World of Foes
Kwitny, Jonathan
World of Foes ENDLESS ENEMIES: THE MAKING OF AN UNFRIENDLY WORLD by Jonathan Kwitny Congdon & Weed. 435 pp. $19.95. The ubiquitous term "national security" sums up one of the great ironies of our...
...Although other books have addressed this occurrence in specific regions of the world, this one is distinguished by Kwitny's ambitious scope and meticulous documentation...
...Endless Enemies is an eye-opener, even for the initiated reader...
...relations with him grew chilly, and talk of assassination began...
...meddling propels us from one crisis to the next as the unfortunate recipients of today's "military solutions" become tomorrow's revolutionaries...
...With fascinating digressions along the way, we move from Africa to Iran, Baluchistan, East Asia, Central America, and the Pacific...
...Meanwhile, U.S...
...Kwitny's preference for capitalist economies will disappoint some readers and please others but is ultimately beside the point...
...For one who is likely to err on the side of conservatism, Kwitny has produced a profoundly radical book...
...foreign policy—in which military might is wedded to corporate gain and licensed to trample democratic principles—is acting as our own adversary...
...His interchangeable use of the terms "socialist" and "totalitarian" is distracting and could lead an uninformed reader to believe that socialism resides in such unexpected quarters as the Philippines and South Africa...
...The book is filled with tales of coups, manipulations of foreign elections and domestic organizations, and assassination attempts (seventeen against Castro alone...
...taxpayers unknowingly obliged with mercenary armies, a poison specially designed to produce an indigenous, fatal disease, and support for the coup that installed the tyrannical Mobutu Sese Seko...
...President Eisenhower gave orders to replace Lumumba's government by force, and U.S...
...It is a new twist on the domino theme: U.S...
...Henry Kissinger in 1974 asserted that the "Marxist" Mbundu tribe was challenging the "pro-Western" Ovimbundu and Kongo for control of Angola...
...Barbara Kingsolver (Barbara Kingsolver is a free-lance writer based in Tucson...
...In Endless Enemies, Jonathan Kwitny systematically recounts the failures of gunboat diplomacy that have bred resentment and distrust of the United States on a global scale...
...U.S.-supplied troops remain in place, as does Mobutu, though he has never been elected to any office...
...As a consequence, he has produced a definitive resource book on what he calls "the moral staining of the Constitution": U.S...
...policymakers ignore all causes of unrest rooted in historical and material fact, seeing instead a Soviet bogeyman under every rock...
...For example, his chapter called "Lies: The Government and the Press" includes an expose of Ronald Reagan's White Paper deception based on a frank, three-hour interview with the State Department's hand-picked hero of the affair, Jon Glassman...
...The ubiquitous term "national security" sums up one of the great ironies of our time: With our money and our lives, the nation's policymakers have bought not security but rather the constant threat of war with foes in unlimited supply...
...press was full of stories about Soviet influence, a claim for which there was not a shred of evidence...
...He believes that socialist economies eventually flop, while those in "our" camp don't...
...businessmen attempted to control the nation's wealth—copper, cobalt, and diamonds—but the native ruler, Patrice Lumumba, didn't seem amenable...
...One of the book's great strengths is Kwitny's proficiency at guiding the reader through the astonishingly corrupt course of international finance...
...Fundamentally, he believes the enslavement of the economies of Third World countries to be the result of individual greed and political misunderstanding, rather than an inevitable outgrowth of capitalism with its endless demand for new markets...
...one of its regrettable weaknesses is his apparently superficial understanding of Marxist economics...
...His compelling thesis, borne out by twenty-two chapters of evidence, is that force creates enmity, and that U.S...
...Meanwhile, the U.S...
...The final chapter, "On Capitalism, Communism, and Freedom," is a departure from the zealous objectivity that characterizes most of the book, but it is useful as an airing of Kwitny's biases...
...In fact, these three ancient nations were at war long before the birth of Karl Marx or "the West...
...It is a book of strong indictments, and yet Kwitny supports his claims with evidence that rarely leaves room for doubt...
...The story began in 1960 with an impoverished equatorial nation trying to establish self-rule after a century of colonial occupation...
...A thirteen-year veteran of The Wall Street Journal, his established position as a mainstream journalist affords him opportunities that add considerable credibility...
...Kwitny devotes the first seven chapters to the Zaire experience, which he selected as a case study because "what we could do wrong, we did in Zaire...
...A quarter century later, the population is destitute and angry...
...Such paranoia would be laughable, were it not for its grievous cost in human life and liberty...
...The information is current through 1983, including a superb postscript on Grenada...
...As an experienced rucksack traveler, Kwitny brings to his subject the lively authenticity of first-hand reporting...
...all are conscientiously and resourcefully documented, with frequent help from the Freedom of Information Act, inside interviews, CIA documents, and secret cables...
...intervention everywhere during the last thirty-five years...
...This is difficult to reconcile with his account of the decline of post-Allende Chile wrought by "our" Chicago boys, or with his chronicle of Cuba's resilience against twenty years of economic sabotage...
...But in Kissinger's mind, it was all Cold War...
Vol. 48 • October 1984 • No. 12
