Year 501 (27 page)

Business proceeded as usual. A few weeks after the Dili massacre, the Indonesia-Australia joint authority signed six contracts for oil exploration in the Timor Gap, with four more in January. Eleven contracts with 55 companies were reported by mid-1992, including Australian, British, Japanese, Dutch, and US. The naive might ask what the reaction would have been had 55 western companies joined with Iraq in exploiting Kuwaiti oil, though the analogy is imprecise, since Suharto's atrocities in Timor were a hundred times as great. Britain stepped up its arms sales, announcing plans in January to sell Indonesia a naval vessel. As Indonesian courts sentenced Timorese “subversives” to 15-year terms for having allegedly instigated the Dili massacre, British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce negotiated a multi-million pound deal for 40 Hawk fighter-trainers, adding to the 15 already in service, some used in crushing the Timorese. Meanwhile Indonesia was targeted for a new sales campaign by British firms because of its prospects for aerospace industries. As the slight tremor subsided, others followed suit.
30

The “Gleam of Light in Asia” in 1965-1966 and the glow it has left until today illuminate the traditional attitudes towards human rights and democracy, the reasons for them, and the critical role of the educated classes. They reveal with equal brilliance the reach of the pragmatic criterion that effectively dismisses any human values in the culture of respectability.

Part III

Persistent Themes

Chapter 6

A “Ripe Fruit”

When new bottles replace the old, the taste of the wine may change, though for victims of the “savage injustice” of the conquerors, it rarely loses its bitterness. Nor does it matter much, for the most part, whose hand wields the rod. Sometimes it does. During the American revolution, Francis Jennings writes, most of the indigenous population “were eventually driven by events to fight for their ‘ancient protector and friend' the king of England,” recognizing what lay ahead if the rebels won. Much the same was true of the black population, their awareness heightened by the British emancipation proclamation of 1775 offering to free “all indentured servants, Negroes or others...able and willing to bear arms,” while condemnation of the slave trade was deleted from the Declaration of Independence “in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia” (Thomas Jefferson). Even employees were considered chattel by the rebels. Local committees opposed granting them permission to enlist in George Washington's army because “all Apprentices and servants are the Property of their masters and mistresses, and every mode of depriving such masters and mistresses of their Property is a Violation of the Rights of mankind, contrary to the...Continental Congress, and an offence against the Peace of the good People of this State” (Pennsylvania); an indication of “how Patriot employers may have felt about the Revolutionary fervor of their employees,” Richard Morris observes.

As well as Samuel Johnson, enslaved people could notice that “we hear the loudest
yelps
for liberty among the drivers of negroes,” including those who urged their slaves to “be content with their situation, and expect a better condition in the next world,” Federal Judge Leon Higginbotham comments. Among the huge mass of refugees fleeing rebel terror, including many “boat people” whose misery has never entered standard history, were thousands of blacks who fled “to freedom in Great Britain, the West Indies, Canada, and, eventually, Africa” (Ira Berlin). The indigenous population well understood what Alexander Hamilton had in mind when he wrote, in the
Federalist Papers
, that “the savage tribes on our Western frontier ought to be regarded as our natural enemies,” and the natural allies of the Europeans, “because they have most to fear from us, and most to hope from them.” Their worst fears were soon to be confirmed.
1

Latin America provides the richest evidence of the persistence of dominant foreign policy themes, which fall within the broader framework of the world conquest. One of the most grave of Latin America's many problems since the overthrow of Spanish rule was foreseen by the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, in 1822: “There is at the head of this great continent a very powerful country, very rich, very warlike, and capable of anything.” “In England,” Piero Gleijeses observes, “Bolívar saw a protector; in the United States, a menace.” Naturally so, given the geopolitical realities.
2

Britain had its own reasons for containing the aggressive upstart across the seas. With regard to the Caribbean, Foreign Minister George Canning pointed out in 1822 that “the possession by the United States of both shores of the channel through which our Jamaica trade must pass, would...amount to a suspension of that trade, and to a consequent total ruin.” As discussed earlier, the Jacksonian Democrats intended not only to strangle and control England, but far more: to “place all other nations at our feet” and “control the commerce of the world.”
3

The United States did not look forward to the independence of the Spanish colonies. “In the Congressional debates of the period,” Gleijeses notes, “there was much more enthusiasm for the cause of the Greeks than that of the Spanish Americans.” One reason was that Latin Americans “were of dubious whiteness,” at best “from degraded Spanish stock,” unlike the Greeks, who were assigned a special role as the Aryan giants who created civilization in the version of history constructed by European racist scholarship.
4
Yet another reason was that, unlike the Founding Fathers, Bolívar freed his slaves, revealing himself to be a rotten apple that might spoil the barrel.

A broader issue was brought forth by the major intellectual reviews of the day. They concluded that “South America will be to North America...what Asia and Africa are to Europe”—
our
Third World. This perception retains its vitality through the 20th century. Commenting on Secretary of State James Baker's efforts to enhance “regional problem-sharing,”
Times
correspondent Barbara Crossette notes “the realization in the United States and throughout the hemisphere that European and Asian trading blocs can be best tackled by a large free-trade area in this part of the world”—the “realization” by sectors that count, by
Times
standards; others have their reservations about the design constructed in the interests of the masters. The World Bank is also less sanguine about the prospects. A 1992 report concludes that the US will gain more from free trade agreements than Latin America, apart from Mexico and Brazil—meaning, those elements in Mexico and Brazil linked to international capital; and that the region would do better with a customs union on the model of the European Community with a common external tariff, excluding the US, something definitely not in the cards.
5

In the 19th century, the British deterrent prevented US dominance of the hemisphere. But the conception of “our confederacy” as “the nest, from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled” (Thomas Jefferson) was firmly implanted, along with his corollary that it is best for Spain to rule until “our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece.”
6

There were internal conflicts over the matter. American merchants “were eager to contribute to the cause of freedom—as long as the rebels were able to pay, preferably cash,” Gleijeses notes. And the well-established tradition of piracy provided a reservoir of American ship owners and seamen (British too) who were happy to offer their services as privateers to attack Spanish shipping, though extension of their terrorist vocation to American vessels led to much moral outrage and a government crackdown. Apart from England, liberated Haiti also provided assistance to the cause of independence, but on the condition that slaves be freed. Haiti too was a dangerous rotten apple, punished for independence in a manner to which we return in chapter 8.

The concept of Panamericanism advanced by Bolívar was diametrically opposed to that of the Monroe Doctrine at the same time. A British official wrote in 1916 that while Bolívar originated the idea of Panamericanism, he “did not contemplate the consummation of his policy under the aegis of the United States.” In the end, it was “Monroe's victory and Bolívar's defeat,” Gleijeses comments.

The status of Cuba was of particular significance, a striking illustration of the resilience of traditional themes. The US was firmly opposed to the independence of Cuba, “strategically situated and rich in sugar and slaves” (Gleijeses). Jefferson advised President Madison to offer Napoleon a free hand in Spanish America in return for the gift of Cuba to the United States. The US should not go to war for Cuba, he wrote to President Monroe in 1823, “but the first war on other accounts will give it to us, or the Island will give itself to us, when able to do so.” Secretary of State John Quincy Adams described Cuba as “an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union.” He too urged Spanish sovereignty until Cuba would fall into US hands by “the laws of political...gravitation,” a “ripe fruit” for harvest. Support for Spanish rule was near universal in the Executive branch and Congress; European powers, Colombia, and Mexico were approached for assistance in the endeavor of blocking the liberation of Cuba. A prime concern was the democratic tendencies in the Cuban independence movement, which advocated abolition of slavery and equal rights for all. There was again a threat that “the rot would spread,” even to our own shores.
7

By the end of the 19th century, the US was powerful enough to ignore the British deterrent and conquer Cuba, just in time to prevent the success of the indigenous liberation struggle. Standard doctrines justified relegating Cuba to virtual colonial status. Cubans were “ignorant niggers, half-breeds, and dagoes,” the New York press observed; “a lot of degenerates...no more capable of self-government than the savages of Africa,” the military command added. The US imposed the rule of the white propertied classes, who had no weird notions about democracy, freedom, and equal rights, and were thus not degenerates. The “ripe fruit” was converted to a US plantation, terminating the prospects for successful independent development.
8

With US economic and political domination of the region well established a generation later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated his “Good Neighbor Policy”; market forces are the most efficient device of control, if they suffice. First, however, it was necessary to overturn the government of Dr. Ramón Grau San Martín, which would be a threat to US “commercial and export interests in Cuba,” Ambassador Sumner Welles advised. The ranking expert on Latin America, Welles was particularly disturbed that workers had taken over sugar mills and set up what he called a “soviet government” in them. There can be “no confidence either in the policies nor stability of this regime,” he informed Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who told the press that the US would “welcome any government representing the will of the people of the Republic and capable of maintaining law and order throughout the island”—not the Grau government. Welles conceded that law and order were being maintained, but this appearance of stability was only “the quiet of panic,” he explained. It was a situation of “passive anarchy,” State Department adviser Adolf Berle added, another term that perhaps finds its place alongside of “logical illogicality.”

FDR told the press that Grau was backed only by “his local army” of 1500 men “and a bunch of students,” a government lacking any legitimacy. Welles's replacement, Jefferson Caffery, testified later as to the “unpopularity with all the better classes in the country of the de facto [Grau] government,” which was “supported only by the army and ignorant masses.” When the US-backed Mendieta government that replaced Grau had problems subduing the population, Caffery explained further that “in numbers, the ignorant masses of Cuba reach a very high figure.”

Roosevelt's refusal to recognize the Grau government “meant in effect an economic strangulation of the island,” David Green points out, “since the United States would not negotiate a new sugar purchase agreement with a government it did not recognize,” and the dependent economy could not survive without one. Army Chief of Staff Fulgencio Batista understood the message, and threw his support to opposition leader Carlos Mendieta, who replaced Grau and was immediately recognized by Washington. Relations were readjusted, with the result that Cuba became more fully incorporated “within the protective system of the United States,” a member of the US Tariff Commission noted. The US retained effective control over Cuban affairs, keeping its highly stratified and repressive internal social system intact along with the dominant role of foreign enterprise.
9

The Batista dictatorship that took over a few years later served US “commercial and export interests in Cuba” admirably, thus enjoying full support.

Castro's overthrow of the dictatorship in January 1959 soon elicited US hostility, and a return to the traditional path. By late 1959, the CIA and the State Department concluded that Castro had to be overthrown. One reason, State Department liberals explained, was that “our business interests in Cuba have been seriously affected.” A second was the rotten apple effect: “The United States cannot hope to encourage and support sound economic policies in other Latin American countries and promote necessary private investments in Latin America if it is or appears to be simultaneously cooperating with the Castro program,” the State Department concluded in November 1959. But one condition was added: “in view of Castro's strong though diminishing support in Cuba, it is of great importance, however, that the United States government not openly take actions which would cause the United States to be blamed for his failure or downfall.”