WARS, FROM HYBRID TO TRADITIONAL, CONTINUE AGAINST IRAN

Harry Targ 

SIXTY YEARS OF BLOWBACK: IRAN

Chalmers Johnson wrote in 2001 about “blowback” that it is a CIA term first used in March 1954 in a declassified report on the 1953 operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a metaphor for the unintended consequences of the US government's international activities that have been kept secret from the American people. "The CIA's fears that there might ultimately be some blowback from its egregious interference in the affairs of Iran were well founded.…. This misguided ‘covert operation’ of the US government helped convince many capable people throughout the Islamic world that the United States was an implacable enemy.” (The Nation, October 15, 2001).

The CIA initiated overthrow of the regime of Mohammed Mossadegh on August 19, 1953 was precipitated by what Melvin Gurtov called “the politics of oil and cold war together.” Because it was the leading oil producer in the Middle East and the fourth largest in the world and it was geographically close to the former Soviet Union, President Eisenhower was prevailed upon to launch the CIA covert war on Iran long encouraged by Great Britain.

The immediate background for the ouster of Mossadegh was Iran’s nationalization of its oil production. Most Iranians were living in poverty in the 1940s as the Iranian government received only ten percent of the royalties on its oil sales on the world market. The discrepancy between Iran’s large production of oil and the limited return it received led Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a liberal nationalist, to call for the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. Despite opposition from Iran’s small ruling class, the parliament and masses of the Iranian people endorsed the plan to seize control of its oil. Mossadegh became the symbol of Iranian sovereignty.

Ironically, Mossadegh assumed the United States would support Iran’s move toward economic autonomy. But, in Washington, the Iranian leader was viewed as a demagogue, his emerging rival the Shah of Iran (the sitting monarch of Iran) as “more moderate.”

After the nationalization, the British, supported by the United States, boycotted oil produced by the Iranian Oil Company. The British lobbied Washington to launch a military intervention but the Truman Administration feared such an action would work to the advantage of the Iranian Communists, the Tudeh Party. 

The boycott led to economic strains in Iran, and Mossadegh compensated for the loss of revenue by increasing taxes on the rich. This generated growing opposition from the tiny ruling class, and they encouraged political instability. In 1953, to rally his people, Mossadegh carried out a plebiscite, a vote on his policies. The Iranian people overwhelmingly endorsed the nationalization of Iranian oil. In addition, Mossadegh initiated efforts to mend political fences with the former Soviet Union and the Tudeh Party.

As a result of the plebiscite, and Mossadegh’s openings to the Left, the United States came around to the British view; Mossadegh had to go. As one U.S. defense department official put it:

“When the crisis came on and the thing was about to collapse, we violated our normal criteria and among other things we did, we provided the army immediately on an emergency basis….The guns that they had in their hands, the trucks that they rode in, the armored cars that they drove through the streets, and the radio communications that permitted their control, were all furnished through the military defense assistance program…. Had it not been for this program, a government unfriendly to the United States probably would now be in power.” (Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, 1972).

The Shah, who had fled Iran after the plebiscite, returned when Mossadegh was ousted. A new prime minister was appointed by him who committed Iran to the defense of the “free” world. U.S. military and economic aid was resumed, and Iran joined the CENTO alliance (an alliance of pro-West regional states).

In August, 1954, a new oil consortium was established. Five U.S. oil companies gained control of forty percent of Iranian oil, equal to that of returning British firms. Iran compensated the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for its losses by paying $70 million, which Iran received as aid from the United States. The Iranian ruling class was accorded fifty percent of profits from future oil sales. President Eisenhower declared that the events of 1953 and 1954 were ushering in a new era of “economic progress and stability” in Iran and that it was now to be an independent country in “the family of free nations.”

In brief, the United States overthrew a popularly elected and overwhelmingly endorsed regime in Iran. The payoff the United States received, with British acquiescence, was a dramatic increase in access by U.S. oil companies to Iranian oil at the expense of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The overthrow of Mossadegh and the backing of the return of the Shah to full control of the regime led to U.S. support for one of the world’s most repressive and militarized regimes. By the 1970s, 70,000 of the Shah’s opponents were in political prisons. Workers and religious activists rose up against the Shah in 1979, leading to the rapid revolutionary overthrow of his military state.

As Chalmers Johnson suggested many years later, the United States role in the world is still plagued by “blowback.” Masses of people all across the globe, particularly in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and East Asia, regard the United States as the major threat to their economic and political independence. And the covert operation against Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran is one place where such global mistrust began.

HYBRID WARS AGAINST IRAN: The Story Continues

from https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2020/01/hybrid-warswhat-is-new-and-what-is-not.html

Iran has been a country of particular concern of the United States at least since the end of World War II. The US propped up the Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) at the outset of the war to protect US bases which were used to transfer war materials to the former Soviet Union. After Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, elected in 1951, nationalized Iran’s valuable oil resource, Great Britain, whose Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had “owned “ the oil, began to urge the US to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister, instill full power in the monarch, the Shah, and reprivatize Iranian oil. In 1953 the US Central Intelligence Agency launched a coup to overthrow the Prime Minister and to establish the Shah as Iran’s all-powerful dictator. His brutality and repression lasted for years until a mass-based worker and religious-led movement ousted him from power in 1979. In the aftermath of the ouster of the Shah, religious leaders consolidated their control of the state, the Shah fled to the United States for medical treatment, the new regime demanded his return to stand trial for his crimes, and Iranian students took 52 US embassy personnel hostage for 444 days.

The United States responses to the transformation of the Iranian regime included President Carter’s declaration of his “doctrine,” which proclaimed that instabilities in the Persian Gulf region were vital to US national security. The US began to fund Iraq in its eight-year bloody war against Iran, which led to 500,000 Iranians killed. The United States urged Israel to invade Lebanon, escalate attacks on Palestine, and in general tilted in opposition to Iran and its allies in the region. The US also increased the sale of technologically sophisticated arms to Saudi Arabia. 

Therefore in the 1980s, US policy in the Persian Gulf and Middle East regions was driven by the growing hostility of Iran to the United States (once a pillar of US support in the Persian Gulf), the continued need of Europe and Japan for Iranian oil, and Iran’s vital geographic location, particularly in terms of its potential control of the  flow of oil to Europe and Japan.  

But, in addition, the Iranian people had violated a cardinal rule of US global hegemony. They had risen up against rule by an American puppet. Much like Cuba in the Western Hemisphere, Iranians declared that they no longer would abide by a leader chosen by the United States and not them. (In fact, in the Nixon Administration, the Shah’s regime was identified as the key “gendarme” state in the Persian Gulf, the local US police enforcer).

Ever since the hostage crisis of 1979, the United States has imposed economic sanctions of one sort or another on Iran. After the long years of damage to the Iranian economy and the people at large, the  Nuclear Treaty of 2015 (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), was negotiated by Iran, the United States, member countries of the European Union, and Security Council members, Russia and China.  Along with Iran’s promise to stop the production of potential nuclear material, signatories agreed to end the freezing of Iranian assets deposited in US and European banks, to eliminate various prohibitions on Western investment in the Iranian economy, and to remove trade restrictions.

Almost immediately after the sanctions were lifted in the aftermath of the Nuclear Treaty, the Iranian economy grew: a 12 percent growth in GDP in 2016 and an additional but modest 3.7 percent in 2017. However, in 2018 President Trump withdrew from the Nuclear Treaty and re-imposed crippling sanctions. As a result, the Iranian economy contracted by 4.8 percent in 2018 and in a BBC report projected a further decline of 9.5 percent in 2019.

Iran’s oil exports and hence production was hit particularly hard. The value of Iranian currency declined dramatically and inflation in the country rose, particularly for the price of food. (BBC News. “Six Charts That Show How Hard US Sanctions Have Hit Iran,” December 2, 2019). Sanctions reduced purchasing power, increased the cost of living for food and transportation, reduced access of Iranian students studying abroad to financial resources, and led to the reduction of public services. 

This is the story of hybrid war against Iran: along with military threats and attempts to isolate Iran diplomatically, make the people suffer and cause increased outrage at the material conditions of life. The hope is that the people will rise up and overthrow the regime in power (and, of course, instances of corruption and repression have magnified protest responses). The scenario has been repeated over and over: Guatemala and Iran in the early 1950s, Cuba since 1960, and now Venezuela and Iran again. And make no mistake about it: economic sanctions are targeted against civilian populations and constitute a strategy of war against the people, motivating them to rise up against their governments. And in the case of Iran, government repression against protest has magnified dramatically.

Finally, it behooves the peace movement to be cognizant of twenty-first century methods of imperialism. It must fashion strategies that clearly and compellingly identify and combat economic sanctions recognizing that they, indeed, are acts of war.

The Tudeh Party, cognizant of "blowback," recently provided an analysis of the repression of the current regime in Iran and at the same time demands that outside powers not make war on the country.

Statement of the Tudeh Party of Iran: Long live the dynamic, encompassing, and heroic uprising of the Iranian people against the dictatorship of Ali Khamenei! - Tudeh Party of Iran

                                              

ON ROBESON, GUTHRIE, AND SEEGER: AN OLD RADIO SHOW

 Harry Targ

Robeson, Guthrie, and Seeger: Legacies of the Cultural Front

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/94864?m=false

From: Burton Cohen Burt Cohen's radio show and podcast was called "Keeping Democracy Alive" (KDA) April 3, 2013

Length: 59:56

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WE ARE ALL CULPABLE IN OUR COUNTRY'S MURDER, STARVATION, AND EXPLOITATION

Harry Targ

I don't know how guilt helps mobilize masses of people to demand change. But, if we begin to assume personal responsibility for our world maybe that is a first step in building a movement for human liberation. 

I started thinking about all this when I saw a post on Face Book of an old Pete Seeger song, "Last Train to Nuremberg." He wrote the song to reflect on the chain of responsibility for the My Lai Massacre. I began to reflect on this chain and the US killings and war-making against Venezuela or the murder of Renee Good (and many more) by ICE agents. 

Who held the rifle? Who gave the orders?

Who planned the campaign to lay waste the land?

Who manufactured the bullet? Who paid the taxes?

Tell me, is that blood upon my hands?

Last train to Nuremberg!

Last train to Nuremberg!

Last train to Nuremberg!

All on board!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6v3VLK0oSw

HOW DO WE UNDERSTAND THE FOREIGN POLICY OF PRESIDENT TRUMP?

 Harry Targ 

 

Extracted and revised from:  

https://mronline.org/2019/10/23/united-states-foreign-policy-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow/

The US Pursuit of Empire

Taking “the long view” of United States foreign policy, it is clear that from NSC-68; to the response to the Soviet challenges in space such as during the Sputnik era; to global wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; to covert interventions in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, the United States has pursued global hegemony. And foreign policy influentials, such as a recent Council on Foreign Relations position paper suggests, regard the maintenance of global power the main priority of foreign policy in the years ahead. It is also clear that the pursuit of empire has, of necessity, involved the creation of a permanent war economy, an economy that overcomes economic stagnation by the infusion of enormous military expenditures.

It is also clear that justification for empire and military spending has necessitated the construction of an enemy, first the Soviet Union and international communism; then terrorism; and now China. The obverse of a demonic enemy requires a conception of self to justify the imperial project. That self historically has been various iterations of American exceptionalism, the indispensable nation, US humanitarianism, and implicitly or explicitly the superiority of the white race and western civilization.

In this light, while specific policies vary, the trajectory of US foreign policy in the twenty-first century is a continuation of the policies and programs that were institutionalized in the twentieth century. Three seem primary. First, military spending, particularly in new technologies, continues unabated. And a significant Council on Foreign Relations report raises the danger of the United States “falling behind,” the same metaphor that was used by the writers of the NSC-68 document, or the Gaither and Rockefeller Reports composed in the late 1950s to challenge President Eisenhower’s worry about a military/industrial complex, the response to Sputnik, Secretary of Defense McNamara’s transformation of the Pentagon to scientific management in the 1960s, or President Reagan’s huge increase of armaments in the 1980s to overcome the “window of vulnerability.”

Second, the United States continues to engage in policies recently referred to as “hybrid wars.” The concept of hybrid wars suggests that while traditional warfare between nations has declined, warfare within countries has increased. Internal wars, the hybrid wars theorists suggest, are encouraged and supported by covert interventions, employing private armies, spies, and other operatives financed by outside nations like the United States. Also the hybrid wars concept also refers to the use of economic warfare, embargoes and blockades, to bring down adversarial states and movements. The blockades of Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran are examples. So, the hybrid war concept suggests that wars are carried out by other, less visible, means.

Third, much of the discourse on the US role in the world replicates the bipolar, super power narrative of the Cold War. Only now the enemy is China. As Alfred McCoy has pointed out (In the Shadows of the American Empire, 2017), the United States in the twenty first century sees its economic hegemony being undermined by Chinese economic development and global reach. To challenge this, McCoy argues, the United States has taken on a project to recreate its military hegemony: AI, a space force, biometrics, new high tech aircraft etc. If the US cannot maintain its hegemony economically, it will have to do so militarily. This position is the centerpiece of the recent CFR Task Force Report.

Imperial Policies in Trump's First Term

Recognizing these continuities in United States foreign policy, commentators appropriately recognized the idiosyncrasies of foreign policy in the first Trump administration. He reached out to North Korea and Russia (which  had the potential of reducing tensions in Asia and Central Europe). He rhetorically claimed that the United States should withdraw military forces from trouble spots around the world, including the Middle East. He declared that the United States could not be “the policeman of the world,” a declaration made by former President Nixon as he escalated bombing of Vietnam and initiated plans to overthrow the Allende regime in Chile. Some of these measures which seemed o contradict the Cold War policy agenda Trump was inappropriately criticized by Democrats and others. Tension-reduction on the Korean Peninsula, for example, should have been encouraged.

However, while Trump moved in one direction, he almost immediately undermined the policies he has ordered. His announced withdrawal from Syria, while in the abstract a sign of a more realistic assessment of US military presence in the Middle East was coupled with a direct or implied invitation to the Turkish military to invade Northeast Syria to defeat the Kurds. Also, at the same time he was withdrawing troops from Syria, the Defense Department announced the United States was sending support troops to Saudi Arabia. He withdrew from the accord with Iran on nuclear weapons and the Paris Climate Change agreement. Time after time, one foreign policy decision is contradicted by another. These contradictions occurred over and over with allies as well as traditional adversaries. Sometimes policies seemed to be made with little historical awareness and without sufficient consultation with professional diplomats. 

Imperial Policies in the Second Trump Term

Candidate Trump ran for reelection in 2024 claiming that the US role in the world (at least outside the Western Hemisphere) should be reduced. His would adopt an "America First" strategy. 

During his first year he engaged in tariff wars, supported dramatic increases in military expenditures, and under the guise of pursuing peace gave support to Israel in its genocidal war against the Palestinian people and continued both to support the Ukrainian military effort and negotiations with the Russians as brutal war in Ukraine continued. And after the administration issued its National Security Strategy Document in November, 2025, largely endorsed the drive for remaining the hegemonic power in the Western Hemisphere (the Monroe Doctrine 2 or the "Donroe Doctrine") while calling for arming the world to challenge growing Chinese power. 

And while the world continued to process Trump's blustery statements, contradictory calls to action, seemingly words and acts to insult the traditional allies, a veritable "mad man" approach to US foreign policy, he made war on Venezuela and carried out the kidnapping of Venezuela's President and wife.

Subsequently, he has alluded to taking out regimes in Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico, running the Venezuelan government-particularly its oil sector, and seizing Greenland from NATO ally, Denmark. And starting in February the US has engaged in a vicious war on Iran (with Israel), posturing about negotiating against a war the United States started.

 Processing the Trump foreign policies one is reminded of the old Nixon idea, the so-called “madman theory.” "Trump thinks that he can frighten and thus deter opponents by appearing unhinged—an idea that political scientists call the madman theory. As Trump once boasted, Chinese President Xi Jinping would never risk a blockade of Taiwan while he is president because Xi “knows I’m fucking crazy,"  

(Nixon allegedly wanted to appear mad so that adversaries would be deterred from acting in ways contrary to US interests out of fear of random responses). For a useful discussion of the "madman theory" see below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory#:~:text=International%20relations%20scholars%20have%20been,failed%20to%20win%20coercive%20disputes.)

Working for Peace in the 21st Century

The contradictory character of Trump foreign policy has left the peace movement befuddled. How does it respond to Trump’s occasional acts that go against the traditional imperial grain while he acts impetuously increasing the dangers of war? How does the peace movement participate in the construction of a progressive majority that justifiably seeks to overturn the Trump era and all that it stands for: climate disaster, growing economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, and hybrid war? Perhaps the task for the peace movement is to include, in the project of building a progressive majority, ideas about challenging the US as an imperial power, proclaiming that a progressive agenda requires the dismantling of the permanent war economy.

Without illusions, the peace movement must participate in politics: which includes the electoral arena and lobbying for policy changes including rekindling the War Powers Act and cutting the trillion dollar military budget.. Articulating a peace agenda, demanding that politicians running for office at all levels embrace it, and convincingly demonstrating that politicians who do not embrace it will be held accountable. This would include a firm opposition to Israeli genocide in the Middle East. Meanwhile, by articulating a peace platform, activists will be participating in a broad educational effort to construct a majority “people for peace.”

Finally, peace and social justice movements must articulate and embrace truly global policies of solidarity in the spirit of the Non-aligned Movement, the Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, commitments to human rights, environmental protections, and support for those movements in the Global South that are pursuing the rights of sovereignty and social and economic development. While flawed the United Nations system, with its multiplicity of political, social, economic, and legal organizations provide the skeletal form of a New World Order.

These are truly troubled times, with to a substantial degree the survival of humanity and nature at stake. The war system is a significant part of what the struggle is about and every avenue must be used to challenge it. Whether it is the mad men theory or traditional imperialism that drives US pursuit of global hegemony or both, it must be stopped.

 

VENEZUELA TODAY: CHILE YESTERDAY (including a post from July 17, 2017)

 Harry Targ

As we read about the US kidnapping of President Maduro and the murdering of Venezuelans on the high seas the corporate media retells stories of rising tensions in the country, economic failures, and the lack of democracy. These are the same stories that appeared when the US was involved in the overthrow of other governments it opposed. The story of the role of US imperialism in overthrowing the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende in Chile comes to mind. Times and circumstances are different, but the needs and struggles of the people for a better life are similar and the narratives that partially justify US interventionism also are similar.

Salvador Allende’s socialist and democratic Popular Unity coalition came to power in the October 1970 Chilean election. Allende was the first elected socialist president of a Latin American country. 

The Nixon Administration and the Chilean military found the people’s choice unacceptable and set about undermining Allende’s government. On September 11, 1973 the military launched a coup, killed Allende, rounded up thousands of his supporters, and brought them to a huge soccer stadium, and tortured and shot their cultural icon, Victor Jara.

The United States Crushes Revolution in Chile

The United States had supported the Christian Democrats in Chile with official assistance and CIA financing since the 1950s. The Christian Democratic candidate in 1970 was opposed by Marxist Salvador Allende, who, as the head of a coalition of six left parties, won a plurality of votes.

From the time of the election in October 1970, until September 1973, when a bloody military coup toppled Allende, the United States did everything it could to destabilize the elected government. First, the United States pressured Chilean legislators to reject the election result. When that failed, energy and resources were used to damage the Chilean economy and build a network of ties with military personnel ready to carry out a coup.

Allende developed policies to redistribute land, nationalized the vital copper industry, and established diplomatic relations with the former Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. Popular culture stimulated by artists such as Victor Jara flowered and grew. All these moves exacerbated tensions with the United States, since its investments in copper, iron, nitrates, iodine, and salt were large.

The Nixon administration formed a secret committee, “the 40 committee,” headed by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, to develop a long-term plan to destabilize and overthrow the Allende government. The CEO of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company, a major foreign influence in Chile, was enthusiastic about the Nixon plan.

Among the policies utilized by Washington were an informal economic blockade of Chile, termination of aid and loans, International Monetary Fund pressure on the government to carry out anti-worker policies, the engineering of a substantial decline in the price of copper on the world market, fomenting dissent in the military, and funding opposition groups and newspapers, particularly the influential Santiago daily, El Mercurio. Despite growing economic crisis and  protests by the rightwing spurred by U.S. covert operations, the Allende-led left coalition scored electoral victories in municipal elections throughout the country in March, 1973. 

Since Nixon’s directive to make Chile’s “economy scream” had not led to Allende’s rejection at the ballot box, the Kissinger committee and the right-wing generals decided to act. On September 11, 1973 the military carried out a coup that ousted the Allende government, assassinated him in the Presidential Palace, and established brutal rule under the leadership of General Augusto Pinochet. A year after the coup, Amnesty International reported that some 6,000 to 10,000 prisoners had been taken. The new regime banned all political parties, abolished trade unions, and initiated programs to assassinate pro-Allende emigres, including former Foreign Minister, Orlando Letelier, who was blown up in an automobile in Dupont Circle in Washington D.C.

The spirit of the brutal U.S. policy in Chile was expressed by Kissinger in 1970 when he declared: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” One year after the coup President Ford (who replaced the discredited Richard Nixon) defended it as being in the “best interests of the people of Chile and certainly in the best interests of the United States.” A different assessment was provided by a distinguished diplomatic historian, Alexander De Conde who wrote that the United States “had a hand in the destruction of a moderate left-wing government that allowed democratic freedoms to its people and to its replacement by a friendly right-wing government that crushed such freedoms with torture and other police-state repressions.” 

Subsequent to the US supported coup in Chile were coups in Panama, Haiti, and Honduras. Subversion, military interventions, economic sanctions and other forms of US efforts to dominate the region include targeting Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, and Bolivia, and of course, Venezuela. And now we have the kidnapping of President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.

THE UNITED STATES SUPPORTS COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN LATIN AMERICA: SEEKS TO ROLL BACK THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION

 Harry Targ

Make no mistake about it. The brutal murders and kidnapping of the president of Venezuela is designed to crush the spirit of the Bolivarian project. And all the US media, while implicitly critical of the military action, make sure to refer to Maduro as an authoritarian. They feature in their stories the celebration of Venezuelans in Miami. And references to the difficulties of the Venezuelan economy make no mention of US sanctions.

(Originally posted May 3, 2016: This essay from a decade ago describes the efforts of Venezuela, Cuba, and other Latin American countries to break away from US hegemony. It suggests that the desired regional transformation had some successes and then reversals during the first 15 years of the new century. The US military coup in Venezuela on January 3, 2026, signifies a dramatic almost complete reversal of the Bolivarian Project. It remains to be seen how the peoples of Venezuela and Latin America in general respond to this seeming reemergence of US imperialism in the region. And if the Bolivarian spirit survives it should be vigorously supported by peace and justice activists in North America.,)

                                Peoples Dispatch photo

The Bolivarian Revolution, the formation of intergovernmental organizations in the Global South, buoyant economic growth among some of the poorer countries, and the spread of  anti-austerity grassroots social movements everywhere have sent shock waves across the international system. The world is experiencing a global transformation potentially as great as when the nation-state system was constructed out of feudalism in the seventeenth century or the multipolar world was transformed into a bipolar one after World War II. Similar dramatic changes resulted from the collapse of the bipolar Cold War world to a unipolar one after the collapse of the Socialist Bloc. This time countries of the Global South and mass movements of workers, youth, indigenous people, and people of color are taking center stage.

However, these twenty-first century tectonic shifts occurring in world affairs have not been occurring automatically. Keepers of the old order, the rich and powerful states of the Global North, continue to promote their hegemonic project particularly when resistance shows its internal weaknesses. The effort to maintain control amid faltering resistance is displayed in recent United States foreign policy toward Latin America.

  

The Bolivarian Revolution Spreads Across Latin America

The Bolivarian Revolution was the name given by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to the populist revolution he initiated in his country. Elected in 1998, he embarked on policies to empower the poor, spread literacy, expand access to health care, build worker cooperatives, and modestly redistribute wealth and power from the rich to the poor. His vision was to constitute an economic and political program designed to reverse the neoliberal policy agenda embraced by his predecessors. The oil-rich country, collaborating with revolutionary Cuba, initiated a campaign to make real the nineteenth century dream of Simon Bolivar to create a united and sovereign South America, free from imperial rule. Inspired by grassroots movements, populists governments came to power in Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Honduras, and Nicaragua. More cautious but left-of-center governments emerged in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. 

Venezuela and Cuba established the eleven nation Bolivarian Alternatives for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in 2004; Venezuela, Cuba and several other Caribbean countries created, in 2005, Petrocaribe, a trade organization, primarily dealing with oil. In the Hemisphere, twelve South American countries constructed the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in 2008 and the 33 nation Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was established in 2011. All of these organizations were inspired by the vision of expanding regional economic and political sovereignty as opposed to the traditional United States hegemony in the region. Primarily they challenged the neoliberal model of economic development.

Setbacks

The successes of the spreading popular movements of the first decade of the twenty-first century were paralleled by buoyant economic growth throughout Latin America. Moises Naim, (“The Coming Turmoil in Latin America,” The Atlantic, October 9, 2015) pointed out that all of Latin America experienced economic growth from 2004 to 2013 due to expanding commodity trade with Asia and increased foreign investments in the region. The major economic player in the region was China. However, comparing 2003-2010 growth rates with 2010-2015, the author reported that rates of growth during the second period were only forty percent of what they were in the first. 

With slower growth, declining currency values, higher unemployment and declining social benefits, the narrowing of economic inequality in the region and rising benefits for the poor have been reversed. As The Economist put it in June 27, 2015, “Latin America’s economy is screeching to a halt; it managed growth of just 1.3% last year. This year’s figure will be only 0.9%, reckons the IMF, which would mark  the fifth successive year of deceleration….Many reckon it now faces a ‘new normal’ of growth of just-2-3% a year. That would jeopardize recent social gains; already the fall in poverty has halted.”  

In 2007, Naomi Klein published a fascinating book called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In it she develops the idea of the shock doctrine, paying homage to the source of the concept, Milton Friedman, the renowned free market economist. From one of his essays she quotes the following: “…only a crisis--actual or perceived--produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” The shock doctrine is illustrated by the fact that the declining growth rates in Latin America have been coupled with reactionary political forces in Latin America (and their US friends) becoming re-energized to stifle and dismantle the gains of the Bolivarian revolution and to reverse the gains made by the popular classes. 

On June 28, 2009 there was a military coup in Honduras, ousting democratically-elected Manuel Zelaya from office. Zelaya, who sympathized with the Bolivarian Revolution, was formally replaced in a November, 2009 election that was designed to give legitimacy to the coup. The Honduran coup, in retrospect, signaled a return to destabilization by the wealthy classes of the popular currents represented by the Bolivarian Revolution everywhere.

While Brazil’s Workers Party candidate Dilma Rousseff won reelection as president in October 2014, her victory margin was the narrowest (51.6 percent to 48.4 percent) of the four races in which the center/left Workers Party was victorious. The split between the left/center and right wing forces set the stage for the 2016 campaign by the wealthy to impeach Rousseff for corruption.

Further, in what was called by the New York Times a “transformative election,” the Argentinian people elected as president right-wing advocate of the disastrous neoliberal economic agenda, Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires. Despite the success of prior governments in resisting destructive IMF demands for debt restructuring, Macri promises to return to the policies of the 1990s that led to economic crisis. As the Macri-sympathetic Times editorial put it: “Reforming the stagnant economy will be painful in the short run, but could make Argentina more attractive to foreign investors” (November 26, 2015).

Nicolas Maduro won a narrow presidential victory over a rightwing candidate in Venezuela’s April 14, 2013 election to replace his deceased popular predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Over the next two years, opposition forces engaged in periodic street protests, many in wealthier parts of Venezuelan cities. Coupled with growing economic problems and domestic violence, leaders of the major opposition political party have sought to mobilize support to overthrow the Maduro government and the reforms put in place by Hugo Chavez. In a March 27, 2014 account of anti-government protests, the BBC reported that; “The government’s popularity remains high amid its working-class voters, who gave it a further boost in local elections in December.” However, in December, 2015, an anti-government coalition took two-thirds of the parliamentary seats in the most recent election. Almost immediately, opposition politicians began efforts to overturn the popular reforms of the Chavez era and to launch a campaign to impeach Maduro from the presidency.

The United States Role

Throughout the period since the political arrival of Hugo Chavez on the scene in Latin America, the United States has stood in opposition to the Bolivarian Revolution. The United States gave at least tacit support to the failed military coup in Venezuela in 2002. Neighboring Colombia received funds to continue the “war on drugs” while the United States built seven military installations around that country to “protect” Colombia from an “aggressive” Venezuela. In subsequent years, the U.S. Congress has imposed partial embargoes on the visitation rights of selected Venezuelan government officials. Also, the United States has provided funding, training, and educational opportunities to Venezuelans who have played prominent roles in opposition to the Chavez government. It continues to condemn Venezuela’s policies at home, projecting the image that it represents the same kind of threat to the hemisphere that the Cuban revolutionary government represented in the 1960s.

The U.S. government mildly condemned the Honduran coup (compared with statements from the Organization of American States and other nations in the hemisphere). Subsequently it endorsed the November, 2009 election in that country, as presidential candidate Hillary Clinton suggested, to give legitimacy to the coup. Since then, the United States has ignored the grotesque human rights violations and assassinations of opponents of the Honduran government.

And very recently a politician in the impeachment bloc in Brazil visited Washington, meeting foreign policy officials who deal with Latin America and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Given the twenty-first century challenges the Bolivarian Revolution represent to the Washington Consensus and the neoliberal agenda in the Western Hemisphere, the recent visits by President Obama to Cuba and Argentina represent metaphorically imperialism’s response. The President on the one hand is dramatically reordering the US/Cuba relationship, but is doing so in a way to pressure the Cubans to adopt a US/style political system and a market-based open capitalist economic system. 

And his visit to Argentina, just after the Cuba visit, was designed to signal to Argentina and the entire Hemisphere that the United States is committed to a return to neoliberal economic policies. These policies, as always, benefit the rich at the expense of the popular classes. Concretely they include;

-reversing the Cuban revolutionary model

-reinforcing Argentina’s return to dependency on the international financial system

-encouraging impeachments of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela 

-weakening emerging regional organizations such as UNASUR and CELAC

-replacing China’s rising presence in the Latin America with a revitalized US economic hegemony in trade, finance, and investment 

As Eric Draitser (“Hillary Clinton and Wall Street’s Neoliberal War on Latin America,” Telesur, April 29, 2016) suggests: “Since the rise of Hugo Chavez Latin America has gone its own way, democratizing and moving away from its former status as a ‘American Backyard.’ With Hillary Clinton and Wall Street working hand in hand with their right wing proxies in Latin America, Washington looks to reassert its control. And it is the people of the region who will pay the price.”

However, it may be the case that the popular classes, tasting some of the benefits of the transition to socialism in the twenty-first century, will resist the attempts in the region to reestablish US hegemony and the neoliberal agenda. The outcome is yet to be determined.

GRENADA INVASION DESIGNED TO OVERCOME THE 'VIETNAM SYNDROME' AND LEBANON DISASTER

Harry Targ

(New York City Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams was inaugurated on January 1 as part of the impactful inauguration ceremonies of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Mr. Williams powerfully reminded the public of the Grenadian Revolution and Maurice Bishop).

 

 People’s World photo

The United States marines and small contingents of military personnel from neighboring countries on October 25, 1983 launched a military invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada (121 miles long, 10 miles wide, population 110,000). The Reagan Administration falsely claimed that the invasion was motivated to save 600 American medical students from a possible Iran-style hostage taking and to restore freedom and democracy to the island. 

The invasion by the Reagan administration was a fully-orchestrated media- censored operation without regard for international law, morality, and the safety of the citizens of Grenada.  It occurred at a time when foreign policy elites were concerned that the public was afflicted with the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome.” This “syndrome” referred to the propensity of Americans to oppose further military interventions overseas (much like the clear opposition to U.S. military action against Venezuela today). 

In addition, the Grenada operation, called “Operation Urgent Fury,” occurred two days after a horrific bombing killed 241 U.S. military personnel in a barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. President Reagan, despite much criticism, had sent U.S. troops to quell the Lebanese civil war and give support to the Israeli army which had invaded its northern neighbor. The Sunday New York Times headline of October 23, 1983 listing preliminary estimates of casualties in bold type declared “Beirut Death Toll at 161 Americans; French Casualties Rise in Bombings; Reagan Insists Marines Will Remain.”

Throughout its history, Grenada was victimized by foreign invaders. The island was originally occupied by the Ciboney Indians and then by the Arawaks. Later Carib Indians established control of the island. Over the centuries islanders were subjected to European invasion--Spain in 1592, the British in 1608, and the French in the 1650s. Grenada was declared a British colony in 1783, and was not “granted” independence until February 7, 1974.

Central to the history of the Caribbean states, the industrial revolution, and the rise of capitalism out of feudalism was the slave trade. The French, who had massacred the Carib Indians, and later the British, brought African slaves to Grenada.  By 1763 Grenada had 82 sugar estates. Slave laborers produced sugar, cotton, and tobacco which was transported to Europe for processing, and then for sale on the European continent, Asia, and Africa. Slavery, which brought 9.5 million kidnapped Africans to the Western Hemisphere, was a system of forced labor that generated profits for European imperial powers.

During the twentieth century, 20 years before formal independence, Grenadian politics was dominated by a charismatic and corrupt politician, Eric Gairy. He collaborated with the small class of domestic elites as well as foreigners to push back against workers and peasants who opposed economic exploitation and British colonialism in general. After independence in 1974, Gairy continued to rule the island with an iron hand. Health care, education, and public services worsened during the Gairy years after independence while personal corruption was rampant.

As independence approached, a political party, known as the New Jewel Movement emerged. Led by Maurice Bishop, a charismatic figure, the party called for policies that would focus on the enormous problems workers and peasants faced. The New Jewel Movement seized power in a bloodless coup in 1979, five years after independence. Maurice Bishop then began to plant the seeds of a modern mixed economy, including state and private sectors and a newly created cooperative sector. 

The public sector revitalized the 30 state farms that were stagnant during Gairy’s rule. The government opened agro-processing plants, created a state fishing and fish-processing industry, built a public component in the vital tourist industry, and established public banking institutions to provide loans for small farmers, owners of small businesses, and fishermen. The public sector thus served as a stimulus to the private sector. In addition, the cooperative sector, in farm inputs and marketing, was designed to appeal to the community spirit characteristic of Grenadian culture.

In other actions, the government instituted a literacy campaign, popular education particularly in mathematics, and English and Grenadian history. Teacher retraining programs upgraded the largely unskilled corps of teachers. Education from primary grades to college became free. Also in 1980, the Grenadian government instituted a program of free medical and dental care. Health care delivery systems were decentralized prioritizing programs of preventive medicine and nationwide sanitation campaigns to combat communicable diseases.

In the political process, the New Jewel Movement created local bodies for popular participation in politics. Parish Councils were further decentralized into smaller “Zonal Council” meetings. The National Women’s Organization and the National Youth Organization were created to articulate political interests parallel to existing organizations for labor and farmers. Particular programs were instituted to redress the historic inequalities between men and women. The Grenadian government placed significant numbers of women in key decision-making positions and hoped to expand political representation of women in policy-making positions.

The U.S. government during both Carter and Reagan administrations opposed the Bishop government because some of the technical assistance it received came from Cuba and the Soviet Union. Cuban work on the expansion of the country’s major airport to facilitate tourism was particularly controversial even though the largest share of its financing came from the British.

 In October 1981, the U.S. government held massive military maneuvers in the Caribbean simulating an invasion of a small enemy country holding Americans hostage. In addition, the United States opposed International Monetary Fund and World Bank aid to Grenada and organized Eastern Caribbean island-states to oppose the dangers that Grenadian democracy and economic change represented. 

Unfortunately, two weeks before the Reagan invasion of Grenada, a faction of the New Jewel Movement ousted Maurice Bishop from power .In the midst of a heated battle within the leadership, Bishop and several of his colleagues were tragically killed. By most accounts at the time, the factional dispute was self-destructive and the outcome was contrary to the wishes of the masses of the Grenadian people who applauded the new economic policies and participatory democracy the government had put in place since 1979. Bishop, himself, was a revered leader among his people who also had close ties with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the United States Congress. 

Despite the foolhardy policies of the anti-Bishop faction of New Jewel, there was every reason to believe that, despite the factional disputes, the policies that New Jewel had initiated would have continued. But the Reagan administration used the domestic turmoil in Grenada as an excuse to invade the island, depose the New Jewel party from power, abolish all the economic and political changes carried out between 1979 and 1983, arrest Cuban airport construction workers, and put in place a neo-colonial government that would reverse the policy trends toward grassroots democracy and human need fulfillment that had been gaining popularity, not only in Grenada but around the Caribbean and Central America. In the months following the invasion, the United States expunged every vestige of progressive institutions and policies installed by Maurice Bishop’s New Jewel Movement.

The marine invasion of tiny Grenada constituted a guaranteed military victory and over the years would lead to a decline in Americans’ reluctance to send more troops overseas. And the invasion of Grenada took the tragedy of 241 marines killed by a terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon off the front pages. 

Over forty years ago the United States joined the Spanish, French, and British as the latest colonial power to determine the destiny of the Grenadian people. At the same time, and despite remaining skepticism, the Grenada invasion put the United States back on the path toward military interventionism around the world.