U.S. Obsessed With Using Force [Opinion]

All Africa Global Media, 2007-08-30

by Reason Wafawarova

SINCE the United States assumed global leadership from Britain at the end of
the Second World War; when it emerged as the biggest beneficiary of the war,
a
development that saw it declare the era of "the American century",
Washington
has been obsessed with using force to thwart small countries.

In fact, the US emerged as a superpower that is scared of small countries.
While this statement might seem contradictory, political analyses of US
behaviour over the past 62 years proves otherwise.

During this period the US, among many other invasions went into Cuba,
Grenada,
Panama, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq
(twice) and Afghanistan.

It also sponsored and armed reactionary rebels in their CIA engineered proxy
wars in Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Congo and Nicaragua, to mention
just a
few countries.

The Americans also led embargo campaigns on Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua,
North
Korea and Zimbabwe.

The US portrays more concerns and worries about the behaviour of small
states
than it has about its more powerful rivals like India, China or the European
Union.

When Ronald Reagan was asked to justify his administration's trade embargo
against Nicaragua in 1985 he said, "the policies and actions of Nicaragua
constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and
foreign policy of the United States."

Does this quotation ring a bell to Zimbabweans?

It should, given that both Condoleeza Rice and George W. Bush have almost
repeated it verbatim in their attempt to justify the so-called Zimbabwe
Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (2001), a sanctions law that bars
multilateral lending institutions, with dealings with the US, from extending
lines of credit to Zimbabwe.

It also bars American companies from trading with Zimbabwe.

In 1985, people outside the US questioned how an underdeveloped peasant
nation
of three million people, as was Nicaragua then, could possibly constitute an
"extraordinary threat" to the security of the US, then one of the two most
powerful superpowers of the world.

Today, many outside the US still wonder how a largely peasant nation of 13
million people, Zimbabwe, can possibly constitute "an unusual and
extraordinary
threat" to the foreign policy of the US.

This writer says many outside the US would question this kind of thinking
because the mainstream US society has often believed its ruling elite
whenever
it speaks this way. This is precisely because the US and much of the western
world; has some of the most indoctrinated and brainwashed people of this
world
as Noam Chomsky rightly pointed out in the book, Latin America: From
Colonisation to Globalisation, 1999.

In 1982, the Reagan administration, through the US Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs
of Staff went on air to tell the American public that Grenada was a military
threat to the US.

The mere fact that this was pronounced indicates the power of indoctrination
and brainwashing contained in the two most powerful agents of imperialism,
namely, western politicians and their mass media.

The fact that the American public could hear their chairman of the Joint
Chiefs
of Staff publicly utter this ludicrous statement without exploding into
raucous
laughter, was yet another indication of the degree of indoctrination.

This "extraordinary" military threat led to the invasion of Grenada in 1983
and
6 000 American elite troops descended on 40 Cubans and a couple of hundred
Grenadine military men, earning themselves a total 8 000 medals for the
"valour" that led to this enormous victory. The American media went berserk,
spewing euphoric pugnacious and jingoistic sentiments over the vainglorious
accomplishment.

Noam Chomsky, in the fore-mentioned book, analysed why the US is so scared
of
small states, in particular, he evaluated the concepts of US national
security
and foreign policy.

He says the threat to the security of the US by these oft-quoted small
nations
is too ludicrous to warrant any discussion, but the threat to US foreign
policy
is quiet real. Chomsky argues that it is the small, weak states that
actually
pose the greatest threat to American foreign policy.

This, he says, is the only explanation that can be given for the
extraordinary
savagery the US has displayed against some of the weakest and most
inconsequential countries like Laos and Grenada.

It is like this, the weaker the country, the greater the banditry and
savagery.
The logic behind this can only be understood in the context of the
underlying
basis upon which US foreign policy is formulated.

To understand this it may be necessary to revisit what George Kennan, head
of
the policy planning unit in the US State Department, 1948, said about
American
foreign policy.

Said Kennan: "We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6,3
percent of its population . . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the
object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to
devise
a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position
of
disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we
will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our
attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national
objectives.

"We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of
altruism
and world benefaction . . . We should cease to talk about vague and -- for
the
Far East -- unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living
standards, and democratisation.

The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power
concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans the better."

Today, those very "unreal objectives" form the cornerstone of US foreign
policy
on Zimbabwe, Iraq and Afghanistan, that despite the fact that they remain
nothing but "idealistic slogans".

The fundamental principles of American foreign policy and indeed that of all
imperialist countries are to ensure what Kennan once called "the protection
of
our raw materials." One would think that he was referring to raw materials
found within the United States but he was actually referring to the raw
materials of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Kennan did not bother to explain from whom he intended to have those raw
materials protected. The only plausible explanation he could give was that
there was need to protect "our raw materials" against the Russians and other
"communists". The Russians and communists were the two major factors that
frightened the US and western communities the most between 1945 and 1990.
Today, the major source of fear among the western communities is terrorism,
ostensibly fronted by the face of Al-Quaeda and Osama bin Laden.

The real threats against whom the Americans want to protect "their"
resources
are indeed the indigenous people who are the bona fide owners of those raw
materials. Some of these indigenous people have made the "mistake" of
embarking
on policies aimed at making indigenous populations use and benefit from
their
resources.

In the eyes of the US ruling elite, that kind of conspiracy is totally
intolerable; for it poses an "unusual and extraordinary threat". It simply
has
to be stopped.

This kind of conspiracy is what makes little countries like Laos, Grenada,
Nicaragua and Zimbabwe so significant as to warrant worldwide headlines in
the
western media.

The significance is derived from the fact that by embarking on social
policies
that are welfare based, these small countries may succeed in empowering
their
own populations and if this leads to successful economic and social
development, it may constitute a model for others, thereby having an
undesired
domino effect.

This is precisely why Henry Kissinger said Salvador Allende's Chile had to
be
stopped as it stood a dangerously high chance of infecting other countries
--
it would be a virus. In other words economic and social development for any
other country other than the US and its western allies is a disease that
might
infect other countries to the detriment of US foreign policy. When they are
not
calling such development a disease they are calling it a "rotten apple",
"rot",
or, as they prefer these days, "a rogue state."

The thinking behind the US' savagery on smaller states is that the smaller
the
state the higher the chance of success for these social policies and
therefore
the smaller the state the greater the threat of the disease of social and
economic development in poor countries. This is precisely why the US wants
land
reform in Zimbabwe to fail. If it succeeds in a small country like Zimbabwe,
what will stop people of the much bigger South Africa from following suit?

Laos, a very small country next to Thailand became a target of US savage
attacks in 1958 as the Americans overthrew its democratic government and
installed its extremely brutal right-wing dictatorial regime. The small
country
was to later be a subject of ruthless US aerial attacks.

This was a small poor peasant country made up of isolated peasant villages,
inhabited by villagers who hardly knew that there was an outside world until
they began to see those bird-like metal things appearing up in the sky and
dropping bombs on them.

The question is why would a sophisticated superpower controlling half of the
world's wealth destroy the misery field life of a peasant society? Laos
committed a grave "crime" under Pathet Lao, a mild revolutionary who led a
low-level agrarian reform programme that began to yield results by expanding
the health and educational sectors. In the eyes of the American ruling
elite,
the "stupid" peasants were using raw materials in Laos for their own
purposes
and such "insolence" had to be stopped.

The US would care nothing if a country like Grenada disappeared from the
face
of the earth today. It is so small and insignificant in terms of US material
interests. Nevertheless, Grenada was invaded in 1983.

The US began to put Grenada on their hostile media radar as soon as Maurice
Bishop's government came to power in 1979. The US administration began to
demonstrate its extraordinary hostility by cutting off aid, carried out
scaring
military threats, established an embargo and finally invaded the tiny
country
in 1983.

Bishop's socialist government could not be allowed to succeed, lest
neighbouring countries would follow suit and pose "unusual and extraordinary
threats" to the foreign policy of the US.

The Nicaraguan Sandinista programmes created more sorrow than happiness for
Nicaragua though they had a successful land reform programme, increased
literacy, improved the health delivery system, reduced infant mortality and
increased life expectancy -- even earning an award from the World Health
Organisation. While WHO saw social and economic development, the US ruling
elite saw "an unusual and extraordinary threat" since the Sandinistas were
"stealing" America's resources for their own purposes. And that is why the
US
trained, armed, nurtured and partnered the Contras in fighting the
Sandinistas.


Of course, eventually the Sandinistas did fall just like Bishop's government
in
Grenada.

The same threat the Americans saw in Nicaragua, Laos and Grenada were also
perceived in Angola, Congo, Ghana and Mozambique.

In Angola, the US sponsored Jonas Savimbi's Unita rebels for more than 20
years. In Congo, they organised the overthrow and murder of Patrice Lumumba
before installing a ruthless dictatorial regime led by Mobutu Sese Seko. In
Ghana, they sponsored and organised the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah while in
Mozambique they sponsored and trained the murderous Renamo of Afonso
Dhlakama.

In all these African countries, the excuse given by the US was that the
governments were communist, a development that probably stood more
threatening
than terrorists in the eyes of the western community during the Cold War
era.
They even successfully assassinated Samora Machel, the then Mozambican
president, in 1986.

Of course, both the US and apartheid South Africa, on whose soil the
assassination was carried out, never admitted to any wrongdoing although the
US
acknowledged that they viewed Machel as the communist point-man in Southern
Africa.

This analysis of historical events involving the US should help put into
perspective, Washington's sanctions regime against Zimbabwe, which sanctions
are supported by the western alliance.

It is an analysis relevant to the course and direction of the Third
Chimurenga.


It is an analysis relevant to the relationship between the MDC and its
partners
in the so-called civic society, and the US led western alliance.

It is also an analysis of Zimbabwe's chances of standing its ground the way
Cuba has done since 1958; the way Venezuela has done since 1999, about the
same
time Zimbabwe embarked on the agrarian reform programme.

The reality behind the US led western alliance's relationship with the
Government as well as its opposition has nothing to do with the rhetoric of
human rights, rule of law, democracy or freedom -- tenets the US generally
views as idealistic slogans.

In fact the US, like any other imperial power, regards rule of law as a
slogan
to be used for three purposes, according to Chomsky.

Firstly, it is a slogan to pacify the domestic populations in the
imperialists'
own backyard. Secondly, it is a slogan so effectively used to denounce
official
enemies of the US's ruling elite.

Thirdly, it is a last resort in dealing with problems where all other covert
means have proved ineffective. This is the extent to which the US and its
western allies are committed to the doctrine of the rule of law, otherwise,
apart from those three concerns all imperialists are sworn to the Rule of
Force. It is high time all Zimbabweans reflected on and saw the real
challenge
before us in its perspective and decide the best way out of the prevailing
challenges.

The US acts in the knowledge that it reversed agrarian reforms and installed
puppet regimes in many countries and we, Zimbabweans, act in the knowledge
that
we have freed ourselves from foreign domination before and some agrarian
reform
programmes have succeeded elsewhere.

We would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer


Publication Date: 2007-08-30

(c) 2007, YellowBrix, Inc.

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