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.In this chapter we consider the long-term implications of making sustain-able global development the template for U.S.foreign relations.Since the cold war, U.S.national security has remained distinct from allother policy areas.This separation has created a clique of national securityelites whose opinions carry weight on topics that go far beyond their areas ofexpertise.It is common, for example, for these national security elites in theCIA, the State and Defense Departments, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff todiscuss topics such as the political uses of military power.Yet after examiningthe record of U.S.engagement with key third world, allies we find that theprimacy given to military expertise has often produced consequences thatthese cliques failed to anticipate.1In European history, wars occurred between nations that shared the samegeneral level of development, so that battle outcomes translated easily intopeace terms.The victors did not have to install new political systems.Typically,leadership remained with the same privileged groups that held domestic swaybefore the war.However, a war that unleashes forces for social change is much19013-7556-0 ch13.qxd 5/9/08 9:58 PM Page 191Linking U.S.Security to Third World Development 191harder for outsiders to control; military intervention is likely to set intomotion unforeseen events beyond the stated goals of intervention.The Unintended Effects of U.S.Military InterventionsConsider the major U.S.military interventions in East Asia, the outcomes ofwhich were as unforeseen as the social changes they precipitated.In WorldWar II, one U.S military aim was to protect a pro-American China fromJapanese aggression.Yet during the cold war years a defeated Japan gainedU.S.backing as the principal bulwark against Chinese regional expansion.After World War II and the defeat of the conservative Kuomintang Party, thesuccess of Chinese Communism made social reforms incumbent on leadersin neighboring countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore,Thailand, and ultimately Taiwan) who wanted to mitigate potential sourcesof Communist insurrection.These leaders met the imminent threat of Com-munist expansion by introducing policies and programs to bolster socialcohesiveness.Although the United States fought the war in Vietnam to constrain Chi-nese influence in Asia, Vietnamese reunification produced one of the moststable regimes in the region and contained the spread of Chinese influence.Infact, having won the war, Vietnam s Communist Party ultimately became achampion for pro-market reform; in 2006 the party gave its officials formalapproval to engage in commercial activities.Meanwhile, the Philippines remains among the least developed economiesin Southeast Asia, despite massive U.S.naval and air protection against thethreat of domestic Communist insurgency and Chinese expansion.Theprimacy that America gave to military alignment and the United Statesunspoken alliance2 with traditional landed elites led to support of anti-Communist leaders whose interests were antithetical to their country s stabil-ity and development.Like the Philippines, Latin America a region that benefits directly fromthe U.S.security umbrella has fallen behind East Asia, the area most threat-ened by U.S.cold war era enemies.However, the social elites in the Philip-pines, Pakistan, and most of Latin America have formed governments thatwere comfortable under the U.S.military umbrella; American support substi-tuted for internal social reform and, ultimately, the capacity to implementsocial programs.The social imbalances in Latin America that have resultedfrom America s strengthening of the region s military elites have producedchronic political instability.13-7556-0 ch13.qxd 5/9/08 9:58 PM Page 192192 Risks from Failures of Global Economic DevelopmentIn Central Asia, too, massive U.S.military intervention has failed to pro-duce the desired consequences.The U.S.tilt toward Pakistan pushedAfghanistan and India into dependence on the Soviet Union.Subsequent aidto the freedom fighters in Afghanistan gave rise to the most virulent anti-American regime in the world.The lessons here are simple: economic and social change may create newcoalitions that completely transform the foreign policies of a given nation.3There is little military action can do to arrest such forces once unleashed.Military strength can only prevail over social forces in the short term.Mem-ories of past oppression, however, influence the prospects for future cooper-ation by making it politically costly for popularly elected leaders to stand withthe United States.Can Development Policy Lead Foreign Policy?National security forms the basis for American cooperation with foreign gov-ernments.Because alliances exist to provide security and are cemented by theperceived urgencies of external threats, preserving those alliances receives pri-ority over commerce or concerns with economic growth and sound eco-nomic policy. The National Security Act of 1947, as amended, specifies threeprimary missions: defend the American homeland from external attack; safe-guard our internal security; and uphold and advance the national policiesand interests of the United States, including insuring the security of areasvital to those interests. 4 When American lives are at stake and an administra-tion s fate depends on events occurring beyond U.S.borders, the distinctionbetween foreign and domestic policy evaporates.When the body count rises,security always trumps economics; politicians know that American casualties,more than economic costs, affect public support for military intervention.During the war in Vietnam, it was the number of U.S.casualties, not eco-nomic assessments of the $150 billion spent or the war s considerable impacton the domestic economy, that dominated the news.During the war withIraq, the number most often cited in the U.S.media was the American casu-alty count, not the war s costs or the consequences to Iraq s economy.Visitorsto the D-Day memorial in Normandy see the names of the troops who diedin the invasion, not the cost or the quantity of materiel used in the conflict.Yet economics often determines the outcome of military encounters andthe durability of alliances.World War II was precipitated by the harsh eco-nomic terms of peace imposed on Germany at the end of World War I.Thedemise of South Vietnam was sealed by economic policies that stressed13-7556-0 ch13.qxd 5/9/08 9:58 PM Page 193Linking U.S.Security to Third World Development 193consumption and consumerism over the stimulation of production, savings,and investment.Flawed economic policies contributed to the inability of U.S.forces to form a viable government in Vietnam.Similarly, unsustainable con-sumption caused the economic failure of Iran under the shah and the Philip-pines under Marcos both U.S.client regimes.The failure to revive Iraq seconomy during the post-Saddam U.S.occupation exacerbated grievancesthat led to insurgency. Political leaders normally see investment in Third World nations as ameans to an end (economic development and stability), rather than an end initself.Self-interested economic gain has played a relatively small role in Amer-ican policies, and decisionmaking is a much more complex process thansimply overseas investment opportunities for large corporations.5 Businessfinds provisioning American troops to be more lucrative than investing informer battlefield nations [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]