I clicked expecting to enjoy another public black eye for the School of the Americas, and instead I’m left with dread that the USA has privatized that training. Because of course you have.
If it makes you feel any better, many US citizens hate it too. It's stupid both to privatize the military, and to provide military training to repressive authoritarian regimes.
America and our democratic allies spent half a century fighting totalitarianism, only to turn around and treat the post-Cold War "peace dividend" as carte-blance to sell out everything we had just finished fighting for. Now authoritarianism is on the rise again as a result.
By destabilizing and ousting democratically elected leaders around the world and replacing them with our puppets? Or do you mean fighting those puppets when they became inconvenient?
I suspect what happened is not the history you think it is.
>By destabilizing and ousting democratically elected leaders around the world and replacing them with our puppets? Or do you mean fighting those puppets when they became inconvenient?
I suspect what happened is not the history you think it is.
I hate justifying the US's behavior in this regard, but all such critiques need to at least be context-aware.
The USSR was attempting to spread a system of totalitarian social, economic and thought control world wide. At the time, almost everything by comparison was a lesser of two evils. In opposing their efforts, anyone who also opposed the USSR, be it a European Democracy or a third world strongman, became a US ally. Anything to thwart the spread of the USSR's variant of Communism. Supporting strongmen was ugly and unpleasant, but those were also desperate times.
The USSR was expanding rapidly and adding satellite states left and right. Any strongman who 1) opposed the USSR, and 2) who was strong enough to maintain control of their country despite USSR attempts to destabilize and gain proxy control of it, was a potential valuable ally in the greater contest. Sometimes the strongmen were the only ones in a given country who could meet both criteria, and the US had to work with was available. Ugly, but c'est realpolitik.
Though I'm not sure Iran can be justified even under that framework. Fomenting a coup in a country with a democratically elected government and liberalizing society just so we can take their oil instead of buying it at market rates is unjustifiable, even in a Cold War context. Their oil could potentially tip the military balance of power, but surely an alternative to a coup was some kind of oil-for-military-aid treaty with a fellow Democracy.
Your picture may be as narrow-minded as the person you're replying to, but in the other direction. The US also uses its economic clout to push for social, political and economic reforms in other countries as well.
The problem is if there is a conflict between economic and and "ethical" interests the economic interest always won (let's not even get into all the political reasons why totalitarian regimes were supported).
The US (and much of the west by extension) certainly has a very spotty history of supporting democracy, especially if it was in their economic interest to support the totalitarian regime.
The US supporting democracy (or atleast classical liberal enlightenment values that would eventually lead to a functioning democracy) in Vietnam, Iraq, Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, and more has by far been a net negative economic interest. We've paid dearly while Europe mostly enjoyed social welfare benefits.
Let's not confuse payments with loans (Europe is not Israel). Let's also not ignore the fact that there have been plenty of analyses showing that post-WWII Europe showed a natural recovery independent of US aid in several countries, and let's not ignore the shackles imposed by the winning powers on several technologies, not to be developed further.
This statement is also incorrect when referred to several key places the US have picked over the years (e.g. Pinochet's Chile or Syngman Rhee / Park Chung-Hee's Korea), and of course looking at the constant heavy military occupation of several "allied" countries, a fact without precedents in history, rather than the fable of "exporting democracy" this just looks like version 2.0 of the British Empire :)
"The Vietnamese government officially calls it the "Day of liberating the South for national reunification" (Vietnamese: Giải phóng miền Nam, thống nhất đất nước) or "Liberation Day" (Ngày Giải Phóng)"
.. I don't think the Vietnamese democratic government thanks you for it.
Vietnam and Korea weren't about ethics or democracy but about influence and control (arguably so was Iraq, Syria) and Afghanistan is mostly a kneejerk reaction to a terror strike that might be quite symbolic, but ultimately pales in numbers.
Yes, the U.S govt does good things abroad. They also do lots of bad stuff. We can criticize them for the bad things they do and appreciate them for their good deeds, at the same time.
> Now authoritarianism is on the rise again as a result.
Perhaps this is an indirect result of the US providing military support to totalitarian regimes, but I don't see how it accounts for a rise in totalitarian/authoritarian tendencies in Russia, China, and other countries that don't receive such aid.
Nationalism and authoritarianism/totalitarianism tend to have more support when economic and other factors make people worried about their futures. In such situations, the natural human instinct is to crave stability at any cost, which opens the door for nationalism and authoritarianism/totalitarianism.
>Russia, China, and other countries that don't receive such aid.
Russia and China received immense amounts of US aid.
After the USSR fell, the US was concerned about their nukes proliferating, and gave billions in foreign aid, financial/credit support, and technical assistance to Russia to help them rebuild their economy and maintain nuclear security.
For China, we opened our markets and brought them into the WTO, which massively enriched and empowered their economy and government, and without which they would not have developed nearly as quickly.
The GGP was talking specifically about direct/indirect military training leading to the rise in totalitarianism, which I broadened to military support (to which the "such" you quoted refers). It sounds like you're talking about direct and indirect economic aid.
Thats the american way of doing things forbidden for a government.
Censorship, blocking demonstrations, torture.
It is not a problem for a private company and if it is, the company goes bankrupt and reopens under a new name.
I'm looking at you Blackwater.
Many drug cartels in Mexico get their training from the retired army personnel from Israel, USA. So, what can the USA/Israel do in such a case? Either ban any training given by retired folks; or give fat pensions to such people and make them sign agreements that prevent any private training whatsoever.
> Four Saudis who participated in the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year under a contract approved by the State Department [emphasis mine]
Likewise, the death squads trained by the School of the Americas were not there by some mistake or bureaucratic misstep -- it was known who they were working for, and their training was quite intentional.
Sure, we can argue that unapproved training will still take place, but it doesn't let us off the hook for the "counterinsurgency" training that was and is still consciously given to known repressive regimes.
Why would the US or Israeli militaries be powerless to say "you can't use your training to help train up cartels and if we find out about it, that's your ass"?
Same reason that Congress has not said to ex-congress members “you can't use your influence to help train up lobbyists and if we find out about it, that's your ass.” That reason would be … money and power for their “retirement” years.
America and our democratic allies spent half a century fighting totalitarianism, only to turn around and treat the post-Cold War "peace dividend" as carte-blance to sell out everything we had just finished fighting for. Now authoritarianism is on the rise again as a result.
This has to be most idiotic own-goal in history.