Reagan's Interventionism-Old Wine in Its Original Bottle
"When Communism threatened to engulf Guatemala in 1954 the American people became uneasy," wrote Milton S. Eisenhower, ambassador and presidential representative to Latin America the previous...
...policy...
...Political officer in Saigon 1964-1968...
...The appointment of the new Central American ambassadorial team (see below) was part of an unparalleled sweep in which 44% of ambassadorial appointments went to people outside the career diplomatic service, the highest proportion in 30 years...
...In addition, the Caribbean is a major refinery area in its own right...
...coordination, killed President Salvador Allende, bombed the presidential palace and imposed a ruthless military regime...
...The Administration, in its goal of securing a supportive South America, has overturned virtually every sanction imposed by Carter on the Southern Cone dictatorships, opening the way for renewed bilateral and multilateral assistance...
...retired General Vernon Walters, a cold war troubleshooter for decades, who is a special adviser on Latin America to the State Department...
...But the task is difficult...
...New right ideologues, who took an early lead during the campaign and transition period, have not fared well in gaining important decisionmaking positions, since they tend to be too rabid for such high-profile jobs...
...Administration fears that the Caribbean is less than optimally cooperative approaches closer to hysteria with every passing day in which the Sandinista revolution is allowed to consolidate, and the revolutonary challenges in El Salvador and Guatemala grow stronger...
...Testifying before the Senate Subcommittee for Western Hemisphere Affairs (chaired by far-right Senator Jesse Helms), Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Fred Ikl6 laid out why the Reagan Administration hankers for a cooperative Caribbean...
...A Divided Legacy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1981), pp...
...There is no question, however, that the general policy thrust is increasingly militaristic...
...Although a previous effort by CIA-financed press and opposition parties had blocked the electoral victory of Socialist Salvador Allende, his coalition, Popular Unity (UP), was elected in 1970 in a three-way split vote against a badly divided bourgeoisie...
...Within four days, on April 25, the military government fell...
...What Eisenhower characterizes as forces favoring democracy consisted of a band of mercenaries and military conspirators who, after toppling the Arbenz government under the guidance of the CIA and with the consent of President Eisenhower, killed hundreds from Each CIA station in the Western Hemisphere carries a list of leftist activists, "whom the station considers the most dangerous...
...Weinberger is versed in domestic affairs with very little background in defense matters...
...Frederic Chapin (Guatemala): Former acting envoy to El Salvador after Robert White sacking...
...II, No...
...Headquartered in Key West, Florida, the new command is headed by Rear Admiral Robert P. Mckenzie, who is authorized to call on naval units in the area when necessary.ls There are also plans to send two aircraft carriers to the region in April, according to the commander of the Atlantic Second Fleet, in order to give the region the importance it deserves.' 9 Reagan's economic plan for the region consits of the "creation of additional wealth" (i.e., private foreign investment) "rather than the selective redistribution of existing wealth from one area of the world to another" (i.e., more equitable terms of trade, Marshall Plan-type grants, soft loans, etc...
...11NACLA Report Haig and Weinberger share a Trilateralist lineage...
...Haig is a military man with no more public diplomacy than that job implies...
...Reagan has his back against a wall in Central America and should be considered dangerous...
...Haig, on the other hand, experienced in military strategy in Vietnam but wholly unfamiliar with the realities of the Central American struggle, sees El Salvador as a quick, cheap, symbolic victory over the forces of "international terrorism...
...7. For further reading on the destablization of Chile, see New Chile (Berkeley: NACLA, 1973...
...global power projection," counsels the Committee of Santa Fe, thus "rests upon a cooperative Caribbean and a supportive South America...
...The following year, Joaquin Balaguer, "Trujillo's puppet," electorally defeated his rival, Juan Bosch...
...Cleto di Giovanni, author of the Heritage Foundation backgrounder on Central America, is a State Department consultant...
...Menges "U.S...
...Unlike the longstanding Middle East crisis, which can possibly be staved off for another presidential term by wise adjustments to the status quo, Central America presents the possibility of inflicting grave political damage to Reagan, domestically and internationally...
...In their place came Thomas O. Enders, best known for directing the secret bombing of Cambodia in 1972-73, even thougn his appointment had been opposed by Helms because of association with Henry Kissinger's early "liberalism...
...El Salvador presents only no-win options, and Guatemala is currently fettered with Congressional restrictions...
...Could it perhaps be because even the modest reforms for the region suggested in the early 60s became vehicles for further U.S...
...Today, as the 1980 Republican Platform laments, "the American experiment, so marvelously successful for 200 years, has come to a dismal end...
...capital expansion, particularly in the third world, are the latest efforts to resolve the protracted U.S...
...Retired General Gordon Sumner, for example, who resigned his commission in protest against the Panama Canal treaties and who has close ties to the Guatemalan military, is special assistant to Enders...
...The Progressive (September 1981), pp...
...But it is on Central America that their approach is sharply different...
...Thousands more "disappeared" and more than a million were forced into exile...
...The security of our maritime operations in the Caribbean, hence, is critical to the security of the Atlantic Alliance...
...Foreign policy was not the strong point of the top men in the Administration either, least of all the topmost man himself, who, though an astute politician, has amply demonstrated his deficiencies in the realms of geography and recent world history...
...Nicaragua is the weakest link in the sense that Reagan has more leverage for political gain...
...As Constantine Menges, the CIA's new National Intelligence Officer for Latin America, pointed out in a foreign policy discussion paper prepared inJanuary 1981 when he was still with the Hudson Institute, the region is economically very importantly 2 It is now the third largest market for U.S...
...This can be illustrated by comparing the four major U.S...
...The equivocating restraints on Haig reflect the still confused and evolving struggle for the foreign policy reins within the Administration...
...government was surprised by the victory of Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate Juan Bosch...
...political will...
...And in fact the Administration has increased foreign weapons sales to a projected $30 billion for fiscal 1982,JanlFeb 1982 double the figure for 1981.10 Reagan's new militarization as well as attempts to open new routes for U.S...
...Is it the oppressive social conditions under which the majority of people have been forced for generations to live...
...influence has been so pervasive, the projection of U.S...
...Chilean and U.S...
...when Eisenhower designated the CIA as his chief instrument of intervention in Iran (1953), Guatemala and Egypt (1954), Indonesia (1958), Laos (1959) and Cuba (1960-1...
...7 JanlFeb 1982a commodity that brought Chile 80% of its foreign exchange...
...5 Treating Friends As Friends...
...ambassador.* 2 . Guatemala was not just a specific response to an isolated foreign policy problem...
...4 Cuba Cuba was a different case entirely...
...intentions were widely conflicting...
...and Latin America," p. 9. 22...
...3. Ibid., p. 286...
...Constantine Menges, "The United States and Latin America in the 80s," paper prepared for Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, January 7, 1981...
...22-24...
...And what, in the Administration view, is responsible for this upheaval...
...business interests, together with the CIA, organized factory lockouts and white collar strikes and went to work on disinformation campaigns designed to disorient the working class and create panic in the middle and upper class...
...Instead, New Right figures have been slotted into consultative and advisory posts...
...To quote Mr...
...Constantine Menges, in his policy paper, sums up in a paragraph both the worst fears and the best hopes of the Reagan team in its Changing Of The Guard An evening of TV viewing in October 1981 summed it up...
...Mexico, Guatemala and Venezuela, he points out, are estimated to have the largest oil potential in the world...
...Associated Press wire story, November 24, 1981...
...Staffer on the National Security Council 1970-1973...
...Allende controlled neither parliament nor the military, but had the support of a majority of Chile's large working class whose militant unions and leftist political parties went back some-50 years...
...The Eisenhower Administration supplied the corrupt and vicious dictator, Fulgencio Batista, with $12 million in military assistance between 1954 and 1958, when pressure by anti-Batista exiles on liberal members of Congress forced an arms embargo...
...Within two years, the U.S...
...John F. Kennedy inherited the CIA's invasion plot...
...The ghost of the Truman Doctrine is called up to explain how the Soviet Union has used this period to build military strength and opportunistically take advantage of third world unrest for its own gains...
...Private banks fell in line...
...postwar offensive to consolidate its economic and political power in the rest of the world...
...The militarization of foreign policy does not wash well with a public which is feeling the economic pinch and the cutback of social programs in favor of a massive defense budget...
...43-80...
...Weinberger, reflecting what seems to be a general Pentagon assessment, does not want to waste political capital on Central America...
...As early as December 1959, when Cuba had done nothing more drastic than confiscate some U.S...
...Afterward, Kennedy still refused to negotiate a peaceful coexistence with Cuba and in January 1962 persuaded the OAS to expel the island nation...
...Marines to the Dominican Republic in April 1965 for "humanitarian reasons," events had gotten out of U.S...
...CIA Diary (Penguin, 1975), pp...
...All U.S...
...and the Guatemalan Left has advanced by leaps and bounds, announcing recently a unification pact...
...Embassy plane and the politically disabled and militarily ineffectual Arbenz government could mobilize no resistance...
...Republican Platform," as printed in Almanac 96th Congress, 2nd Session...1980, Vol...
...corporate expansion in the late 60s and 70s...
...Eisenhower also refused to sell arms to Cuba and pressured Western Europe to do the same, leaving the fledgling government no choice but to turn to the Soviet Union...
...As the Republican Platform sums up, "By reversing our economic decline, by reversing our international decline, we will resurrect our dreams...
...government's support for repressive dictatorships even stifled the growth of a coherent, reform-minded bourgeoisie...
...quota, Cuba sold its sugar to the USSR in exchange for oil...
...citizens to loyalty and security checks...
...chafing on the other at the inability of his State Department to execute policy unfettered...
...domination of those that remain has diminished...
...His deputies, John Bushnell and James Cheek, had substantial experience in the area...
...2. Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower...
...and equally today...
...Was there a foreign policy...
...4 Ignoring a chunk of history called Vietnam, the National Security Council's Norman Bailey put it even stronger: "Cuba was the greatest U.S...
...government) for assistance in the emergency preventive detention of dangerous persons...
...As a loyal ally and confidant of Reagan, his task appears to be to keep an eye on the wranglings between National Security Council members and bring about a coordinated strategy while allowing Reagan to remain above it all and avoid a loss of' prestige...
...And in particular, its attempt to mediate and coopt revolutionary movements where possible is viewed by them as a monumental disaster...
...foreign policy apparatus...
...Internationally, the Marshall Plan set out to rebuild Western Europe and the countries of the NATO Alliance pledged themselves to collective security against communist Eastern Europe...
...Much of the petroleum shipments and important reinforcements destined for U.S...
...5. Cole Blasier, "The Elimination of United States Influence," in Carmelo Mesa-Lago, ed., Revolutionary Change in Cuba (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), pp...
...Was first holder of newly created post of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, coordinating military and intelligence activities in Latin America...
...Editorial, New York Times, February 15, 1982...
...Interviewed on three separate channels that same night, Secretary of State Haig, Defense Secretary Weinberger and Presidential Counsel Edwin Meese III were all asked what plans the Administration had in store for dealing with Nicaragua...
...The reform-minded government of Guatemala's Jacobo Arbenz was the first in Latin America to be crushed by the postwar muscle-flexing of the United States, though far from the last...
...structural crisis...
...2 4 These tensions were publicly reduced to seeming personality clashes between Haig, Weinberger and then National Security Adviser, Richard Allen...
...Presentation by Norman Bailey, Director of Planning and Evaluation, National Security Council, to the Center for Inter-American Relations, December 1, 1981...
...218, 292...
...control...
...forces in Europe would be originating from Gulf ports...
...To borrow a summary from a recent book on the TrumanEisenhower years, Truman intended nothing less than "to destabilize communism worldwide, eradicate New Deal 'socialism' domestically, and globalize American business and America's values in a world of upheaval and constant change...
...The negotiations resulting from the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis resulted in a status quo impasse...
...Kennedy reluctantly approved the plan, but refused to provide U.S...
...In wartime, half of NATO's supplies would transit by sea from Gulf ports through the Florida straights and onward to Europe...
...Then in 1963, when elections were held to replace the militarybased junta that had taken power, the U.S...
...Three months later, Eisenhower approved a CIA proposal to arm and train the exiles in Guatemala for a "Guatemalastyle" invasion...
...March 24, 1981...
...But three years of this "invisible blockade" did not cause Allende's popular support to significantly waver as the U.S...
...Within 10 days, claiming that what was by now a civil war had been "seized and placed into the hands of a band of Communist conspirators," Johnson had increased the military force to more than 23,000...
...Haig's situation is paradoxical: decried on the one hand by the New Right as weak, accommodationist, pro-detente...
...Guatemala Toward Guatemala, in those zealous Cold War days, the strategy was simple and easy to effect: aim a propaganda campaign at the press, Congress and OAS smearing the Guatemalan government as pro-Communist...
...For a detailed analysis of these components of the Reagan coalition, see the July-August 1981 NACLA Report, "Reagan Policy in Crisis, Will the Empire Strike Back...
...In this Administra- tion the whole front office of the Latin American region has been removed.'"" 2 3 And with the bathwater of Carterism out went the baby of regional expertise...
...aggression, given Soviet support...
...It was part of the general U.S...
...copper companies, whose operations were nationalized by Allende, boycotted Chilean copper in the world market, On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military, with U.S...
...Most of the major policy-making posts have gone to the tough, but not crazy Trilateralists such as Haig and Weinberger and Neo-Conservatives like Eliot Abrams, Assistant Secretary for Human Rights...
...To continue the farce, only six countries agreed to send symbolic troops: five dictatorships (Brazil, Honduras, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador) and Costa Rica, which has no army...
...It is unheard of," said 25-year veteran diplomat Robert White, "for assistant secretaries and deputy assistant secretaries not to receive onward assignments as ambassadors...
...In Latin America, the immediate danger is that if the communist forces consolidate their power in Nicaragua and take El Salvador, then ninety million people living from Panama to the United States border could be swept unwillingly into Guban-type totalitarian regimes...
...agitate internal political opposition among Guatemala's frightened petty bourgeoisie, the Church and bourgeois sectors with ties to the United States...
...Interview with Bayardo Arce, Managua, Nicaragua, November 1981...
...Both are looking for ways of binding together an increasingly shaky Western Alliance and more than once have crossed paths...
...To assure loyalty among states in the hemisphere, the Organization of American States (OAS) was put in place along with a regional equivalent of NATO, the Rio Treaty...
...U.S...
...Thus, for example, adds Assistant Secretary Enders, the United States will "help threatened countries to defend themselves since, once insurgents take arms with outside support, there is no alternative to an armed response...
...And Reagan has taken up the advice given then by Senator Arthur Vandenberg...
...But both have strong opinions about their own and each other's domains...
...The recent reports of approved CIA covert actions, following months of relentless propaganda attacks, confirm that the counterattack has begun...
...The Administration also failed in a late attempt to persuade Batista to resign in favor of a "third force" (a military junta...
...It is impossible to open the papers or turn on the television without feeling that the Soviet Union is virtually on our doorstep...
...When Eisenhower cancelled the sugar quota entirely, Cuba nationalized all remaining U.S...
...To this end, the Pentagon has already upgraded a small Caribbean military task force created only two years ago by President Carter...
...Ironically, may be most liberal of Central American appointments whose role may be subordinated to that of Managua CIA station officer...
...Walters, who once described the Vietnam war as "one of the noblest and most unselfish wars in which the United States ever participated," was sent to Latin America in February 1981 to seek suppot for the White Paper on El Salvador and took the opportunity to pledge close ties with Chile and Argentina...
...Counter-Projecting American Power The appearance of Ronald Reagan on the scene reflects profound changes in the country's role worldwide in the last decades, and a vision on the part of his ruling coalition of how to recover its dominance...
...Anthony Quainton (Nicaragua): Appointed in January 1981, five months after Pezzullo's withdrawal...
...Enders, "Remarks...
...What Milton Eisenhower, President Dwight Eisenhower's brother, calls a communist threat in Guatemala was a constitutionally elected government-the last real repi-esentative vote in Guatemala since 1954-that dared to value the needs of its people higher than those of the United Fruit Company...
...3 At home there was the Federal Employee Loyalty Program subjecting millions of U.S...
...4 NACLA ReportJanlFeb 1982 S Twenty-three years of U.S...
...The episode was a black eye for the United States internationally, a blow it could ill afford on top of Vietnam and Watergate...
...In the memorable phrase of former U.S...
...In June 1965, Johnson imposed Hector Garcia Godoy to head what became a violencetarnished transition government...
...2 2 Was Haig's refusal to "rule out any options" a Machiavellian rerun of Nixon's doctrine of calculated unpredictability, designed to keep enemies off balance...
...Cuba events 1959-81, see Cuba Update, Vol...
...But the key to the success of Reagan's strategy for the region, according to Secretary of State Haig, lies in the combined use of foreign, defense and economic policies, since "each of these policies must support the others if any is to succeed...
...When the State Department pressured the Esso and Texaco refineries on the island not to refine the Soviet crude, Cuba nationalized them...
...CIA dispatches had continuously reported growing unrest in Cuba and the CIA assured Kennedy an uprising would support the 1,500-man invasion...
...power is shaped by realities often outside its control...
...7 The U.S...
...Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a long line of new military rulers, entered Guatemala City aboard a U.S...
...foreign policy decisions are shaped at any given time both by the ideological shadings of a particular administration and by the means at its disposal to project power worldwide...
...Who gives the orders in foreign affairs is not yet clear, although after a year of jockeying for power between traditional conservatives, Neo-Conservatives, hardline Trilateralists and the New Right, certain dominant strains have emerged...
...find or create a pretext that would galvanize this support and mobilize right-wing exiles then biding their time in Honduras and Nicaragua...
...El Salvador's FMLN controls up to a third of the country...
...Carter's assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs had been William P. Bowdler, a former ambassador to Guatemala and El Salvador...
...In the most literal sense of the word it can be called a witchhunt, its purpose to eradicate any official tainted with the heresy of human rights and Carterism...
...No, says the Reagan Administration, these are not the issues...
...The U.S...
...Further damage was done as the military dictatorship ushered in by the CIA became an international pariah...
...The effect of this vacuum of political authority seems to have rendered all men equal in the scramble for the reins...
...the only alternative to a Soviet dominated world is the "worldwide counter-projection of American power...
...economy...
...The role of the CIA and companies like ITT ultimately emerged in congressional investigations and the CIA's guidelines for covert actions were seriously constricted...
...In consolidating their power the new rulers of the country left 10,000 dead...
...exports and imports totalled $50 billion in 1979, while U.S...
...120-21.] a list provided by the U.S...
...8. The Committee of Santa Fe, A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties (Washington, D.C.: Council for InterAmerican Security, 1980), p. 6. 9. David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, (Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Crest, 1973), p. 407...
...Europe and Japan have reasserted their economic strength, the defense treaties and alliances set up by the United States to assure collective security have eroded and U.S...
...Remarks by Thomas O. Enders at the Council of the Americas, Washington, D.C., June 3, 1981, pp...
...Differences begin to emerge when the debate turns to the means of dealing with it, and even more so regarding the timetable...
...pass through the Caribbean...
...Ibid...
...Enders does not even speak Spanish...
...XXXVI (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1980...
...And back in the States, antiinterventionist sentiment was running high following the Dominican invasion and the Vietnam debacle...
...After the parliamentary elections of March 1973, it became clear that Allende could not be unseated through parliamentary means...
...Involved in drawing up El Salvador's military aid program...
...COHA Washington Report on the Hemisphere (Washington, D.C...
...The most powerful New Right figure is Jesse Helms, who heads the Senate Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs...
...While the range of options is similar, their applicability and their effect differ widely...
...By the end of his term inJanuary 1961, Eisenhower had also prohibited all exports except medical supplies and non-subsidized foods, severed diplomatic relations and pressured the OAS to condemn "Soviet intervention in Cuba...
...Helping threatened countries to defend 910 themselves includes both major increases in military assistance and a stronger direct presence in the region...
...The U.S...
...The LYNX list is...to be maintained in case a local government in time of crisis should ask (or be asked by the U.S...
...Stephen Kinzer and Stephen Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982...
...IklI, the culprit is the "crown colony of Soviet imperialism in the Caribbean," Cuba...
...aid and persuade the World Bank to isolate Guatemala from multilateral aid and international credit sources...
...1 3 "In peacetime, 44% of all foreign trade tonnage and 45% of the crude oil to the U.S...
...According to the policy recommendations of the Committee of Santa Fe (a subset of the far-right Council for Inter-American Security, Inc...
...petroleum imports...
...4. For further reading on the Guatemalan invasion, see Susanne Jonas and David Tobis, eds., Guatemala (Berkeley: NACLA, 1974...
...William Middendorf, member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the American Security Council), and at the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, whose critique of the fall of the Somoza regime formed the heart of the two Commentary essays which effectively won her the job...
...For the first year after Batista's overthrow on January 1, 1959, the Administration carried out air incursions and propaganda attacks, and violated the U.S...
...Alexander Haig, "A Strategic Approach to American Foreign Policy," U.S...
...The rest of the Western world was urged to follow suit and all OAS countries, except Mexico, were successfully persuaded to cease all trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba...
...32 (October 1981...
...air support, further guaranteeing the mission's disastrous failure...
...Nevertheless, this requires a factual understanding of what is really happening in the Central America/Mexico region...
...products, and the source for a number of strategically important minerals, including nearly 20% of U.S...
...The pretext was the arrival of a shipment of Czech weapons and the coup de grAce was an invasion of no more than 50 men fi-om Honduras with tactical air support arranged by the CIA...
...Thus the Reagan Administration calls not only for the containment but the rolling back of communism...
...The bare facts of 1981 contradict the Administration's clarion call to roll back "communism" in Central America...
...Believes "violence is in the culture" of El Salvador...
...Convinced that Bosch was "soft on communism"--a misconception--the United States supported a coup carried out by the Dominican Army in alliance with large landowners and bankers, after only seven months of Bosch government...
...Does it perhaps have to do with the fact that the U.S...
...The Trilateralist strategy of joint global management by the major capitalist powers appears in hardliners' eyes to reflect a "failure of U.S...
...government and Chilean bourgeoisie expected...
...New York Times, February 21, 1982...
...private investment added some $37 billion (20% of the worldwide total...
...citizens...
...aid was terminated, except military and training grants and projects of the AFL-CIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development...
...5 Dominican Republic Until the Johnson Administration sent the first U.S...
...The purge of the Foreign Service and the State Department was unprecedented...
...The technological superiority which the United States enjoyed for NACLA Report the first postwar decades has shrunk and the capitalist world as a whole is undergoing a serious crisis...
...Who's On First...
...The final vote came from the foreign minister of the deposed Dominican government...
...Keen advocate of Honduras as regional military stronghold...
...When Communism threatened to engulf Guatemala in 1954 the American people became uneasy," wrote Milton S. Eisenhower, ambassador and presidential representative to Latin America the previous year...
...Chile Chile again posed a unique set of problems...
...delegate...
...First, Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo had been killed in May 1961 by a group of conspirators even though the United States had backed out of the plan at the last moment...
...a This aggressive pursuit is as drastic as that carried out by President Truman when he convinced a war-weary people to rally against the communist menace that had just been an uneasy ally in the war against fascism...
...7 (This rigid reasoning throws light on the Administration's refusal to respond to the request for unconditional negotiations by El Salvador's Democratic Revolutionary Front...
...properties as part of its agrarian reform program, the CIA began recruiting anti-Castro exiles, beaming radio propaganda into Cuba from an island off Honduras and cooking up schemes with underworld figures to kill Fidel Castro...
...But U.S...
...Consulting no one, on April 28 Johnson rushed 1,000 troops to "protect U.S...
...Neutrality Act by allowing anti-Castro 6migr6s to launch small-scale incursions from U.S...
...A resolution of the struggle will hav' to come soon, because Central America is becoming a key crisis area, and it is Reagan's crisis, as Vietnam was Johnson's...
...Or, as U.S...
...Even in Latin America, where U.S...
...In their answers, the rhetoric about creeping totalitarianism and Cuban encroachment seemed to have come from a common script, but signals about likely U.S...
...government effected the cutoff of almost all multilateral aid, even the short-term credits necessary to conduct everyday business...
...President Nixon's maneuverability was limited...
...U.S...
...The infamous Taft-Hartley Act was successful in undermining militancy in the U.S...
...2 1 There appears to be little disagreement within the Reagan coalition about the main danger to the region, and they all mouth the same rhetoric as to its source...
...destabilization efforts, from economic blockade to an armed invasion, have not brought down the revolutionary Cuban government...
...If Truman wanted acceptance of his offensive, said Vandenberg, he would "have to go and scare hell out of the country...
...Allende, a popular leader, had gained power in an electoral contest...
...As an example, see the article on Chile in Update this issue...
...The New Right sees another potential champion for their cause in NACLA ReportJanlFeb 1982 desperate effort to elaborate a strategy to defang Cuba, destabilize Nicaragua and destroy the revolutionary movements in the rest of the region...
...Because the Chilean military was loyal to the bourgeoisie, Nixon was spared the necessity of direct intervention...
...Chapin, who has strong intelligence links, was expelled as ambassador to Ethiopia...
...For the first time we began to fear that the backyard could suddenly become a path for Communist subversion...
...Roger Fontaine, a onetime rising star of the New Right, is a special staff adviser on Latin America for the National Security Council and has not made a public statement in close to a year...
...But when the United States on May 6 proposed sending an inter6JanlFeb 1982 7 American peacekeeping force, only 12 nations voted with the U.S...
...21...
...Hardliners moved into place at the OAS (J...
...Diario LasAmericas, January 5, 1982...
...government nonetheless paid a heavy price...
...22-24...
...Philip Agee, Inside the Company...
...properties...
...By April 1965, the PRD leadership together with a constitutionalist wing of the Army moved to return Bosch to power...
...As long as the confusion lasts, theories and rumors will abound, and those who have a lot at stake in the outcome will continue to prepare for the worst scenario...
...Prior to 1959 it had arrested 170 anti-Batista exiles for violation of the same act...
...The OAS nations were highly insulted at not being informed, yet they refrained from condemning the unilateral contravention of several articles of the charter...
...At the ideoligical level, Reagan is doing his best to do just that...
...REAGAN'S INTERVENTIONISM 1. Milton Eisenhower, The Wine Is Bitter (New York: Doubleday, 1963), p. 78...
...6 The appointment of William P. Clark, formerly Deputy Secretary of State, to replace Allen as National Security Adviser, adds another knownothing to the foreign policy table...
...In its overthrow are embodied the ideology as well as the doctrinal expression and mechanisms underpinning the Reagan Administration's foreign policy today...
...The international finance community has a large stake in Latin America as well, since annual foreign borrowing has increased from $3 billion in 1970 to more than $40 billion a decade later...
...They point to the fall of the Shah of Iran and Carter's "unwillingness to prevent a Marxist regime" in Nicaragua as chief expressions of its foolhardiness...
...interventions in the region since World War II...
...14 were required...
...cut off U.S...
...Before we can predict what they're going to do, we have to figure out who's giving the orders," was the reaction of one National Directorate member...
...Though they had not armed the people, weapons were taken from the police, and the popular struggle transcended the constitutionalist goals of its leaders...
...John D. Negroponte (Honduras): Another diplomat with Vietnam experience, was appointed to Hondurasjust before the November 1981 election...
...As they read through the interview transcripts, Nicaragua's leaders were at a loss to decipher U.S...
...Nomination originally held up in controversy over his former role as head of the State Department Office for Combatting Terrorism...
...On September 11, 1973, the Chilean armed forces toppled the UP government, killing Allende and bombing the National Palace...
...1 1 Implications For Latin America What is the role of Latin America and the Caribbean in the Administration's dreams...
...Shaping Up Latin America Interventionism, then, was and is part of that larger offensive, in its nascent stage under Truman...
...President Arbenz had also dared to legalize the Guatemalan Communist Party and allowed several of its members to hold Congressional seats and serve in government posts...
...Preoccupied with Vietnam, the Johnson Administration did not sufficiently monitor the build-up of activities for the next two years...
...The far-reaching institutional bases for this were laid within a two-year period during the Truman Administration...
...The Progressive (September 1981), pp...
...When Eisenhower cut Cuba's sugar 0 r 0 .. J aJanlFeb 1982 5NACLA Report Within ten days of President Johnson's order, 23,000 U.S...
...Thus debate in the early months of Reagan's presidency centered on what would be the locus of power in the foreign policy machine: Haig's State Department, Weinberger's Defense Department, the National Security Council, the wise troika of the White House, the newly created senior interdepartmental groups on intelligence, foreign and defense policy...
...Purging The Softliners One thing all members of the coalition could agree on was that the "softliners" remaining on the diplomatic team would have to go, to be followed by a stealthy mowing down of like- minded State Department insiders...
...Fortunately, from the point of view of the Soviet Union, this process while desirable as a means of further weakening its principal adversary, is not worth a major effort in clandestine or public action and therefore the United States and friendly governments can act with comparatively little risk at present...
...Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger is currently protesting that the gigantic armament program--traditionally a highly inflationary project when used in war or as part of foreign aid-is itself part of the Administration's plan for economic reactivation...
...Department of State (August 11, 1981...
...Why pursue a domestically and internationally unpopular policy which might not be winnable and risk imperiling support for the greater strategic objective of building up America's military might, crucial to Weinberger's approach to regenerating the U.S...
...What seems to be most in question is who among the Reagan team indeed has factual understanding of what is really happening and whether or not they effectively call the shots...
...ambassador Robert White, Haig thought winning in El Salvador was "like rolling a drunk...
...The Security Threat in the Caribbean and Central America," testimony by Fred C. Ikl6, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of Senate Foreign Relations Committee (December 15, 1981...
...2 "This is the basis of the six-point trade and investment initiative for the Caribbean Basin announced by Reagan recently...
...As Piero Gleijeses, author of The Dominican Crisis, explains it, "The Dominican people understood a simple reality:...the Yankees and their 'loyalist' prot6g6s controlled the country, and if Bosch won the elections, they would drown his victory in blood...
...In his confirmation hearings, Clark showed absolute ignorance of NATO affairs and was unable to name the premiers of either South Africa or Zimbabwe...
...The Nicaraguan revolution has further consolidated and improved its capacity for self-defense...
...This, despite continual assurances that these groups want nothing more than relationships of mutual respect with the United States...
...Marines had arrived in Santo Domingo to put down a popular revolt...
...AID Mission Director in Chile 1969-1971, where he coincided with the CIA's anti-Allende campaign...
...6. Piero Gleijeses, TheDominican Crisis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978...
...We breathed in relief when forces favoring democracy restored Guatemala to its normal place in the American family of nations...
...The National Security Act created the CIA, and underlaying it all was the Truman Doctrine-a policy of "containment" based on the perception that the Soviet Union was behind unrest in any country...
...labor movement...
...for a complete chronology of important U.S...
...trade embargo was total...
...commentators began to ask with growing anxiety, did it mask paralysis at the heart of the U.S...
...In the Central American chain of crises, Cuba is a dangerous target for serious U.S...
...The New Central American Diplomatic Team: Deane R. Hinton (El Salvador): AID Mission Director in Guatemala 1967-1969, when AID funded a "model police program" for counterinsurgency...
...soil...
...foreign policy failure of the postwar period...
...Export-Import Bank cut off all credits, preventing Chile's purchase of vital supplies, spare parts and food from the States...
...Che Guevara once said of these early years that, save the agrarian reform, every radical move Cuba made was in reaction to the United States...
Vol. 16 • January 1982 • No. 1
