Hope yet!

Blackwater, the Private Military Firm has been kicked out of IRAQ! Maybe the US can follow Iraq's example and kick them out of the US!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/world/middleeast/18iraq.html?th&emc=th

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2477503.ece

NY Times article

Hello, I apologize for not posting much lately. I am going through a very difficult time right now. However, I invite you to read this perspective of War in the Modern World from the 26Oct2006 NY Times:
http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2006/10/29/magazine/1154651225889.html?pagewanted=1&8tpw&emc=tpw

Just the names imply the difference: Truman made a pronouncement, Marshall suggested a strategy. As far as these two items are concerned, both entail nation-building, but it does not appear that the conditions "free from coercion" lasted long in Greece. Though "free" from communism, A military dictatorship began to rule Greece by 1967, a scant twenty years after Truman's Doctrine was uttered.

As for Turkey, well... was Truman speaking of the Armenians in Turkey being free from a way of life free from coercion? The Greeks in Turkey? The Jews? The Kurds? As sarcastic as I sound on this issue, I am glad that Turkey remains to this day less coercive than most states that were spun from the remains of the Ottoman Empire. But I remain unconvinced. Was it the Truman Doctrine that made this so? What is the legacy of the Truman Doctrine? Is it simply US Air Force Bases in Turkey and a sweet duty station at Souda Bay for the US Navy? Has the Truman Doctrine has stood the test of time? The idealistic side of me likes the rhetoric of it, The Dubya Doctrine echoes Truman's... but what of success? I believe the Marshall Plan can demonstrate its success; Berlin alone became a beacon to East Berliners - something that made people willing to risk it all to get there from the other side of the political-economic-ideological divide... but what about this Truman Doctrine? Did it meet its aim as a "policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation..." or was the ending of that statement a built- in loop hole, "...by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

I suppose that working out their destinies in their own way was successful, if a military junta was the way that the Greeks wanted to work things out on their way to democracy. And since the groups in Turkey I mentioned above were not minorities ruling the Turks, that could be a success - majority did and does rule in Turkey. But was it on the merits or action of the Truman Doctrine?

Looking ahead

I need to leave myself notes, so the things I am touching now, I can remember to draw on as I develop my ideas later. I am thinking forward to when it is my turn to lead the discussion on section 2.5 on the Cold War and the Third World. I am drawn to Chalmers Johnson's concern over the counterproductive activities of the US in South East Asia. Of course, the Ugly American is the Book of Genesis & Revelations to a large extent on the matter of the US in the third world... But his book 'Blowback' may have some relevance:
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/b042402.html
He also has an essay in Triumphalism. It discusses the idea of three cold wars, Europe, China, and Latin America. I see myself having to focus regionally to keep it manageable.

I will likely develop largely on US mistakes since the Soviets were new to expansion outside of their tempurate zone. Also I think my response in the previous post to OB by John Quincy Adams is also a good guide in terms of idealism.

How about some relief from reading? Cinema!

Where shall I start my Cold War movie list? How about some of the events prior to the end of WWII:
Stalin's purge in the interval between the Wars:
Burnt by the Sun
Someone mentioned the Coca-colization of the Soviets, well then, see "1 2 3 America! made in 1961.

To get ready for Cuba prior to the missile crisis see "Soy Cuba"

I have been quite struck recently as I consider the films that show how the Cold War did loom large in people's lives, even when it wasn't the film's topic - the 1971 film "Little Murders" the protagonist speaks of an FBI man reading his mail while he attended college. The 1967 farce, "The President's Analysist" has the whole spy vs. spy sequence long before Seller in the Pink Panther series.
Here is a quote from the Soviet spy, V.I. Kydor Kropotkin: "Logic is on our side: this isn't a case of a world struggle between two divergent ideologies, of different economic systems. Every day your country becomes more socialistic and mine becomes more capitalistic. Pretty soon we will meet in the middle and join hands."

An empire, by any other name would still smell...

Hey Cold Warriors, check out today's NY Time article:
http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2006/10/15/books/1154649075029.html?8tpw&emc=tpw

Well... let’s see what else to talk about...

Reading. Again, looking at Gaddis, I find trouble - mountains out of mole hills perhaps, but certain phrases are said so much as fact, when I believe they are entirely debatable points.

One aspect of my current reading in We Now Know that I find without merit is this notion of "Empire by Invitation" (American) compared to "Empire by Imposition" (Soviet). First I will say that I agree with the first half of his statement, "an American Empire would accomodate far greater diversity than would one run by the Soviet Union; as a consequence, most Europeans accepted and even invited American hegemony..." It is that portion after the semicolon that I have trouble with... I find it amazing the Gaddis tells the story of post WWII as though US bases overseas did not exist even prior to WWI! To correct this oversight, let me point out some highlights of Empire building. The US - in effort to involve itself in foreign markets and elsewhere for business - had acquired its world wide position. As far as I know, Howard Island & Baker Island in the Pacific were aquired in 1857. In 1867, the US claimed Midway Island. In 1871, we sought other areas in the Pacific for coaling stations, such as Samoa (where there was empire-clashing intrigue with Germany - and that was in the 1870's!) In 1893, Hawaii, at the behest of Sanford Dole was nefariously occupied by US Marines, and the Queen was deposed. The appearance of Japanese war vessels off Hawaii gave impetus to finally annex Hawaii in 1898. And thanks to the Spanish American War, the US came away with the prizes of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines in 1898. We engaged in the putting down of the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900.

With the annexation of Hawaii, to say the US was not well on its way toward empire 47 years before the end of the second world war is simply not credible. But wait, there is more: How did Panama become an independent country? US involvement. The US seized Panama from Columbia in 1903. It then made Panama a protectorate so that we could build the Canal. To think America was not an aggressive expansionist state one needs to be a mental contortionist. One needs to forget that the US had invaded Mexico, occupying Vera Cruz in 1914, as well as the Pershing Expedition in 1916-1917 and other escapades in Mexico in search of helping establish a government that would not nationalize their oil and other resources.

Elsewhere under the aegis of the Monroe Doctrine, the US occupied Honduras in 1912-1919 and again from 1924-1924. The US also occupied Nicaragua in 1912-1925 and again from 1926-1933. The US occupied Haiti from 1915-1934. The US occupied Cuba in 1998-1902 and again from 1906-1909, and again in 1912, 1917, and 1922 and kept it as a protectorate until 1934. The US via the Platt Amendment gave itself the right to determine the Constitution for Cuba. Notice that some of these occupations were during a presidency that had "self-determination" as part of its high minded rhetoric.

Yet on the ground in these regions it was more about American business interests with no connection to the democracy we hail. But let's go back again to 1900. In the Philippines at this same time, the US waged a war against the "insurgents" who felt the US had betrayed the interests in independence from Spain by occupying areas of that island nation. No Monroe Doctrine to fall back on here. The US simply could not give up the Philippines as it was such an ideal springboard into the China market.

For the US, becoming imperial was not a passive activity - The Taft-Katsura Act speaks to this point, a secret agreement where Teddy Roosevelt had his Vice President recognize Japan's dominance of Korea, and in turn the Japan would keep out of the Philippines (Spheres of Influence... a habit that would be hard to break.) It is not the case that America and the empire it had fostered were "INVITED" all around the globe. I can think of no time in history when sovereign states invited a foreign power to come and occupy or otherwise exercise control as benignly as Gaddis would have us believe was the case for the US in europe post WWII. So when Gaddis says, “Washington’s wartime vision of a postwar international order had been premised on the concepts of political self-determination and economic integration” he neglects that for many human beings, the best predictor of future practice is past practice… and American past practice had NOT let the light of self-determination shine in many places around the globe - let alone allow them economic integration - unless it was through the auspice of an American owned company... all of this we will get to in more detail when we address the third world.

Paranoid Style in American Politics

Wow,

I feel like a genius today. I just looked at the NY Times, and this past weekend in my disjointed essay on the Cold War, cited Richard Hofstadter's collection of essays and lo & behold, Paul Krugman looks to Hofstadter's same work to discuss American Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. Now I wonder if Krugman is reading my post...
nah, that sounds too paranoid...

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/opinion/09krugman.html?hp