Year 501 Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky. Published by South End Press.
Chapter 2: The Contours of World Order Segment 4/14
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2. After Colonialism

The United States had become the world's major industrial economy by the turn of the century, and its leading creditor by World War I, a position maintained until the Reaganites took command, quickly converting the US into the world's leading debtor. During World War II, quasi-totalitarian measures at last overcame the effects of the Great Depression, more than tripling US industrial production and teaching valuable lessons to the corporate managers who ran the wartime economy. There has been no serious challenge since to their conclusion that private wealth and power, which were nurtured by large-scale state intervention in the first place, can be sustained and enhanced only through the same means; only in rhetorical flourishes, or on the remote margins, is capitalism regarded as a viable system. With much of the world in ruins, the US had attained a historically unparalleled peak of economic and military dominance. State and corporate planners were well aware of their unprecedented power, and intent on using it to construct a global order to benefit the interests they serve.

The highest priority was to ensure that the industrial heartland, German-based Europe and Japan, would be firmly within the US-dominated world order, controlled by domestic financial-industrial sectors linked to US state-corporate power. The first order of business, then, was to undermine the antifascist resistance with its popular base in the "rascal multitude," to weaken labor, and to restore traditional conservative rule, often including fascist collaborators. This task was undertaken on a global scale in the late 1940s, with considerable violence when that proved necessary, notably in Greece and South Korea.

In this New World Order, North-South relations were reconstructed, though not in any fundamental way. The US sought a generally open world based on the principles of liberal internationalism, expecting to prevail in a competition that was "free and fair." These considerations led to a measure of support for the rising anti-colonial forces. But within limits. A 1948 CIA memorandum observed that a balance must be struck between "supporting local nationalist aspirations and maintaining the colonial economic interests of countries to whom aid has been pledged in Western Europe"; there could be little doubt as to the relative weights when serious US interests are at stake. Similarly, the imperial system that Japan had sought to construct had to be restored to it, under over-arching US control. These considerations led to tactical decisions to favor traditional colonial preference systems for rival/allies; temporarily, in the context of postwar reconstruction and reestablishment of trade patterns with the industrial powers on which the US economy relied.

Intending to organize the Far East pretty much on its own, Washington barred its allies from any role in determining the fate of Japan. The goal was "to guarantee U.S. security by insuring long-term American domination of Japan" and "to exclude the influence of all foreign governments" (Melvyn Leffler, expressing a scholarly consensus; "security" having its usual meaning). Given US power, that goal was easily attained, irrespective of wartime agreements. In the Middle East and Latin America, the ideological system confers on the United States the right to pursue its "needs" and "wants," respectively. The plan, therefore, was to restrict foreign interference, apart from an occasional subordinate role assigned to client powers, notably Britain in the Middle East. Britain serves as "our lieutenant (the fashionable word is partner)," as a senior Kennedy adviser put it; the British are to hear only the fashionable word.12

The character of planning is well-illustrated by the case of Italy. Like Greece, its importance extended to the Middle East. "U.S. strategic interests" required control over "the line of communications to the Near East outlets of the Saudi-Arabian oil fields" through the Mediterranean, a September 1945 interagency review observed. These interests would be threatened if Italy were to fall into "the hands of any great power" -- in translation: if it were to escape from the hands of the proper great power. Italy "could be used to guarantee -- or, in the wrong hands, impair -- oil supplies from the Near East," Rhodri Jeffrey-Jones observes.

It was expected that the Communist Party, with its strong labor support and the prestige conferred by its role in the struggle against Fascism and the Nazi occupiers, would win the 1948 elections. That result could have a "demoralizing effect throughout Western Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East," US policymakers warned. It would be the "first instance in history of a communist accession to power by popular suffrage and legal procedure," and "so unprecedented and portentous an event must produce a profound psychological effect in those countries threatened by the Soviets and...striving to retain their freedom." To translate again to English, it might influence popular movements that sought to pursue an independent and often radical democratic course, thus undermining the US policy of restoring the traditional order dominated by conservative business and often pro-fascist sectors ("freedom"). In short, Italy might become a "virus infecting others." The US planned military intervention if the election could not be controlled by other means. A combination of force, threats, control over desperately needed food, and other measures succeeded in overcoming the threat of a free election. Substantial US efforts to subvert Italian democracy continued at least to the mid-1970s. In later years, as noted, it was feared that Chile might be a "virus infecting" Italy.13

For similar reasons, after Washington failed to disrupt the 1984 election in Nicaragua by terror, its doctrinal system effaced the terrible event from history; the media rigorously excluded the approval voiced by international observers including hostile ones, US Latin American scholars who studied the election in depth, and the leading figure of Central American democracy, José Figueres.

The life of those responsible for world order is never easy, as Metternich and the Czar had recognized in their day.

Apart from subversion, policymakers sought other ways "to stabilize Italy," Sallie Pisani writes in her study of the early days of the CIA. Subversion to achieve stability is standard procedure, quite intelligible to those who have mastered PC rhetoric; it is even possible to "destabilize a freely elected Marxist government in Chile" because "we were determined to seek stability" (James Chace). One idea for Italy was to thin the disruptive population by inducing emigration. Marshall Plan money was used to rebuild the Italian merchant marine to "double the number of Italian emigrants who can be carried overseas each year," the chief of the ECA (Marshall Plan) mission for Italy reported. It was also used to retrain workers, "thereby making them more acceptable to other countries," he added. Europe had unemployment problems, and more "wops" was the last thing wanted in the US. Congress therefore authorized funds for the "purpose of transporting emigrants from Italy to parts of the world other than the United States." The ECA decided upon South America, with its "relatively less developed areas." It funded an emigration survey "to locate specific lands suitable for Italian settlement" in South America, and to help prepare the ground. The first recipient of such aid was Brazil, in 1950.

The project was considered highly sensitive, and concealed from Italians completely. "Propaganda to stabilize the remaining Italians was equally important," Pisani writes, and a "sophisticated campaign" was conducted in Italy, as in France, another potential "virus." A problem in France, the ECA mission noted, was that "The French are allergic to propaganda. They often confuse what we call information with what they call propaganda." Washington policymakers agreed that "overt American propaganda" would not be a good idea for Europeans, because of their experiences with the Nazis. The ECA therefore adopted the concept of "indirection," defined as the ability to "get across the ECA and U.S. Government foreign policy point of view, without either ECA or the U.S. Government being identified as the source of the material." At home, where the population is better trained, "information" suffices.14


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12 Leffler, Preponderance, 258, 90-1. TNCW, chs. 8, 11; DD, chs. 1, 6, 8, 11. Frank Costigliola, in Paterson, Kennedy's Quest. On Japan, see Schaller, American Occupation. See references of n. 16.

13 Leffler, Preponderance, 71. Jeffrey-Jones, CIA, 51. Pisani, CIA, 106-7. See ch. 1.2, above. Nicaraguan election, MC, NI, DD. DD, ch. 11, on US and Italy, in the context of the broader struggle to deter the threat of democracy in the industrial societies after World War II.

14 Pisani, CIA, 114f., 91f. Chace, NYT Magazine, May 22, 1977. On racist attitudes towards the "wops" in both the internal and public record, see DD, chs. 1.4, 11.5.