I am not at all sure whether you still follow this thread, but in case you do, I’d like to somewhat push back about what you said about coups.
I became interested in this topic a while ago and I tried to find out as much as possible about events like the 1973 coup in Chile or the 1965 crisis in Indonesia etc., and about Western involvement. I found out that the coups were usually homegrown affairs driven by domestic actors (such as disgruntled conservative military officers) and often even supported by a wide section of the public (which was for example angry about economic mismanagement by the previous regime), while the West played at best a minor role. Usually, you find many vague accusations about Western “backing” for the coup, but there is rarely good evidence of any major or crucial external intervention.
For example, I read a lot of comments about a “US-backed coup” in Honduras in 2009. I try to Google it and the best thing I found about US involvement was the fact that the US recognized the new regime and didn’t attempt to reinstate the overthrown leader.
I would argue that in many of the coups which the West supported, it most important contribution was to signal, even implicitly, that it wouldn’t be too unhappy if the leftist leader of the country in question was overthrown. Now this is definitely bad, but it seems to me a far cry from the West having orchestrated the whole thing.
(Similarly, in the former Czechoslovakia where I am from, there was a communist coup in 1948. People, especially foreigners, will often point out that the coup was “backed by the Soviets”, and while that is definitely true in the sense that they badly wanted the coup to succeed and had strong intelligence ties in the country, it doesn’t seem they did anything decisive and you don’t need to mention them in order to explain what happened.)
There were some coups, like Guatemala in 1954, where the US did in fact intervened to overthrow a popular government (by training an army of thugs who invaded the country), but as far as I can tell, the reality was usually closer to what I described above. Iran in 1953 might also fall into this category, I don’t know enough about it to be able to tell.
I therefore overall think that many leftwing authors, such as Hickel, or for example Chomsky, tend to wildly exaggerate the West’s role in most of these coups by making sweeping statements about how the US orchestrated this coup or overthrew that government, but that they usually don’t have strong evidence and yet their case often sails through strangely uncontested.
I would also argue that the idea that the West can (or could in the past) overthrow foreign governments at will by covert intelligence operations portrays the West/US/CIA as these almighty diabolical masterminds who can subtly direct events in faraway countries without leaving evidence and that this view totally ignores the agency of the people in the countries in question. (Also, if the West had this ability, you would expect that they would have done a coups in places like Cuba, North Korea, Syria or Iran a long time ago.)
Lastly, I would say that Hickel misunderstands the motivation for Cold war era US policy in the Third World. As far as I can tell, the US didn’t care much about countries internal economic policies, and in fact many pro-US right wing regimes like the junta in Brazil in Chiang’s regime on Taiwan or Suharto in Indonesia had strongly interventionist and very non-neoliberal policies and the US never complained about it. What they disliked was an ideological affiliation with Marxism and a pro-USSR foreign policy, as long as a country refrained from that, the West was happy with almost anything. (Again, Guatemala seems to me like an exception here, possibly Iran too.)
Anyway, I hope this is a helpful response, take care :-)
Hi,
I am not at all sure whether you still follow this thread, but in case you do, I’d like to somewhat push back about what you said about coups.
I became interested in this topic a while ago and I tried to find out as much as possible about events like the 1973 coup in Chile or the 1965 crisis in Indonesia etc., and about Western involvement. I found out that the coups were usually homegrown affairs driven by domestic actors (such as disgruntled conservative military officers) and often even supported by a wide section of the public (which was for example angry about economic mismanagement by the previous regime), while the West played at best a minor role. Usually, you find many vague accusations about Western “backing” for the coup, but there is rarely good evidence of any major or crucial external intervention.
For example, I read a lot of comments about a “US-backed coup” in Honduras in 2009. I try to Google it and the best thing I found about US involvement was the fact that the US recognized the new regime and didn’t attempt to reinstate the overthrown leader.
I would argue that in many of the coups which the West supported, it most important contribution was to signal, even implicitly, that it wouldn’t be too unhappy if the leftist leader of the country in question was overthrown. Now this is definitely bad, but it seems to me a far cry from the West having orchestrated the whole thing.
(Similarly, in the former Czechoslovakia where I am from, there was a communist coup in 1948. People, especially foreigners, will often point out that the coup was “backed by the Soviets”, and while that is definitely true in the sense that they badly wanted the coup to succeed and had strong intelligence ties in the country, it doesn’t seem they did anything decisive and you don’t need to mention them in order to explain what happened.)
There were some coups, like Guatemala in 1954, where the US did in fact intervened to overthrow a popular government (by training an army of thugs who invaded the country), but as far as I can tell, the reality was usually closer to what I described above. Iran in 1953 might also fall into this category, I don’t know enough about it to be able to tell.
I therefore overall think that many leftwing authors, such as Hickel, or for example Chomsky, tend to wildly exaggerate the West’s role in most of these coups by making sweeping statements about how the US orchestrated this coup or overthrew that government, but that they usually don’t have strong evidence and yet their case often sails through strangely uncontested.
I would also argue that the idea that the West can (or could in the past) overthrow foreign governments at will by covert intelligence operations portrays the West/US/CIA as these almighty diabolical masterminds who can subtly direct events in faraway countries without leaving evidence and that this view totally ignores the agency of the people in the countries in question. (Also, if the West had this ability, you would expect that they would have done a coups in places like Cuba, North Korea, Syria or Iran a long time ago.)
Lastly, I would say that Hickel misunderstands the motivation for Cold war era US policy in the Third World. As far as I can tell, the US didn’t care much about countries internal economic policies, and in fact many pro-US right wing regimes like the junta in Brazil in Chiang’s regime on Taiwan or Suharto in Indonesia had strongly interventionist and very non-neoliberal policies and the US never complained about it. What they disliked was an ideological affiliation with Marxism and a pro-USSR foreign policy, as long as a country refrained from that, the West was happy with almost anything. (Again, Guatemala seems to me like an exception here, possibly Iran too.)
Anyway, I hope this is a helpful response, take care :-)