Latin America, the U.S., and the New Imperialism: Talking with Greg Grandin

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2-6-07, 8:58 am



Editor’s note: Greg Grandin is author of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism and The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (University of Chicago. He writes frequently for The Nation and teaches Latin American history at New York University. This interview was conducted by Tony Pecinovsky.


PA: A central part of your book Empire’s Workshop is that U.S. involvement in Central and Latin America in the 1970’s and 80’s was really a 'testing ground' for what is taking place in Iraq. What do you mean by that analogy?

GG: Well, it’s on two levels. One, is more broadly on the U.S. experience in Latin America. Latin America is the place where U.S. political, economic and intellectual expansion took place. It was the place where the U.S. elite apprenticed themselves as internationalists, where corporations have the most extensive experience of working out strategies of projecting power abroad. It was in Latin America where U.S. elites cultivated a sense of themselves as men on a mission, as men with a world historical purpose.

But also, more specifically, I look at Central America in the 1980’s as a testing ground for the coalition that stands behind George W. Bush. It was a place that brought together these different constituencies that stand behind the Bush doctrine, the pre-emptive warfare doctrine. Neo-conservatives, free marketeers, the Christian right and militarists: Central America was a place where they could run wild.

If you think about the post Cold War years – where the U.S. for the first time in half a century didn’t face a rival super power to check its ambitions, to check its arrogance – then the Latin and Central American wars in the 1970’s and 80’s were dress rehearsals. Unlike South East Asia, where Washington had to take into account not just the USSR but China, in Central America in the 1980s, there was absolutely no countervailing force to balance its actions.

Thus it became the place where all of these different groups that were emerging out of the ruins of the New Deal coalition that ran the US from the 1930s to the 1960s first came together. This was a place where Reagan could bring together word and deed and match the right- wing rhetoric with actual foreign policy. In other places, Reagan was restrained in his foreign policy objectives by the Soviet Union’s influence. So the book looks at Central America and the U.S.’ s involvement there, as an unacknowledged, yet very important, part of the history of U.S. foreign policy.

PA: One would think, maybe naively, that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. would have no more interest in the internal affairs of Latin and Central American states.

GG: I think the U.S.’s interest abroad really had nothing to do with containing the Soviet Union. U.S. financial interests are bound-up with its ability to project its power outside of its borders in all sorts of ways; control of resources, control of trade routes, opening of markets. By the 1980’s South America was more or less under U.S. control. One country after another had fallen to right-wing dictatorships and the left-wing was more-or-less defeated.

The socialist project that had emerged after WWII was contained. But not in Central America. El Salvador and Guatemala was in the midst of a social revolution. The Revolution was victorious in Nicaragua. So the region became the first real battle of the new-right to open up the third world.

PA: We find a right-wing ideological justification for the pre-emptive war doctrine and the expansion of markets. You call it ‘punitive idealism and free market absolutism’ in your book.

GG: When you look at the Bush doctrine it’s not just the rehabilitation of militarism that marks its distinction, that is, the re-legitimating of violence as an instrument of the state – the claiming the right to respond preemptively to perceived threats through shock and awe, but rather it’s the justifying of that right in idealistic and noble terms. Hence we supposedly invaded Iraq not just to protect interests or defend national security but to spark a global democratic revolution, to spread freedom throughout the world. Of course, the combination of brutalism and idealism are two traits that have been deeply embedded in U.S. foreign policy for a long time.

But historically, they tended to operate sequentially; realism would give way to idealism or idealism would give way to realism. And it tended to be the Democrats throughout the 20th century who were the agents of the idealist strain in U.S. foreign policy. Republicans tended to dislike the kind of vaulting rhetoric that so moved Woodrow Wilson and John Kennedy. But in the 1980’s the Republicans took over the mantle of idealism. Part of that was because the new right, the Reagan Revolution, was the historical project tasked with responding to the crisis of the 1960’s and 70’s. And there were many different crisis; the economic, the military (the defeat in Vietnam), the political (the Watergate scandal). But there was also a moral crisis. U.S. global power was discredited morally because of its involvement in coups, atrocities and death squads. The Central American conflicts allowed the New Right to reestablish U.S. foreign policy on a moral basis, at least rhetorically. So, it wasn’t just about supporting the contras. They had to be defended ideologically as freedom fighters. It was Reagan who rehabilitated Abraham Lincoln for the Republican Party. It was Reagan who rehabilitated Thomas Paine. Obviously, Lincoln was a Republican, but they kind of shunned the idealism he represented and Lincoln became an icon of the left. Central America allowed the Republicans, through Reagan, to reappropriate these figures.

All we have to do is compare Vietnam to Central America. In Vietnam, as the war went on and as U.S. atrocities and atrocities committed by our allies were exposed, idealism drained out of U.S. foreign policy. Public pronouncements from Washington diplomats and pundits and defenders of the war, became about saving face and national security.

In Central America, the exact opposite happened. As atrocities by the contras were revealed, as Iran-Contra exploded in the press, Reagan upped the rhetoric. It became about defending American national ideals, American values, staying committed to the American revolutionary tradition. It was here where the modern Republican Party embraced the language of insurgency. We see that going on today in Iraq. It’s not about weapons of mass destruction or removing a dictator because he threatened U.S. interests. It’s about spreading democracy to the world. Ridding the world of evil. That is what I mean by 'punitive idealism.' It is a wedding of brutalism, a willingness to use violence, and idealism – which of course is the case with any empire despite its professed objectives. Empire will always tilt toward stability. That means aligning with dictators and death squads, as the U.S. has done in Latin America, and that will inevitably be the case now.

This is a structural condition of empire. No matter how much they try to justify their power in noble and idealistic terms, when faced with a tension between democracy and stability they will always tilt toward stability. The U.S. was faced with a mobilized Latin America after WWII and opted to throw its weight behind dictatorship.

PA: Rather than being an aberration of U.S. foreign policy this seems to be a rather consistent aspect.

GG: Yes, but what makes this distinct is that never before has the violence been justified in such idealistic terms. This new-right wing coalition has fused idealism and realism in to a particularly dangerous concoction. This is where ideology comes in. This is where neo-conservatives and the religious right - their world view, their understanding of a moral historical mission to defend and bring democracy or American values to the world - have come together with very dangerous repercussions.

PA: Would this ideological offensive have been possible without the mobilization of the religious right?

GG: This is one of the things that the book looks at. The Bush doctrine is not just the brain child of neo-conservatives. It really is the manifestation of a hegemonic alliance made up of different constituencies. The two main constituencies are neo-conservative intellectuals who give the pre-emptive warfare doctrine its legal and intellectual justifications – all of the stuff about rehabilitating the imperial presidency, restoring to the executive branch the power to wage unaccountable war, justifying torture, justifying surveillance – that’s the project of neo- conservatives. But what gives the project its grassroots energy is the religious right.

What I try to look at in the book is how those two constituencies came together in Central America. The religious right had a somewhat ambiguous relationship to U.S. military and foreign policy throughout the 20th century. But increasingly, as a result of social liberalization domestically and the loss in Vietnam internationally, there was a radicalization of the Evangelical community. People like Jerry Farewell, Pat Robertson and Robert Price began to urge their flock, to urge the Evangelical rank- and-file, to pay more attention to U.S. foreign policy. They began to take defeat in Vietnam as a signal moment in world history. They began to align their theology more closely with the fortunes of the American nation state. At the same time the Republican ascendancy, the Reagan revolution, went to work challenging what they perceived as an entrenched culture of anti-militarism. They began to mobilize their own grassroots base or supporters to wage an aggressive foreign policy.

So one thing that they did to carry forward this brutal Central American policy was to galvanize and mobilize the Christian right. That’s really what Iran-Contra was about; creating these alternative networks, bringing together the power of the grassroots Evangelical community. In Central America, the Reagan administration largely outsourced the 'hearts and minds' component of its low-intensity warfare. Evangelical and Pentecostal groups began to send tons of 'humanitarian aid' to 'anti-Communist allies.' They set up schools and radio stations. They began to minister. And it was really in that context where the Christian right got a sense of themselves as a powerful force able to influence U.S. foreign policy.

This had a number of different consequences. It began the transformation of the Republican Party into a populist party dependent on an aggressive foreign policy in order to achieve domestic political success. It began the internationalization of the Christian right. It gave them an extensive apprenticeship in foreign policy. And it began to align different elements within the religious right. So what you began to see in Central America was that theology matters less then politics. They were able to bring together different strains within conservative Christianity. So it becomes a transnational, trans-denominational conservative religious movement forged in Central America. After September 11 they became fully joined once again with this new, re-empowered neo-conservative cohort.

PA: Towards the end of your book you talk about the various propaganda campaigns that were lead in the Central American wars and how it is a little different than the propaganda campaigns today, in that it was first a domestic campaign.

GG: Today it seems more like a worldwide campaign to justify the Iraq war. Coming out of Vietnam, coming out of the 1960’s and 70’s, the US was gripped by a widespread culture of dissent – which wasn’t just a diffuse cultural movement, but was institutionalized – began to push against governmental legitimacy and create what neo-conservative intellectuals called the 'permanent adversarial culture.' So the task of the new-right was to figure out how to circumvent that. The press in particular, but also the oppositional, emboldened legislative branch which saw itself as now having power to regulate and supervise the foreign policy of the executive branch. These were all obstacles that the new-right had to figure out how to overcome.

One of the things that they did was set up the Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD). The OPD was very distinctive. It brought together the power of the executive branch with the expertise of public relations firms, physiological warfare operatives drawn from the military and the CIA, and grassroots Evangelical Christians. The OPD brought them together in a centrally orchestrated campaign headed by Cuban émigré Otto Reich, then Robert Kagan, a neo-conservative intellectual. It really developed many of the tactics used today that go by the name of 'swift boating.' It identified critics in the press and in Congress and went after them in a central way. They used polling data and focus groups to figure out key words that played well with the American public in order to sell the war. Today they have perfected many of the tactics that became 'swift boating.' But today it is outsourced. Instead of setting up its own central organization, the Pentagon has outsourced much of this work to groups like the Rendon Group which coordinated building public support for the invasion of Iraq, but again, on a more international level.

PA: Finally, after twenty or thirty years, the right wing seems to no longer be on the ascendancy.

GG: For the neo-conservatives it really wasn’t enough to circumvent this culture of dissent, they wanted to change America’s political culture. Look at the commentary during the early months of the Iraq war when they began to rehabilitate the concept of empire and imperialism. They saw 9/11 as an opportunity to create an imperial culture, to get Americans to shoulder their imperial burdens. For them, 9/11 was a golden opportunity to finally give purpose to American civic life. Throughout the 1990’s, neocons complained, we were awash in meaninglessness. The favorite sitcom was a show about nothing. We were obsessed with trivial stuff. September 11 gave us a way to focus our attention and give meaning to our life. That’s what they thought. However, that project, has completely failed as the Iraq war has proved to be a disaster. They haven’t managed to create an imperial culture. Though they have tried, they haven’t made it okay to torture, though, I think, they have desensitized people some, and they can claim some success in that the question is even being debated. So what they will simply return to Cheney-style deceit and secrecy in order to circumvent public opinion, since they seemed to have failed in creating a warrior culture.

PA: The left is on the up-surge in Latin America now. In Cold War terms I’m sure some right-wing intellectuals would claim that we’ve 'lost' Latin America and that their 'work' in the 1970’s and 80’s was all for nothing.

GG: While their are many differences between moderate reformists elected in Chile or Brazil and leftists in Venezuela and Bolivia, who seem willing pick fights with international capital, I think they are all united around a number of things. One, is a desire to deepen trade integration within Latin America. That is a new thing. It will create a diversification of markets weakening the U.S. power over Latin America. Two, is diversification of capital so that they are not dependent on the IMF or U.S. financial corporations. Three, there is enormous political dissent which would have been unheard of in the Cold War. And finally, most importantly, Latin America has refused to substitute the Cold War for the War on Terror. That kind of autonomy is unprecedented. If you think about the Cold War and the ideological framework used to justify the U.S.’s economic, political and military primacy, the effort to use the War on Terror in the same way has been a huge failure.

Latin Americans have refused that project in all sorts of ways which signals a structural shift in global politics, especially when you consider that the U.S. has kind of counted on Latin America as a region to claim as its own. And that is no longer the case. One of the arguments that the book tries to make is: twice during the last century, during moments of crisis, the U.S. turned to Latin America to try to regroup. Hence the metaphor of Latin America being the U.S.’s backyard; but that metaphor really doesn’t work. Latin America is more like the U.S.’s strategic reserve, a place where the U.S. returns to when it wants to rebuild its power. The first time was in the 1930’s after the Great Depression. Then the New Deal coalitions worked out its strategy for the Good Neighbor Policy and 'soft power.' The Good Neighbor Policy became the blueprint for liberal multilateralism.

Then in the 1980’s, as we talked about earlier, the new-right turned to Latin America to respond to the crisis of the 1960’s and 70’s, which rehabilitated 'hard power.' So we are at another historical crossroads, where the recession of U.S. power in the world crosses with a resurgent, mobilized left in Latin America. I have no idea what foreign policy coalition will emerge out of the disaster of the Iraq war, but the Bush doctrine is falling apart, its ruined. The U.S. is effectively defeated in the Middle East. So the question becomes, will the coalition that emerges out of the disaster of Iraq turn to Latin America to regroup and if it does what form will it take?