Back to the Future: Evaluation of US Actions in Iraq

To the Editors:

Historians are not known for predicting the future, but we often do look back in order to draw some reasoned speculations about what might transpire if certain conditions hold. What historical circumstances will allow us to evaluate the future of U.S. actions in Iraq and the world should this country decide to pursue its recently announced doctrine of global military supremacy and aggressive preemption? The National Security Strategy released by the Bush administration on Sept. 30, 2002 established that the United States now has reached unequaled military power in the world and that the U.S. will not allow that military supremacy to be challenged. Further, it established a doctrine of pre-emption: “In the new world we have entered,” according to the strategy document, “the only path to peace and security is the path of action.” The purpose of all this power, according to an administration spokesperson, “is to defend this balance of power that favors freedom.”
How can we usefully envision a world in which the United States is unchallenged militarily and in which pre-emption is used as a basic policy approach? Latin America provides a historical laboratory of sorts for this experiment since the U.S. has held unchallenged power in this hemisphere since the so-called Spanish-American War. It is quite clear that the United States, which holds a decisive military edge in the hemisphere, has further solidified its control in the region given that it trains a large percentage of Latin American officers.
Let me just briefly, however, trace the roots of pre-emption in the hemisphere. The United States intervened and occupied Panama, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic for long stretches between 1903 and 1934. Washington further engaged in “pre-emptive” action to overthrow reformist regimes in Guatemala (1954), Guyana (1961), Brazil (1964) and Chile (1973). It has tried to overthrow the Cuban government repeatedly since 1960, and funded (often illegally) and equipped a costly and destructive war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua (1979-1990), and invaded Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989), in order to remove their leaders, also portrayed as major threats to U.S. security. (Grenada’s population is about twice the size of that powerhouse, Elyria!)
To suggest, then, that the United States has been a militarily supreme power in the hemisphere and that it has long allowed itself the policy of pre-emption is not a wild claim. What, then, have been the results? While one should obviously avoid suggesting that the United States is the only actor in Latin America and therefore responsible for everything that happens, we can still assess what more than a century of intervention and military supremacy have produced. U.S. aid figures indicate an increase in those in “extreme poverty” in Latin America from 36 million in 1980 to 74.5 million in 1995 (while those “just” in “poverty” increased from 93 million to 153 million over the same period). Space doesn’t allow for an examination of all the necessary data, so I’ll just propose one case, Chile, since it is considered to be the “poster child” of free market economic growth. (It would hardly be fair to pick on, say, Nicaragua, where 10 years of U.S.-sponsored war were followed by a decade of U.S. neglect once there was no troublesome threat around. Nicaragua’s GDP is now exactly where it was in 1987.)
In Chile, there was no growth between 1973 (when the U.S. helped overthrow the Allende government) and 1986, and real salaries have declined 10 percent since 1986. Fully 25 percent of the country lives in absolute poverty; one-third of the nation earns less than $30 a week. Out of 65 countries, Chile ranks as 7th worst in terms of most unequal income distribution. Ten percent of the Chilean population earns almost half the nation’s wealth. The richest 100 people earn more than the state spends on all social services. Nor are the “democracy” indicators any better. In Chile, where politics was as avidly followed as soccer and elections commonly drew a turn-out rate over 95 percent, more than 40 percent of the voters didn’t register, abstained, or defaced the ballot in the last presidential race of 1998. A million voters under 25 failed to register.
All this suggests that in the one region where the United States already maintains unchallenged military superiority and has historically acted to pre-empt “threats,” the result has been neither development nor democracy. There is little reason to imagine that when this policy is applied to the world at large the results will be any different, particularly as the costs of military control will be significantly higher. An invasion of Iraq, the first test of the Bush administration’s new national security doctrine, will be a historic and tragic turning point. The Pax Americana promised by the Bush Doctrine is as frightening, dismaying, and (ultimately) self-defeating as were similar calls issued by Rome and Britain. Oppose this invasion!

–Steve Volk
Professor of History