#64 Controlling the Peace: The Re-establishment of World Power
New Beginnings and Ideology After 1945
Readers of these blogs will know that establishing world power has always required sophisticated ideology to justify action across the world. The centre of ideology in the hundreds of years after 1492, up to 1945 centred on race and racism; that European and then American invasions were by ‘superior’ peoples. Race was always a flexible tool and the exact variant varied over time determined by who were the perpetrators of the invasions and the moment in history.
The ideological story that followed 1945 would be determined by the USA. This blog discusses the new ideological tale told by the Americans and the old European colonial powers who had lost all their colonies as a consequence of the wars that ended in 1945.
Independence across the world: was it real or false?
One of the first acts of the Americans was to insist that all the old colonies and their markets would be open to American trade and commerce. Before 1945, a colony owned by a European power meant that all trade and commerce were monopolised by the European owner.
So:
Why were so many of the new African, Asian, and South American States so obsessive about their new independence?
How and why did the USA go about attempting to assert her ascendancy across the globe through constant war?
At the end of the hostilities in 1945, both Japan and Europe were in economic and political chaos. So much so that American cigarettes became a medium of exchange.
In Europe, the geographical boundaries of states were redrawn again.
The three leaders of the three winning societies - USSR, USA, and UK - met at Yalta on the Black Sea in early 1945 to decide the parameters of the peace and the new divisions in Europe.
The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. February 1945.
The American understanding of the World Power: The Cold War
The alliance of these three 'empires' fell apart after the end of hostilities. The USA consciously and unilaterally decided after 1948 to conduct a global anti-soviet, anti-communist, anti-socialist programme which became known under the term the ‘Cold War’. The USA also decided that the UK or France was not to be an equal partner: they required full economic access to all the colonies.
By 1947, the USA had created mechanisms which were to reconstitute and reinvigorate the economies of Germany and Japan under controls from the USA, under the Marshall Plan.
It is instructive to understand how the USA viewed world power, and why the Cold War as American policy should be established. A top-secret document entitled ‘A Report to the National Security Council (NSC 68)’ by the executive secretary summed up the Cold War warrior’s view succinctly; it was not made available until many years later for public viewing:
“Within the last 35 years the world has experienced two global wars of tremendous violence. It has witnessed two revolutions.... the Russian and the Chinese... of extreme scope and intensity. It has also seen the collapse of five empires, ---- the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, the German, Italian and Japanese--- and the drastic decline of two major imperial systems, the British and the French. During the span of one generation the international distribution of power has been fundamentally altered. For several centuries it has proved impossible for any one nation to gain such preponderant strength that a coalition of other nations could not in time face it with greater strength. The international scene was marked by recurring periods of violence and war, but a system of independent sovereign and independent nations was maintained, over which no state was able to achieve hegemony.”
“Two complex sets of factors have now basically altered this historical distribution of power. First the defeat of German and Japan and the decline of the British and French Empires have interacted with the development of the United States and the Soviet Union in such a way that power has increasingly gravitated to these two centers. Second the Soviet Union, unlike the previous aspirant to hegemony is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. Conflict has therefore become endemic...”
The above summary of world power was prescient and accurate at least as seen from an American point of view: a precise summing up of recent history.
American Ideology: The Cold War
What, then, is so interesting is the ideology of the above document that followed the accurate summary of the recent past, that laid out the rationale for what was already being called the Cold War, plus the preparations needed for a new ‘hot’ war.
The document was secret and was never intended for public consumption. It would have been reasonable therefore to expect that it would have cast with the same insights as to the introduction. But not so, NSC 68 was written as if it was a document to persuade the American populous of the righteousness of imperial expansion. Reading it today provides us with a view of American nationalist ideas that can usefully be compared with the ideas of racialism which led had led the colonial powers for four centuries. These are ideas that could not be countered with logic, as they became an internalised belief system, comparable to religious beliefs. In both the colonial era and the Cold War era (1948 to 1991) the ideology of the leading states was internalised and believed as truth. Racism and ‘manifest destiny’ (the US variant) provided an idealised explanation for why their own social and political system was superior to their opposing side.
Philip Agee graduated into the CIA with the following words ringing in his ears:
“.....faith in self and faith in country...self-discipline and determination and fighting spirit are an integral part of the curriculum, we are living in a great country where there is equality of opportunity, where justice is a reality.... we are a generous nation...we never wage a war of aggression.... we are a strong country... we have strong allies... But greater than all this is the strength of our moral principles... Our nation is symbol of freedom; of justice and opportunity regardless of flag or political beliefs... Communism has been and still is a prison for the millions who are denied the opportunity to learn responsibility...”
- Philip Agee Inside the Company, CIA Diary, 1975 page 15, Admiral Burke Chief of Naval Operation at Agee graduation ceremony.
The key issue to be understood in the 21st century is that at the time people in the USA believed in this rhetoric.
Later, after 1989 when the USSR collapsed and this high spirited, moralistic formula was more difficult to emphasise, ideological leaders changed tack and moved back into the sphere of "civilisation" as the centrepiece of ideology. ‘Back’, because civilisation rhetoric had been such an essential component of the European racial ideas before 1939.
Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order was published in 1993, just as the old anti-Communist order had become redundant. The book was widely praised by the high priests of the empire. The old order was coming to an end with it the demise of the Soviet Union. Huntington thought he was describing the new world order.
The Beacon of Freedom and Democracy
Quotations from the NSC 68 document also give readers a feel for ideology internalised by their leaders:
On the USSR:
"... the ideas of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the Kremlin"
"... the implacable purpose of the slave state is to eliminate the challenge of freedom” page 7
"... the peace the Soviet Union seeks is the peace of total conformity to Soviet policy” page 8
"... The antipathy of slavery to freedom explains the iron curtain, the isolation, the autarchy of the society whose end is absolute power." page 8
"The Kremlin’s design for world domination begins at home... the entire coercive course of the socialist state is more than ever one of seeking to impose its absolute authority over the economy..."
"Being a totalitarian dictatorship, the Kremlins' objectives in these policies is the total subjective submission of the peoples under its control" page 13
On the USA:
".... freedom is the building of a just society"
"....freedom with responsibility derives marvelous diversity, the deep tolerance, the lawfulness of the free society. This is the explanation of the strength-free men. It constitutes the integrity and vitality of a free and democratic system.... Every individual has the opportunity to realise his creative powers “ page 7
"... the idea of freedom is the most contagious idea in history"
Ideas like these are repeated throughout the document. There is no attempt at ambiguity or precision. There is no mention that the USSR has recently lost over 25 million men women and children; nor that without the fortitude of the Soviet people, America could not have won the peace. The writer of NSC 68 knows where his argument is going; the document was intended to create a confrontation on a global scale. NSC 68 was full of the bombast of a society that had never itself experienced defeat or impoverishment: the self-confidence of a people who have only experienced successful colonisation:
"We must make ourselves strong... we must lead in building a successfully functioning political... and economic system in the free world... abroad as well at home... affirmation of our essential values... preserve our integrity."
- page 9
American national ideology had always exaggerated past successes and ignored unnecessary detail. American ideas sprang directly out of the nationalism that had developed in the 19th century. The ideas around colonising the national American empire was transferred to a global empire without a blush.
The ideas of divine ‘chosenness’: the political convictions of the liberty of the new republic was to be transferred directly to American global imperial history.
The Americans have tended to exaggerate and exclude unfortunate detail of the key events in their past. They had won the war of independence 1776 ‘by their own fortitude’, ignoring the essential French assistance in 1776. In 1865 the northern armed forces had defeated the South to outlaw slavery, ignoring the threat of the south to create a breakaway state of its own. In 1945 they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima with the purpose of saving American lives, ignoring the threat to Japan from the Soviets who were advancing through Asia via Manchuria.
This bare summary of partial truths has allowed American ideology to roam free of even basic historical facts, to make assertions about its purpose in the world without criticism.
Americans saw themselves as a beacon of freedom and democracy. The American dream was of high ideals, things that mattered more than money. They saw themselves as the ‘saviour’ of the free world; as a unique civilisation, chosen by God, supreme among nations, destined for greatness. NSC 68 was full of American high idealism; the writer expected readers to automatically accept these idioms as truth.
It was not that the writer of NSC 68 in the 1940s did not know that the USA was immensely more powerful than the USSR. He quoted figures that showed that the USA created:
4 times as much steel
5 and half times as much aluminium
6 times as much electric power
9 times as much crude oil
In terms of technological progress and productivity, the USA were light years ahead of the USSR. In 1950 the leaders of the USA knew that comparatively, the USA was at a bare minimum four times richer than the USSR. That was a huge difference. So why did the USA decide that they alone must be the leaders of the entire world?
The USA, the World most Economically developed Country
Moreover, if the USA was to maintain and develop its overall lead it is fairly obvious that a militarised economy is not the logical way forward. It is a question worth pondering. The Americans were already economically far ahead of the USSR. And by 1950 the Russians were still recovering from their war with Germany. There were alternative directions in global policy they might have decided on, to follow the success of their Japanese and German redevelopment with the rest of the non-Communist world.
The assassination of Kennedy closed alternative possibilities. There is little value in considering why they did not examine alternatives. The USA had set itself on a course at the 1943/1944 meeting at Bretton Woods. By 1950, NSC 68 laid out in clear terms that they were determined to develop a militarised society, and they were going to be the single dominant global power. These decisions led all the way through the following years to the present.
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The peoples of Western Europe had risen from one world of relative poverty and had learnt how to take the wealth from the Americas and transfer it to their own countries. This was slavery and latterly until 1920, indentureship. A whole set up of banks, shipping companies, and insurance companies had arisen to make these transfers possible. From the 1750s the European invaders turned their attention to Asia and systematically began the colonisation process anew. At the same time, as they attempted to colonise and extract the wealth of Asia, the colonising countries began the process we now recognise as industrialisation alongside the rapid growth of cities. The surplus resources extracted through colonisation were used to finance the growth of new industries.