Turning the tide: U.S. intervention in Central America and the struggle for peace. - book reviews

Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace

by Noam Chomsky, Boston: South End Press, 1985. 290 pp., $10.00.

This is the most important work dealing with the current U.S. intervention in Central America that has yet been produced, not only because of the extraordinary wealth of factual material, much of which is inaccessible in the mainstream media, but also for the systematic and comprehensive analysis and explanation it gives of the motivating factors behind the policy. Chomsky locates the current intervention in the overall context of U.S. foreign policy, past and present, and shows how it conforms to a consistent pattern of interventionist activity throughout the globe that has persisted for well over a century and has survived largely unchanged even through the tenure of the country's most liberal administrations.

The consistency and coherence of U.S. policy over time derives, Chomsky claims, from the fact that the policy naturally reflects the interests of the dominant groups in society--namely, those who control the economy. Foreign policy, in other words, is an expression of the imperatives of capitalist economic organization in the United States. Thus "the guiding concern of U.S. foreign policy,' he writes, "is the climate for U.S. business operations, a fact well-supported in the historical and documentary record and easily explained in terms, of the domestic institutional basis for foreign policy planning.' Among the mass of evidence that Chomsky has assembled in support of this contention, both here and in previous works, there are some quotations from a perhaps surprising source--to wit, George Kennan, who argued in 1950 that a principal concern of U.S. foreign policy must be "the protection of our raw materials,' referring to resources that are unfortunately located within the national boundaries of other countries. Kennan had also argued in 1948 in a secret State Department document that "we have about 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 per cent 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.'

Efforts to maintain this disproportionate share of the world's wealth and resources, both human and natural, have often had ugly consequences for foreign nations, since our interests clash with those of the bulk of their populations. Hence the well-documented correlation, to which Chomsky calls attention, between U.S. intervention and a decline in respect for human rights: "[I]n the Third World, improvement in the investment climate is regularly achieved by destruction of popular organizations, torture of labor and peasant organizers, killing of priests engaged in social reforms, and general mass murder and repression.'

The need for frequent intervention has, in the postwar era, been one of the two most important reasons for "the vast and constantly expanding military system.' Because, Chomsky argues, "strategic weapons provide an "umbrella' for intervention and aggression with impunity,' they are necessary "to permit free exercise of our Cold War policies of intervention and subversion, is accord with the overriding geopolitical conception.' In this connection he quotes Paul Nitze, who argued in 1953 that civil defense was imperative on the ground that Soviet nuclear weapons programs would otherwise "tend to impose greater caution in our cold war policies to the extent that these policies involve [a] significant threat of general war'-- such an enforced increase in caution being of course an unthinkable prospect. The second main factor motivating the arms buildup is the need for state intervention in the economy. Chomsky observes:

The military system provides an optimal means to compel the public to subsidize the costly programs of research and development, leaving private industry to reap the profits during this phase and later, if commercial applications become possible. It amounts to a system of forced public investment, of public subsidy and private profit, with little interference with the businessman's prerogatives. . . . There has always been a kind of love-hate relation between business interests and the capitalist state. On the one hand, business wants a powerful state to regulate disorderly markets, provide services and subsidies to business, enhance and protect access to foreign markets and resources, and so on. On the other hand, business does not want a powerful competitor, in particular, one that might respond to different interests, popular interests, and conduct policies with a redistributive effect, with regard to income and power. It has never been an easy problem to solve. It is difficult to imagine a system better designed for the benefit of the privileged than the military system.

According to Chomsky, the failure of the freeze movement to accomplish anything of significance despite overwhelming public support for its position is attributable to its failure to come to terms with these two driving forces behind the arms buildup and to address its efforts to dealing with them.

If the foundations of U.S. foreign policy are found in domestic economic interests, necessitating regular intervention abroad in order to maintain and expand control over markets, resources, and so on, then how is one to explain the U.S. interventions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Grenada, or even those in Southeast Asia--areas where U.S. economic interests have clearly not been of sufficient magnitude to warrant the investment of resources--a succession of administrations have thought necessary in order to try to ensure that those countries should remain within the U.S. "sphere of influence'? These interventions are to be explained, Chomsky argues, in terms of a rational version of the domino theory. What has primarily motivated these interventions is the fear that if any of our dependencies are allowed to pursue successful policies of social and economic development which constrain our ability to extract from them what we need, this will embolden others to do likewise and pretty soon the whole empire will start unraveling at the seams.

These claims are supported by a wealth of historical material concerning U.S. foreign policy, both in Central America and other parts of the world. With regard of Central America, Chomsky demonstrates the continuigy, consistency, and coherence of U.S. policy from the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine to the present-- citing a number of candid statements by officials from previous governments to corroborate his account of the relevant history. There is also historical material on the U.S. war for the domination of the Philippines and on the U.S. interventions in Greece, the Dominican Republic, and Vietnam--all of which supports the main lines of his argument.

The highly consistent pattern in U.S. foreign policy that Chomsky describes is of course obscured by the propaganda system and thus is entirely absent from official history. Accompanying Chomsky's brilliant exposition and analysis of the aims and effects of U.S. foreign policy is a remorseless and devastating exposure of the way in which both the mainstream media and mainstream scholarship have given systematically distorted accounts of the current and historical events he discusses. For example, he cites a remarkable study by Edward Herman of the coverage in the New York Times of the 1984 Salvadoran and Nicaraguan elections which conclusively demonstrates the systematic bias of the reporters in the selection of topics for discussion, sources of information, and so on. "Notice,' he remarks, "that the news reports maintained the objectivity of which they are so proud; reporters did not state their opinions.' Rather, the official truths are simply assumed in the background framework in which discussion takes place--a less overt and more effective way of entrenching them in the public mind than baldly stating them as the writer's own opinion.

Another way in which the propaganda system functions, according to Chomsky, is through the exploitation by government officials of their access to the news media to flood the popular consciousness with a barrage of official lies. "It is well understood by Reagan's advisers . . . and others practiced in the skills of defamation, lies, and brainwashing that repeated charges that receive wide publicity create a lasting image, even if they are disproven point by point in critical analysis that may subsequently appear on the back pages.' This technique is nicely illustrated in a front-page article in the New York Times of August 20th. Reagan is quoted as saying that the goal of his administration in Nicaragua is to "negotiate the democratization of Nicaragua, to return to those principles that they [the Sandinistas] had once pledged.' The background assumption is that there is no effective democracy in Nicaragua, and the explicit assertion is that the Reagan administration is genuinely interested in negotiations and concerned about such democracy--both entirely false, as Turning The Tide demonstrates. Reagan also refers here to a supposed pledge by the Sandinistas to establish a "true democracy'--a pledge which, as Chomsky notes, they never made, though the administration has been so sedulous in putting it about that they did that it is now useless even to attempt to clear the historical record on this matter. (Chomsky elsewhere observes that "one should not . . . accuse the President of lying. . . . To lie requires a certain competence; one must first have mastered the concept of truth.')

In this book, as in his previous work on political topics, Chomsky devotes a considerable amount of space to the relentless exposure of lies, hypocrisy, and the use of a double moral standard in the evaluation of the conduct of the U.S. and its enemies. He invites the reader to consider what our reaction would be if some official enemy were to act in ways that we assume are entirely appropriate for our own government. He urges us to compare forms of conduct that we unhesitatingly condemn in our enemies to what we or our allies have done (or would do) in similar circumstances. Thus he argues with devastating effectiveness that the sins of which the Sandinistas have been guilty since the revolution pale into virtual insignificance in comparison not only with those of the U.S. government in the comparable period following the American revolution, but also with those of the Israeli government in the period following the establishment of the Israeli state. And he notes that even now we demand that the Nicaraguan government should meet far more exacting standards than we would ever consider appropriate for ourselves. Thus on the censorship of La Prensa he observes sardonically that "naturally if the U.S. were being attacked by a state of unimaginable power, we would not impose censorship on a journal that offered them support and that received a $100,000 grant from the aggressor.'

This is not, strictly speaking, a conspiracy theory. The propaganda system has its genesis in institutional arrangements that reflect the structure of domestic power relations. And there are means by which conformity to official doctrine is enforced. For one thing, the central tenets of the doctrinal system--which have to do with what Chomsky refers to as our own "awesome nobility'--are comforting to believe and hence are readily internalized. And there are other constraints. "An American journalist,' Chomsky writes, "is as likely to give an accurate account of what he or she sees as any in the world, far more than most; though what they look for, and how they perceive it given a background of indoctrination, and that the editors will tolerate or accept, are different matters.' Academics face similar pressures. If they deviate too far in their work from current political orthodoxy, "they will have to abandon respectability, prestige, institutional funding, media access, and the other perquisites of obedience' --a fact to which Chomsky can testify from long and bitter personal experience.

The institutional nature of the forces underlying the formulation and implementation of policy is of relevance in determining how best to affect the redirection of U.S. foreign policy:

U.S. foreign and domestic policy [Chomsky writes] has its roots in institutional structures; only in a limited way does it reflect the personal preferences and commitments of particular individuals who happen to hold office. . . . Within the constraints of existing state institutions, policies will be determined by people representing centers of concentrated power in the private economy, people who, in their institutional roles, will not be swayed by moral appeals but by costs consequent upon the decisions they make--not because they are "bad people,' but because that is what the institutional roles demand; if current incumbents do not perform these tasks, they will be removed in favor of others who will. The closer to the centers of power one stands, the more these factors operate. Those who are serious about inducing changes in public policy will therefore consider ways to modify this calculus of costs.

This is but one illustration of the way in which Chomsky's powerful analytical mind draws out important practical implications from the general theory he advances in this book. The book as a whole is brilliantly argued, clearly and powerfully written, and thoroughly researched with, as usual, extraordinarily extensive documentation. As such it presents an extremely formidable challenge to those whose views (or policies) it attacks. This is sufficient to ensure that both it and its arguments will be largely ignored or supressed in the mainstream debate about U.S. policy in Central America. It is too important to be ignored elsewhere. Read it.

COPYRIGHT 1987 Monthly Review Foundation, Inc.
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