Since the end of World War II, fear has been “The Decider” in the foreign policy of the United States. We see it again now in our Pakistan policy. Once again, we pursue a reactionary policy; bent on maintaining a status quo that cannot last and will create even more ill will towards the United States.
There is irony here. We are the most powerful nation in the history of the world with less to be afraid of than any nation in the history of the world and yet we are afraid. All the time. In Pakistan we support an anti-democratic military dictator because of our fear. We fear that if General Musharraf is not in office, Pakistan might descend into chaos and someone might steal one or more of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons – weapons we helped them acquire and that were peddled to Iran, North Korea and Libya while four American administrations stood by and watched. But we’ll leave that for another discussion. Too much irony in one day causes cognitive dissonance.
Not for the first time since the end of World War II, we find ourselves at the wrong end of history. Musharraf is a military dictator who thumbs his nose at the Bush/Cheney Administration while accepting billions in military aid. A.Q. Khan peddles nuclear technology and equipment to rogue states and Musharraf refuses to make him available to either the United States or the International Atomic Energy Agency even for questioning. Pakistan has more than 50 nuclear warheads and, though we provided – for free – the technology and equipment to secure them, we don’t even know where they are. This is the result of what we now know is foreign policy about Pakistan which is run out of Vice-president Cheney’s office.
Worse, because of that policy, we have no good alternatives in Pakistan now. Once again we are locked in a policy that requires support of a reactionary dictator whose days in office are numbered, who is unpopular with his own people and hates democracy. Small wonder that the Moslem world distrusts and dislikes us.
But this is just another in a long line of fear-based foreign policy missteps the United States has made since the end of World War II. A few examples will have to suffice; this is a blog, not an academic treatise. Because it is a blog, I can throw out oversimplified hypotheses and theories with half-baked analysis of what were complex foreign policy decisions and do so with impunity.
Let’s begin with 9/11. 9/11/1973 that is. The day we orchestrated a military coup in Chile which ousted its democratically elected President Allende and installed that marvelous, enlightened despot General Augusto Pinochet; who immediately suspended all civil liberties in Chile and started murdering anyone who disagreed with him. Why did the United States assist in overthrowing a democracy and replacing it with a murderous military dictatorship? Fear. We were afraid of the Russians taking over Chile. Why? Because President Allende was a socialist. Never mind that hardly any chance existed that Allende would turn Chile into a vassal of the Soviet Union. There was a one percent chance – to use Vice-president Cheney’s brilliant reductionist formula of foreign policy – of Chile being absorbed into Russia’s “sphere of influence” so we abandoned our Nation’s principals and aligned ourselves firmly on the side of repression and historical backwardness. And gave Chile two decades of misery. [1]
Or we could look at Vietnam. The overriding consideration in American minds from the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 until our ultimate withdrawal two decades later was fear. We were deathly afraid of Vietnam becoming Communist because, you see, that would result in dominoes falling: All of Southeast Asia would become communist. Vietnam did, of course, become a Communist country and no dominoes have fallen – except our great bugbear the Soviet Union.
Or we could talk about Korea. Or Panama. Or Honduras. Or Nicaragua. Or even Cuba which is the only example where the fear really was justified. For a few months. Four decades ago. But our democracy continues to be safe from Cuban cigars, even now. We could even talk about the Carter Administration’s decision to stop effective economic sanctions against a repressive military dictatorship in Pakistan so we could funnel arms and munitions through Pakistan to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan for a proxy war against the Soviet Union.
But, as I said earlier, too much irony in one day is bad for you.
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[1] I see that conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer attempts to justify this unqualified disaster for American foreign policy by praising our wisdom. Chile, you see, wasn’t a mature country and was unready for Democracy so we actually helped them. He applies the same whitewash to our long time support of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Balderdash.
However; Mr. Krauthammer’s view of our current options in Pakistan seems about right.
Addition of November 22nd — In today’s Washington Post Robert Kagan has a perceptive piece about our history of supporting dictators. It always causes me cognitive dissonance when I find myself in agreement with a Neo-Con but there it is. Facts are facts. See the article here.
The Golden State 