Kissinger Planned Attacks on Cuba
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. (Photo: Gerald Ford Library)
National Security Archive | October 1, 2014
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered a series of secret contingency plans that included airstrikes and mining of Cuban harbors in the aftermath of Fidel Castro’s decision to send Cuban forces into Angola in late 1975, according to declassified documents made public today for the first time. “If we decide to use military power it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures,” Kissinger instructed General George Brown of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a high-level meeting of national security officials on March 24, 1976, that included then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. “I think we are going to have to smash Castro,” Kissinger told President Ford. “We probably can’t do it before the [1976 presidential] elections.” “I agree,” the president responded.
The story of Kissinger’s Cuban contingency planning was published today in a new book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana, co-authored by American University professor William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh who directs the National Security Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project. Research for the book, which reveals the surprising and untold history of bilateral efforts towards rapprochement and reconciliation, draws on hundreds of formerly secret records obtained by the authors. The documents detailing Kissinger’s Cuban contingency planning in 1976 were obtained by Kornbluh through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
According to the book, Kissinger’s consideration of open hostilities with Cuba came after a protracted effort of secret diplomatic talks to normalize relations — including furtive meetings between U.S. and Cuban emissaries at La Guardia airport and an unprecedented three-hour negotiating session at the five-star Pierre Hotel in New York City. Cuba’s efforts at supporting the anti-colonial struggle in Africa, the authors write, “was the type of threat to U.S. interests that Kissinger had hoped the prospect of better relations would mitigate.”
The book describes Kissinger as “apoplectic” with Castro — in oval office meetings Kissinger referred to the Cuban leader as a “pipsqueak” — for Cuba’s decision to deploy thousands of soldiers to Angola to assist the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party of António Agostinho Neto against attacks from insurgent groups that were supported covertly by the United States and apartheid regime of South Africa. Concerned that Castro would eventually broaden his military incursion beyond Angola, Kissinger counseled Ford that they would have to “crack the Cubans.” “If they move into Namibia or Rhodesia, I would be in favor of clobbering them,” Kissinger told the president, according to a March 15, 1976, Oval Office memorandum of conversation.
In the March 24 meeting with an elite national security team known as the Washington Special Actions Group, Kissinger expanded on the domino scenario. “If the Cubans destroy Rhodesia then Namibia is next and then there is South Africa,” Kissinger argued. To permit the “Cubans as the shock troops of the revolution” in Africa, he argued, was unacceptable and could cause racial tensions in the “Caribbean with the Cubans appealing to disaffected minorities and could then spillover into South America and even into our own country.”
Moreover, the lack of a U.S. response to the global exercise of military power by a small Caribbean island nation, Kissinger feared, would be seen as American weakness. “If there is a perception overseas that we are so weakened by our internal debate [over Vietnam] so that it looks like we can’t do anything about a country of eight million people, then in three or four years we are going to have a real crisis.”
Drafted secretly by the Washington Special Actions Group in April 1976, the contingency plans outlined punitive options that ranged from economic and political sanctions to acts of war such as mining Cuba’s harbors, a naval quarantine, and strategic airstrikes “to destroy selected Cuban military and military-related targets.” The contingency planners warned Kissinger, however, that any act of aggression could trigger a superpower confrontation. Unlike the 1962 missile crisis, stated one planning paper, “a new Cuban crisis would not necessarily lead to a Soviet retreat.”
Indeed, “a Cuban/Soviet response could escalate in areas that would maximize US casualties and thus provoke stronger response,” Kissinger’s national security advisers warned. “The circumstances that could lead the United States to select a military option against Cuba should be serious enough to warrant further action in preparation for general war.”
Back Channel to Cuba was released today at a press conference at the Pierre Hotel, the site of the first official secret meeting to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba in July 1975. The authors suggested that the history of such talks, and the lessons they hold, remain especially relevant at a time when both President Obama and President Raul Castro have publicly declared the urgency of moving beyond the legacy of perpetual hostility in U.S.-Cuban relations.
Document 1: Memorandum of Conversation, February 25, 1976
During a conversation with President Ford in the Oval Office, Secretary of State Kissinger raises the issue of Cuba’s military incursion into Angola, implying that Latin American nations are concerned about a “race war” because of Cuba’s efforts in Africa. “I think we are going to have to smash Castro. We probably can’t do it before the elections.” The president responds, “I agree.”
Document 2: Memorandum of Conversation, March 15, 1976
In another Oval Office conversation, Kissinger raises the Cuban military involvement in Africa and expresses concern that Castro may deploy troops elsewhere in the region. “I think sooner or later we have to crack the Cubans … I think we have to humiliate them.” He continues to argue that, “If they move into Namibia or Rhodesia, I would be in favor of clobbering them. That would create a furor … but I think we might have to demand they get out of Africa.” When President Ford asks, “what if they don’t?” Kissinger responds, “I think we could blockade.”
Document 3: Washington Special Actions Group Meeting, Cuba, March 24, 1976
Kissinger convenes The Washington Special Actions Group-a small elite team of national security officials-on March 24 to discuss a range of options and capabilities to move against Cuba. “We want to get planning started in the political, economic and military fields so that we can see what we can do if we want to move against Cuba,” he explains. “In the military field there is an invasion or blockade.” Kissinger shares his domino theory of Cuban military involvement in the region. “If the Cubans destroy Rhodesia then Namibia is next and then there is South Africa. It might only take five years,” Kissinger argues. In discussing military options, he states, “if we decide to use military power it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures – we get no reward for using military power in moderation.” Kissinger orders the group to secretly draw up plans for retaliation if Cuban troops go beyond Angola.
Document 4: Cuban Contingency Plan Summary, (ca. April 1976)
This document is a summary of the Cuban Contingency survey considering the possible U.S. reactions to continued Cuban and USSR “Angola style” intervention. The summary notes that the U.S. is already engaging in some efforts to dissuade further intervention through “public warnings, signals to the USSR, changes in our African policy and some measures designed to isolate Castro.” While any U.S. response will affect U.S.-Soviet relations, “It is easier to bring pressure on Cuba, as the closer and weaker partner in a tightly interwoven relationship, than on the Soviet Union.”
Document 5: Cuban Contingency Plan Paper 1, (ca. April 1976)
According to this lengthy contingency planning paper, the objective of these plans is to prevent a pattern in which Cuba and the USSR “arrogate to themselves the right to intervene with combat forces in local or regional conflicts.” The contingency plan outlines four courses of action that vary on a scale of seriousness for deterring continued Cuban intervention, including: political pressure, actions against the USSR, a scenario of actions (combining political, economic and military measures), and military steps. Any actions taken towards Cuba could spur greater tension with the USSR. “In short, confronting Cuba — the weaker partner — is an obvious step toward confronting the USSR.” Political measures are presented as the best option for dissuading Cuba because of the increased chances of a U.S.-Cuban “incident” stemming from military actions. Along with the possibility of an incident, this document notes that “one of Cuba’s main foreign policy objectives has been to normalize relations with the countries of this hemisphere.”
The document outlines the option for a quarantine. As Cuba is highly dependent on imports and foreign military equipment (from the USSR), especially by sea, the U.S. would be able to exacerbate Cuba’s greatest vulnerability. On that same theme, the paper points to the U.S. base at Guantanamo as the greatest vulnerability for a Cuban response to any U.S. military actions. Other military steps outlined in the plans include mining Cuban ports and conducting punitive strikes against selected targets.
Document 6: Cuban Contingency Plan Paper 2, (ca. April 1976)
This paper covers several categories of U.S. actions against Cuba: deterrence, pressure to cease and desist, interdiction of Cuban action under way, and retaliation. Any form of deterrence taken by the U.S. would have to be “predicated on a willingness to take some action if the deterrence failed.” However, and reiterated once again, any action taken to confront Cuba would also incite a confrontation with the USSR. The possible military measures presented include three forms of quarantine (selected war materiel, POL imports, maritime blockade excluding food and medicine), mining Cuban ports, and punitive airstrikes on selected targets.
The document notes two important ambiguities — the role of Cuban military involvement in Africa and the threshold to determine the U.S. response to a Cuban provocation. “In sum, there is a good chance the US will be confronted by an ambiguous situation, in which Cuban intervention is not clearly established.” As well, there is “no precise threshold” which would determine the U.S. response, except to state that the threshold would be low if Cuban action were directed against the US or its territories (Puerto Rico), higher in the Caribbean and Latin America, and highest in Africa.
The document states that “we should further make it clear that we are not reverting to the shenanigans of the early 1960’s” and that the U.S. is not violating any international agreements. While the Soviets in 1970 indicated that they regarded the 1962 U.S.-Soviet agreement as still in force, the “failure of the Cubans to permit the UN supervision renders the US pledge technically inoperative.”
Document 7: Kissinger Aide-Memoire to Cuba, January 11, 1975
This conciliatory message drafted by an aide to Kissinger, and approved by the Secretary of State, was given to the Cuban side at the first meeting between U.S. and Cuban representatives, which took place at a cafeteria in La Guardia airport. “We are meeting here to explore the possibilities for a more normal relationship between our two countries,” it begins. The objective is to “determine whether there exists an equal determination on both sides to settle the differences that exist between us.” While the ideological differences are wide, Kissinger expresses hope that such talks will “be useful in addressing concrete issues which it is in the interest of both countries to resolve.” As a gesture to the Cubans, the U.S. will permit Cuban diplomats (accredited to the UN) to travel from New York to Washington and may begin granting additional visas to Cubans for cultural, scientific and education meetings. For Kissinger, “no purpose is served in attempting to embargo ideas.”
Document 8: Memorandum for the Secretary, Meeting in New York with Cuban Representatives, January 11, 1975
In a briefing paper on the first secret meeting at La Guardia airport, Kissinger’s aide Lawrence Eagleburger reports on the tone and exchange of views. The Cubans stated they had no authority to negotiate at that time, but emphasized the importance of removing the embargo as a “sine qua non” for talks. Eagleburger reports that he wanted to “leave both Cubans with a clear understanding that while I had received their message, I was in no way prepared — even unofficially — to accept [removing the embargo] as a precondition to further talks.” Even though at times there was a seemingly difficult tone in the meeting, as Eagleburger explains, “the atmosphere of the meeting was extremely friendly.”
Document 9: Memorandum of Conversation, Pierre Hotel, U.S.-Cuba Meeting, July 9, 1975
This meeting marks the first formal negotiating session to explore normalized relations between the United States and Cuba. To break the ice, Eagleburger suggests that Kissinger is disposed to meet with the Cuban foreign minister during the upcoming UNGA meetings in September. Assistant Secretary of State William D. Rogers begins by explaining that Washington would support lifting multilateral sanctions at the OAS and that the United States would then begin to dismantle the trade embargo, piece by piece, in response to similar gestures from the Cubans. Over the course of the next three hours the U.S. and Cuban officials discuss a series of reciprocal and bilateral improvements of relations, with much of the meeting focused on the Cuban responses to the points raised by the U.S. side. Responding to the piece by piece approach of the U.S., the Cuban representatives reiterate that any precondition for talks remains the lifting of the embargo. “We cannot negotiate under the blockade,” Ramon Sánchez-Parodi argues; “until the embargo is lifted, Cuba and the United States cannot deal with each other as equals and consequently cannot negotiate.”
‘THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY’
THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Written after years of extensive research, THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY contains over 550 pages, including more than 1200 footnotes and some 120 pages of bibliography. The book has been meticulously researched with every aspect of the history fully supported with primary evidence, much of it from the neoconservatives themselves.
The book is a must for all those interested in the history of neoconservatism, the recent history of Israel and conflict between the West and Islam in the Middle East during the first ten years of the NEW AMERICAN CENTURY.
Despite being originally written as a successful doctoral thesis, the book avoids academic jargon and uses plain easy to understand language
It details the rise of neoconservative influence within the US government particularly from the Reagan era through to the presidency of George W. Bush, when neoconservative power reached its zenith. It details the strong connections neoconservatives have with right-wing Israeli Zionism and the way in which neoconservatives were able to manipulate American power to benefit the Greater Israel cause. The book details how various interests including the Military Industrial Complex, the American religious right, US big business and US/Israeli Zionists converged into a coalition under George W. Bush and his administration that set out to determine the future history of the Middle East in such a way as to benefit Israel and the economic interests of the US.
Currently available in fully searchable PDF format for just AUD$12-00 via PayPal or direct through the author Damian Lataan.
At the moment the book is not available in hard copy though maybe in the future.
Email: lataan@adam.com.au
Ismael Hossein-zadeh’s “Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis”
The Consequences of Parasitical Capitalism
Book review by Isaac Christiansen | CounterPunch | May 23, 2014
Ismael Hossein-zadeh has done a masterful job in explaining the causes of the 2007-08 financial collapse and in identifying what must be done in response. While there is a consensus that the main source of the 2008 financial collapse was the accumulation of too much toxic debt, there is little agreement on the factors that precipitated the buildup of all that unsustainable debt. Focusing on superficial descriptions or symptomatic factors such as deregulation, securitization, greed, and the like, mainstream economics falls way short of providing a satisfactory explanation for the collapse, or the ensuing long recession. Now comes a newly published book, Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis: Parasitic Finance Capital, which skillfully fills this theoretical void as it provides an alternative explanation of the 2008 financial collapse, of the ensuing long recession and of the neo-liberal austerity responses to it. Instead of simply blaming the “irrational behavior” of market players, as neo-liberals do, or lax public supervision, as Keynesians do, the study focuses on the core dynamics of capitalist development that not only created the financial bubble, but also fostered the “irrational behavior” of market players and subverted public policy.
Hossein-zadeh sets out in Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis to first demonstrate the origins of the crisis and the subsequent transfer of “tens of trillions” of dollars from the vast majority of society into the coffers of the financial speculators through the imposition of austerity cuts on the many for the benefit of the few; and secondly to examine potential societal responses to avoid the repetition of such crises in the future. To do this, he begins by examining the two most prominent explanations for the crisis: the neoliberal explanation, which claimed it was due to irrational market actors and/or intrusive government policies that interfered with the self-correcting market mechanism; and the Keynesian explanation, which explained the crisis as the result of excessive deregulation, “inappropriate” public policy and supply side strategies. The author skillfully exposes the weaknesses of both and offers a compelling and well grounded alternative explanation, as indicated in the book’s title.
The book is well written and is easily understood by those who may not have an extensive background in economic theory. At the same time, it provides keen insights that are essential to understanding the crisis for those who may be more experienced in the field. It is structured with the first five chapters devoted to understanding crises within advanced capitalism, particularly the role of finance capital in provoking them, while the final three chapters are dedicated to examining solutions. Moreover, the work is an essential heuristic tool for any and all who wish to show how and why advanced capitalist economies tend towards crisis and the role of finance capital as a catalyst of crisis. A more thorough examination of the work’s primary contributions follows below.
In Chapter one Hossein-zadeh explains that neoliberal conceptualizations suffer from a misplaced religious-like faith in the market mechanism that led the leading neoliberal/neoclassical economists to remain oblivious to the impending crash. Due to neoliberals’ blind faith in the income-expenditure (or supply-demand) circular flow model, their economic theory is impervious to the fact that contradictions can arise within the real sector itself as well as to the reality that contradictions can also arise between the financial and the real sector. This led the leading neoliberal/neoclassical economists like Ben Bernanke and the IMF financial gurus to predict continual expansion up through the very eve of the crisis, and later to offer mistaken remedies such as quantitative easing and more funds to the financial sector. The impact of these measures is that instead of preventing a new bubble from forming they put us well on the way to creating another one.
In chapter two Mr. Hossein-zadeh delves into the weaknesses of Keynesian explanations of the crisis, arguing that while they are not wrong to signal deregulation as part of the problem leading to this crisis, they naively believe that capitalism will allow itself to be regulated without pressure from the people, thereby ignoring the power relationship between capitalism and the state. Not surprisingly, Keynesians tend to be oblivious as to why their more sane-sounding prescriptions for increasing public demand (through the promotion of New Deal type economic programs) and curtailing the aggressive and irresponsible behavior of financial players through more regulation have not been followed. While their policy suggestions may prove effective under certain circumstances, Keynesians fail to see or acknowledge that profit can also be increased through more intense exploitation of workers, that is, through supply-side measures. Furthermore, while the New Deal reforms were beneficial for the extrication of the U.S. economy from the grips of the Great Depression, these were followed much more as a response to working-class pressure from below then as a deliberated response to the writings of Keynes. In addition, the long economic expansion that followed was also due to the specific global economic situation of vast amounts of capital destroyed in Europe leaving the U.S. without much competition for its exports.
Much of the weakness of Keynesian economic theory, like all neoclassical economics, is their rejection of the category of value, and thus any real understanding as to the origin of social wealth and class dynamics. The general weaknesses of neoclassical economics are covered expertly in chapter 3. This chapter examines the weaknesses in the neoclassical understanding of the relationship between industrial and finance capital. The neoclassical position traditionally argues that the latter is limited by the real expansion of the former, and thus remains oblivious to the possibility of a crisis forming in the financial sector and spreading to the real ‘productive’ sector. To understand the real developments, Hossein-zadeh convincingly argues, we need to turn to Karl Marx’s Volume III and look at what he termed ‘fictitious capital’, when Marx examined how value tended to be siphoned from the sector in which it was produced to the unproductive sectors of the economy in pursuit of speculative investment.
Chapter 4 looks at the historical growth of finance capital (whose share of GDP in 2008 was more than double its share on the eve of the Great Depression in 1929), the growth of speculative activities (derivative markets, credit-default swaps) and the role of private control of the money supply. Each one of these phenomena is analyzed here in their social impacts and class/political dynamics. Here the author (p76) demonstrates that the speculative activity of finance capital accelerates “accumulation of fictitious capital through asset price inflation” (often with the help of public funds that simultaneously act as insurance protecting the speculators from the potential consequences of their socially deleterious behavior), creating a bubble that eventually bursts—with the public left paying the debt for the now-devalued assets.
This chapter also demonstrates that the bailouts for the speculators and austerity for the many, which further increased the already sharp economic inequality, were not an economic necessity but a reflection of the power of finance capital over the state and the monetary authority. To this end, Hossein-zadeh reflects on the immense tax-breaks for the wealthy, gargantuan military spending and lucrative contracts for weapons producers that created ‘public’ debt as a pretext to slash necessary social programs. The chapter demonstrates that we live under an economic system where losses are socialized and profits are privatized.
In Chapter 5, Hossein-zadeh reflects on Marx’s understanding of parasitic finance capital, its place within labor theory of value, and its contribution to a better understanding of the causes behind the present economic crisis. In Vol. III of Capital Marx outlined how the surplus value produced in the industrial and agricultural sectors ends up being divided between the merchant (or commercial capital), finance capital (money lending capital) and ground rent (Marx [1894] 1981). Hossein-zadeh points out that, according to Marx, fluctuations of finance capital could take place independent “of the movement of the actual capital it represents” (p86, quoted in Hossein-zadeh); and that as capitalism develops the movement of money (finance) capital becomes more and more independent of the movement of industrial capital. This is critical for his argument that crisis can hit the speculative financial sector at a moment when there is not a crisis within the real sector, but that through the tightening of credit and asset price deflation spread the crisis from the speculative to the productive sector.
The author further argues in this chapter that contemporary Marxists, unlike Hilferding and Lenin who expanded in the early 20th century on Marx’s work on finance capital, have largely abandoned systematic explorations into the workings of finance capital (generally viewing it as secondary to their conception of a Marxian theory of crisis), and focused primarily on the movements within the productive sector. It is not that Hossein-zadeh disagrees in principle with the contemporary Marxist scholars about the potential for crisis to arise within the circuit of productive capital; but that many of these Marxists have overlooked the fact that crisis can and does at times start within the financial sector and proceeds to spread to the real sector. Many contemporary Marxist theoreticians and economists seem to argue, in an inconsistent or self-contradicting fashion that “asset price inflation can boost demand and cause or magnify an expanding real cycle; but debt and/or asset price deflation cannot cause or aggravate a real-sector recession!” (p107).
In Chapter 6 the author explores the historical record of debt cancellations/write-downs, dating back to Bronze Age Mesopotamia (2400-1400 BCE) and running through the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Here he examines the evidence that suggests that not only were debt cancellation and land restitution/reform common practices in this epoch, but that they often led to economic renewal. While there are moral and ethical arguments that can easily be made in favor of the biblical Jubilee and debt cancellation in general, Hossein-zadeh goes beyond these points to argue that the historical record offers clear evidence that an economic recovery would not occur so long as the vast majority of the population is saddled with overwhelming debt and interest payments. The author further argues that the decline of these socially-beneficial practices coincided with the rise of private property and the growth of power of landowning and rentier classes, and that these classes exerted influence over the state/religious authorities to deemphasize these central aspects to the Old Testament’s socio-economic reforms.
In Chapter 7 the author makes the case for public banking. Here he underscores once again the pernicious role of private banking in advancing the interests of the wealthy few in general and finance capital in particular at the expense of the many. He argues that while private banks “create financial bubbles during expansionary cycles and credit crunch during contradictory ones”, public banking “can provide steady, reliable financial resources as dictated by a nation’s industrial and/or commercial needs”(p129). Crucial here is the superior economic record held by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries in weathering the 2008 financial collapse and the ensuing economic crisis. Contrary to a situation in which the state becomes beholden to creditors, when banks are nationalized the state has additional resources with which to engage in essential public projects that both serve a social purpose and stimulate demand. While acknowledging that public banking by itself is insufficient to prevent the recurrence of all economic crises, Hossein-zadeh successfully makes the case that this is a necessary first step to avert crises that originate within the financial sector.
In the final chapter, the author soundly argues that there are no shortcuts to superseding capitalism by solely nationalizing the banking system; and that we must move beyond capitalism itself, or else we would be subjected to the throes of its logic. Here he examines the role of labor as one of the key players in confronting capital. Sadly, as he points out in this chapter, many unions have become caught up in business unionism and have tragically become vehicles for transmitting the dictates of capital to the workers (as opposed to vice-versa!), and have been unable (or unwilling) to resist the generalized assault on labor in the form of layoffs, wage cuts and outsourcing.
A central explanation for the debilitation of unions offered here lies in capital’s global reach and the globalization of production. Capital has free global movement and is organized on an international level and thus is able to play off workers in various countries against each other in a race to the bottom in terms of worker safety, salaries, benefits, labor laws and environmental protections. Labor must therefore organize internationally so as to be able to effectively resist a globalized capitalist system. A key element of this strategy lies in resisting all forms of chauvinisms, and reactionary nationalisms that have at times infected the labor movement and can lead to what Edna Bonacich (1972) referred to as a split-labor market.
Dr. Hossein-zadeh in this chapter also looks at the limitations of the Occupy movement, arguing that while their heart was in the right place, Occupy activists had condemned themselves to be ineffective as a long-term force for change by refusing to adopt an organizational structure or outline specific demands. The author thus points us back to the critical role of labor to play in this regard, but that it is essential that they organize and coordinate globally, otherwise capital will be able to outmaneuver workers’ resistance and subject labor to its logic. In the end, Hossein-zadeh remains hopeful based on the seeds of international labor organizing that labor will be able to meet this challenge in the future and serve as a primary catalyst for meaningful socio-economic transformation. In summary, I recommend this book without reservation, as a critical component of the library of those who are not just concerned with understanding the dynamics of finance capital and its role in facilitating economic crisis, but to all those who are genuinely interested in bringing about a more socially just and equitable society.
Isaac Christiansen is a Ph.D Student in the Sociology Department at Iowa State University.
Works Cited
Bonacich, Edna. 1972. “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split-Labor Market” American Sociological Review, 37:5 547-559.
Marx Karl. [1894] 1981. Capital Vol. III Penguin Books in Association with New Left Review. London WI.
Clearing the plains
Book review by Paul Burrows • Briarpatch Magazine • March 10, 2014
In the context of a Canadian popular imagination still permeated by myths about heroic voyageurs, intrepid Mounties, and an inexorable yet ostensibly “peaceful” and “lawful” acquisition of other peoples’ lands, James Daschuk’s Clearing the Plains is a vital intervention. Described by historian Elizabeth A. Fenn as a “tour de force that dismantles and destroys the view that Canada has a special claim to humanity in its treatment of Indigenous peoples,” Daschuk’s study of Indigenous health and disease on the Canadian Prairies draws on decades of research to recount Canada’s policies of forced starvation and ethnic cleansing. More broadly, it’s a good introduction to the history of Canadian expansion into the northwest and the nature and evolution of Canadian Indian policy in the 19th century.
Research for Clearing the Plains began some 20 years ago as part of Daschuk’s doctoral program in history at the University of Manitoba under the supervision of D.N. Sprague. Sprague was himself a scholar of Canadian and Métis history, perhaps best known for his lengthy feud with Tom Flanagan over interpretations about Louis Riel, presumptions of government “benevolence,” and the causes of Métis dispossession in the Red River valley. Like Sprague’s own work, Canada and the Métis (1988), Clearing the Plains finds little evidence of Dominion “benevolence” in its annexation of the Canadian northwest or in its post-Confederation dealings with First Nations.
However, Daschuk’s is also a work of environmental and epidemiological history. As such, he argues that human agency, greed, and colonial power are “only half of the story.” In his view, the field of biology is equally important to understanding Indigenous history, not just in present-day Canada but also throughout the hemisphere. Much of what follows is an attempt to strike a balance between these two sides of causation, with Daschuk see-sawing between a portrait of epidemic disease as an inexorable, objective, even organic force, and a counter-portrait that emphasizes the social determinants and policy-induced nature of compromised immunity, disease outbreaks, and death.
The historical scope of Clearing the Plains is sweeping. The book opens with an assessment of pre-European health and well-being on the northern Great Plains, then concentrates on the impact of the fur trade era and nascent European settlement, and ends with the post-Confederation treaty era and the “nadir of indigenous health” in the wake of the Northwest Resistance of 1885. Throughout the book, Daschuk emphasizes the relationships between Indigenous health, outbreaks of epidemic diseases, and environmental factors, as well as settlement expansion, settler ideology, and most crucially, Indian policy. In this regard, Clearing the Plains joins a growing body of historical work examining the social determinants of health and, in particular, the relationship between Indigenous health and Canadian policy.
Overall, Daschuk’s book is important less for unearthing new and surprising historical facts than for expanding upon, reinterpreting, and publicizing them. For example, one of the central theses of Clearing the Plains is that famine was a deliberate policy weapon used to coerce “unco-operative Indians” onto reserves and remove them from lands coveted by white settlers. This isn’t a revelation for anyone familiar with existing scholarship. In his influential 1983 article, “Canada’s Subjugation of the Plains Cree,” John Tobias persuasively demonstrated that starvation was a weapon used to impose the reservation system, bring “recalcitrant” leaders such as Big Bear to heel, and force the Cree to capitulate to treaty terms. Clearing the Plains not only expands on such themes, bringing to light further evidence and examples, but its publication has made them accessible to a much wider public.
Daschuk’s interpretive framework sheds the congratulatory and smug self-image that still dominates in much Canadian historical writing. He is unafraid, for example, to label the settler-colonial process in southern Saskatchewan “ethnic cleansing,” and elsewhere he has described the foundation of modern Canada as resting upon the twin truths of “ethnic cleansing and genocide.” Those wanting a crash course in Prairie colonial history would do well to read Daschuk’s book alongside Sarah Carter’s Aboriginal People and Colonizers of Western Canada to 1900 (University of Toronto Press, 1999). Both books are carefully empirical but rooted in a deep commitment to social justice. Together, they serve as excellent points of departure for further research into colonial policy in the Canadian Prairie provinces.
Paul Burrows is a Winnipeg-based writer, researcher, and parent. A lifelong activist, he co-founded the Winnipeg A-Zone (Emma Goldman Building) in 1995 and is currently finishing a PhD in history related to Treaty 1 Territory and settler-colonialism.
By James Daschuk
University of Regina Press, 2013
Evo’s Bolivia: Continuity and Change
By Linda C. Farthing and Benjamin H. Kohl
Out now. An accessible account of Evo Morales’s first six years in office, offering analysis of major issues as well as interviews with a wide variety of people, resulting in a valuable primer on Bolivia and Morales’s “process of change”.
In this compelling and comprehensive look at the rise of Evo Morales and Bolivia’s Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Linda Farthing and Benjamin Kohl offer a thoughtful evaluation of the transformations ushered in by the western hemisphere’s first contemporary indigenous president. Accessible to all readers, Evo’s Bolivia not only charts Evo’s rise to power but also offers a history of and context for the MAS revolution’s place in the rising “pink tide” of the political left. Farthing and Kohl examine the many social movements whose agendas have set the political climate in Bolivia and describe the difficult conditions the administration inherited. They evaluate the results of Evo’s policies by examining a variety of measures, including poverty; health care and education reform; natural resources and development; and women’s, indigenous, and minority rights. Weighing the positive with the negative, the authors offer a balanced assessment of the results and shortcomings of the first six.
Torture is Mainstream Now
By David Swanson | War is a Crime | April 13, 2014
As Rebecca Gordon notes in her new book, Mainstreaming Torture, polls find greater support in the United States for torture now than when Bush was president. And it’s not hard to see why that would be the case.
Fifteen years ago, it was possible to pretend the U.S. government opposed torture. Then it became widely known that the government tortured. And it was believed (with whatever accuracy) that officials had tried to keep the torturing secret. Next it became clear that nobody would be punished, that in fact top officials responsible for torture would be permitted to openly defend what they had done as good and noble.
The idea was spread around that the torture was stopping, but the cynical could imagine it must be continuing in secret, the partisan could suppose the halt was only temporary, the trusting could assume torture would be brought back as needed, and the attentive could be and have been aware that the government has gone right on torturing to this day with no end in sight.
Anyone who bases their morality on what their government does (or how Hollywood supports it) might be predicted to have moved in the direction of supporting torture.
Gordon’s book, like most others, speaks of torture as being largely in the past — even while admitting that it isn’t really. “Bush administration-era policies” are acknowledged to be ongoing, and yet somehow they retain the name “Bush administration-era policies,” and discussion of their possible prosecution in a court of law does not consider the control that the current chief perpetrator has over law enforcement and his obvious preference not to see a predecessor prosecuted for something he’s doing.
President Elect Obama made clear in January 2009 that he would not allow torturers to be prosecuted and would be “looking forward” instead of (what all law enforcement outside of science fiction requires) backward. By February 2009, reports were coming in that torture at Guantanamo was worsening rather than ceasing, and included: “beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.” In April 2009 a Guantanamo prisoner phoned a media outlet to report being tortured. As time went by the reports kept coming, as the military’s written policy would lead one to expect.
In May 2009, former vice president Dick Cheney forced into the news the fact that, even though Obama had “banned torture” by executive order (torture being a felony and a treaty violation before and after the “banning”) Obama maintained the power to use torture as needed. Cheney said that Obama’s continued claim of the power to torture vindicated his own (Cheney’s) authorization of torture. David Axelrod, White House Senior Advisor, refused repeatedly, to dispute Cheney’s assertion — also supported by Leon Panetta’s confirmation hearing for CIA director, at which he said the president had the power to torture and noted that rendition would continue. In fact, it did. The New York Times quickly reported that the U.S. was now outsourcing more torture to other countries. The Obama administration announced a new policy on renditions that kept them in place, and a new policy on lawless permanent imprisonment that kept it in place but formalized it, mainstreamed it. Before long Obama-era rendition victims were alleging torture.
As the Obama White House continued and sought to extend the occupation of Iraq, torture continued to be an Iraqi policy, as it has post-occupation. It has also remained a U.S. and Afghan policy in Afghanistan, with no end in sight. The U.S. military has continued to use the same personnel as part of its torture infrastructure. And secret CIA torture prisons have continued to pop into the news even though the CIA was falsely said to have abandoned that practice. While the Obama administration has claimed unprecedented powers to block civil suits against torturers, it has also used, in court, testimony produced by torture, something that used to be illegal (and still is if you go by written laws).
“Look at the current situation,” Obama said in 2013, “where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike . . . Is this who we are?” Well, it is certainly who some of us have become, including Obama, the senior authority in charge of the soldiers doing the force-feeding, and a human chameleon able to express outrage at his own policies, a trick that is perhaps more central to the mainstreaming of vicious and sadistic practices than we always care to acknowledge.
The mainstreaming of torture in U.S. policy and entertainment has stimulated a burst of torture use around the globe, even as the U.S. State Department has never stopped claiming to oppose torture when it’s engaged in by anyone other than the U.S. government. If “Bush-era policies” is taken to refer to public relations policies, then there really is something to discuss. The U.S. government tortured before, during, and after Bush and Cheney ran the show. But it was during those years that people talked about it, and it is with regard to those years that people still talk about it.
As Rebecca Gordon’s book, Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States, recounts well, torture has been around. Native Americans and enslaved African Americans were tortured. The CIA has always tortured. The School of the Americas has long trained torturers. The war on Vietnam was a war of mass-murder and mass-torture. Torture is standard practice in U.S. prisons, where the torture of Muslims began post-9-11, where some techniques originated and some prison guards came from via the National Guard who brought their torturing to an international set of victims for the Bush-Obama era. [Abuse of POWs and torture were also common practices of both sides of the American civil war, post WWII rape of civilians and abuse and murder of POWs was rampant as well]
One of Gordon’s central points, and an important one, is that torture is not an isolated incident. Rather it is an institution, a practice, a collective endeavor that requires planning and organization. Defenders of torture often defend a widespread practice of purely vicious evil by reference to a single imaginary incident in which it would make sense to torture someone. Imagine, they say, that you knew for certain (as of course you would not) that many people were about to be killed unless a particular person revealed something. Imagine you were certain (as of course you would not be) that you had found that person. Imagine that contrary to accumulated wisdom you believed the best way to elicit the information was through torture, and that you were sure (as of course you would not be) that the information would be revealed, that it would be accurate (nobody EVER lies under torture), and that it would prevent the greater tragedy (and not just delay it or move it), with no horrible side-effects or lasting results. Then, in that impossible scenario, wouldn’t you agree to torture the person?
And doesn’t that fantasy justify having thousands of people prepared to engage in torture even though they’ll inevitably torture in all sorts of other situations that actually exist, and even though many thousands of people will be driven to hate the nation responsible? And doesn’t it justify training a whole culture to support the maintenance of an apparatus of torture, even though uses of torture outside the fantasized scenario will spread like wildfire through local police and individual vigilantes and allied governments?
Of course not. And that’s why I’m glad Gordon has tackled torture as a matter of ethics, although her book seems a bit weighed down by academic jargon. I come at this as someone who got a master’s degree in philosophy, focusing on ethics, back before 9-11, back when torture was used as an example of something evil in philosophy classes. Even then, people sometimes referred to “recreational torture,” although I never imagined they meant that any other type of torture was good, only that it was slightly less evil. Even today, the polls that show rising — still minority — support for torture, show stronger — majority — support for murder, that is for a president going through a list of men, women, and children, picking which ones to have murdered, and having them murdered, usually with a missile from a drone — as long as nobody tortures them.
While many people would rather be tortured than killed, few people oppose the killing of others as strongly as they oppose torturing them. In part this may be because of the difficulty of torturing for the torturers. If foreigners or enemies are valued at little or nothing, and if killing them is easier than torturing them, then why not think of killing as “cleaner” just as the Obama administration does? That’s one ethical question I’d like to see taken up even more than that of torture alone. Another is the question of whether we don’t have a duty to put everything we have into opposing the evil of the whole — that being the Nuremberg phrase for war, an institution that brings with it murder, imprisonment, torture, rape, injury, trauma, hatred, and deceit.
If you are going to take on the ethics of torture alone, Mainstreaming Torture provides an excellent summary of how philosophy departments now talk about it. First they try to decide whether to be consequentialist or deontological or virtue-based. This is where the jargon takes over. A consequentialist ethics is one that decides on the propriety of actions based on what their likely consequences will be. A deontological ethics declares certain actions good or bad apart from their consequences. And an ethics of virtues looks at the type of life created by someone who behaves in various ways, and whether that person is made more virtuous in terms of any of a long list of possible virtues.
A competition between these types of ethics quickly becomes silly, while an appreciation of them as a collection of insights proves valuable. A consequentialist or utilitarian ethics is easily parodied and denounced, in particular because supporters of torture volunteer such arguments. Would you torture one person to save the lives of two people? Say yes, and you’re a simple-minded consequentialist with no soul. But say no and you’re demonstrably evil. The correct answer is of course that it’s a bad question. You’ll never face such a situation, and fantasizing about it is no guide to whether your government should fund an ongoing torture program the real aim and results of which are to generate war propaganda, scare people, and consolidate power.
A careful consideration of all consequences, short- and long-term, structural and subtle, is harder to parody and tends to encompass much of what is imagined to lie outside the purview of the utilitarian simpleton (or corporate columnist). The idea of an ethics that is not based on consequences appeals to people who want to base their ethics on obedience to a god or other such delusion, but the discussions of deontological ethicists are quite helpful nonetheless. In identifying exactly how and why torture is as incredibly offensive as it is, these writers clarify the problem and move people against any support for torture.
The idea of an ethics based entirely on how actions impact the character of the actor is self-indulgent and arbitrary, and yet the discussion of virtues (and their opposite) is terrifically illuminating — in particular as to the level of cowardice being promoted by the policy of employing torture and any other evil practice in hopes of being kept safe.
I think these last two types of ethics, deontological and virtue — that is, ongoing discussion in their terms — have good consequences. And I think that consequentialism and principled integrity are virtues, while engaging in consequentialism and virtue ethics lead to better deontological talk as well as fulfillment of the better imperatives declared by the deontologists. So, the question should not be finding the proper ethical theory but finding the proper ethical behavior. How do you get someone who opposes torturing Americans to oppose torturing human beings? How do you get someone who wants desperately to believe that torture has in fact saved lives to look at the facts? How do you get someone who believes that anyone who is tortured deserves it to consider the evidence, and to face the possibility that the torture is used in part to make us see certain people as evil, rather than their evilness actually preceding and justifying the torture? How do you get Republicans loyal to Bush or Democrats loyal to Obama to put human rights above their loyalty?
As Gordon recounts, torture in reality has generated desired falsehoods to support wars, created lots of enemies rather than eliminating them, encouraged and directly trained more torturers, promoted cowardice rather than courage, degraded our ability to think of others as fully human, perverted our ideas of justice, and trained us all to pretend not to know something is going on while silently supporting its continued practice. None of that can help us much in any other ethical pursuit.
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
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