I spent most of yesterday offline watching football and reading an old book a friend of mine loaned me: The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA, by Thomas Powers (1979). It was ironic that Pinochet died the same day I borrowed the book. Richard Helms was convicted of perjury for lying to Congress about the CIA’s role in bringing Pinochet to power.
The book is more than a biography of Richard Helms, it is a history of the CIA from its nebulous World War Two origins as the OSS, all the way up to 1979. And it is highly relevant to today. The CIA’s first major covert project was to prevent the communists from winning the Italian elections of 1948. They succeeded, but they had a plan to intervene militarily if they failed. Their fear of democracy in Europe was warranted by recent events, especially Hitler’s rise to power through the ballot box. America did not liberate Europe from Nazis only to turn the continent over to Stalin and Stalinist proxies. Unfortunately, the CIA quickly discovered that it was powerless to shape events in Eastern Europe or to foment rebellion within the Soviet Union. By 1953 they had all but given up covert actions in favor of a cold propaganda war. But one legacy remained. The foreign policy establishment still feared democracy, and they intended to interfere anywhere that communists looked to be making political gains.
The subsequent forty years of American foreign policy would be marred by this hostility to democracy, and the opposition to communism would become complicated by a confusion about the distinction between communism, socialism, and anti-imperial nationalism. A failure to make these distinctions made it hard to tell whether American foreign policy was primarily aimed at containing the influence of totalitarian Marxism or protecting U.S. business interests. It’s impossible to separate the coup in Iran (1953) from the interests of British Petroleum, the coup in Guatemala (1954) from the United Fruit Company, and the coup in Chile (1973) from ITT. By attacking democratically elected leaders in favor of right-wing juntas, the United States undermined the rationale for what we supposed to be doing. We were supposed to be expanding the free world, not taking away people’s right to vote and imposing dictatorships. Our saving grace was that the Soviets were not offering anything better and that our allies in Europe and the Far East were free (save South Korea) and were prospering.
Our policies in the Middle East were different. From its inception, Israel had incredibly close relations with the CIA, especially the CIA’s counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton. We also had extremely tight relations with the Saudis and with the Shah of Iran. This formed the basis of our regional hegemony, as the Soviets dabbled in pan-Arabism, Ba’athism, and creating a counterforce, opposed to Israel’s continued existence. But other than Turkey’s fitful efforts, democracy was nowhere to be seen in the region, even to be opposed.
This has left us a nasty legacy. Soon after the Berlin Wall fell, democracies blossomed all throughout Europe and Latin America, and even within the former Soviet Union. But they did not arrive on time in the Middle East. And here is where the neo-conservatives stepped in. It’s very difficult to gauge the sincerity of the neo-conservative movement. They write papers and books about the potential power of democracy to transform the Middle East, but they are also shareholders in the arms and energy industries. Are they true believers in the power and rightness of democracy? Or are they just looking to get rich? And to what extent are they just deluded?
I’ve watched them closely and I don’t have definitive answers to those questions. But by November 2003, the President had adopted their rhetoric .
Our commitment to democracy is also tested in the Middle East, which is my focus today, and must be a focus of American policy for decades to come. In many nations of the Middle East — countries of great strategic importance — democracy has not yet taken root. And the questions arise: Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom, and never even to have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it. I believe every person has the ability and the right to be free. (Applause.)
At least on the surface, it seemed like the President had diagnosed a shortcoming of the outcome (and perhaps the conduct) of the Cold War. And he made it our policy to discontinue our accommodation with tyrants.
Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe — because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo. (Applause.)
Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before. And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace. (Applause.)
So, one flaw was replaced with another. Bush never stopped to ask whether the countries of the Middle East were ruled by autocrats because they were not logical nation states and would unravel into sectarian, ethnic, and tribal warfare if allowed to compete for political power. He simply took it as an article of faith that this would not happen. It has happened in Iraq. It is beginning to happen again in Lebanon. It is happening in Palestine. And it could well happen in Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, if true elections are attempted.
It would be simple minded to blame these circumstances on Islam. The same difficulties happened in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia (fortunately resolved peacefully) in the aftermath of the Cold War. Islam plays a part (mainly sectarian) in the region’s difficulties, but geography, demographics, and a legacy of colonialism play bigger parts. And then there is the elephant in the room: energy.
Strategic and military planners rarely say it openly, but a disruption of energy supplies from the Persian Gulf would begin to harm the global economy within a day or two. It is this last consideration that is currently paralyzing Washington as they consider their options in Iraq. Converting from autocracy to democracy is a messy prospect, and in a region like the Middle East it is likely to involve mass migrations, ethic and sectarian cleansing, and the redrawing of maps. That process is already underway in Iraq, and there is no telling where it will end. With all that black gold lying under the sand, the final configuration of future maps of the Middle East are well worth fighting over, as any investment in lives and arms have the prospect of an enormous return.
Add to this the emerging likelihood of a regional nuclear arms race, and the ever weakening position of Israel, and the future of the region is bleak. Michael Rothkopf has an interesting take on the situation. He lays out the case that even after we pull out of Iraq we will be sucked back in, but he makes an important point that is going to bedevil our foreign policy establishment (emphasis mine).
We have inflamed tensions in the Middle East, undercut our regional influence and eroded the nation’s political will to remain actively engaged in this critical part of the world.
I’ve written a lot about this last feature of the Iraq War. The war has exhausted the American people both morally and financially. It has decimated our military. Galvinizing the country for greater efforts ‘absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor’ will prove difficult, if not impossible. Under these circumstances, a new Pearl Harbor begins to look attractive to certain ‘realists’, not to mention ‘ideologues’. But such a preemptive strike is not necessary. Sustained energy shortages and the resulting economic dislocation should prove sufficient to put the West in an ornery and interventionist (not to mention, xenophobic) mood.
Either way, the threat of a reprise of fascism is real. There is a way forward, however. The Democrats need a 2008 candidate that understands the stakes. We need to do two things urgently. First, we need to put all our efforts into getting a settlement of Israel/Palestine conflict. Second, we need to take immediate steps to protect the global economy from the risks of an interruption of energy supplies.
These are steps the American people can understand and support. If we do not start making progress on those two issues, we will find ourselves in an increasingly weakened position, and only a crisis (real or manufactured) will be able to remobilize America’s will to provide stability within the Middle East.
America has been humbled and is inclined to retreat within our borders for a while. The problem is that Iraq has opened up a pandora’s box that threatens to undermine the entire international system and economy, lead to a regional nuclear arms race, cause ethnic and sectarian cleansing, genocide, regional war, and Israeli air strikes against Iran.
In the end, the lessons are obvious. Our earlier accommodation of tyrants undermined our dedication to extending freedom. Our latest efforts to reverse that error have led to even greater problems. The USA needs to learn humility.
