Reflections
Rothschild, John Buell, Matthew
REFLECTIONS John Buell and Matthew Rothschild Behind the Nicaraguan Threat President Reagan asserts that the revolution in Nicaragua might spread across Central America, and he is right. He...
...To what extent does the Sandinista revolution threaten U.S...
...John Buell and Matthew Rothschild are associate editors of The Progressive...
...But as Third World countries, most notably those in the oil cartel, have begun pursuing more nationalistic economic policies, the United States has had more difficulty asserting its political and economic might...
...In his attempt to enslave, the master himself has become locked into a set of interests and commitments that keep him from attaining his full humanity...
...American consumers could also be placed at a disadvantage...
...Our modern industrial-military society resembles nothing so much as a dog chasing its own tail...
...Contemporary economic growth is similarly threatening, both on the level of the individual and on the level of society...
...The Pentagon would not topple...
...consumers of such commodities might have to pay a higher price...
...In this sense, too, Nicaragua poses a threat...
...Central America exports coffee, bananas, and manufactured products to the U.S...
...That's the price we should be prepared to pay for a moral foreign policy...
...Yes, American companies and American consumers may suffer as a result...
...Though many liberals and leftists denounce the "irrationality" of the arms race, that race is rational in the sense that the ever-expanding exploitation of the Earth's resources and people requires the ceaseless development of arms technology...
...They also direct us down a wasteful and destructive path of existence...
...If we are to conduct a moral foreign policy, we will have to learn as a people to live on a more modest scale...
...corporations doing the exporting...
...Tocqueville recognized that hope, not misery, was the wellspring of radical change...
...We export ideas, ideas of change and renovation," said Sergio Ramirez Mer-cado, a member of the Sandinista Junta, in a 1983 speech...
...The harder it runs, the harder it must strive to catch up...
...david suter So what's all the fuss...
...The economic and psychological imperatives of the American empire propel us inexorably toward intervention and war...
...Today, the Sandinistas provide the hope...
...He understood that the ideology of freedom and the example of greater economic and political equality were bound to appeal to peoples all over the world...
...The economic challenge posed by Central America is the economic challenge posed by the Third World...
...Americans have grown accustomed to enjoying a vastly disproportionate share of the world's wealth...
...If all of Central America, including Mexico, were to undergo leftist revolutions, this country would face no military threat...
...interests...
...How can one prevent a peasant in another Central American country from hearing, from finding out, from realizing that in Nicaragua land is given to other poor and barefoot peasants like him...
...And the meat on our tables induces heart attacks and cancer...
...This is improbable, however, since any Mexican government would need to sell oil to the United States at some near-market price...
...corporations have more than $10 billion invested in Central America...
...And Mexico accounts for a large share of our oil imports...
...But the American psyche is pegged to being biggest, best, richest, and strongest...
...This accounts, in part, for the decline in our standard of living...
...It calls into question the way our own society is run, and it repudiates our type of economic system and representative government...
...When a Third World nation—whether it be Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, or Nicaragua—spurns our way of doing things, our egos ache even more than our pocketbooks...
...It does not, by any stretch of paranoid imagination, threaten the "national security" of the United States...
...In the glory days of the American empire, from World War II to the late 1960s, we thrived on bargain-basement prices for raw materials, oppressively low foreign wages, and golden investment opportunities in the Third World...
...standard of living in this period...
...And in the process, we become enslaved...
...If leftist regimes managed to attain power, U.S...
...We devote precious time, energy, and human resources to develop technologies that perpetuate our power...
...if it were to become hostile to the United States, oil prices might shoot up and strain our economy...
...Their access to cheap labor and raw materials, as well as their ability to negotiate lollipop contracts with Central American oligarchs, might diminish...
...We can't stand to be, in Richard Nixon's memorable phrase, a pitiful, helpless giant...
...policy toward Nicaragua is but the latest installment of the American tragedy...
...market—though it is usually U.S...
...He claims that the Sandinistas threaten the interests of the United States...
...To put more red meat on every table, we constantly expand food production through use of nitrogen fertilizers which, in turn, pollute rivers, erode farm lands, and deplete resources...
...The fuss is economic—and psychological...
...Just listen to the rhetoric of our politicians, or behold the chauvinistic spectacle that was the Olympics...
...If leftist governments came to power in all of the region, the corporations might not make as much money as they did before...
...U.S...
...otherwise, Mexico would lose its major trading partner...
...Two centuries ago, Alexis de Tocque-ville saw that the American and French revolutions would spur similar upheavals in other nations...
...In so doing, it assaults our self-image, our notion of identity...
...Revolutions spread, but not in the way Ronald Reagan imagines...
...By instituting real land reform, successful literacy drives, and a massive public health program, they have persuaded others in the region that positive change is possible...
...How can you avoid his realizing that here children—not his children—are being vaccinated while his children still die of gastroenteritis and polio...
...Yes, the Sandinistas may hasten the advent or triumph of revolutions in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and even Mexico...
...again, he is right...
...To no small degree, these windfalls accounted for the unprecedented U.S...
...It's time to grab the bull by the horns...
...With the overthrow of Anastasio So-moza in 1979, the Sandinistas showed that the old order was not immutable...
Vol. 48 • October 1984 • No. 10
