend national sovereignty vis-a-vis
powerful external forces. 3
From that same article, I also wish to quote Herman E. Daly and John B.
Cobb, co-authors of the book, For the Common Good; Redirecting the
1
Please see “Democratization in the Third World – Myth or Reality,” in Kenneth E. Bauzon,
ed., Development and Democratization in the Third World; Myths, Hopes, and
Realities (Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Francis/Crane Russak, 1992), pp. 1-31.
2
(New York: Free Press, 1992), 418 pp.
3
Bauzon, loc. cit.
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(Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1989), 482 pp.
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pp. 13-18. All quotations from Diamond are from this source.
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notes that the only democratic countries are Israel and Turkey, and notes that
“[t]his region has by far the lowest average freedom score (5.5) of any region of
the world, compared with 4.4 in Asia, 4.3 in Africa, 3.4 among the postcommunist
states, and 2.5 in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Diamond also wonders about the compatibility between democracy, on one
hand, and Islam, on the other. His observation appears to validate Samuel
Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis when he notes that “[o]f the 47 Muslim
majority countries in the world, only nine are democracies (and only one, Mali, is a
liberal democracy.” Among Arab countries in particular, Diamond notes that, as
evident to him over the last two decades, “political liberalization has proven to be
no more than a tactic of political survival and one element in a type of regime that
combines ‘guided pluralism, controlled elections, and selective repression.’”
Despite his dire assessment about the prospects of liberal democracy in
various regions and countries around the world, Diamond ends with a note of
optimism. At least insofar as ideology is concerned, he notes that “democracy
appears to remain the only legitimate form of government in the world.” He
observes that even in places where resentment towards the United States and
other industrialized countries appears to be intense, peoples in those places have
“no broad preference for a non-democratic form of government.” Diamond notes
further that, “[I]ndeed, much of the current criticism of American ‘hegemony’ in
the world, or of conditionality by the International Monetary Fund, stems precisely
from the belief in many societies that their own elected governments do not enjoy
sufficient sovereignty and that decisions at the international level should be made
in a more consultative, democratic fashion.”
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liberal, and which are found in the Third World, were countries that have either
been subject to colonial rule and exploitation, or have remained poor and
undemocratic or even authoritarian, as the case may be, often with the
encouragement and support of the leading industrialized countries to suit their
particular political, economic, diplomatic, or military expediency and, furthermore,
through the use of supranational organizations like the World Bank (WB), the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
A second irony may be noted in that while Diamond appears obsessed with
using electoral politics as a gauge of democracy, it has not occurred to him to note
and observe that this particular feature of democracy has, historically, been an
object of manipulation to suit the convenience of the imperial powers. In a
pioneering study by Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead, entitled Demonstration
Elections; US-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and El
Salvador, 6 US foreign policy interests have virtually determined or predetermined,
as the case may be, whether (a.) elections should be held (Show Elections); (b.)
elections should be cancelled (Preempted Elections); and c. the results of elections
– regardless of whether or not they were free, fair, and constitutional – should be
nullified (Unacceptable Electoral Results). According to Herman and Brodhead, each
of these conditions offered its own set of justification, clichés, and symbols for US
intervention including but not limited to:
A claim to “natural right” to intervene and “set things straight”;
Righteous opposition to “foreign interventionism”;
Greater threat to “national security” by standing idly by;
The preservation of the country’s “good name” as a champion of
“freedom”, “democracy”, and “human rights”;
Righteous opposition to “terror” and “violence”;
Righteous opposition to “armed minorities” that are out to seize
power undemocratically; and
Righteous opposition to “Marxists”, “communists”, and “Leftists” out
to impose an “alien ideology”
A. Show Elections
To the category of “show elections” may be included those held in Iraq and
Afghanistan in 2005 and 2004, respectively, in which the outcome was predictably
favourable to the US with the desired effect of validating the US military invasions
6
(Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1984), 270 pp. Hereinafter cited as Demonstration
Elections.
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of those countries. Had a country other than the US invaded those countries, and
which had sponsored similar elections for comparable reasons, the US would
certainly have loudly denounced the results as illegitimate. But the US is
determined to show the world that its invasions and virtual military occupation of
Afghanistan and Iraq – despite their nominal independence -- were not a mistake
and that US President George W. Bush’s commitment to bring democracy to these
countries remains genuine. Contributing to the legitimacy of this democratic project
has been the United Nations (UN), allowing the US to invoke the support of the
“international community.” UN participation, as well as those by civilian non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), was particularly crucial in the planning,
management, and control of the elections held in these countries since the
invasion. Recalling a principal thesis in the book by Herman and Brodhead cited
earlier, they expressed their doubt about the role of the mainstream media to
articulate any critical voice, much less to expose demonstration elections as
fraudulent components of a counter-insurgency or military pacification campaign in
the Third World. Herman and Brodhead concluded with prescient anticipation:
[W]e see the free election-pacification strategy
as a powerful one, likely to be successful in disarming
or limiting opposition to U.S. intervention or U.S.
support for fascist clients in the Third World…. [S]uch
elections are designed to appeal to the most idealistic
strains in the U.S. political culture, including the right
of all peoples to self-determination through peaceful
political processes. That such freedoms have been
transformed into tools of pacification and chains of
enslavement by the intervention strategies of the last
two decades needs to become part of the common
currency of our opposition political culture.
Unfortunately, both for ourselves but even more so for
the rest of the world, we haven’t even come close. 7
The mainstream media as well were unanimous in their editorial praise for
the October 2004 elections in Afghanistan without giving the slightest hint that this
electoral exercise may be nothing but “demonstration elections.” Comparing these
elections to those held in El Salvador in 1982, US Vice President Dick Cheney was
effusive in the thought that these elections were being held at all. He said: Twenty
years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador. We had a guerrilla insurgency
[that] controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead, and we held
free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress. The human
drive for freedom, the determination of these people to vote, was unbelievable. The
terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places; as soon as they left, the
7
Ibid.
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voters could come back and get in line and would not be denied the right to
vote.” 8 Sample banner headlines from some leading US newspapers bear this out:
“It Must Not Be the Last,” Los Angeles Times, October 11; “Afghanistan’s Proud
Day,” Chicago Tribune, October 12; “”Afghanistan Votes,” New York Times,
October 12; “Afghanistan’s Anti-Fear Vote,” Christian Science Monitor, October
12. The “demonstration elections” character of the Afghan vote is betrayed by a
number of significant factors most important of which is that the country remains
under virtual foreign military occupation. Timed to appeal to and influence domestic
US voters in the November elections in favor of Bush’s candidacy, the outcome of
the Afghan election itself was essentially predetermined to ensure the victory of the
US-annointed candidate, Hamid Karzai. One may note further that Karzai, who was
a former employee of a US oil company, faced little or no opposition with many
would-be candidates having been barred from running. To the US, the choice of
Karzai was a logical one in that, as one observer keenly notes, has already served
as the “titular President of the various incarnations of militarily occupied
Afghanistan for at least 34 out of those 36 months.” 9 To the Afghan electors,
intimidation by warlords was a daily reality to which was added the fear for how the
US might react if the results proved negative to US expectations.
The electoral experience in Iraq in January 2005 parallels that of
Afghanistan. As Herman wrote prior to these elections, “A truly free election would
result in the ouster of U.S. forces and bases and a repudiation of the numerous
contracts with friends of the Bush administration, as well as the string of de facto
laws (“Orders”) and rules imposed by the U.S. like tax policies, open-door rights to
foreign companies, and exemptions of foreigners from the rule of law that serve
U.S., but not Iraqi, interests.” Herman continues, “But the occupation forces will
prevent this, unless they are driven out of the country or the costs of pacification
are so great that, as in Vietnam, there is a voluntary exit based on compelling
political pressures and/or a negative calculus of the costs and benefits to the
occupying power.” 10 Predictably, following these elections, President Bush heaped
high praises for these elections, noting that “the Iraqi people value their own
liberty.” The First Lady, Laura Bush, contributed her own spin when she remarked:
“It was so moving for the President and me to watch people come out with purple
8
As quoted in Edward S. Herman, “The Afghan, El Salvador, and Iraq Elections,” published
originally in Z Magazine (December 2004). Available online at:
www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Afghan_ESal_Iraq_Elections.html.
9
David Peterson, “Demonstration Elections III.” In:
http://blog.zmag.org/indexphp/weblog/entry/afghanistan2/.
10
Herman, “The Afghan, El Salvador, and Iraq Elections,” op. cit.
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fingers [denoting that one had already voted].” 11 And, columnist Mark Brown of
the Chicago Sun-Times, echoing the sentiment of the mainstream media, wrote
that the elections were “the first clear sign that freedom really may mean
something to the Iraqi people,’ implying that freedom never meant anything to the
Iraqis prior to this exercise.
Contradicting the Bush administration and corporate media spin, Canadian
journalist Naomi Klein cautions that “[I]n looking at democracy in Iraq, we first
need to make the distinction between elections and democracy. The reality is the
Bush administration has fought democracy in Iraq at every turn. Why? Because if
genuine democracy ever came to Iraq, the real goals of the war – control over oil,
support for Israel, the construction of enduring military bases, the privatization of
the entire economy – would all be lost. Why? Because Iraqis don’t want them and
they don’t agree with them. They have said it over and over again….” 12 Which is
why, Klein asserts, the Bush administration was eager to “lock in” the future of Iraq
during the provisional period, particularly during the virtual proconsulate of Paul
Bremer, noted, among others, for issuing over a hundred decrees intended to bring
about what Klein describes as an “extreme makeover” and granting what The
Economist describes as “the wish list of foreign investors.” “There was no role for
the Iraqis in this process,” Klein notes. She notes further: “It was all foreign
companies modernizing the country. Iraqis with engineering Ph.D.s who built their
electricity system and who built their telephone system had no place in the
reconstruction.” 13
As though criticisms against the transparent motives by the Bush
administration pertaining to the elections were not bad enough, multiple Pulitzer
Prize recipient and investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals in a July 2005
issue of The New Yorker magazine clandestine efforts by the Bush administration
and its surrogates to predetermine the outcome of these elections. Hersh writes:
“As the election neared, the Administration repeatedly sought ways – including
covert action – to manipulate the outcome….” 14 Despite existing congressional ban
on the use of federal funds for the purpose of intervening in and influencing
elections in Iraq, the Bush administration had determined as early as the spring
2004 that this clandestine action be taken and to do so by recruiting former CIA
operatives and enlist the cooperation of certain NGO, e.g., the National Democratic
11
Naomi Klein, “Getting the Purple Finger,” originally published in The Nation, February
11, 2005, now available online at: www.commondreams.org/cgd-
bin/print.cgi?files/views05/0211-24.htm.
12
Naomi Klein, “How to End the War,” in the In These Times online at
www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2103.
13
Ibid.
14
Please see his “Annals of National Security: Get Out the Vote,” The New Yorker, July
27, 2005. Available online at: www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050725fa_fact.
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Institute, the International Republic Institute, and the National Endowment for
Democracy, though which funds were funnelled while presumably serving as non-
partisan election monitors. Promulgating a classified “finding,” a legal maneuver to
allow the CIA to use certain funds without incurring congressional opposition,
according to Hersh, the “process” turned over for management and control of the
CIA and the Department of Defense. In preparing this expose, Hersh noted one
recurring theme: “…the Bush Administration’s increasing tendency to turn to off-
the-books covert actions to accomplish its goals. This allowed the Administration to
avoid the kind of stumbling blocks it encountered in the debate about how to
handle elections: bureaucratic infighting, congressional second-guessing,
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complaints from outsiders.”
Two other examples under this category may include the numerous
elections and referenda held in Indonesia under the dictatorship of Suharto since
he came into power in the wake of the bloody coup in 1965, and the elections held
in Nicaragua in 1988 leading to the defeat of the Sandinistas.
In the case of Indonesia, despite the atmosphere of repression and the
killing of several opposition candidates and workers by the Indonesian military and
paramilitary agents, the US has hailed these elections and referenda as “victory” of
Suharto’s brand of democracy euphemistically called the “New Order.” Suharto’s
“show” elections began in 1967 when the country’s provisional parliament formally
elected him to his first five-year term. This routine was repeated in1978, 1983,
1988, 1993, and 1998. Suharto’s façade of democracy was, of course, intended to
shape an image before the international community as a moderate and a benign
leader. Reflecting the success of this public relations campaign, a prominent
Australian academician, Heinz Arndt, has gone so far as to offer his fawning
description of the Suharto regime as being “genuinely and desperately anxious not
to be thought undemocratic, militaristic, dictatorial. It wants to educate and
persuade, not to run roughshod over anyone….” 16 In fact, the opposite was true
the whole time.
As for US role in the 1965 coup, US investigative journalist Kathy Kadane
wrote in 1990: “They [i.e., former US embassy officials] systematically compiled
comprehensive lists of communist operatives. As many as 5,000 names were
furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names
of those who had been killed or captured.” 17 And as to whether or not there was
any concern or remorse on the part of these officials about the arrests, torture, and
executions during and subsequent to the coup, Howard Federspeil, who served as
15
Ibid.
16
H.W. Arndt, “A Comment,” Australian Outlook, 22, 1 (April 1968), pp. 92-95.
17
San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990; and Washington Post, May 21, 1990.
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B. Preempted Elections
Examples of the category of pre-empted elections may include the
scheduled elections in Vietnam in 1956, and in the Philippines in 1972. In the case
of Vietnam, the envisioned elections in 1956 were a vital component of the Geneva
Accords of 1954 that would have peacefully ended French colonialism (after French
capitulation at Dien Bihn Phu , and which would have led to the political
reunification of Vietnam and returned the country to its people. However, with
serious misgivings about the Accords and sensing French weakness, the US decided
to back Ngo Dinh Diem, a militant anti-communist, in his power struggle with the
more traditional Emperor Bao Dai favored by the French. Confident of US support,
Diem then proceeded to stall, then altogether cancel, further consultations with the
Hanoi-based Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam particularly on the
issue of elections. US motives were quite apparent: it feared that “free, fair and
democratic elections” in accordance with the Geneva Accords might lead to the
election of popular resistance leader Ho Chi Minh into political leadership, realizing
that Ho’s political movement, the National Liberation Front, was admitted even by
US officials to be the only significant popularly supported party particularly in rural
South Vietnam. Its exclusion through electoral pre-emption, therefore, was
essential to US policy agenda. Thus, the US, having effectively succeeded the
French as the principal sponsor of the government south of the Seventeenth
Parallel, gave its full consent to Diem’s decision to cancel the envisioned elections
18
San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990.
19
(London: Verso, 2003), 254 pp.
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In this context, one may understand the series of unequal bilateral treaties, e.g.,
the Mutual Defense Treaty and the Parity Rights Agreement, between the US and
the Philippines all of which had the cumulative effect of rendering the latter as a
neocolony of the former. Part of the contrivance alluded to by Kennan was the
constant meddling in Philippine domestic political affairs, including the clandestine
20
As revealed in the Pentagon Papers, the US rationale was oriented around the doctrine of
containment. Rightly or wrongly, the US perception that “the Soviet-controlled expansion of
communism both in Asia and in Europe required, in the interests of U.S. national security, a
counter in Indochina. The domino thesis was quite prominent.” Please see The Pentagon
Papers, Gravel Edition (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1971), Vol. 1, Chap. 4, pp. 179-214.
21
Foreign Relations of the United States, Vol. 1 (1948): 509-529.
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support for pro-US candidates, political parties, and governments. This was
particularly true in the April 1946 elections in which the US backed the candidacy of
Japanese collaborator Manuel Roxas. The pro-US forces needed “strong men”
including collaborationists like Roxas, recalled Luis Taruc in his autobiography,
Born of the People 22 , in order to carry out their “ruthless policies.” “They were
allowed by MacArthur and McNutt,” Taruc writes, “to seize control of Congress and
the army….” 23 Especially so that the Philippine Congress would be taking up
important pieces of legislation including the enactment of the Bell Trade Act and
the requisite amendment to the Philippine Constitution, Roxas schemed the
expulsion from Congress -- based on trumped-up charges -- of the duly elected
opposition candidates, six congressmen from the Democratic Alliance (including
Taruc himself who won by a landslide over his opponent), and three Senators-elect
from the Nacionalista Party. Taruc recalls this event which he deemed to be a
betrayal:
There was, of course, a reason for the haste of Roxas
to have the DA Congressmen unseated. Approval of
the Bell Trade Act and its parity provision necessitated
an amendment of our Constitution, requiring a two-
thirds vote of the Philippine Congress. After we had
been unseated, the resolution to amend the
Constitution was approved by only a one-vote margin
in the lower house. In that naked way was the will of
the people frustrated. 24
22
(New York: International Publishers, 1958), 286 pp.
23
Ibid., p. 220.
24
Ibid., p. 227.
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economic support. What the US received, in turn, were liberalized trade and
investment policies which allowed US corporations to rake in as much $5.00 in
profits for every dollar invested, access to the Philippine consumer market, and the
ability to enter the agricultural and extractive industries such as in mining, logging,
oil exploration, and food processing and export. Further, the US military gained
access to Philippine territory to host a number of significant military installations
including the Clark Air Force Base, reputed to be the largest outside of continental
US, and the Subic Naval Base, a support facility for repair and refuelling used by
the US Seventh Fleet which patrolled, and continues to patrol, the western Pacific.
Even up to the waning years of the Marcos dictatorship, US support for
Marcos was unwavering as when the US Vice President George Herbert Bush, on a
brief stop-over visit with Marcos in Manila in 1981, offered a toast that would earn
a niche in what Asiaweek described as a “pantheon of American diplomatic
mealtime blunders,” in which Bush praised Marcos for his “adherence to democratic
principles” when it was universally known, as borne out by a series of reports by a
number of independent human rights organizations including Amnesty International
and no less than the US State Department, that the Marcos regime has engaged in
systematic and sustained violation and abuse of human rights. 25 And even during
Marcos’s last hours in power, when it was evident that Marcos had stolen the “snap
elections” in 1986, following the brutal murder of popular opposition leader Ninoy
Aquino on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport, then US President Ronald
Reagan would only concede, and indeed, insisted, at a press conference that
violence was “on both sides” when it was unmistakable to any independent
observer that violence was overwhelmingly on the side of the Government and the
thugs that were working on its behalf.
25
Alejandro Reyes and Tim Healy, “Shattered Summit,” in
www.cgi.com/Asianow/asiaweek/98/1127/nat1.html.
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scant paragraph on the Anglo-American coup in Iran. In this book, the author
writes:
There had been troubles even before 1955. The
prime minister of Iran, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh,
had precipitously nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company in 1951 and raised a large row with Great
Britain. But eventually things came back under control
in Iran, the shah abdicating in August 1953, then
returning and appointing a new prime minister who
jailed Dr. Mossadegh. The new government negotiated
a settlement with the British oil company. 26
This text does not discuss the social, political, and economic conditions surrounding
Mossadegh’s popularity and ascension to the position as Prime Minister, much less
a discussion of his political platform supporting the 1951 law enacted by the Iranian
parliament nationalizing the oil industry. It does not deal with covert plans by the
US-Anglo intelligence and security operatives that overthrew Mossadegh’s
government in August 1953, and it does not explore the US-Anglo motivations for
wanting to return to power the Shah and how he was supplied with massive
amount of arms and money to carry out his so-called White Revolution until he was
deposed by the revolution of 1979. 27
The apparent lack of scholarly interest in this event may not be quite
accidental. In the US, the CIA apparently engaged in an unauthorized destruction
of “an unknown quantity of materials” related to the coup. Although CIA Director
James Woolsey claimed that the destruction was “routine,” an investigation by the
National Archives and Records Administration, published in March 2000, affirms
that “no schedules in effect during the period 1959-1963 provided for the disposal
of records related to covert actions and, therefore, the destruction of records
related to Iran was unauthorized.” 28 The National Security Archive (NSA), a non-
profit research organization dedicated to security and foreign-policy issues, reveals
26
Robert H. Ferrell, American Diplomacy; A History, Third Edition (New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., Inc., 1975), p. 745. A more recent book on US foreign policy, William H.
Chafe’s The Unfinished Journey; America Since World War II (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999), does not even have word on the coup in question.
27
A qualification herein needs to be made. The present category of “undesirable electoral
results” does not simply pertain to the election of a specific head of state. As in the case of
Iran, it also refers to the election of members of a legislative body the majority of whom
enacted the oil industry nationalization law in 1951, and supported by Mossadegh whose
appointment by the Shah to the position of prime ministership was in recognition of his
popularity as a nationalist leader. But the nationalization law was seen by the British as a
clear challenge to their hegemony over the country’s oil resource through the Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company. Hence, the plot – now with the active complicity of the US government – was
not simply to remove Mossadegh but also to overthrow an elected government.
28
Please see ”The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953,” at the website of the
Washington-based National Security Archive at
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/ More more in-depth analysis, please see also
Mark Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, eds., Mohammad Mossadeq and the 1953 Coup in
Iran (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 408 pp.
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the existence of the so-called “Wilber history” prepared in 1954 by Donald Wilber,
one of the coup’s chief planners. In this document, Wilber discusses the history of
the CIA’s clandestine Operation TPAJAX, code name for the coup. The document
posted in the NSA’s website is introduced by Mark Gasiorowski, noted scholar on
the coup and member of the advisory panel of the NSA’s Project on Iran-US
Relations. In his introduction, Gasiorowski offers his “take” on the meaning and
significance of the document. Thus, he writes, in part:
These contain a wealth of interesting information. They
indicate that the British played a larger—though still
subordinate – role in the coup than was previously
known, providing part of the financing for it and using
their intelligence network (led by the Rashidian
brothers) to influence members of the parliament and
do other things. The CIA described the coup plan as
“quasi-legal,” referring to the fact that the shah legally
dismissed Mossadeq but presumably acknowledging
that he did not do so on his own initiative. These
documents make clear that the CIA was prepared to go
forward with the coup even if the shah opposed it.
There is a suggestion that the CIA use counterfeit
Iranian currency to somehow show that Mossadeq was
ruining the economy, though I’m not sure this was
ever done. The documents indicate that Fazlollah
Zahedi and his military colleagues were given large
sums of money (at least $50,000) before the coup,
perhaps to buy their support. Most interestingly, they
indicate that various clerical leaders and organizations
– whose names are blanked out – were to play a major
role in the coup.
….
Perhaps the most general conclusion that can be
drawn from these documents is that the CIA
extensively staged-managed the entire coup, not only
carrying it out but also preparing the groundwork for it
by subordinating various important Iranian political
actors and using propaganda and other instruments to
influence public opinion against Mossadeq…. In my
view, this thoroughly refutes the argument that is
commonly made in Iranian monarchist exile circles
that the coup was a legitimate “popular uprising” on
behalf of the shah. 29
29
Ibid.
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probably could not believe their ears, for they would think that this president
could not see the mote in his own eye and recognize the evil of flagrant US
interventionism and two-and-a half decades of US support for the Shah’s repressive
regime that has killed more innocent victims than Bush would care to count!
A year later, flushed with the Iranian success story, the CIA once again tried
its hand – and succeeded in a “dandy” coup (to use retired CIA officer Kermit
Roosevelt’s recollection of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s term), this time in
Guatemala. This coup overthrew Arbenz’s presidency which ended what historians
refer to as the “Ten Years of Spring.” This period began with the popularly backed
overthrow of the hated dictator, General Jorge Ubico in 1944. Ubico’s overthrow
was inspired and organized by the “October Revolutionaries,” a group of
progressive-minded dissident military officers, student activists, and liberal sectors
in the broader society who wanted to emulate in their country what they saw at the
time as the flowering of free speech and political freedom in such countries as
Venezuela, Cuba, and El Salvador. Among the young officers that led the coup
against Ubico were Jacobo Arbenz and Francisco Javier Arana. In a surprise move
that was popularly welcomed, Arbenz and Arana paved the way for free elections
and set aside any concerns that they might want to keep power to themselves.
Thus, general elections were held in 1945 wherein a civilian candidate Juan Jose
Arevalo was elected president. Arevalo served until the next scheduled elections in
1951.
In the 1951 elections, Arbenz ran for president and was elected in a
landslide victory wherein his problem with the US became more manifest. He ran
on a platform of progressive agrarian reform. After assumption into office, he
began to implement this platform; he also removed restrictions that have until that
time restrained the activities of labor unions, including the left-leaning Guatemalan
Party of Labor. These developments fed into the McCarthyist paranoia among
influential Washington politicians and corporate lobbyists who feared, albeit with no
basis, that Guatemala was becoming a “Soviet beachhead” in Latin America. What
galled these leaders was the nationalization of agriculture which meant, in effect,
the confiscation of significant landholdings which were not under cultivation as well
as other assets of the United Fruit Company (UFC). Up until this time, the UFC
owned and controlled as much as 40 per cent of the country’s best agricultural
lands, and a de facto control of the country’s sole commercial harbor. Additionally,
UFC also owned significant shares in the country’s transportation, communications,
and utilities industries. To the progressive-minded leaders of the country,
therefore, the nationalization measures were a logical and a justifiable action to
conserve the country’s resources for its largely peasant population.
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Why Schlesinger and Kinzer chose to entitle their work “Bitter Fruit” is not
hard to understand. It suggests not only the country’s predominantly agrarian
economy which is the major prize in itself in the struggle between the hapless
people of Guatemala, on one hand, and that giant of a country, the US. The
bitterness comes not only because of a sense of betrayal by the US of the
Guatemalan people and their leader who naively trusted the US government to
come to their succor. As it turns out, the US would install a new leader – Castillo
Armas -- who would, during his short three years preside over the murder and
assassination of Arbenz supporters and those suspected of harbouring communist
thoughts. But the worse is yet to happen. As one author explains:
Castillo Armas was then followed by a succession of
U.S.-approved Guatemalan military regimes, regimes
30
Revised and Expanded Edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 358
pp.
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Schlesinger and Kinzer offer their reasoned hindsight to the past four
decades of Guatemalan history, and offering important lessons in democracy. They
write:
Had Arbenz served out his term, the opposition might
well have been strong enough to contest and even win
the [scheduled] 1955 elections. Although a distinct
minority, the conservative opposition had both money
and organized religion on its side…. In short, the
democratic option – however uncertain its results –
was still open to Guatemalan conservatives in 1954.
The U.S. intervention gave them an opportunity to win
by opting instead for the security of authoritarian
repression. In taking this path, they condemned their
country to four decades of unremitting brutality and
violence. 32
Any lesson that may have been learned from the Guatemalan experience
appears to be lost to the US government. Nearly ten years later, in 1963, the US
was again out in its mischievous ways to frustrate the will of the people in yet
another small country, this time in the Caribbean. Juan Emilio Bosch Gavi was the
first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic following the
assassination of President Rafael Trujillo, ending his 31-year dictatorship in 1961.
For his opposition to Rafael Trujillo, Bosch was forced into exile in 1937. In 1939,
while still in exile, he founded the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). The PRD
dedicated itself to a platform which included distribution of land to the peasants,
the breakup of large landholdings, restrictions on land ownership by foreigners, and
the establishment of a secular educational system. Much of these programs
understandably provided the bases for an eventual collision with important landed
aristocracy, the religious establishment, and commercial and trading interests
many of whom had powerful foreign connections. Collectively, these elements
comprised the core of what became the opposition.
Nonetheless, the Consejo de Estado, the transitional government
established after Trujillo’s assassination, went ahead with plans to organize and
prepare the country for its first free elections, scheduled in 1962. Juan Bosch
31
Please see Jacob G. Hornberger, “An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Guatemala,”
available online at www.fff.org/comment/com0502f.asp. .
32
Schlesinger and Kinzer, loc cit.
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decided to run for the presidency campaigning on the PRD’s populist platform. The
people responded by electing him with 60 per cent of the popular votes. Unable to
accept their electoral defeat, the reactionary conservative forces mobilized and,
with the complicity of right-wing elements within the Dominican military, removed
Bosch from office in a coup in 1963 thereupon a military dictatorship was
established. The ascension of this dictatorship stimulated political organization and
mobilization at the grassroots level. Many of the organizations were cultural in
nature, and were called Cultural Clubs. Because of what was generally seen as the
disruptive impact on the democratisation process in the country of the rude
removal of Bosch from office and the subsequent establishment of a military
dictatorship, many of these clubs were agitated and became actively involved in
the political process. As noted by a writer, these clubs became “the focus of
significant power struggles among the various political and ideological currents
prevalent in Dominican society at the time.” 33 Allied with constitutionalist elements
within the military, these forces engaged the conservative forces in what came to
be a full blown civil war culminating in the April 1965 in the overthrow of the ruling
military junta, the restoration of constitutional government, and the return of
Bosch into the presidency.
This might have been a happy ending for Bosch, but with US President
Lyndon B. Johnson watching events unfold from his White House office, he decided
that it was time for the US to weigh in. He authorized the dispatch of some 20,000
troops to defeat what he termed as a “revolt” against the rogue military elements
that illegally seized political power to begin with! In sending the expeditionary
force, Johnson rationalized that his action was necessary in order to “prevent the
mergence of a second Cuba in Latin America,” to “save American lives,” and to
“protect commercial interests” in the Dominican Republic.
The US intervention left no choice for the Bosch supporters but to capitulate
and agree to US-sponsored elections to be scheduled in June 1965. With US
military forces in virtual occupation of the country, with over 300 leaders and
members of Bosch’s party having been assassinated during the campaign, and with
the US media trumpeting the “return of democracy” to the country, the outcome of
these elections was never in doubt. The US-backed candidate, Joaquin Balaguer,
standard-bearer of the right-wing Reformist Party, won. Balaguer was to prevail
again in the elections of 1970 and 1974 giving him a twelve-year streak in office
until 1978.
33
Please see Cesar Perez, “4. Popular Organizations in the Dominican Republic: The Search
for Space and Identity” in Michael Kaufman and H. Dilla Alfonso, eds., Community Power
and Grassroots Democracy; The Transformation of Social Life (London, England: Zed
Books, 1997), 300 pp. Available online at www.idrc.ca/en/ev-54438-201-1-DO_Topic.html.
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34
(Pacific Grove, Ca.: Thomson Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., 1991), 262 pp. Excerpts
available online at
www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy_America/Exporting_Façade_TDF.html.
35
Ibid.
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Hellinger and Judd also describe how Gulf&Western made fashionable what is
known today as “Free Trade Zones” designed to host what are popularly known as
“runaway shops.” “Such zones,” write Hellinger and Judd,
Offer a low-wage labor force, government subsidies,
and freedom from taxes and environmental
regulations. Unions are not permitted in these zones,
and thus in the mid-1980s 22,000 workers earned an
average of 65 cents per hour working in factories
surrounded by barbed wire and security guards.
Dominican Law 299 grants corporations a 100 percent
exemption from Dominican taxes and also provides
then a 70 percent government subsidy of plant
construction to set up business in the zones. 37
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
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IV. Conclusion
Over the past century or so, proponents of liberal democracy have touted
the supposed victory over totalitarianism and fascism in Europe, and militarism in
East Asia. More recently these proponents have also felt triumphant over the
collapse of the socialist experiments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union. They have also celebrated the supposed “wave of democratization”
sweeping across the Third World in the wake of the downfall of a number of
authoritarian regimes in the Third World.
What many of these proponents – particularly those of the neoconservative
variety -- fail to acknowledge or recognize is that democracy ultimately has to be
expressed in terms of the indigenous characteristics of a situation by people
indigenous to a location expressing their own unique aspirations borne out of their
own historical experience. It could not be imported or exported, and it could not be
turned on and off at the will of another. Furthermore, it could not be introduced at
the barrel of a gun especially to a people imbued with the spirit of resistance and
independence. In this light, interventionist policies – legitimated by the US
Congress through a series of “democracy acts” leading ultimately to a program of
destabilization and regime change – are in essence an affront to and a corruption
of democracy, and are bound to fail.
Another failure of these proponents is their lack of distinction between
democracy as a political principle and capitalism as an expansionist and an
acquisitive economic system. As the cases examined show, when democratic values
clashed with capitalist objectives, the latter always prevailed. This was true during
the halcyon days of slavery when the supposedly enlightened liberal countries of
Europe became the progenitors of the slave trade. And this is true today as
corporations race each other to the bottom in their promotion of global sweatshops
and mega-profits. This explains why the US has had no compunction in repeatedly
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39
Please see monograph on this subject by Kenneth E. Bauzon, Political Forecasting;
History, Theory and Practice (Manila, Phil.: University of the Philippines, College in
Manila, 2000).
40
Please see “International Republican Institute, in: www.sourcewatch.org, and “National
Democratic Institute for International Affairs,” in www.sourcewatch.org.
41
Commenting on the work of the IFES, Tom Griffin, a human rights attorney, wrote in a
report for the National Lawyers Guild, “They [i.e., IFES representatives] went down [to Haiti]
as part of a USAID package, with a multi-million dollar plan to, basically, fix the judicial
system -- that was what they operated under. It was really a plan to oust Aristide. The IFES
workers I was able to isolate and talk to in confidence, completely take credit for ousting
Aristide. They started with this theory that the judicial system was corrupt in Haiti, and that
it had to be turned around and cleaned out. From that premise came that if the judicial
system was corrupt, Aristide, who is controlling them is most corrupt, and he must go.”
Please see “International Foundation for Election Systems,” in www.sourcewatch.org. And,
on the Open Society Institute, its website describes it as dedicated to “the common goal of
transforming closed societies into open ones and protecting and expanding the values of
existing open societies.” Please visit www.soros.org. However, Ralph McGehee reports that
the Russian Federal Counterintelligence Service has reported in 1995 that “American
research centers, institutes and aid organizations, were in fact spying on Russia and working
to undermine it as a competitor to the U.S.” McGehee quotes from the said Report: “Through
their special services [CIA] and scientific centers, the U.S. is penetrating deeply into all
spheres of our country’s life, occupying strategic positions and influencing the development
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their activities are benign, that the interests of the US and those of the peoples of
the countries where they interfere in are one and the same, and that the only true
version of democracy is the one being promoted by the US. They, in turn, expect
the world to accept, say, an elite-led pluralism even as we witness the gross
manipulation by the elites of the electoral process; and they also expect the world
to accept US interventionism as being motivated only by a high moral purpose
even as we witness the disappearance of sovereignty and self-determination by
others. Activities of these organizations, clandestine or not, makes one wonder
whether the problems of democracy lie with the peoples of the countries that are
the targets of intervention, or whether these interventions and the organizations
carrying them out are themselves the problem.
In retrospect, one may discern that, in realist terms, the concept of
“national interest” as championed by the US epitomizes what has gone awry in
modern and contemporary international relations for it has become an overarching
justification for anything that the US decides to do. This has superseded any claim
to the same – no matter how meek or modest -- by any other country, and has
effectively rendered meaningless any notion of international law, much less the
implementation of it. One may further realize that the US claim to its interest in
bound up with the perception of itself as exceptional in world affairs as exemplified
most famously by its claim to manifest destiny. Ultimately, however, any notion of
exceptionalism is antithetical to and incompatible with democracy. It provides a
basis for the US expectation that the rest of the world should conform to its own
image of itself, and the justification to subjugate if it does not. In a manner of
speaking, this notion of exceptionalism provides the necessary intoxicating effect
that opium provides in the sense that Marx used in describing religion. As an astute
observer of post-colonial culture explains, “”U.S. nationalism – that the United
States is superior to any society or that Western Civilization as embodied in the
institutions of the U.S. has privileged position over others – has operated as the
means of exacting consent from the majority of citizens. Of course, it operates
subtly. It does not proclaim itself as such. When anyone speaks of how U.S.
representative democracy should be the pattern in other countries, there you have
of political and economic processes in Russia…. The use of scientific centers in intelligence
and sabotage activities against Russia acquires a total character.” McGehee, then, explains
that the Report has named the Soros Foundation along with dozens of other organizations in
that the Report claims are exploiting “Russia’s open atmosphere to engage in subversive
activity designed to steal secrets or restrain Russia as a competitor to the ‘one and only
superpower’.” Please see his “CIA Past, Present and Future, Part II,” in
www.serendipity.li/cia/ciabase/ciabase_report_2.htm.
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an example of the ‘opium’ working.” 42 It goes without saying that the sooner the
US realizes and accepts the folly of exceptionalism, and the greater the rejection of
it by the world community, the better the prospect for global democracy during our
time.
Under the current atmosphere generated by the US crusade on terror,
however, the world has seen a reassertion of the claim to exceptionalism. This is
manifested in various ways including the preference for unilateralism over
multilateralism, preemption over deterrence, non-proliferation for others and
rearmament for itself and its allies, and intimidation and coercion over diplomacy
and cooperation. It is not accidental that the war on terror is occurring alongside
the push for corporate globalization under the neoliberal agenda. 43 For under the
war on terror have opponents of corporate globalization been conveniently branded
as allies of terrorists, and subjected to harsh repression by proto-fascist police in
cities where WTO or World Bank meetings, and the like, are held. This, so that the
foundations of global popular democracy, e.g., the concept of commons secured as
part of government services, could be eroded, undermined, and ultimately
privatized for the benefit of a few. 44 Indeed, there is ample empirical evidence for
peoples of the world to be wary and for them to run and duck for cover whenever a
stranger greets with offers of democracy, for this has come to mean the
privatization of their commons, the erosion of public services, the unleashing of
corporate greed through deregulation, and the commodification of just about
everything that a human being needs to survive on this planet. Unfortunately,
these are the logical end of the endless façade of demonstration elections, and an
extension of the Cold War between democracy and socialism except that now, the
war is on democracy itself.
***
42
Please see Michael Pozo, “Political Discourse – Theories of Colonialism and
Postcolonialism: A Conversation with E. San Juan, Jr..” Available online in
www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/poldiscourse/sanjuan.html.
43
More able authors have pursued this point some of whom are as follows: Maude Barlow
and Tony Clarke, “Making the Links; A People’s Guide to the World Trade Organization and
the Free Trade Area of the Americas,” available online in:
www.citizen.org/documents/Making_the_links.pdf; Noreena Hertz, The Silent Takeover;
Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy (New York: The Free Press, 2002), 247
pp.; David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (West Hartford, Ct./San
Francisco, Ca.: Kumarian Press, Inc./Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1995), 374 pp.; John
R. MacArthur, The Selling of “Free Trade”; NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion
of American Democracy (New York: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 388.
44
On the corporate threat to commons, please see the trenchant essays by: Naomi Klein,
“Fences of Enclosures, Windows of Possibility,” available online in:
www.nologo.org/newsite/essay.php; and Mary Zepernick, “The Impact of the Corporations
on the Commons,” available online in: www.poclad.org/articles/zepernick02.html.
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