Harry Targ
I have been teaching courses on United States
foreign policy for about 40 years now and my sense of outrage at the enduring
ruthlessness of that policy never abates. We are just a few months away from
what was a threatened U.S. attack on Syria which was beaten back by popular
pressures. However, the hawks from scholarly, journalist, and political
communities are ratcheting up pressure to return to the war option against that
country; hoping that the American people’s capacity for resistance will have
dissipated. In related demands, many foreign policy influentials are calling
for the U.S. to withdraw from serious negotiation of differences with Iran.
And now, the United States government and its
compliant media are mobilizing the citizenry to accept economic and even
military interventions in Ukraine and Venezuela. We are reminded that in all
four cases over the years--Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and Ukraine--there have been
street protests and violence against alleged authoritarian rule. Although the
complaints of protesters have had varying degrees of validity, the accuracy of
claims by protesters has been of little consequence to U.S. policy makers.
What is most puzzling to observers is why the United
States still regards itself as the legitimate source of resolving disputes and
transforming political institutions virtually everywhere. Of course, as the
preeminent imperial power (in the tradition of Rome, Spain, France, Great
Britain, Germany, the former Soviet Union and others) economic advantage,
political power, geographic positioning, the acquisition of resources and cheap
labor, figure prominently as causes.
The contradiction that still needs an explanation is
the fact that for the most part the American people oppose wars and
intervention. This is particularly so in the twenty-first century when so much
pain and suffering has been caused by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008
Americans elected Barack Obama, in part because he had opposed the war in Iraq
and had called for a new American foreign policy based on respect for other
nations and peoples. He promised to use diplomacy not war as the primary tool
of international relations and in some instances has tried to do that. He
probably wanted to end the two awful wars and show some respect for others,
even while promoting a neoliberal global agenda in a world of diverse centers
of power and wealth. But why have Obama’s cautious efforts to promote United
States economic and political interests been contradicted by the patterns of
interventionism and the rhetoric of military globalization so common over the
last few years?
The answer can be found in a variety of explanations
of United States imperialism that emphasize what Mike Lofgren calls the “deep
state.” Lofgren defines the “deep state” as “… a hybrid association of elements of
government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able
to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as
expressed through the formal political process.” (Mike Lofgren, “Anatomy of the ‘Deep State’:
Hiding in Plain Sight,” Online University
of the Left, February 23, 2014). Others have examined invisible power
structures, including class, that rule America (from C. W. Mills’ classic The Power Elite, Oxford University
Press, 2000 to Robert Perrucci, Earl Wysong, and David Wright, The New Class Society: Goodbye American
Dream? Rowman and Littlefield, 2013).
The roots of analyses like those above are that power
to make critical decisions reside not in the superstructure of the political
process; the place were competitive games are played for all to see, but in powerful
institutions embedded in society that can make decisions without requiring
popular approval. Over and over again, the “deep state” apparatus has led the
American people into war or covert interventions that destroyed the rights of
people in other countries to solve their own problems. In the end these hidden institutions
have involved the United States in death and destruction all across the globe.
Two current examples come to mind, Venezuela and
Ukraine. In the Venezuelan case, the United States has worked tirelessly to
undermine and overthrow the regime that came to power in 1999 led by Hugo
Chavez, and almost succeeded in carrying out a coup in 2002. Subsequently, this
regime, evolving over time, has become a model for 21st century
socialism whose popularity is spreading across South and Central America. Its
centerpiece is prioritizing the interests, needs, and wishes of the vast
majority of people in Latin America in historically unequal and stratified
societies. Currently, street protest, against the Maduro regime (Maduro was
elected president after the untimely death of Chavez in March, 2013 and his
party won large victories in municipal elections last December) have spread,
with violence, across wealthy neighborhoods of Caracas, Venezuela.
Various agencies of the United States government
have engaged in efforts to undermine and overthrow Chavez’s Bolivarian
Revolution since its inception much like the covert programs President Nixon
carried out to overthrow the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile in
1973.
Mark Weisbrot pointed out recently (The Guardian, February 18, 2014) that
“…there’s $5 million in the 2014 US federal budget for funding opposition
activities inside Venezuela, and that is almost certainly the tip of the
iceberg—adding to the hundreds of millions of dollars of overt support over the
past 15 years.”
George Ciccariello-Maher, Professor of Political
Science, Drexel University, reported on “Democracy Now” (February 20, 2014)
that Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was trained in United States
prep schools and Harvard University and was funded by the National Endowment
for Democracy and the US Agency for International Development to establish an
anti-Chavista party. As Ciccariello-Maher put it, “…as Chavez came to power,
the traditional parties of Venezuela collapsed, and both the domestic
opposition and the U.S. government needed to create some other vehicle through
which to oppose the Chavez government, and this party that Leopoldo Lopez came
to power through is one of these—as one
of those vehicles.”
Journalist Robert Parry has recently described the
character of the “deep state” and patterns of interference in Ukraine (Robert
Perry, “A Shadow US Foreign Policy,” consortium
news. com, February 27, 2014). Funding for covert operations in support of
“democratization” was initiated by Congress in 1983 when it established the
National Endowment for Democracy. NED currently receives $100 million a year to
engage in non-transparent activities such as in Venezuela and Ukraine.
Parry raises the issue of who is controlling U.S.
covert operations: “NED is one reason why there is so much confusion about the
administration’s policies toward attempted ousters of democratically elected
leaders in Ukraine and Venezuela. Some of the non-government organizations (or
NGOs) supporting these rebellions trace back to NED and its U.S. government
money, even as Secretary of State John Kerry and other senior officials insist
the U.S. is not behind these insurrections.”
As a result of ousted President Yanukovych’s turn
away from joining the European Union, which would require Ukraine to accept
IMF/EU austerity policies, the deep state institutions shifted from supporting
the elected Ukraine president to funding various opposition elements to him.
Parry reports that Carl Gershman, neoconservative
and president of NED wrote in the Washington
Post last September that the U.S. should push all the countries in Central
Europe to accept so-called free trade agreements and the neoliberal policy
agenda. Although the long-term goal would be removing Putin from office, Parry
said that NED has funded 65 projects in Ukraine creating a “shadow political
structure of media and activist groups.” According to Gershman, “Ukraine is the
biggest prize.”
It is likely that much more data will be uncovered
in the weeks ahead (primarily in alternative media) about United States
involvement in Ukraine, Venezuela, and the dozens of other countries in which
the deep structures of the national security apparatus operate. For now,
several points can be made:
First, a multiplicity of agencies, bureaus, funded
organizations (often called non-governmental organizations or NGOs) engage in
semi-independent foreign policies with political groups in other countries. In
addition, banks, multinational corporations, so-called human rights
organizations and other NGOs are part of the panoply of interventionist
organizations that promote an imperial agenda.
Second, it is not always clear that deep state
structures reflect the official foreign policies defined by the President or
members of the National Security Council who are supposed to be the public face
of United States foreign policy to the
world and the American people.
Third, these deep structures promote long
discredited foreign policies that have their roots in the post-World War Two
period or even further, the Russian Revolution (when the United States and 9
other countries sent troops to help the counter-revolutionaries to overthrow
the new government established by the Bolsheviks).
Fourth, these deep structures also promote the
neoliberal policy agenda across the global economy: privatization of public
institutions, so-called “free markets,” cutting government services so that
countries can pay back loans from international financial institutions, export
development policies, and disempowering workers, peasants, those barely
surviving in the informal sector.
Fifth, even if the President and key foreign policy
decision-makers are not in control of the deep state they still bear
responsibility for the correction of policies created by it.
Finally, while working against deep state imperial
policies, peace activists should at the same time oppose violence, repression,
dictatorship, and rule by economic elites in those states under assault by the
United States.
