Year 501 (10 page)

The framework of postwar global planning entailed that colonial relations must be reestablished in new forms and “ultranationalist” tendencies suppressed, particularly if they threaten “stability” elsewhere; the destiny of the South remains much as before. Both the industrial core and its subservient periphery were to be guarded against association with the “Sino-Soviet bloc” (or its components, when the bitter antagonism internal to the “bloc” could no longer be denied). The latter “bloc,” a huge segment of the former Third World that had departed from its traditional role, had to be “contained” or, if possible, restored to the service function by “rollback.” A significant factor in the Cold War was the imposition of Soviet rule over traditional service areas, separating them from the US-dominated state capitalist world, and the threat that Soviet power might contribute to the breakaway of other areas, even influencing popular sectors within the industrial core itself, a threat considered particularly severe in the early postwar period.

North-South relations vary somewhat over the years, but rarely beyond these basic limits. The realities are described in a 1990 report by the South Commission, chaired by Julius Nyerere and consisting of leading Third World economists, government planners, religious leaders, and others. The Commission observes that there were some gestures to Third World concerns in the 1970s, “undoubtedly spurred” by concern over “the newly found assertiveness of the South after the rise in oil prices in 1973”—incidentally, not entirely unwelcome to the US and UK. As the threat of Southern assertiveness abated, the report continues, the industrial societies lost interest and turned to “a new form of neo-colonialism,” monopolizing control over the world economy, undermining the more democratic elements of the United Nations, and in general proceeding to institutionalize “the South's second class status” through the 1980s.

The pattern is consistent; it would be remarkable if it were otherwise.

Reviewing the miserable state of the traditional Western domains, the South Commission called for a “new world order” that will respond to “the South's plea for justice, equity, and democracy in the global society.” The prospects for this plea are revealed by the attention granted it; the study was ignored, as are Third World voices generally. They are of slight interest to the rich men to whom “the government of the world must be entrusted.”
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Several months later, George Bush appropriated the phrase “New World Order” as a cover for his war in the Gulf. In this case, word got out, and Bush-Baker rhetoric inspired much elevated discourse about the prospects opening before us. In the South, in contrast, the “New World Order” imposed by the powerful is perceived, not unrealistically, as a bitter international class war, with the advanced state capitalist economies and their transnational corporations monopolizing the means of violence and controlling investment, capital, technology, and planning and management decisions, at the expense of the huge mass of the population. Local elites in the Southern dependencies can share in the spoils. The US and UK, which wield the whip, may well continue their decline toward societies with notable Third World characteristics, dramatically obvious in the inner cities and rural areas; it is likely that continental Europe will not lag far behind, despite the impediment of a labor movement that has not yet been entirely restored to its proper place.

3. The Rich Men's Club

The US-designed global system required that order must reign within the rich men's club as well. Its lesser members are to pursue their “regional interests” within the “overall framework of order” managed by the United States, the only power with “global interests and responsibilities,” Kissinger informed Europe in 1973 (“the Year of Europe”). In the early postwar years, a European third force could not be tolerated. The formation of NATO was in large part motivated by the need “to integrate Western Europe and England into an orbit amenable to American leadership,” Leffler observes: “Neither an integrated Europe nor a united Germany nor an independent Japan must be permitted to emerge as a third force or a neutral bloc.” Neutralism would be “a shortcut to suicide,” Secretary of State Dean Acheson stated. The same was true outside the core industrial societies. While recognizing that the Russians were not responsible for conflicts in the Third World, Acheson warned in 1952 that the Russians might exploit such conflicts in an effort to “force the maximum number of non-Communist countries to pursue a neutral policy and to deny their resources to the principal Western powers”—that is, to deny them on the terms the West demanded. General Omar Bradley also warned of “the suicide of neutralism,” with Japan in mind.
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Western planners “did not expect and were not worried about Soviet aggression,” Leffler writes, summarizing a well-established scholarly consensus: “The Truman administration supported the Atlantic alliance primarily because it was indispensable to the promotion of European stability through German integration.” This was the basic motivation for the North Atlantic treaty signed in Washington in April 1949, which led to the establishment of NATO, and in response, the Warsaw Pact. Preparing for the April meeting, US policymakers “became convinced that the Soviets might really be interested in striking a deal, unifying Germany, and ending the division of Europe.” This was regarded not as an opportunity, but as a threat to the “primary national security goal”: “to harness Germany's economic and military potential for the Atlantic community”—and to block “the suicide of neutralism.”
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Note that “national security” is used here in its technical sense, unrelated to the security of the nation, which could only be endangered by these conscious steps toward superpower confrontation. Similarly, the phrase “Atlantic community” refers to its ruling elements, not its populations, whose interests are readily sacrificed if power and profits so dictate; by shifting production overseas to labor that is kept docile and cheap by state violence, for example.

“The real issue,” the CIA concluded in 1949, “is not the settlement of Germany,” which, it was believed—and feared—might be reached by an accord with the Kremlin. Rather, it is “the long-term control of German power.” This “great workshop” must be controlled by the US and its clients, with no participation from the Soviet Union, despite the well-understood security interests of the country that had just been virtually destroyed by Germany for the second time in 30 years, and had borne the brunt of the war against the Nazis; and in violation of the wartime agreements on the Soviet role in Germany, which the US had already violated by March 1946, Leffler observes. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Germany might be a desirable goal, Acheson held, but “the withdrawal of American and British troops from Germany would be too high a price.” The “trend of our thinking,” George Kennan recognized, “means...that we do not really want to see Germany reunified at this time, and that there are
no
conditions on which we would really find such a solution satisfactory.” Unification of Germany might be a long-term desideratum, but “only if the circumstances are right,” the State Department emphasized. US troops would therefore remain in Germany even if the Soviets proposed a mutual withdrawal; Germany would be integrated as a subsidiary part of the US-dominated global economy; and the Russians would have no significant voice in the outcome, would not receive reparations, and would not influence German industrial (or military) development.
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That outcome would serve two crucial goals: weakening the Soviet rival, and reinforcing US dominance over its allies. Moves to end the Cold War, in contrast, would serve neither of these goals, and hence were never a serious option.

A third reason for opposing unification, Leffler observes, was concern over the “appeal of the left,” reinforced by “the more vigorous recovery and political activism in the Soviet zone,” including the space allowed for works councils with some managerial authority in denazified enterprises, and trade union organization. Washington feared that a unified labor movement and other popular organizations might interfere with US plans to restore traditional business rule. The British Foreign Office also feared “economic and ideological infiltration” from the East, which it perceived as “something very like aggression”; political successes by the wrong people are commonly described as “aggression” in the internal record. In a united Germany, the British Foreign Office warned, “the balance of advantage seems to lie with the Russians,” who could exercise “the stronger pull.” Division of Germany was therefore to be preferred, with the Soviet Union excluded from any voice over the heartland of German industry in the wealthy Ruhr/Rhine industrial complex.
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For many reasons, confrontation seemed preferable to accommodation. Whether that might have been possible is a matter for speculation. Throughout, a major concern was integration of the core industrial societies in a world order dominated by the US state-corporate nexus.

A decade later, Europe had substantially recovered, thanks in large measure to the policies of “international military Keynesianism” undertaken by Washington from shortly before the Korean war—which served as a pretext on the assumption, too convenient to require evidence, that the Russians were setting forth on world conquest. As recovery proceeded, fears of European independence and neutralist tendencies increased. Kennedy's Ambassador to London, David Bruce, saw “dangers” if Europe “struck off on its own, seeking to play a role independent of the US”; like others, he wanted “partnership—with the United States in a superior position,” Frank Costigliola comments. Kennedy's “Grand Design” was an effort to manage the allies, but with mixed results. France was a particular annoyance. Kennedy feared that President Charles de Gaulle might make a deal with the Russians that “would be acceptable to the Germans,” and was “extremely concerned” about intelligence reports suggesting a Franco-Russian deal to shut the US out of Europe, close associates recalled. Another concern was the gold drain, taken to be French-inspired. A still further irritant was de Gaulle's position on Indochina. His advocacy of diplomacy and neutralization was completely unacceptable to the Kennedy Administration, which was committed to military victory and, at the time, was struggling to undermine and deflect Vietnamese initiatives on all sides to settle that conflict without a major international war. In Indochina, as in Europe and throughout the Third World, neutralism was anathema to US planners, “a shortcut to suicide.”
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Mounting difficulties in controlling the allies led to Kissinger's 1973 admonitions. The “major problem” in the Western alliance, he felt, was “the domestic evolution in many European countries,” which might lead to an independent course. The development of Eurocommunism aroused new concerns—which Kissinger shared with Brezhnev, who also was not pleased by the call for a “democratic path to socialism” that opposed “all foreign intervention.” Kissinger cited post-fascist Portugal and Italy as situations that, “while not the result of détente or of Soviet policy,” posed political problems for the US: “We cannot encourage dialogue with Communist parties within NATO nations,” he informed US Embassies, whether or not they follow “the Moscow line”: “The impact of an Italian Communist Party that seemed to be governing effectively would be devastating—on France, and on NATO, too.” Consequently, the US must oppose the rise of the Communist party in Portugal after the collapse of the fascist dictatorship (which had posed no problem), even if it were to follow the Italian Eurocommunist model. “It was feared that Eurocommunism would make Western communist parties more palatable and attractive to the publics of Western countries,” Raymond Garthoff writes in his comprehensive study of the period: the US “gave a higher priority to...protecting the Western alliance and American influence in it” than to “weakening Soviet influence in the East.”
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Again, we see the dual problem: the combination of democratic developments that escape corporate control, and decline of US power. Neither is acceptable; jointly, they pose a grave danger to “security” and “stability.”

By the 1970s, the problems were becoming unmanageable, and a sharply different course was initiated, to which we return in the next section. They persist into the 1990s. An illustration is the controversy over a secret February 1992 Pentagon draft of Defense Planning Guidance, leaked to the press, which describes itself as “definitive guidance from the Secretary of Defense” for budgetary policy to the year 2000. The draft develops standard reasoning. The US must hold “global power” and a monopoly of force. It will then “protect” the “new order” while allowing others to pursue “their legitimate interests,” as Washington defines them. The US “must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order,” or even “aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” There must be no independent European security system; rather, US-dominated NATO must remain the “primary instrument of Western defense and security, as well as the channel for U.S. influence and participation in European security affairs.” “We will retain the pre-eminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but also those of our allies or friends”; the United States alone will determine what are “wrongs” and when they are to be selectively “righted.” As in the past, the Middle East is a particular concern. Here “our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil” while deterring aggression (selectively), maintaining strategic control and “regional stability”(in the technical sense), and protecting “U.S. nationals and property.” In Latin America, the primary threat is Cuban “military provocation against the U.S. or an American ally,” the standard Orwellian reference to the escalating U.S. war against Cuban independence.