JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture
This is one of a series of Chomsky paperbacks republished in 2015 which collectively offer a truly radical and transformative review of America's role in world affairs. It is surely essential reading for anyone seeking a rational explanation for seemingly crazy situations. After the virtual insurrection of American youth in the Sixties and early Seventies, in opposition to the very crimes of aggression described with such clarity here, it would seem that a counter revolution has conspired to close the public's mind - perhaps its heart. The extent to which we have been deceived is made more graphic with the realisation that Chomsky's voice has been so lonely and so untypical for all these years. It is not that the evidence is not there in plain sight, so one must assume that we have chosen not to know. Chomsky has laid it out for us with such clarity that it is now difficult to justify ignoring it any longer. The truth as he tells it is painful and upsetting - it hurts - but it must be faced.
The first part of this book provides an overview of the Cold War, dating this from 1917, not 1945. I have placed a selection of quotes on this topic below. The second part focuses on America’s interference in Indochina from 1945 to the 1970s and beyond, and is especially concerned to expose the way historians of the Vietnam war have changed their tune periodically, in order to paint a retrospective picture at odds with contemporary records, including flatly contradicting their own earlier publications as though nobody would have the imagination to cross-check. Chomsky provides detailed rebuttals and ensures that JFK is accorded his proper place in the sequence of war criminals that have held the presidency. In the last section of the book, Chomsky notes that Kennedy secured escalating military spending which amounted to a Keynesian boost for the economy and a massive growth in nuclear and conventional weaponry on the basis of a supposed gap compared with the USSR, at a time when he knew very well that Kruschev was actually reducing the size of the USSR’s forces and reaching out for opportunities to reduce the risk of nuclear war. He also describes Kennedy’s personal role in moving Latin American policy beyond support for fascist regimes towards direct American leadership of a grotesquely oppressive security state system across the continent, as well as his aggressive and illegal efforts to subvert and destroy Castro’s regime in Cuba. This provides the basis for interesting comparisons between JFK’s “Camelot”and Ronald Reagan’s administration.
The quotes that follow help to outline Chomsky’s account of the Cold War, which is the essential context for any understanding of the USA’s criminal role in the Third World, its intolerance of democracy, destruction of human rights, rejection of international law and consistent promotion of fascism.
The inhabitants of Asia and the Western Hemisphere were “appalled by the all-destructive fury of European warfare,” military historian Geoffrey Parker observes. “It was thanks to their military superiority rather than any social, moral or natural advantage, that the white peoples of the world managed to create and control” their “global hegemony,” history’s first. “Europe’s incessant wars” were responsible for “stimulating military science and spirit to a point where Europe would be crushingly superior to the rest when they did meet,” historian V.G.Kiernan comments aptly. [p5,6]
These traditional features of European culture emerged with great clarity in the Indochina wars. There is a direct line of descent from the English colonists who carried out “the utter extirpation of all the Indians in the most populous parts of the union” by means “more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru” (Secretary of War Gen. Henry Knox, 1794) to the “ethnic cleansing” of the continent, to the murderous conquest of the Philippines and the rampages in the Caribbean region, to the onslaught against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.” [p6]
Every age of human history, Adam Smith argued with some justice, reveals the working of “the vile maxim of the masters of mankind”: “All for ourselves and nothing for other People.” The “masters of mankind” in the half millennium of the European conquest included Europe’s merchant warriors, the industrialists and financiers who followed in their paths, the supranational corporations and financial institutions that are creating what the business press now calls a “new imperial age,” ... as new governing forms coalesce to serve the needs of the masters in a “de-facto world government”: the IMF, World Bank, G-7, GATT and other executive agreements. [p11]
Our “excess of righteousness and disinterested benevolence” in Vietnam is commonly attributed to the Cold War, the felt need ‘to resist every hint of Soviet expansion wherever it occurred, even in areas that were not vital to our interests.” The doctrine is not wholly false, but must be translated from Newspeak into English. The term “Soviet expansion” served throughout the Cold War as a cover for policy initiatives that could not be justified, whatever their actual grounds. The Indochina Wars provide a revealing illustration of the general practice.” [p16]
The actual reasons for terror and subversion, and finally aggression, derive from the basic logic of North – South relations, developed with unusual explicitness in the early postwar period. Recognizing that they held unprecedented power, US planners undertook to organize the world in the interests of the masters, “assum[ing] out of self-interest, responsibility for the welfare of the world capitalist system, as the chief historian of the CIA, Gerald Haines, puts the matter in a highly regarded study of US policy in Latin America. Each region of the South was assigned its proper place. Latin America was to be taken over by the United States, its rivals Britain and France excluded. Policy there, as Haines explains, was designed “to develop larger and more efficient sources of supply for the American economy as well as create expanded markets for U.S. exports and expanded opportunities for investment of American capital,” a “neo-colonial neomercantilist policy that permitted local development only “as long as that did not interfere with American profits and dominance.” The Monroe Doctrine was also effectively extended to the Middle East, where the huge oil resources and crucially the enormous profits they generated were to be controlled by the US and its British client, operating behind an “Arab facade” of pliant family dictatorships. As explained by George Kennan and his State Department Policy Planning Staff, Africa was to be “exploited” for the reconstruction of Europe, while Southeast Asia would “fulfil its major function as a source of raw materials for Japan and Western Europe”, helping them to overcome the “dollar gap” so that they would be able to purchase US manufacturing exports and provide lucrative opportunities for US investors. [p16]
In short, the Third World was to be kept in its traditional service role, providing cheap labour and resources, markets investment opportunities and other amenities for the masters, with local elites permitted to share in the plunder as long as they cooperate. By the same logic, the major threat to US interests was always recognized to be “radical and nationalistic regimes” that are responsive to popular pressures for “immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses” and development for domestic needs. Such “ultranationalism” is unacceptable, regardless of its political coloration, because it conflicts with the demand for a “political and economic climate conducive to private investment”, with inadequate repatriation of profits and “protection of our raw materials.” [pp16,17]
Eastern Europe was the original “Third World,” diverging from the West along a fault line running through Germany even before the Columgian era, the West beginning to develop, the East ecoming its service area. By the early 20th Century, much ofthe region was a quasi-colonial dependency of the West. The Bolshevik takeover n 1917 was immediately recognized to be “ultranationalist,” hence unacceptable. Furthermore it was a “virus,” with substantial appeal in the Third World. / The Western invasion of the Soviet Union was therefore justified in defense against “the Revolution’s challenge ... to the very survival of the capitalist order,” the leading diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis comments today, reiterating the basic position of US diplomacy of the 1920s. “The fundamental obstacle” to recognition of the USSR, the chief od the Eastern European Division of teh State department held, “is the world revolutionary aims and practices of the rulers of that country.” These “practices” of course, did not involve literal aggression; rather, interfering with Western designs, which is tantamount to aggression. The Kremlin conspiracy to take over the world was therefore established, a record replayed in later years as other ultranationalists and viruses were assigned to the category of “Soviet expansion.” [p22]
The Bolsheviks sought to make “the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth, “ Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State Robert Lansing warned... force must be used to prevent “the leaders of Bolshevism and anarchy” from proceeding to “organize or preach against government in the United States.” The repression launched by the Wilson administration successfully undermined democratic politics, freedom of the press, and independent thought, safeguarding business interests and their control over state power. The story was re-enacted after World War II, again under the pretext of the Kremlin conspiracy. [p23]
According to the official version, it was Soviet crimes that aroused Westerrn indignation. In his scholarly history of Soviet American relations, George Kennan writes that the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 created the breach... The idealistic Woodrow Wilson was particularly distraught, reflecting the “strong attachment to constitutionality” of the American public... A few months later, Wilson’s army dissolved the National Assembly in occupied Haiti “by genuinely Marine Corp methods,” ... The reason was that the Haitian legislature refused to ratify a constitution imposed by the invaders that gave them the right to buy up Haiti’s land. A Marine-run plebiscite remedied the problem... [p24] Following the same high principles, the US enthusiastically welcomed the “fine young revolution” carried out by Benito Mussolini in Italy in 1922, as the American ambassador described the imposition of Fascism... because they blocked the threat of a second Russia, the State Department explained. Hitler was supported as a “moderate” for the same reason. In 1937, the State Department saw fascism as compatible with American economic interests, and also the natural reaction of “the rich and middle classes, in self defence” when the “dissatisfied masses, with the example of Russia before them, swing to the Left.” ... Major US corporations were heavily involved in German war production, sometimes enriching themselves (notably the Ford motor company) by joining the plunder of Jewish assets under Hitler’s Aryanization program, “U.S. investment in Germany accelerated rapidly after Hitler came to power”, Christopher Simpson writes, increasing “by some 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in continental Euopre and barely holding steady in Britain.”... [pp 23-25]
As Gaddis and other serious historians recognize, the Cold War began in 1917, not 1945. Whatever one believes about the post-World War II period, no one regarded the USSR as a military threat in earlier years... It should be added that Stalin’s awesome crimes were of no concern to Truman and other high officials. Truman liked and admired Stalin, and felt he could deal with him as long as the US got its way 85 percent of the time. Other leading figures agreed. As with a host of other murderers and torturers of lesser scale, the unacceptable crime is disobedience; the same is true of priests who preach “the preferential option for the poor”, secular nationalists in the Arab world, Islamic Fundamentalists, democratic socialists, or independent elements of any variety. [pp26, 27]
The question of what Kennedy might have done or what was hidden in the secret recesses of his heart, we may leave to seers and mystics. We can, however, inspect what he did do and say, an inquiry facilitated by a rich documentary record. [p83]
Note that JFK and his advisers consistently regarded lack of popular support for the war and GVN initiatives towards political settlement not as an opportunity for withdrawal but rather as a threat to victory. [p97]
For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while marching in the parade. [p142]
The high level shift of policy after Tet called for a revision of the earlier record. Since everyone was now an “early opponent of the war,” the same must have been true of the grand leader. The enterprise had soured; the picture of John F. Kennedy must therefore be modified. [p143]
The first part of this book provides an overview of the Cold War, dating this from 1917, not 1945. I have placed a selection of quotes on this topic below. The second part focuses on America’s interference in Indochina from 1945 to the 1970s and beyond, and is especially concerned to expose the way historians of the Vietnam war have changed their tune periodically, in order to paint a retrospective picture at odds with contemporary records, including flatly contradicting their own earlier publications as though nobody would have the imagination to cross-check. Chomsky provides detailed rebuttals and ensures that JFK is accorded his proper place in the sequence of war criminals that have held the presidency. In the last section of the book, Chomsky notes that Kennedy secured escalating military spending which amounted to a Keynesian boost for the economy and a massive growth in nuclear and conventional weaponry on the basis of a supposed gap compared with the USSR, at a time when he knew very well that Kruschev was actually reducing the size of the USSR’s forces and reaching out for opportunities to reduce the risk of nuclear war. He also describes Kennedy’s personal role in moving Latin American policy beyond support for fascist regimes towards direct American leadership of a grotesquely oppressive security state system across the continent, as well as his aggressive and illegal efforts to subvert and destroy Castro’s regime in Cuba. This provides the basis for interesting comparisons between JFK’s “Camelot”and Ronald Reagan’s administration.
The quotes that follow help to outline Chomsky’s account of the Cold War, which is the essential context for any understanding of the USA’s criminal role in the Third World, its intolerance of democracy, destruction of human rights, rejection of international law and consistent promotion of fascism.
The inhabitants of Asia and the Western Hemisphere were “appalled by the all-destructive fury of European warfare,” military historian Geoffrey Parker observes. “It was thanks to their military superiority rather than any social, moral or natural advantage, that the white peoples of the world managed to create and control” their “global hegemony,” history’s first. “Europe’s incessant wars” were responsible for “stimulating military science and spirit to a point where Europe would be crushingly superior to the rest when they did meet,” historian V.G.Kiernan comments aptly. [p5,6]
These traditional features of European culture emerged with great clarity in the Indochina wars. There is a direct line of descent from the English colonists who carried out “the utter extirpation of all the Indians in the most populous parts of the union” by means “more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru” (Secretary of War Gen. Henry Knox, 1794) to the “ethnic cleansing” of the continent, to the murderous conquest of the Philippines and the rampages in the Caribbean region, to the onslaught against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.” [p6]
Every age of human history, Adam Smith argued with some justice, reveals the working of “the vile maxim of the masters of mankind”: “All for ourselves and nothing for other People.” The “masters of mankind” in the half millennium of the European conquest included Europe’s merchant warriors, the industrialists and financiers who followed in their paths, the supranational corporations and financial institutions that are creating what the business press now calls a “new imperial age,” ... as new governing forms coalesce to serve the needs of the masters in a “de-facto world government”: the IMF, World Bank, G-7, GATT and other executive agreements. [p11]
Our “excess of righteousness and disinterested benevolence” in Vietnam is commonly attributed to the Cold War, the felt need ‘to resist every hint of Soviet expansion wherever it occurred, even in areas that were not vital to our interests.” The doctrine is not wholly false, but must be translated from Newspeak into English. The term “Soviet expansion” served throughout the Cold War as a cover for policy initiatives that could not be justified, whatever their actual grounds. The Indochina Wars provide a revealing illustration of the general practice.” [p16]
The actual reasons for terror and subversion, and finally aggression, derive from the basic logic of North – South relations, developed with unusual explicitness in the early postwar period. Recognizing that they held unprecedented power, US planners undertook to organize the world in the interests of the masters, “assum[ing] out of self-interest, responsibility for the welfare of the world capitalist system, as the chief historian of the CIA, Gerald Haines, puts the matter in a highly regarded study of US policy in Latin America. Each region of the South was assigned its proper place. Latin America was to be taken over by the United States, its rivals Britain and France excluded. Policy there, as Haines explains, was designed “to develop larger and more efficient sources of supply for the American economy as well as create expanded markets for U.S. exports and expanded opportunities for investment of American capital,” a “neo-colonial neomercantilist policy that permitted local development only “as long as that did not interfere with American profits and dominance.” The Monroe Doctrine was also effectively extended to the Middle East, where the huge oil resources and crucially the enormous profits they generated were to be controlled by the US and its British client, operating behind an “Arab facade” of pliant family dictatorships. As explained by George Kennan and his State Department Policy Planning Staff, Africa was to be “exploited” for the reconstruction of Europe, while Southeast Asia would “fulfil its major function as a source of raw materials for Japan and Western Europe”, helping them to overcome the “dollar gap” so that they would be able to purchase US manufacturing exports and provide lucrative opportunities for US investors. [p16]
In short, the Third World was to be kept in its traditional service role, providing cheap labour and resources, markets investment opportunities and other amenities for the masters, with local elites permitted to share in the plunder as long as they cooperate. By the same logic, the major threat to US interests was always recognized to be “radical and nationalistic regimes” that are responsive to popular pressures for “immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses” and development for domestic needs. Such “ultranationalism” is unacceptable, regardless of its political coloration, because it conflicts with the demand for a “political and economic climate conducive to private investment”, with inadequate repatriation of profits and “protection of our raw materials.” [pp16,17]
Eastern Europe was the original “Third World,” diverging from the West along a fault line running through Germany even before the Columgian era, the West beginning to develop, the East ecoming its service area. By the early 20th Century, much ofthe region was a quasi-colonial dependency of the West. The Bolshevik takeover n 1917 was immediately recognized to be “ultranationalist,” hence unacceptable. Furthermore it was a “virus,” with substantial appeal in the Third World. / The Western invasion of the Soviet Union was therefore justified in defense against “the Revolution’s challenge ... to the very survival of the capitalist order,” the leading diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis comments today, reiterating the basic position of US diplomacy of the 1920s. “The fundamental obstacle” to recognition of the USSR, the chief od the Eastern European Division of teh State department held, “is the world revolutionary aims and practices of the rulers of that country.” These “practices” of course, did not involve literal aggression; rather, interfering with Western designs, which is tantamount to aggression. The Kremlin conspiracy to take over the world was therefore established, a record replayed in later years as other ultranationalists and viruses were assigned to the category of “Soviet expansion.” [p22]
The Bolsheviks sought to make “the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth, “ Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State Robert Lansing warned... force must be used to prevent “the leaders of Bolshevism and anarchy” from proceeding to “organize or preach against government in the United States.” The repression launched by the Wilson administration successfully undermined democratic politics, freedom of the press, and independent thought, safeguarding business interests and their control over state power. The story was re-enacted after World War II, again under the pretext of the Kremlin conspiracy. [p23]
According to the official version, it was Soviet crimes that aroused Westerrn indignation. In his scholarly history of Soviet American relations, George Kennan writes that the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918 created the breach... The idealistic Woodrow Wilson was particularly distraught, reflecting the “strong attachment to constitutionality” of the American public... A few months later, Wilson’s army dissolved the National Assembly in occupied Haiti “by genuinely Marine Corp methods,” ... The reason was that the Haitian legislature refused to ratify a constitution imposed by the invaders that gave them the right to buy up Haiti’s land. A Marine-run plebiscite remedied the problem... [p24] Following the same high principles, the US enthusiastically welcomed the “fine young revolution” carried out by Benito Mussolini in Italy in 1922, as the American ambassador described the imposition of Fascism... because they blocked the threat of a second Russia, the State Department explained. Hitler was supported as a “moderate” for the same reason. In 1937, the State Department saw fascism as compatible with American economic interests, and also the natural reaction of “the rich and middle classes, in self defence” when the “dissatisfied masses, with the example of Russia before them, swing to the Left.” ... Major US corporations were heavily involved in German war production, sometimes enriching themselves (notably the Ford motor company) by joining the plunder of Jewish assets under Hitler’s Aryanization program, “U.S. investment in Germany accelerated rapidly after Hitler came to power”, Christopher Simpson writes, increasing “by some 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in continental Euopre and barely holding steady in Britain.”... [pp 23-25]
As Gaddis and other serious historians recognize, the Cold War began in 1917, not 1945. Whatever one believes about the post-World War II period, no one regarded the USSR as a military threat in earlier years... It should be added that Stalin’s awesome crimes were of no concern to Truman and other high officials. Truman liked and admired Stalin, and felt he could deal with him as long as the US got its way 85 percent of the time. Other leading figures agreed. As with a host of other murderers and torturers of lesser scale, the unacceptable crime is disobedience; the same is true of priests who preach “the preferential option for the poor”, secular nationalists in the Arab world, Islamic Fundamentalists, democratic socialists, or independent elements of any variety. [pp26, 27]
The question of what Kennedy might have done or what was hidden in the secret recesses of his heart, we may leave to seers and mystics. We can, however, inspect what he did do and say, an inquiry facilitated by a rich documentary record. [p83]
Note that JFK and his advisers consistently regarded lack of popular support for the war and GVN initiatives towards political settlement not as an opportunity for withdrawal but rather as a threat to victory. [p97]
For the totalitarian mind, adherence to state propaganda does not suffice: one must display proper enthusiasm while marching in the parade. [p142]
The high level shift of policy after Tet called for a revision of the earlier record. Since everyone was now an “early opponent of the war,” the same must have been true of the grand leader. The enterprise had soured; the picture of John F. Kennedy must therefore be modified. [p143]
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