A blog for POLS 209, Dictatorships and Revolutions, at Victoria University of Wellington. A place for students to talk and think about political pathologies all over the world. This is our other blog - see also here
Interesting list, but where’s the United States? Where’s France and Britain? Almost every single one of these dictators were supported, in most cases installed, by western governments. Does that make those governments anti-democratic?
To take a few examples: Western “democracies” namely France and the United States maintained intimate relations with Jean Bedel Bokassa throughout the 1970s. His Central African Republic was rich in mineral resources, supplying American mineral extraction companies and providing France with the uranium it required for the Cold War. In 1977 France sent military police to secure Bokassa’s coronation ceremony.
In full knowledge of his brutal repression, the United States and other Western powers loaned Nicolae Ceausescu an excess of $13billion to gain his support in the Cold War. With debt strangling the Romanian economy Ceausescu began exporting all Romania agricultural production, plunging his people into starvation.
United States support for the Duvalier family in Haiti, including Jean-Claude, is no secret. The brutal poverty of Haiti has meant super-cheap labour for American corporations for close to a century, and repression has been instrumental in ensuring the the Haitian people don’t get ideas about self-determination. The United States invaded Haiti in 1915 and altered its constitution by removing fixed-terms for elected leaders. When the Jean-Claude Duvalier was finally deposed in 1989, after years of US financial support, the populist leader with a penchant for social equality, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected in 1990. US foreign aid was immediately cut. With funding from the American National Endowment for Democracy (the same NGO responsible for the attrocities in Cuba) a military coup removed Aristide in 1991, butchered the activists that campaigned for his election, reinstalled him so he could finish his term whilst simultaneously asking him (with a gun to his head) to accept a World Bank structural adjustment package that undid all his progress. Under international scrutiny, Bush imposed an embargo on the Haitian dictatorship when it was reinstalled after Aristide, but 800 American companies were ‘exempted’ from it, and trade with Haiti increased by 50% under Clinton. If you type ‘Duvalier family’ into google, it will usually be preceded by ‘US-backed.’
American companies traded extensively with Hitler throughout the 1930s. In fact, George Bush’s grandfather had a huge hand in Hitler’s rise to power. As director of the Union Banking Corporation, Prescott Bush funded the largest steel and coal tycoon in Germany, Fritz Thyssen, allowing him to continue generating massive profits as he supplied Hitler’s rearmament programme. His assets weren’t seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act until 1942. Western corporations were having a field-day as Europe prepared for war. The fascists in Spain would not have won the Civil War if not for the support of American oil companies. The devastating attrocities of the German Luftwaffe in Spain, such as the bombing of Guernica, would not have been possible if not for petrotechnology supplied by Texaco, now known as Chevron. The software giant IBM supplied Hitler with the identification and cataloguing programmes used to process Jews throughout the holocaust. In 1939 Coca-Cola had over 40 bottling plants in Germany, and after inventing Fanta during the war as its ingredients were easier to source, reintroduced Coke to the German market in 1945.
The CIA was instrumental in the the coup that brought Pinochet to power. This really requires no discussion. Put it into google, go to the library.
My point is that capitalism played an integral role in supporting, maintaining and validating the dictatorships on this list and continues to do so. As long as capitalism exists, democracy will be undermined.
Sam O, many good points here. There is a shameful history of support for dictatorships by the US.
But note:
a) Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Kim Jong Il, among others mentioned in the site, cannot be plausibly be said to have been supported by capitalism or the US, and even your Ceausescu example shows less than you perhaps think; Ceausescu had no need to pay every penny back, he did this out of pique. He could just as easily have defaulted, or paid his debts much more slowly, but he insisted on paying every penny back quickly.
b) Capitalism is a very large abstraction. What you are basically saying is that the US, and to a lesser extent France and Britain, supported some of these dictatorships (though we could also add that China supported the Cambodian and North Korean regimes during Mao's time, and continues to do so - as well as the Burmese dictatorship; that the CPSU created and sustained some pretty awful regimes on the preiphery of Russia, from Eastern Europe to Mongolia, and had their own idiotic adventures in Afghanistan etc. or that, unfortunately, realpolitik considerations have made possibly many a shameful alliance); and
c) It is possible to overestimate the degree to which this support was really essential to these dictatorships. IBM provided some technology to Hitler, but the Holocaust would have happened without it (the Germans were no slouches in the technology department - in fact most rocket technology was invented in Germany, and many of the scientists who later created the A bombs were Germans); Pinochet was supported by the US, but he also had lots of support by the upper classes in Chile, who were terrified of Allende; poor and unequal countries like Haiti and the Central African Republic are very likely to have authoritarian governments due to the incentives of the elites and the difficulties the poor face in organizing collective action.
This is not to absolve the US and other powers of enabling and sometimes making worse these things; but the inference that "capitalism" is responsible for these things seems unsupported.
Funny you should bring up American involvement with dictatorships. For one essay I had to write, I came across an article called "Promoting Democracy and Fighting Terror" by Thomas Carothers (http://www.cfr.org/publication/5357/promoting_democracy_and_fighting_terror.html)
In it, he basically talks about Bush's "democracy promoting" in the aftermath of September 11, as he believed non-democracies were breeding grounds for terrorists. However, he notes that Bush had a split personality when it came to such task, noting "Bush the realist" who made friends with tyrants and dictators and "Bush the neo-Reganite" who actively sought to campaign for democracy in the Middle East. Really does show the hypocrisy in the Bush Administration's foreign policy. To actively preach for democracy and then to make friends with dictators in order for them to create military bases in areas such as Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The article, though did not prove overly useful for my essay, was a real eye opener for me as I was not aware of the sort of dealing that was occuring during the War on Terror until I read this article. It seemed that the US was prepared to do anything, even befriend tyrants or turn a blind eye to the regimes in non-democratic states, in this so called "War on Terror.
Also, in relation to US help in the holocaust, I came across another article whilst essay researching..(it never ends...I swear...)called "The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics" by Edwin Black (http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html), and it talks about how the US inspired and even helped promote eugenics and genocide in Nazi Germany. He talks about how America was practicing genocide even before Hitler rose to power and how these ideas later influenced the horrifying sterilisation of million of Jews, gays and disabled people. Both articles are unrelated to capitalism but both hopefully show how America had some involvement with dictatorships and I found them genuinely interesting to read.
On a side note, in relation to the topic, I believe Hitler would win hands down, purely due to notoriety.
Why else would western governments intervene? I think we can safely discredit the argument that it is in the interest of the people of those nations. The fact is that the interests of ordinary people usually contrast starkly against the interests of corporations. For example, people usually want to share in the wealth generated by the exploitation of the resources of their country, so they would logically object to foreign companies owning them. People usually want decent jobs with reasonable pay, so they may object to foreign corporations paying them slave wages to work in intolerable conditions. If people are given the right to self-determination, they will threaten the interests of foreign corporations, hence the support of western corporations and governments for dictatorships. Standard imperialism.
Why else would the US support a Haitian dictatorship or install a brutal dictator in Argentina?
Interesting list, but where’s the United States? Where’s France and Britain? Almost every single one of these dictators were supported, in most cases installed, by western governments. Does that make those governments anti-democratic?
ReplyDeleteTo take a few examples:
Western “democracies” namely France and the United States maintained intimate relations with Jean Bedel Bokassa throughout the 1970s. His Central African Republic was rich in mineral resources, supplying American mineral extraction companies and providing France with the uranium it required for the Cold War. In 1977 France sent military police to secure Bokassa’s coronation ceremony.
In full knowledge of his brutal repression, the United States and other Western powers loaned Nicolae Ceausescu an excess of $13billion to gain his support in the Cold War. With debt strangling the Romanian economy Ceausescu began exporting all Romania agricultural production, plunging his people into starvation.
United States support for the Duvalier family in Haiti, including Jean-Claude, is no secret. The brutal poverty of Haiti has meant super-cheap labour for American corporations for close to a century, and repression has been instrumental in ensuring the the Haitian people don’t get ideas about self-determination. The United States invaded Haiti in 1915 and altered its constitution by removing fixed-terms for elected leaders. When the Jean-Claude Duvalier was finally deposed in 1989, after years of US financial support, the populist leader with a penchant for social equality, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected in 1990. US foreign aid was immediately cut. With funding from the American National Endowment for Democracy (the same NGO responsible for the attrocities in Cuba) a military coup removed Aristide in 1991, butchered the activists that campaigned for his election, reinstalled him so he could finish his term whilst simultaneously asking him (with a gun to his head) to accept a World Bank structural adjustment package that undid all his progress. Under international scrutiny, Bush imposed an embargo on the Haitian dictatorship when it was reinstalled after Aristide, but 800 American companies were ‘exempted’ from it, and trade with Haiti increased by 50% under Clinton. If you type ‘Duvalier family’ into google, it will usually be preceded by ‘US-backed.’
American companies traded extensively with Hitler throughout the 1930s. In fact, George Bush’s grandfather had a huge hand in Hitler’s rise to power. As director of the Union Banking Corporation, Prescott Bush funded the largest steel and coal tycoon in Germany, Fritz Thyssen, allowing him to continue generating massive profits as he supplied Hitler’s rearmament programme. His assets weren’t seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act until 1942. Western corporations were having a field-day as Europe prepared for war. The fascists in Spain would not have won the Civil War if not for the support of American oil companies. The devastating attrocities of the German Luftwaffe in Spain, such as the bombing of Guernica, would not have been possible if not for petrotechnology supplied by Texaco, now known as Chevron. The software giant IBM supplied Hitler with the identification and cataloguing programmes used to process Jews throughout the holocaust. In 1939 Coca-Cola had over 40 bottling plants in Germany, and after inventing Fanta during the war as its ingredients were easier to source, reintroduced Coke to the German market in 1945.
The CIA was instrumental in the the coup that brought Pinochet to power. This really requires no discussion. Put it into google, go to the library.
My point is that capitalism played an integral role in supporting, maintaining and validating the dictatorships on this list and continues to do so. As long as capitalism exists, democracy will be undermined.
Sam O, many good points here. There is a shameful history of support for dictatorships by the US.
ReplyDeleteBut note:
a) Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Kim Jong Il, among others mentioned in the site, cannot be plausibly be said to have been supported by capitalism or the US, and even your Ceausescu example shows less than you perhaps think; Ceausescu had no need to pay every penny back, he did this out of pique. He could just as easily have defaulted, or paid his debts much more slowly, but he insisted on paying every penny back quickly.
b) Capitalism is a very large abstraction. What you are basically saying is that the US, and to a lesser extent France and Britain, supported some of these dictatorships (though we could also add that China supported the Cambodian and North Korean regimes during Mao's time, and continues to do so - as well as the Burmese dictatorship; that the CPSU created and sustained some pretty awful regimes on the preiphery of Russia, from Eastern Europe to Mongolia, and had their own idiotic adventures in Afghanistan etc. or that, unfortunately, realpolitik considerations have made possibly many a shameful alliance); and
c) It is possible to overestimate the degree to which this support was really essential to these dictatorships. IBM provided some technology to Hitler, but the Holocaust would have happened without it (the Germans were no slouches in the technology department - in fact most rocket technology was invented in Germany, and many of the scientists who later created the A bombs were Germans); Pinochet was supported by the US, but he also had lots of support by the upper classes in Chile, who were terrified of Allende; poor and unequal countries like Haiti and the Central African Republic are very likely to have authoritarian governments due to the incentives of the elites and the difficulties the poor face in organizing collective action.
This is not to absolve the US and other powers of enabling and sometimes making worse these things; but the inference that "capitalism" is responsible for these things seems unsupported.
Funny you should bring up American involvement with dictatorships. For one essay I had to write, I came across an article called "Promoting Democracy and Fighting Terror" by Thomas Carothers (http://www.cfr.org/publication/5357/promoting_democracy_and_fighting_terror.html)
ReplyDeleteIn it, he basically talks about Bush's "democracy promoting" in the aftermath of September 11, as he believed non-democracies were breeding grounds for terrorists. However, he notes that Bush had a split personality when it came to such task, noting "Bush the realist" who made friends with tyrants and dictators and "Bush the neo-Reganite" who actively sought to campaign for democracy in the Middle East. Really does show the hypocrisy in the Bush Administration's foreign policy. To actively preach for democracy and then to make friends with dictators in order for them to create military bases in areas such as Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The article, though did not prove overly useful for my essay, was a real eye opener for me as I was not aware of the sort of dealing that was occuring during the War on Terror until I read this article. It seemed that the US was prepared to do anything, even befriend tyrants or turn a blind eye to the regimes in non-democratic states, in this so called "War on Terror.
Also, in relation to US help in the holocaust, I came across another article whilst essay researching..(it never ends...I swear...)called "The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics" by Edwin Black (http://hnn.us/articles/1796.html), and it talks about how the US inspired and even helped promote eugenics and genocide in Nazi Germany. He talks about how America was practicing genocide even before Hitler rose to power and how these ideas later influenced the horrifying sterilisation of million of Jews, gays and disabled people. Both articles are unrelated to capitalism but both hopefully show how America had some involvement with dictatorships and I found them genuinely interesting to read.
On a side note, in relation to the topic, I believe Hitler would win hands down, purely due to notoriety.
Why else would western governments intervene? I think we can safely discredit the argument that it is in the interest of the people of those nations. The fact is that the interests of ordinary people usually contrast starkly against the interests of corporations. For example, people usually want to share in the wealth generated by the exploitation of the resources of their country, so they would logically object to foreign companies owning them. People usually want decent jobs with reasonable pay, so they may object to foreign corporations paying them slave wages to work in intolerable conditions. If people are given the right to self-determination, they will threaten the interests of foreign corporations, hence the support of western corporations and governments for dictatorships. Standard imperialism.
ReplyDeleteWhy else would the US support a Haitian dictatorship or install a brutal dictator in Argentina?