The war in Vietnam was a US imperialist and colonialist war that failed, unable to defeat a united popular movement that combined nationalism and socialism.

      The Vietnamese anti-colonial revolution began in the early twentieth century, with petty bourgeois intellectuals playing the leading role.  Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 and was a product of this anti-colonial intellectual environment.  He arrived in Paris in 1917, where he lived for several years and was active in the Vietnamese émigré community and in the struggle against colonialism.  Ho also became  active in the French Socialist Party in Paris.  In the split between social democracy and communism, Ho sided with the communists, as a result of Lenin’s sensitivity to the oppression of the colonized peoples.  He traveled and studied in the Soviet Union in 1923 and 1924. 

      Ho was critical of the communist parties of the West for lacking contact with the colonized peoples and for ignoring the colonial question, thus not following in practice the theoretical formulations of Lenin on the national question.  He believed that the  international proletarian movement could not attain success without alliance with the colonized peoples, which he viewed as constituting a considerable force  of revolutionary opposition to the structures of world capitalism.  At the same time, he understood that  Third World nationalism without communism would not liberate the colonized  peasant.  And he understood that the peasantry, while possessing an orientation toward spontaneous rebellion, was unaware of communism, and that the peasants needed organization and leadership in order to form an effective struggle.  He thus saw the need to educate Western workers and the Western communist parties on the importance of encounter and alliance with the anti-colonial struggles in the colonies, and at the same time he recognized the need for the spreading of communism among the peasants, workers, students, intellectuals, and merchants of the colonies.  Thus Ho developed a practical synthesis of Marxism-Leninism and a Third World  perspective.

     During the 1930s, Ho emerged as the charismatic leader of the Vietnamese movement for independence, which by the end of World War II had attained de facto control of the country.  On September 2, 1945, before a crowd of one-half million people, continually  shouting “independence,” in Ba Dinh square in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh read the  Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The French tried to reconquer the country, but they were defeated by 1954, setting the stage for the continually escalating US intervention in defnense of the world-system.  Both the French and the United States tried to support puppet and regional governments as alternatives to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

       US intervention was justified with the ideology of anti-communism. The nationalist and anti-colonial character of the Vietnamese Revolution was ignored, and emphasis was given to its Marxist-Leninist side.  And a distorted image of communism was presented, portraying it as a movement that seeks to eliminate democracy, rather than as a movement that seeks to replace bourgeois structures of democracy with alternative structures of popular democracy.

      But a neocolonial project is unsustainable in the face of a politically and theoretically advanced nationalist movement.  The various puppet governments lacked legitimacy among the people, necessitating greater US military and financial support.  Increasing US military presence further undermined the legitimacy of the puppet government, completely de-legitimating its claim to represent an independent nationalist force in Vietnam.  Trapped in a vicious  cycle of self-defeating military escalation, US policymakers had forgotten an insight relevant to their project of world domination: neocolonialism requires the appearance of independence.  
 
       The failure of the US imperialist war in Vietnam had a profound effect on the United States.  Among other effects, it stimulated an analysis among the people of the causes for the failure, leading to increased popular consciousness of the imperialist character of US foreign policy.  The emergence of anti-imperialism in the African-American movement and the student anti-war movement will be discussed in future posts.


Bibliography     
 
García Oliveras, Julio A. 2010.  Ho Chi Minh El Patriota: 60 años de lucha revolucionaria.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.  
 
Ho Chi Minh.  2007. Down with Colonialism.  Introduction by Walden Bello.  London: Verso.

McNamara, Robert S., with Brian VanDeMark.  1996.  In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.

Prina, Agustín.  2008.  La Guerra de Vietnam.  Mexico: Ocean Sur.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Vietnam, Ho Chi  Minh


 

       With the impossibility of the reforms of the neocolonial system proposed by the Kennedy administration (see “The Alliance for Progress” 9/26/2013), US policy toward Latin America under Presidents Lyndon Johnson (1963-68), Richard Nixon (1969-74), and Gerald Ford (1974-76) abandoned efforts at economic reform of the neocolonial system.  They returned to interventionism, alliance with the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, and support of military dictatorships, in reaction to the intensity of anti-imperialist popular movements that pervaded the region during the 1960s and 1970s.

      During the Johnson administration, the United  States intervened militarily in Panama in 1964 and in the Dominican  Republic in 1965.  It supported coups d’état in Brazil(1964), Bolivia(1964), and Argentina(1966).  It provided economic and military assistance to governments that were participating in the US counterinsurgency strategy in Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador, and Uruguay (Regalado 2007:143).

       The Latin American dictatorships of the period followed an approach first adopted in Cuba during the 1930s with Batista. They were based on the development of the military as an institution and the strengthening of its capacity to control the population through repression.  They were different from “strong-arm or caudillista dictatorships” (Regalado 2007:143) that had been the norm to the 1960s, which were characterized by personal rather than institutional control.  The new type of institutional military dictatorship was more able to carry out repression, and violations of human rights became systematic and widespread.  “The repression unleashed by these dictatorships was not limited to the annihilation of revolutionary organizations that developed armed struggle, but in fact extended to the destruction of left-wing political parties and social organizations, and in many cases, also center and right-wing formations.  This is understandable because the aim was not only to banish the ‘threat of communism,’ but also to use such dictatorships to wipe out the remains of developmentalism and its political expression, populism”  (Regalado 2007:144).

     Like the Johnson administration, the Nixon administration supported the institutional military dictatorships and, when necessary, intervened to establish them.  “In response to the rise in nationalist and revolutionary currents in Latin America, the policy of the Nixon administration was to destabilize and overthrow governments that it considered a threat to the‘national interest’ of the United States, and to install new dictatorships, such as the governments resulting from the coup d’état that overthrew General Juan José Torres in Bolivia (August 1971); the in-house coup of Juan María Bordaberry in Uruguay (June 1973); and, in particular, the coup d’état in Chile on September 11, 1973, against Salvador Allende’s constitutional government”(Regalado 2007:147).

       US support for institutional military dictatorships was integral to the neocolonial world-system.  The structures of the core-peripheral relation promoted the underdevelopment of Latin America, thus generating popular anti-imperialist movements, which could lead to a national project of autonomous development designed to break the neocolonial core-peripheral relation.  Repression was necessary to preserve the neocolonial system. 
 

References

Regalado, Roberto.  2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment,
colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford


 

     In relation to Latin America, alongside the development of counterinsurgency as a primary strategy (see “Kennedy and the Third World” 9/25/2013), a secondary strategy of the Kennedy administration was economic reform of the neocolonial system.  “The fall of Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela and Fulgencio Batista in Cuba—precisely two of the nations where the US neocolonial model had been most advanced—called into question the capacity of the Latin American oligarchy to continue to guarantee control of the region.  Its nearly feudal mechanisms of exploitation tended to reduce the expansion of the market, and the extraordinary reactionary character of its ideology as well as its inclination to the most brutal and generalized repression, were destabilizing factors of the system and a problem for the foreign policy that Kennedy intended to project” (Arboleya 2008:156).  

      Kennedy therefore called for social changes, including structural reforms in land tenancy and reforms in the distribution of wealth. Kennedy’s policy thus involved an abandonment of the traditional landowning oligarchy that up to then had been considered as sustainer and protector of the neocolonial system.  Proclaiming a “revolution of the middle class,” the Kennedy strategy was to support the reformist sector of the national bourgeoisie, which up to that point had confronted the powerful obstacle of the traditional oligarchy.  The Alliance for Progress committed twenty billion dollars over a decade for concrete projects for the development of this reformist sector, which also would have the consequence of establishing new possibilities for US investment (Arboleya 2008:156-57). 
 
      The proposed reforms in Latin America did not represent fundamental structural changes that would involve a transition from a neocolonial system to an alternative more just and democratic world-system.  They were proposed reforms of the neocolonial system.  “The modernization that Kennedy proposed for Latin America was not based on the development of an independent national bourgeoisie as an alternative to the traditional oligarchy.  Rather, it was based on producing a ‘new class’ that, more than related to, would form a part of the US transnational corporations and would share their interests. In short, it aspired to consolidate US neocolonialism in the region, through the articulation of a new relation of dependency, which would require a national class organically tied to foreign capital” (Arboleya 2008:157).

     The proposed economic reforms of the neocolonial system did not succeed,  and it was not possible for them to succeed.  The Kennedy plan encountered political opposition from those sectors of US capital historically tied to the traditional oligarchy in Latin America.  In addition, the national bourgeoisie did not have sufficient economic and political strength to play the role assigned to it by the plan.  There was in this regard a fundamental contradiction: the national bourgeoisie would, according to the plan, transform itself into a class economically dependent on foreign capital, which therefore would render it unable to lead the nation in a project of independent economic development. Under these conditions, the national bourgeoisie would not be able to mobilize the popular support needed to challenge the control of the oligarchy and thus would be incapable of playing the political role that it was supposed to play.  The national bourgeoisie would become increasingly discredited by nationalist popular sectors, which would search for more revolutionary approaches and more independent approaches to national development (Arboleya 2008:157).

       The failure of the Alliance for Progress suggests the impossibility of
reforming the neocolonial system in a form that promotes US interests, with the intention of establishing political stability.  As long as the core-peripheral structures that promote US economic and financial penetration remain, the neocolonized nation will not be able to develop, and the needs of the people will not be met. Thus there will remain the conditions for popular mobilization in opposition to the system, in other words, for political instability.  The establishment of political stability requires the economic and cultural development of the nation, impossible under the structures of the core-peripheral relation. What is required is an autonomous national project for economic and cultural development, which could be put into place when a popular movement takes control of the government and seeks to govern in a form that represents the interest of the various popular sectors.  Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have seen the realization of this possibility.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Kennedy, Alliance for Progress


 

     John F. Kennedy became President of the United States at a time when the process of the decolonization of the European colonies in Asia and Africa was well underway.  Decolonization established new possibilities for the United States, because it could open the ex-colonies to greater U.S. economic and financial penetration.  But decolonization also established for the United States a situation of insecurity, in that there was now the possibility that the newly independent nations could incorporate themselves into the socialist bloc or could emerge with anti-imperialist and/or socialist governments.  
 
     The Non-Aligned Movement was formed by the most radical Third World leaders who sought to break with the neo-colonial relation.  An organization of newly independent governments, the Non-Aligned Movement was anti-imperialist, but it did not wish to be incorporated into the socialist bloc.  It sought to break dependency with the major capitalist powers and to avoid dependency on the nations of the socialist bloc.  To the extent that these radical Third World movements were socialist, they were developing in theory and practice a redefinition of socialism.  But such nuances were not appreciated by the Kennedy administration, which considered newly independent Third World nations to be “vulnerable to communist influence” and viewed the national liberation movements as “extensions of Soviet power in the world” (Arboleya 2008:151-52).

     Accordingly, the foreign policy of the Kennedy administration gave greater emphasis to the Third World as the arena of the Cold War conflict between the superpowers, developing a perspective that viewed the national liberation movements and newly independent nationalist governments as expressions of communism and Soviet influence, downplaying their nationalist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist character (Arboleya 2008:151).

     The US strategy toward the Third World during the Kennedy administration included the development of a US capacity for counterinsurgency, involving armed confrontation with the revolutionary movements of the Third World.  The Special Forces (“Green Berets”) were developed in order to give the armed forces the capacity for a flexible response in any place or circumstance in the world.  In addition, the CIA became involved in training military and para-military groups in the neocolonies of the Third World, developing techniques that came to be known as dirty wars.  "Since 1954, the CIA was given the task of strengthening security corps in various parts of the world, but beginning with the Kennedy administration, this mission would have greater importance and greater consequences.  Through the so-called Program of Public Security, the United States trained more than a million security personnel of other nations, and this development is tied with the emergence of the 'death squads,' with the indiscriminate application of the torture of political prisoners, the assassination and disappearance of alleged insurrectionists, and the dissemination of terror among the civil populations in the zones of conflict" (Arboleya 2008:154-55).  Believing that the United States and its allies in the neocolonies were confronted with a supposed “international communist conspiracy,” and assuming that the insurgent revolutionaries were uncivilized and lacking in ethical norms of conduct, the Kennedy administration excused any excess on the part of the counterinsurgents, including the most brutal forms of behavior (Arboleya 2008:153-55).

       The distorted and misleading characterization of the Third World movements as well as the use of all necessary means to preserve and protect the neocolonial system, including the systemic use of barbarous techniques and practices, are legacies of US foreign policy that continue to our time.  It was the dark side of Camelot.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cold War, counterinsurgency, Special Forces, Green Berets, Non-Aligned Movement, nonalignment


 

      Franklin Roosevelt’s vision of a neocolonial world system with US hegemony and cooperation among the global powers, including the Soviet Union, was cast aside by the ideological construction of the Cold War, which defined communism as evil and expansionist, requiring the defense of democracy through a permanent military preparedness. 

     A liberal-conservative consensus emerged.  There was wide agreement on the militarist application of Keynesian economic principles, facilitating the growth of the economy and the capacity for military intervention anywhere in the world.  “Conservatives as well as liberals ended up supporting this approach, which reduced the differences between the two to the dimension and the quality of theintervention of the state in the economy, with neither side rejecting its
tax collector-investor function in the production of arms” (Arboleya 2008:133).  And there was consensus based on Cold War ideological premises.  “In foreign policy, the distance between liberals and conservatives was reduced to the point of converting Roosevelt into the last traditional liberal that occupied the White House.  As liberalism moved toward militant anti-communism in the context of the Cold War, liberalism ceased to be an alternative ideological current for foreign policy, expressed on the basis of a different political agenda.  Militarism united both currents, and although differences persisted between conservatives and liberals in regard to the procedures to be utilized, nearly no one questioned the strategic importance of US expansionism. Isolationism became obsolete during the Second World War.  The United States no longer was separated from the rest of the world by the ocean or by anything.  Like the dollar, its soldiers appeared everywhere" (Arboleya 2008:138).   
 
     Utilizing the Cold War ideological construction, US presidents Harry Truman (1945-53) and Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1960) provided economic and military support to Latin American governments that utilized repressive tactics against communist and socialist parties as well as progressive organizations.  Eisenhower’s “Good Partner” policy included CIA support for a counterrevolutionary force in Guatemala in 1954 in opposition to the government of Jacobo Árbenz, a democratically elected president who had nationalized some of the properties of the United Fruit Co.  “In addition to the overthrow of Árbenz
and his replacement with the Carlos Castillo Armas dictatorship (1954-57), the Good Partner policy also stimulated the fall of the governments of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil (1954); Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina (1955); and Federico Chaves in Paraguay, which led to Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship (1956-89).  At the same time, Eisenhower’s policies contributed to undermining the thrust of the Bolivian revolution in the governments of Victor Paz Estenssoro (1952-56) and Hernán Siles Zuazo (1956-60).  Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship in Haiti also arose in this period” (Regalado 2007:122).

     The Cold War was the ideological pillar of imperialism, facilitating US
economic and financial penetration of Latin America and the Third World and ensuring the consolidation of the United States as the hegemonic power of the neocolonial world-system.

       Thus, we see that immediately following the Second World War, pushed by the economic interests of arms industries, political leaders created a Cold War ideology that provided justification for a permanent war economy.  But the Cold War ideology distorted history in fundamental ways: the Soviet Union was not a threat, and it was less evil than portrayed; the nations of the Third World were not turning to communism, but were seeking independence from colonialism and neocolonialism; and the nation itself was less democratic than it pretended.   The Cold War ideological distortions became widely accepted beliefs not because they were true or right, but because they served powerful particular interests.  

     The ideological distortions of the Cold War would be exposed in the 1960s by the African-American movement and the student anti-war movement, bringing to an end the post-war consensus.  We will be discussing these movements and their anti-imperialism in future posts.


 References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Regalado, Roberto.  2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cold War, militarization, Eisenhower, Truman


 

      As World War II came to a close, Franklin Roosevelt had conceived of a post-war “new order” in which the United States would have hegemony, but in which there would be a balance of power and cooperation among the great powers, a vision that later was represented in the structures of the United Nations.  He saw the new world order as a neocolonial system, and he therefore advocated the dismantling of the colonial empires of the European powers.  He believed that political and social stability in the world was a fundamental prerequisite for the growth of U.S.commerce.  He believed in the persuasive power of capitalism, and he therefore viewed the Soviet Union as a market to be conquered, and he expressed opposition to the permanent stationing of US troops in Europe (Arboleya 2008:113, 135).

     But Roosevelt died before the war ended, and the implementation his vision was complicated by: the ruin of Europe; the high levels of unemployment and difficulties in the reinsertion of soldiers in the post-war economy; and the characteristics of the war industries, including their integral role in the US economy at the end of the war (Arboleya 2008:132).  
 
      Thus there emerged an alternative idea that proposed the expansion of the war industry rather than its reconversion.  “Winston Churchill was the first to speak of a world divided by an Iron Curtain, but the concepts that served the theoretical base of the Cold War were proposed by George Frost Kennan, a lower rank US diplomat stationed in Moscow, who developed the thesis that lasting peace with the Soviets was impossible, for which reason it was indispensable to strengthen US military power in order that it would serve as the ‘counterweight to expansionist tendencies,’ whose cultural origins go back to the Russian Empires" (Arboleya 2008:133).

      In reality, rather than expansionist, Soviet foreign policy sought to construct a cordon of security around its territory and to peacefully co-exist with the capitalist powers, a policy that created tensions in Soviet relations with the anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial revolutions in the Third World during the period 1945 to 1989.  However, the extraordinary success of the Kennan thesis, in spite of its mischaracterization of Soviet foreign policy, can be explained by the fact that it served the interests of the arms industries and functioned to justify and legitimate an arms race (Arboleya 2008:133-34). 
 
      Thus militarism came to dominate the US political system.  “In a kind of militarist application of Keynesian theory, defense expenses replaced public spending as the principle driving force of the economy and the scientific development of the country” (Arboleya 2008:133).  Arms production became integral to the economy.  “Arms capital merged with other branches of the economy and served the expansion of the large conglomerates and transnational companies of the country.  Such was the warning of President Eisenhower, that a military-industrial complex had been consolidated” (Arboleya 2008:134).

      In a similar vein, U.S. sociologist C. Wright Mills published in 1956 a classic work maintaining that there had developed in the United States a “power elite” composed of the top two or three executives of the largest 100 corporations, the highest fifty members of the executive branch of the federal government, and the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Most of the members of the power elite were born into the upper class, although one-third of its members were recruited from the upper middle class through a process of selection that included socialization into its values.  The power elite made the decisions of great consequence for the nation, and members of Congress as well as educational and religious leaders and the mass media had to adjust to the direction established by the elite.  It was, for Mills, an economic, military, and political elite (Mills 1956).

      The militarism of US society shaped the cultural and ideological formation of the people.  “Militarism required US policy to be based on the fabrication of a climate of fear and insecurity, because this was required for the arms market. Communism was presented as a phantasmagoric force that intended the domination of the world”  (Arboleya 2008:134). 
 
      Anti-communism was an enormously powerful ideological tool, enabling the United States to present a distorted image of Third World anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements as manifestations of the spreading menace of communism, thus justifying imperialist interventions throughout the world.  Interventions in defense of neocolonial  interests were presented as the defense of democracy, and this Orwellian inversion was widely accepted by the people.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Mills, C. Wright.  1956.  The Power Elite.  New York: Oxford University Press.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cold War, militarization, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, power elite, C. Wright Mills


 

     As early as 1919, the British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) had argued for strong state intervention in the economy.  In the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929, Keynes argued that the principal cause of the crisis was a collapse in investment, and that state spending would give a boost to the economy and to employment.  Higher wages and full employment are desirable, he argued, because they increase consumption and thus strengthen the market.  National economic policy should be orientated above all toward attaining full employment and distributing income equitably throughout the society (Toussaint 1999:179-80).

     Assuming the presidency at the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-45) turned to Keynes’ prescriptions of strong state intervention to raise wages, reduce unemployment, and promote more equitable distribution of income (Toussaint 1999:171-72, 180).  This represented a significant change in the domestic policy of the United States.  US historian Howard Zinn (2005:392-96 & 401-3) has interpreted New Deal policies as state action to protect to some degree the social and economic rights of the people, with the principal intention of promoting political stability.  In a similar vein, Arboleya writes that “the goal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was to save capitalism, but he had the vision and the sensibility to understand that this would lie in feeding the hungry, creating sources of work, and freeing the people from the misery in which they found themselves” (Arboleya 2008:104). “Roosevelt had the merit of understanding that the stability of the North American system was unsustainable under the presence of the inequalities and tensions resulting from the desperation of millions of persons.  He thus decided . . . to not leave them at the mercy of the market, which represented a significant change in North American political life” (Arboleya 2008:103).

      During Roosevelt’s administration, domestic political factors worked against the continuation of the military interventions in Latin America that had been central to U.S. policy since 1903 (see “US Imperialism 1903-32” 9/18/2013).  Keynesian economic policies made necessary a more humanistic discourse, placing ideological constraints on the capacity of the government to act aggressively in other lands.  Moreover, there had emerged a renewal of isolationist tendencies and a rejection of armed interventions, expressed in new laws on neutrality that limited the possible participation of the United States in future armed conflicts; armed interventions in Latin America came to be viewed as unconstitutional.  At the same time, there had emerged in Latin America during the 1920s an anti-imperialist popular movement, which had been able to develop popular nationalist consciousness in opposition to US interventions, requiring even elite sectors in alliance with the United States to adopt a nationalist rhetoric.  Such opposition to interventionism both nationally and internationally required the United States to adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy (Arboleya 2008:104).

      So the United States turned to a “Good Neighbor” policy of non-intervention, seeking to pursue its imperialist goals through means other
than direct military intervention.  The strategy was to strengthen the military in the Latin American nation, in order that it could play a more active role in maintaining social control.  In some cases, this involved supporting military dictatorships that had been established through previous interventions during the period 1898-1926.  In others cases, it involved establishing military dictatorships through diplomatic maneuvering and economic pressure.  In still other cases, the system worked with constitutional and even progressive governments in power.  
 
      In addition, it was necessary to give more economic space to the figurehead bourgeoisie, so that this class would have a stronger commitment to the neocolonial system and a greater capacity to participate in the maintenance of social control (see “Neocolonialism in Cuba and Latin America” 9/12/2013).  
 
      These new policies represented the pursuit of an imperialist agenda through alternative means, and as such they signified a more advanced and sophisticated form of neocolonialism, under which US corporations continued to  control the labor, raw materials, the financial and productive structures, and the markets of the neocolony.  The Good Neighbor policy of the New Deal does not represent the abandonment of imperialist goals, but the adaptation of imperialist policies to new economic, ideological, and political conditions (Arboleya 2008:105-7; Regalado 2007:118).

     From the Third World perspective, even the most progressive US administration was imperialist.  It did not engage in direct military intervention, but it intervened indirectly in pursuit of its imperialist goals.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Regalado, Roberto.  2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.

Toussaint, Eric. 1999.  Your Money or Your Life:  The Tyranny of Global Finance.  Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.

Zinn, Howard. 2005.  A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Harper Perennial Modern
Classics.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, New Deal, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Keynes, Keynesianism


 

     The development of US imperialist policy took a significant step forward during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09). Although the United  States had intervened in Cuba in 1898 in response to the challenge to its interests posed by the Cuban revolutionary war of independence, non-intervention continued to be the norm that guided US foreign policy.  But “Rooseveltbroke with this tradition and promoted interventionism without reserve”(Arboleya 2008:73).  As the Cuban scholar Roberto Regalado has written:  “During Roosevelt’s term in office, Washington sponsored the forcible secession of Panama (1903), enabling it to refuse to recognize the Columbian Congress’s rejection of the proposal to construct the Panama Canal; intervened militarily in the Dominican Republic (1904), which led to control over that country’s customs policy (1905-12); occupied Cuba for the second time (1906-09); sent in the marines in order to obtain political dividends in the wars that broke out between Guatemala and El Salvador (1906) and between Honduras and Nicaragua (1907); and applied interventionist policies that led to the resignation of President Santos Zelaya in Nicaragua (1909)"  (Regalado 2007:116-17).

     The imperialist policies of Theodore Roosevelt continued under his successor, William Howard Taft (1909-13).  Taft adopted different rhetoric, replacing Roosevelt’s “big stick” with “dollar diplomacy,” thus promoting a policy of facilitating US economic and financial  penetration through the buying of politicians in the neocolony (Arboleya 2008:74-75).  But the military interventions and aggressive policy continued, with
military interventions in Honduras and Nicaragua and threats designed to hinder the Mexican Revolution (Regalado 2007:117).

     The foreign policy of Woodrow Wilson “was equally expansionist in relation to the Caribbean and Central America, and he developed a policy as interventionist as his predecessors” (Arboleya 2008:82). Although he was critical of “dollar diplomacy” due to its ethical implications, he expressed a similar view when he affirmed that dollars “ought to be reserved for the ministers of the state, even if the sovereignty of the reluctant nation is mistreated in the process” (quoted in Arboleya 2008:82).  In addition, military interventions continued, consistent with the policies of Roosevelt and Taft.  Between 1913 and 1921, under the pretext of “promoting democracy” and “stopping German intervention,” the US government interfered in Mexican international affairs, occupied Haiti (1915-34) and the Dominican Republic (1916-24), intervened in Panama (1918), and supported coups d’état and dictatorships  in Central and South America (Regalado 2007:117).

     Wilson, however, developed a more advanced ideological formulation of imperialism.  Roosevelt and Taft had proclaimed imperialist policies to be consistent with the values of democracy and freedom, but in the implementation of the policy, the emphasis was on the application of military force (the “big stick”) and economic pressure (“dollar diplomacy”).  But Wilson sought to establish a new international order on a foundation of US political values, thus facilitating greater global acceptance of US intervention and economic penetration and reducing the need for the application of force and pressure.  As Arboleya has written, Wilson believed that US national interests would be served best by “the establishment of an international order that would universalize North American political values.  A mixture of divine mission, democratic crusade, and expansionist will constituted the ingredients of this international project, which in reality was no more than a modernized version of ‘manifest destiny’” (2008:82).

     However, national and international conditions had not yet arrived at a point that would enable the implementation of the Wilsonian vision. Following World War I, Wilson encountered opposition from Britain and France, who objected to those components of Wilson’s policy that would involve a reduction of their spheres of influence. The United States was not yet able to impose international rules of conduct on the nations of Western Europe.  At the same time, Wilson’s goals for the post-war era also encountered opposition in the United States.  US capitalism and political culture had not yet developed sufficiently, and important sectors of the capitalist class were not convinced that the “new world order” proposed by Wilson would provide sufficient guarantees for the protection of their capital.  The US government therefore did not enter the League of Nations that had been promoted by Wilson (Arboleya 2008:82-86).

     The presidential administrations of Warren Harding (1921-23), Calvin Coolidge (1923-29), and Herbert Hoover (1929-33) continued US imperialist policies toward Latin America, supporting military dictatorships in order to constrain popular struggles in opposition to the neocolonial system, and initiating new interventions in Panama, Honduras, and Nicaragua  (Regalado 2007:118).

     We are beginning to see a phenomenon that is emphasized in the Third World perspective: the continuity of US foreign policy during the twentieth century, regardless of shifts in rhetoric or changes in political party, as an interventionist imperialist policy, in violation of the internationally accepted principle of the sovereignty of all nations.


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Regalado, Roberto. 2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.

Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson


 

     With the concentration of industry and the emergence of a few large companies that controlled the market in several key industries (see "Lenin on Imperialism” 9/10/2103), productive capacity in the United States reached a level that overextended the capacity of its domestic market to consume products.  This could give rise to a surplus of goods and a fall of prices.  Periodic crises of overproduction had been a pattern of capitalism, but the problem was deepened by the arrival of the system to large-scale and concentrated production.  Therefore, in order to maintain or increase level of profits, US companies would have to find new markets for their products beyond the frontiers of the United States.  
 
      In the 1890s, there was consciousness of the need for new markets among US producers, as a result of the economic crisis of 1892-93, which was widely interpreted as having been caused by overproduction.  This situation gave rise to the formulation of a new expansionist foreign policy by the US government.  The new foreign policy was called “imperialism” by its promoters.  The basic goal was to find new markets outside the United States for US manufactured and agricultural products.  Strategies for the attainment of this goal were proposed by the platform of the Republican Party in 1896.  They included: the expansion of the army and the establishment of military bases abroad; control of Hawaii and the purchase of the Danish Virgin Islands; support of Cubans in their war of liberation from Spanish colonial rule; and the construction of a canal across Nicaragua to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  Control of the Caribbean and the Far East were considered central, and thus the Philippines, Hawaii, and Cuba were viewed as having high strategic value as locations for US military bases.  The election of William McKinley in 1896 was a political victory for the promoters of the new imperialist policy (Arboleya 2008:35-37).

      The first practical implementation of the new expansionist policy was US intervention in Cuba in 1898, launching what US historians have called the Spanish-American War, Cubans call the Cuban-Hispanic-American War, and Lenin considered the first imperialist war.  The war resulted in Spain ceding to the United States the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico and the Pacific Islands of the Philippines and Guam (Arboleya 2008:37, 40).

      With the acquisition of these territories, the United States was becoming a colonial power like those of Western Europe.  However, in justifying the expansionist policy to the people of the United  States, the government obscured its colonial character and sought to present the policy as fulfilling a civilizing mission, consistent with the values of democracy, liberty and justice.  The discourse of the political elite was effective in convincing the people that the expansionist policies were defending freedom and were the fulfillment of a “new manifest destiny,” in contrast to the decadent European empires (Arboleya 2008:41-42).


Bibliography

 Arboleya, Jesús. 2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective


 

     Drawing upon the previous three posts (“Neocolonialism in Africa and Asia” 9/11/2013; “Neocolonialism in Cuba and Latin America” 9/12/2013; “The Neocolonial World System” 9/13/2013), let us summarize the general characteristics of neo-colonialism.

     The general characteristics of neocolonialism are: a core-peripheral economic relation that in essence is a continuation of the economic relation imposed by conquest and force during the colonial era; rule by large and concentrated transnational corporations, transnational banks, and international financial agencies, which control the economic and financial institutions of the neocolony; rule through a figurehead bourgeoisie that inserts itself into the structures of economic penetration and exploitation, conforming to the interests of international capital and benefitting itself at the expense of the majority of people in the nation; social control by the military of the neocolonial state, with necessary training and arms coming from the United States or other core states; ideological penetration to justify the existing political-economic system; and the use of military force directly by the United States and/or other core states when popular resistance provokes political and social instability.  When it functions, the neocolonial system gives the appearance of independence to the neocolony, and the function of ideology is to reinforce this image in order to legitimate the world-system.  
 
      Since the world-system is not organized to protect the sovereignty of the nations nor the human needs of their peoples, neocolonies everywhere are characterized by popular anti-neocolonial movements, and they invariably have periods of instability.  Such instability is a symptom of a fundamental fact: the neocolonial world-system contradicts human rights and democratic values, and for this reason, among others, it is not sustainable in the long run.

     In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the world-system encountered much ideological and popular resistance in all regions of the world.  However, after 1980, with the imposition of the neoliberal project, the core powers were able to move toward the consolidation of the global neocolonial system, taking significant steps on economic, financial, and ideological fronts.  But the system was never fully consolidated, and since 1995, there has occurred a renewal of the popular movements in the Third World, weakening the political and ideological structures of neocolonial domination and establishing an economic, financial, and social alternative.  This formulation of a Third World alternative in theory and practice is occurring at the present time, and it is occurring precisely at a moment when the world-system confronts a profound and general crisis, as a consequence of its internal contradictions and its incompatibility with the ecological needs of the earth.  
 
     Thus there is at the present time a fundamental political conflict between the global North and the global South.  The global powers seek to preserve the neocolonial structures that maintain for the present an unsustainable world-system, while the peoples of the Third World are developing a global anti-neocolonial revolutionary movement.  These issues will be discussed further in future posts.


Bibliography

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial