Posted September 25, 2013

     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

Posted September 26, 2013

     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, according to the plan, would 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, the conditions for popular mobilization in opposition to the system, in other words, for political instability, will remain.  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

Posted September 27, 2013

       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


 

Posted September 30, 2013

     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

Posted October 1, 2013

     Jimmy Carter, US President from 1977 to 1981, is highly respected in Latin America.  Driven by a sincere Christian faith, Carter believes that the United States ought to respect human rights in the conduct of its foreign policy.  His administration took two important steps that symbolized respect for the autonomy of Latin American governments: negotiating control of the Panama Canal by the government of Panama; and the establishment of limited diplomatic relations with Cuba, through the agreement for a Cuban Interest Section in Washington and a US Interest Section in Havana.  

       But Carter’s moral evaluation of US policy was limited in scope.  It did not question the fundamental structures of the neocolonial world-system that promote underdevelopment and poverty in vast regions of the world.  Carter wanted to respect human rights, but he did not discern that the violation of human rights was a necessary component of the core-peripheral relation between the United States and the Third World. The functionality of repression in the preservation of the neocolonial world-system placed practical constraints on the implementation of Carter’s human rights policy. 
 
       Like Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter envisioned a softer and more humane form of imperialism.  He accepted as given that the United States policy would continue to promote the economic and financial penetration of US corporations and financial institutions, and that the neocolonial world-system should be preserved. He was seeking moral conduct in the context of immoral social structures.

      Carter remains, however, a respected figure, in spite of the limitations of his foreign policy.  In part, this is a consequence of his conduct since his presidency.  In 1982, he formed the Carter Center, an organization dedicated to human rights, conflict resolution, and the promotion of democracy. The Carter Center has monitored elections in many nations.  In 2013, Carter confirmed the legitimacy of the presidential elections in Venezuela, noting that their electoral procedures are the best in the world, thus undermining the destabilizing strategy of the opposition.  
 
      Carter visited Cuba in 2002.  He was very well-received by the Cuban people and the Cuban government.  The visit included an interesting and mutually-respectful interchange at the University of Havana, during which a number of Cubans defended the Cuban political system and criticized the model of representative democracy that Carter had assumed is the only possible form of democracy.  Carter also used the occasion of his visit to Cuba to call upon the United States to end its long-standing economic blockade of the island.

       Jimmy Carter: A good and decent man who could not escape the structures of the neocolonial world-system.


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, Jimmy Carter


 
 

Posted October 2, 2013

     Alongside the development and implementation of imperialist policies (see posts from 9/19/2013 to 9/27/2013), the United States government pursued a policy of Pan-Americanism, seeking to establish an institutionalized Inter-American economic and political system under its control.  
 
      During the presidency of Benjamin Harrison (1889-93), Secretary of State James Blaine proposed a “Pan-American system.” It was the start of a long-term strategy “to convert the Latin American government and peoples into co-participants in the domination exercised over them”  (Regalado 2007:123).   From 1889 to 1942, twelve Inter-American meetings were convened in pursuit of the objective of establishing an international Inter-American System under US control.  

      In the Inter-American conferences of 1889 to 1942, there was considerable resistance from Latin American nations to the Pan-American project, and therefore little progress was made toward its implementation.  In the 1923 conference in Santiago de Chile, the Latin American governments proposed a multilateral guarantee of the independence of all of the states of the region, which the United States refused to accept.  In 1928 in Havana, the Latin American nations rejected a proposal by the United States to institutionalize the right to intervention.  The 1933 conference in Montevideo accepted an Argentinean proposal for a non-aggression treaty.  In 1936 in Buenos Aires, the United States was unable to obtain conference support for a proposal to increase the powers of the Pan-American organization.  And in 1938 in Lima, a US proposal for creating an Inter-American consultative committee was rejected (Regalado 2007:123-26).

     With the arrival of the United States to a position of hegemonic maturity at the conclusion of World War II, the United States was able to establish the Pan-American institutionalization of neocolonialism.  At the 1945 conference in Mexico, “the Latin American countries—with the exception of Argentina, which was not invited—supported the United States in its efforts to build the postwar world order.  In this meeting, steps were taken toward the institutionalization of the Inter-American system” (Regalado 2007:126).  In 1948, the Organization of American States (OAS) was created.  In 1954, “OAS declared that communist activity constitutes an intervention in the internal affairs of the Americas and affirmed that the installation of a communist regime in any state in the Western Hemisphere would imply a threat to the system, which would require an advisory meeting to adopt measures”(Regalado 2007:127).  
 
      Although the Organization of American States expelled socialist Cuba in 1961, for the most part OAS was not highly effective as an instrument of neocolonial domination from 1948 to 1980.   During this period, the neocolonial system was developed, not through the institutionalized cooperation of Latin American states in OAS, but through unilateral action by the United States.   After 1980, with a more aggressive pursuit by the United States of its imperialist objectives, OAS has been ignored as a structure for the implementation of US foreign policy.

      It might appear that, as an organization of all American states, OAS has the possibility to become a forum for a Latin American and Caribbean challenge to US imperialism and neocolonial domination.  But OAS has never functioned in this way.  When a new challenge to US imperialism emerged in the Americas at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the neocolonized nations formed (in 2011) a separate organization, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC for its initials in Spanish), an organization that includes Cuba and excludes the United States and Canada. 

     Pan-Americanism, then, is the institutionalization of the cooperation of the neocolonized nations of Latin America and the Caribbean in the US imperialist project of neocolonial domination.  With growing strength of the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean through union and integration since 2004, and with the productive and commercial decline of the United States since the 1970s, Pan-Americanism is no longer a viable project.


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, Pan-American, Organization of American States, OAS

Posted October 3, 2013

     One of the tendencies of the modern world system is the rise and relative decline of hegemonic core nations.  A hegemonic nation has a clear advantage over other core nations in terms of economic productivity, levels of technology and capital, and military strength.  But as hegemonic nations acquire the highest wages and levels of consumption, their efficiency and productivity is undermined, placing them at a competitive disadvantage relative to other core nations, and their position tends be further eroded by excessive military spending. These factors enable other core nations to close the gap, and there thus occurs a relative decline of the hegemonic nation (Shannon 1996:136-40).  

     Wallerstein considers the United States to be the third hegemonic core nation in the history of the world-system, and he believes that its relative decline began in the period of 1968 to 1973.  Thus, coinciding with the deep structural crisis of the world-system (1973-present), the United States has experienced an economic and financial decline, relative to other core nations (Wallerstein 2000).

     During the 1970s, the spectacular ascent of the United States that had begun in the eighteenth century came to an end.  The decade was characterized by a lower level of economic growth, higher unemployment, high inflation, increasing government debt, high corporate debt, high consumer debt, and balance of payments deficits. The deterioration of US hegemony is evident in key economic indicators: in 1950, the US economy accounted for 20% of world commerce and 40% of world Gross Domestic Product, whereas in 1980 it accounted for 11% of world commerce and 21.5% of the world GDP. During this time, the economies of the European Union and Japan were dynamic, and they were able to close considerably the gap between themselves and the United States.  In addition, the United States lost control of the international monetary system, when President Nixon was obligated to suspend unilaterally the backing of the US dollar with gold reserves (Cobarrubia 2006:187-89).

     In the context of the relative decline of the United States during the 1970s, and taking advantage of the general “malaise” and the feeling of losing control among the people of the United States as well as the taking of hostages at the US embassy in Iran in 1979, Ronald Reagan was able to win the presidential elections of 1980 with an ultra-conservative discourse.  Barry Goldwater had offered a similar right-wing message as the Republican Party presidential candidate in 1964, but he was defeated by Lyndon Johnson in one of the most lopsided presidential elections in US history.  But the ultra-conservative message had more appeal in 1980, given that the nation had entered into a spiral of decline.  
 
     The turn to the Right provided a clearer sense of national direction and purpose, but the measures adopted under the revitalized conservative movement functioned to accelerate the national decline and to deepen the global crisis.  The ultra-conservative response did not address the structural causes of the decline, and it strengthened some of the tendencies that were factors in weakening the US position, such as high military expenditures and high levels of government and consumer debt.

       We will examine the impact of the turn to the Right on imperialist policies in subsequent posts.


References

Cobarrubia, Gómez, Faustino.  2006. “Economía de los Estados Unidos: Una retrospectiva de las últimas cuatro décadas” in  Libre Comercio y subdesarrollo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Shannon, Thomas Richard.  1996.  An Introduction to the World-System Perspective, 2nd ed.  Boulder:  Westview Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2000.  “The Three Instances of Hegemony in the History of the Capitalist World-Economy” in Immanuel Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein (New York: The New Press), Pp. 253-63.[Originally published in International Journal of Comparative Sociology XXIV:1-2 (January-April 1983), Pp. 100-8).


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, cycles of hegemony, the Right, American decline

Posted October 4, 2013

     The administration of Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) eliminated the Keynesian policies that were established during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Faustino Cobarrubia of the Center for the Study of the World Economy in Cuba has identified three pillars of Reaganomics: simultaneous cuts in taxes and government spending (except for military expenditures); reduction of government regulation and reduction of the state bureaucracy; and reduction of inflation through control of the monetary supply.  Cobarrubia believes that the second and third pillars had long been proposed by the conservative movement in the United States, and thus Reaganomics can be understood as the end of a long road rather than a rupture with tradition.  However, he notes that the combination of reducing taxes and increasing military expenditures broke with the long-standing calls for fiscal responsibility of the conservative movement (2006:190).

      Although Reaganomics controlled inflation, it led to an enormous increase in government debt, principally as a result of the combination of tax reductions and increased military spending.  US citizens had excessive debt and insufficient savings, so the debt was financed through loans from: Arab countries that were oil-exporting countries, principally Saudi Arabia; West Germany; and most importantly, Japan. Cobarrubia observes: “Japan supplanted the United States as the dominant creditor nation and financial power.  While the Japanese economy became the principal exporter of capital in the world, the US economy became in 1985 a net debtor for the first time since 1914. Never before in the history of international finances has there been such a decisive change in a so short a period of time.  In less than five years, the richest country in the world had reversed a tendency of a century, becoming the most indebted nation in the world” (2006:191).

      The Reagan Administration disdained international organizations, and accordingly, it ignored the Organization of American States, established in 1948 with the intention of institutionalizing the cooperation of Latin American and Caribbean states with the structures of neocolonial domination (see “Pan-Americanism and OAS” 10-2-2013). The Reagan Administration violated an important principle of neocolonial domination, namely, the satisfaction of the interests of the figurehead bourgeoisie (see “Neocolonialism in Cuba and Latin America” 9/12/2013).

     The unilateralism of US foreign policy after 1980 is illustrated by the US response to the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in 1979.  The measures adopted by the Sandinista government were not radical: it confined nationalization to those properties of owners who had fled the country after 1979; it did not join the socialist bloc, but merely diversified its economic and diplomatic relations to include the West, the socialist bloc, and the Third World; and its 1984 Constitution established structures of representative democracy, and not structures of popular democracy, as had been developed in Cuba.  Nevertheless, the United States in the 1980s embarked on a campaign to destabilize the Sandinista government.  In 1981, it ended economic relations with the government of Nicaragua and began to provide economic and military assistance to a counterrevolutionary guerrilla army, most of which were stationed in Honduras along the Nicaraguan border (Booth and Walker 1993:140-46).

     In El Salvador, the United States government gave $6 billion in economic and military assistance to the government during the civil war.  The government represented the interests of the coffee oligarchy, and it was seeking to maintain itself before the onslaught of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional.  Established in 1980, the FMLN was formed by five groups that had taken to armed struggle in the aftermath of government repression of popular protest, and it was allied with a federation of progressive and leftist political and social organizations, the Frente Democrático Revolucionario (FDR).  During the 1980s, the FMLN constituted the de facto government in many rural communities in the eastern region of the country, and it operated clandestinely in the cities.  Ultimately, a peace accord was signed in 1992, recognizing the FMLN as a legal political party.  Some 70,000 Salvadorans had died in the conflict, and one in six had fled the country (Harnecker 1998:32-33, 42-43; Prieto 2009:36-43; Regalado 2008:143-44, 56-57).  
 
      The 1980s was a period in which politics was driven by uncertainty and fear.  The United States had begun its fall from hegemony, the world-system was beginning to experience the first signs of deep structural crisis, and the peoples of the Third World were in movement in opposition to the neocolonial world-system. And none of these dynamics were understood by the people of the United States.  Ronald Reagan was able to tap into the popular insecurity and fear and lead the nation toward what Jesse Jackson would call a “dark night of reaction.” It is a path that we still follow. 
 

References

Booth, John A. and Thomas W. Walker.  1993.  Understanding Central America, Second Edition. Boulder:  Westview Press.

Cobarrubia, Gómez, Faustino.  2006. “Economía de los Estados Unidos: Una retrospectiva de las últimas cuatro décadas” in  Libre Comercio y subdesarrollo. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Harnecker, Marta.  1998.  Haciendo posible lo imposible: La Izquierda en el Umbral del Siglo XXI.  La Habana:  Centro de Investigaciones, Memoria Popular Latinoamericana.

Prieto Rozos, Alberto.  2009.  Evolución de América Latina Contemporánea: De la Revolución Cubana a la actualidad.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Regalado, Roberto.  2008.  Encuentros y desencuentros de la izquierda latinoamericana: Una mirada desde el Foro de São Paulo.  México D.F.: 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, Ronald Reagan, Nicaragua, Sandinista, FSLN, El Salvador, FMLN

Posted October 7, 2013

     The first steps toward the neoliberal project had been taken by the Reagan administration, with the rejection of Keynesian policies, cutbacks in domestic programs, and the first steps toward international financial deregulation.  More systematic application of neoliberal policies on a global level was adopted by the administration of George H. W. Bush (1989-93), which sought to restructure the Inter-American system of domination on a foundation of three pillars.  The first is support for representative and parliamentary democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, replacing the military dictatorships of national security.  This so-called “transition to democracy” was necessary, given the popular struggles against the military dictatorships and their total lack of legitimacy.   And the transition was possible, given the increasing concentration of capital, greater dependency of the Latin American elite, declining autonomy of Latin American governments as a result of external debt, and the limited organizational capacity of the popular movements as a result of repression by military dictatorships.  The second pillar is the economic, characterized by the imposition of neoliberal polices, efforts to impose a Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the signing of Free Trade Agreements with various nations.  The third is the military pillar, in which the United States seeks to establish a greater military presence in the region, using the “war against drugs” and the“war against terrorism” as pretexts (Regalado 2010).

     Neoliberal economic theory is a recasting of classical liberal economic theory formulated by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations in 1776.  Smith had maintained that in order to maximize the possibilities for economic development, rather than protecting the markets and industries of the colonial powers, it would be better to follow a principle of international free trade.  Although liberalism or free trade was the dominant economic theory from 1776 to 1929, it was not followed in practice by the global powers. Throughout the nineteenth century, Britain, Germany and other European nations as well as the United States for the most part practiced protection of their industries.  The notion that the period prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s was an era of free trade is a myth, even though it is a myth perpetuated by most economists (Bairoch 1993:1-55; Raffer 1987:1-3; Hayami 233, 238-39).

     The neoliberal project of the 1980s and 1990s was developed on the basis of the economic theory proposed by Milton Freidman and others at the School of Economics of the University of Chicago.  Its premises are: (1) the state should not distort the natural and spontaneous economic order; (2) governmental policy should be based on the principle of the unlimited supremacy of the market; (3) states should not interfere with the free play of supply and demand; and (4) governmental interference in the economy ought to be eliminated.  Specific neoliberal policies include: the elimination of government protection of national currency and the trading of currency at a free market rate; privatization of government-owned enterprises; reduction of protection for national industry, reducing or eliminating tariffs and taxes on imported goods; facilitation of the free flow of capital into and out of the country; and the elimination of union restrictions on the free play of supply and demand (Prieto 2009:108-11).  
 
     The administration of Bill Clinton (1993-2001) continued to develop the three pillars of the restructured Inter-American system of domination that had been established by the Bush administration.  However, the Clinton administration encountered opposition.  On the domestic front, labor organizations were opposed to free trade agreements, concerned with their implications for the job security of US workers.  At the same time, there emerged in Latin America during the period of 1994 to 1998 popular mass demonstrations in opposition to free trade agreements and the neoliberal project.  This stage of the Latin American popular struggle was inaugurated with the Zapatista rebellion in Mexico in 1994, launched on the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect.   After 1998, beginning with the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela, the popular struggle would pass to a more advanced stage, a phenomenon that we will discuss in future posts (Regalado 2010).

     Osvaldo Martínez, Director of the Center for the Study of the World Economy in Cuba, sees neoliberalism as a strategy of imperialist domination.  He maintains that “free trade” is a rhetorical phrase that is an integral part of a coherent package that expresses the interests of the transnational corporations and the governments that represent them.  He maintains that neoliberalism is full of contradictions, inconsistencies and myths, and as a result, it is in crisis (Martínez 1999; 2005; 2006).


References

Bairoch, Paul.  1993.  Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hayami, Yujiro. 2001.  Development Economics: From the Poverty to the Wealth of Nations, 2ndedition.  NY: Oxford University Press.

Martínez Martínez, Osvaldo.  1999.  Neoliberalismo en Crisis.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

__________.  2005.  Neoliberalismo, ALCA y libre comercio.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

__________.  2006. “El libre comercio: zorro libre entre gallinas libres,” in Libre Comercio y subdesarrollo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Prieto Rozos, Alberto.  2009.  Evolución de América Latina Contemporánea: De la Revolución Cubana a la actualidad.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Raffer, Kunibert.  1987.  Unequal Exchange and the Evolution of the World System: Reconsidering the Impact of trade on North-South Relations.  NY:  St. Martin’s Press.

Regalado, Roberto.  2010.  “Gobierno y poder en América Latina hoy,” Curso de actualización: América Latina: entre el cambio y la restauración conservadora, Centro de Investigaciones de Política Internacional, La Habana, Cuba, 22 de noviembre de 2010.   
 

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, neoliberal, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, FTAA

Posted October 8, 2013

     During the Clinton administration, a number of conservative think tanks financed by international corporations reformulated the conservatism of Reaganism, seeking to adapt to changes at the end of the century, including the end of the Cold War.  The neoconservatives, or “neocons,” sought to reverse the decline of US hegemony.  They envisioned the establishment through any means necessary, including military force, of the American concept of democracy and American civilization as the universal world standard.  Accordingly, they favored expansion of military expenditures and the maintenance of US military dominance.  In reaction to what they saw as the decadence of Western civilization, they sought to restore discipline, order, and hierarchy.  They were opposed to egalitarianism, feminism, environmentalism, sexual tolerance, and the absence of prayer and the teaching of the theory of evolution in school.   They gave priority to security over civil liberties.  They viewed the neoconservative movement as a permanent counterrevolution that would consolidate neoconservative values in the long term.  They sought to convert popular insecurity resulting from the deep structural crisis of the world- system and from the US hegemonic decline into a social fear that would generate support for neoconservative policies.  They envisioned strategies of creating enemies and threats in order to establish pretexts for extreme policies.  A number of prominent neoconservatives supported the candidacy of George W. Bush, some of whom became prominent members of his cabinet when he assumed the presidency (Nils Castro 2010:11-12; Schmitt 2003).

     The events of September 11, 2001 provoked an opportunity for the neoconservatives to more aggressively pursue their vision.  The George W. Bush administration launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and expanded US global military presence.  US naval ships engaged in maneuvers near Iran and North Korea, two nations not under US neocolonial control, with the pretext of the nuclear programs of these nations. US military presence in South America increased, under the pretext of the control of illegal drug trafficking. 
 
      A significant increase in military spending occurred.  The US defense budget in 2001 was $316 billion and increased to $685 billion in 2010, an increase of 67% in constant dollars. In 2009, the military expenditures of the United States represented 43% of the total military expenditures of all the countries in the world, placing the United States far ahead of second place China (CIEM 2010a; CIEM 2010b; SIPRI 2010:11).

      Since the United States is losing the economic and financial capacity to control its neocolonies, direct US military control functions to ensure the raw materials supplies and markets that are integral to US neocolonial domination.  For example, US military occupation of Iraq in 2003, with 10% of world oil reserves (second only to Saudi Arabia), enabled the United States to take control of the Iraqi political process and its oil production.  And Afghanistan is important as a route of transit for the petroleum and natural gas exportations of Central Asia (Pichs 2006:167-72; Diez Conseco 2007:110-11).

      In relation to Latin America, the Bush administration sought to take advantage of the events of September 11, 2001 to overcome the stagnation that had beset the implementation of the new system of Inter-American domination.  However, from 2003 to 2009, there was increasing Latin American resistance to the implementation of the restructured system of domination that first had been formulated by George H. W. Bush and had been continued by Clinton.  Major developments included: the defeat suffered by the FTAA at the Ministerial Meeting on Finances and the Economy of the Americas in 2003; the inability of the United States to successfully promote its favorite candidates for the position of Secretary General of OAS in 2005; the failure of the U.S. effort to reform the Inter-American Democratic Charter, in order that it could be used against the government of Hugo Chávez in 2005; the defeat suffered by Bush in the presidential effort to revive the FTAA in the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata in 2005; the entrance of Cuba into the Río Group in 2008; and the repeal of the 1961 decision to expel Cuba from OAS in 2009 (Regalado 2010).

       Neoconservative policies represent a short-sighted response to the deep structural crisis of the world-system and the hegemonic decline of the United States. They are interested only in preserving US power, yet they contribute to the further erosion of the US economy in the long run. They have been rejected by the peoples and governments of the world. And they have increased ideological division among the people of the United States. 


References

Centro de Investigaciones de la Economía Mundial (CIEM).  2010a. “Exportaciones y gastos militares en Estados Unidos.”  Havana: CIEM.

__________.  2010b. “Gastos militares y economía mundial.” Havana: CIEM.

Diez Conseco, Javier. 2007.  “América Latina: recursos naturales y soberanía” in Contexto Latinoamericano: Revista de Análisis Político, No.3 (April-June), Pp. 110-17.

Nils Castro. 2010. “¿Quién es y qué pretende la ‘nueva derecha’?” Avance de investigación, Centro de Estudio sobre América, La Habana.

Pichs Madruga, Ramón. 2006.  “Petróleo, Energía, and Economía Mundial, 1964-2004” in Libre Comercio y subdesarrollo.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Regalado, Roberto. 2010.  “Gobierno y poder en América Latina hoy,” Curso de actualización: América Latina: entre el cambio y la restauración conservadora, Centro de Investigaciones de Política Internacional, La Habana, Cuba, 22 de noviembre de 2010.    
 
Schmitt, Jutta. 2003.  “El ‘Projecto para un Nuevo Siglo Americano’ y sus Incidencias sobre América Latina,” Jornada de Discusión Política: “Emancipación versus Globo-Fascismo,” Movimiento Utopía 78, Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas, Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela, November 6-7, 2003.

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRE), SIPRI Yearbook 2010: Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security.  Solna, Sweden: SIPRI.


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, neoconservative, George W. Bush