An alternative American Cold War Strategy

[Aussiegunner]

I'm interested to hear people's views on how the Cold War might have turned out had the US adopted the general principle of not toppling democratically elected Communist or Socialist governments to replace them with right wing dictatorships, on the proviso that they did not act in a threatening manner to the US or its allies and that they maintained a democratic electoral system? How different might the geostrategic environment now be as a consequence of this?

[astralis]

aussie,

and that they maintained a democratic electoral system?

the problem with this was that almost none of the outright Communist governments would hold to a democratic electoral system-- even for the Socialists there was the threat of corruption by the Commies.

the main issue with the US strategy was that the US was tied to UK/French imperialism in the 1950s, as they tried to hold on to the last vestiges of empire. this almost irrevocably ruined the image of capitalism in the former colonies-- which was already bad to begin with, as the rich-poor gap was absolutely enormous.

thus, when nationalist movements sprung up everywhere, they almost all had a leftist tinge, which the USSR was busy tapping into. the US could have, and should have, reacted faster to this stunning shift, which was noticed as the UN general assembly (formerly -very- Western-friendly, look at the Korean War intervention) shifted in 10 years to become an anti-Western organization.

the US attempted to compromise by alternatively looking at a third way (Graham Greene's "The Quiet American"), by backing the Brits/French, or sometimes backing the nationalist movement. this didn't work out well.

finally, the strategy they settled on was the right-wing nationalist movement, usually comprised of former elites, to counteract the USSR.

the biggest fear the US had was that the socialist countries would gradually turn into the COMINTERN and then turn into effectively another part of the USSR. it took the US some twenty-five years until she figured out that this was not true.

[Bigfella]

I'm interested to hear people's views on how the Cold War might have turned out had the US adopted the general principle of not toppling democratically elected Communist or Socialist governments to replace them with right wing dictatorships, on the proviso that they did not act in a threatening manner to the US or its allies and that they maintained a democratic electoral system? How different might the geostrategic environment now be as a consequence of this?

AG,

An interesting question, but quite broad. it might be useful if you gave us a few examples of instances where the US faced such a choice & how you think a different outcome might have a) been possible, and b) changed the Cold War.

I don't have time to think this one through much now, but I'll try to work up some thoughts.

[zraver]

AG,

An interesting question, but quite broad. it might be useful if you gave us a few examples of instances where the US faced such a choice & how you think a different outcome might have a) been possible, and b) changed the Cold War.

I don't have time to think this one through much now, but I'll try to work up some thoughts.

Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Egypt, India, and Vietnam spring to mind. Only Iran and Iraq were toppled, the others were ignored (India and Egypt) or made into enemies (Cuba, Iran, Vietnam). Iran is now an enemy and Iraq is still a mess. Things with India were finally getting smoothed out until Mr I hate democracies Obama got elected. Cuba is still on the outs but Vietnam is now an ally. Egypt with all of its once vast promise is now a despotic country that has to be bought off from threatening Israel.

Examples of what might have been include Yugoslavia after the Tito-Stalin split.

[Bigfella]

Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Egypt, India, and Vietnam spring to mind. Only Iran and Iraq were toppled, the others were ignored (India and Egypt) or made into enemies (Cuba, Iran, Vietnam). Iran is now an enemy and Iraq is still a mess. Things with India were finally getting smoothed out until Mr I hate democracies Obama got elected. Cuba is still on the outs but Vietnam is now an ally. Egypt with all of its once vast promise is now a despotic country that has to be bought off from threatening Israel.

Examples of what might have been include Yugoslavia after the Tito-Stalin split.

OK Z, some meat to get stuck into. I'm not fully informed on all of these, so jump in if I get it wrong.

I wasn't aware that Iraq, Vietnam & Cuba had democracies of any sort to support.

There is certainly an argument that Castro could have been kept out of the Soviet sphere, though I'm not sure how realistic that was, given that a distant Russian patron probably seemed less of a threat to his position than a nearby American one - especially given America's history in the region & domestic politics.

The possibility of turning Ho Chi Minh into an 'Asian Tito' is tempting in hindsight, but I'm not sure how realistic it was in reality. Given the events of 1956 burning France doesn't seem so bad, but sadly French support for NATO seemed too important to risk. Would America have been prepared to provide the finance & expertise in nation building that the Russians & even Chinese gladly would and would it be done without attempting to interfere in the Communist revolution that Ho dearly wanted? There is certainly an argument that America could have refused to back France & let the whole of Vietnam fall to the VM in 1951 or 52. That would have saved a bunch of lives & later American prestige, but it wouldn't have furthered the cause of democracy or immediate American interests - effectively a loss with no clear gain at the time.

I'm not quite sure about your point on Iraq. It could be argued that America did periodically support a left wing dictatorship (the Ba'ath) against other, Soviet backed leftists. What might have happened if that support had been continuous is hard to say, but I'm not really sure that the periods when the Ba'athists did have support provide much hope that it would have achieved somethng positive.

Egypt had some possibilities before 1952, which would have involved stepping on Britain's toes & throwing some weight around in Egypt to push the King to be more democratic. Again, it could be argued that Nasser & co. could have been treated differently, though it would have involved sorting out or ignoring conflict with Israel - neither a particularly straightforward idea. If you were arguing that America could have done more the push Sadat/Mubarak toward a freer society you might be correct. I don't know enough about what was possible (given the desire to keep Russia out & relations with Israel good) to comment. It strikes me that, if anything, a less despotic Egypt might actually have been more of a threat to Israel. Hard to imagine that after 56, 67 & 73 that the Camp David Accords would have been the popular thing to do in Egypt.

I would agree that Iran & India present some intriguing prospects, as do a series of left wing governments & movements in Latin America. The longstanding policy of supporting the likes of Pakistan over India has struck me as one of the most foolish & shortsighted policies America has adopted. backing dictators in Pakistan has brought little but grief & dissolution to that nation, while backing India's democracy would not only have set a fine example, but it might have given the US more influence among the 'non-aligned' bloc, which tended to be left-leaning for fairly obvious historical reasons.

Iran still strikes me as a great tragedy whose last chapter has yet to be written. A neutral, secular Iran that was home to a more traditional version of Shi-ism could actually have been a force for stability & progress in the region in a way that it was hoped the Shah would be. Obviously the USSR would have tried to interfere, but it strikes me that of all the ways to prevent that, installing the Shah was one of the worst & most short sighted.

In addition to pretty much the whole of Latin America, a place that would have benefitted enormously from the US not interfering was Cambodia. Granted, Sihanouk was no democrat, but by supporting his overthrow & indulging the fantasies of his successor the US paved the way for the Khmer Rouge in a way that I doubt would otherwise have taken place.

I guess the question from all of this is what the broader impact of such changes in policy might have been? Would it have significantly changed the course or outcome of the Cold War, or would it just have been local impacts (which, granted, might have saved millions of lives).

[Aussiegunner]

Thanks for the good start guys. I deliberately left it a broad question to elicity as broad a range of responses as possible, as well as the fact that I don't actually have very firm views on what the outcomes of such a policy would have been.

Iran tops my list for a good example but I also think that some of the Latin American countries might also be worthwhile looking at, Nicuagura comes to mind. I think that the Iranian situation highlights the fact that a lot of the problems the US faced were because of British and French imperialist interests. I wonder why they chose to oppose those interests so strongly in Suez in '56 when they had knocked over the Iranian president in '53?

I agree that the US relationship with Tito (even though he wasn't democratic) provides something of a model of how it might be done. I also agree that the propensity of the Communists to ruin democracy was a problem and wonder how the US might have supported democratically elected socialist regimes against the communist influence.

Sorry if this is very high level but I'm still more interested in hearing other's opinions than spouting my own, which are not that informed, on this.

[astralis]

aussie,

I wonder why they chose to oppose those interests so strongly in Suez in '56 when they had knocked over the Iranian president in '53?

superpower competition in both cases. the US was trying to woo the middle eastern powers and in any case, the soviets were threatening to intervene if the US didn't act.

as for iran, the brits and the french wanted continued western oil but that wasn't the primary driver for US action-- they thought mossadegh was leftist and wanted to eliminate him as a Soviet proxy.

[Aussiegunner]

as for iran, the brits and the french wanted continued western oil but that wasn't the primary driver for US action-- they thought mossadegh was leftist and wanted to eliminate him as a Soviet proxy.

Is that a realistic assessment of his ideology based on what information they had at the time, or were they being paranoid by applying the anti-communist hysteria over every situation? I have a very good Iranian friend who has filled me in on how the underlying theme in Iranian culture is an extremely strong sense of national unity, independence and pride. He argues that it was built over a mostly proud 3000 year history and that it is a more important cultural trait to Iranians than Islam is now. I suspect that even if Mossadegh had some leftist views either his own or his countrymen's Persian national pride would have outweighed any desire to be a Soviet proxy.

I wonder, had the US made the effort to understand this would they have been less worried about the Iranians allowing themselves to become a Soviet proxy and perhaps used it to their advantage? It seems to me that a non-aligned Iran would still have sold the West oil between the early 50's and 1979. Had the US (and perhaps the French) helped them arm and provided a security guarentee (perhaps a secret one) they would have been too big a nation for the Soviets to easily invade outright, so might have been left alone.

[astralis]

aussie,

Is that a realistic assessment of his ideology based on what information they had at the time, or were they being paranoid by applying the anti-communist hysteria over every situation?

both. remember that US policymakers (correctly) saw communist/leftist parties in western europe as basically fronts for the USSR (they had been for decades). same thing in eastern europe, with the exception of tito.

they were aware of the nationalist overtones of the leftist movement but were profoundly unsure about whether that would clash with the soviets or fall in behind them. there was a minority which argued that the US should try to play it off, which only became actual policy when it became clear in the mid-late 60s (with the sino-soviet split, and later, the sino-vietnam war) that the Domino Theory was incorrect.

pretty much people whom condemn the US for the overthrow are looking back with the benefit of hindsight. the US was frightened of the USSR winning iranian and middle eastern sympathies and creating proxy states out of all of them, which would have been a disaster of the first magnitude (giving the Soviets control of the Suez plus huge oil reserves). against that, the threat of iranian backlash was decidedly of less concern.

[zraver]

OK Z, some meat to get stuck into. I'm not fully informed on all of these, so jump in if I get it wrong.

I wasn't aware that Iraq, Vietnam & Cuba had democracies of any sort to support.

More we should have backed what were really nationalist movements rather than true communist movements.

There is certainly an argument that Castro could have been kept out of the Soviet sphere, though I'm not sure how realistic that was, given that a distant Russian patron probably seemed less of a threat to his position than a nearby American one - especially given America's history in the region & domestic politics.

We could have kept him quiet, the Italy of Latin America. Instead we forced him into the Soviet sphere with all of its ramifications in Latin America and the almost WWIII starter we call the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The possibility of turning Ho Chi Minh into an 'Asian Tito' is tempting in hindsight, but I'm not sure how realistic it was in reality. Given the events of 1956 burning France doesn't seem so bad, but sadly French support for NATO seemed too important to risk. Would America have been prepared to provide the finance & expertise in nation building that the Russians & even Chinese gladly would and would it be done without attempting to interfere in the Communist revolution that Ho dearly wanted? There is certainly an argument that America could have refused to back France & let the whole of Vietnam fall to the VM in 1951 or 52. That would have saved a bunch of lives & later American prestige, but it wouldn't have furthered the cause of democracy or immediate American interests - effectively a loss with no clear gain at the time.

Ho was an ally, all we had to do to keep him was not ship French troops back to Indochina and stood by our claim that all peoples deserved self determination. Like Washington and Tito, Ho earned the title father of his country. Ho's communism was more anti-colonialism and land reform in the begining.

I'm not quite sure about your point on Iraq. It could be argued that America did periodically support a left wing dictatorship (the Ba'ath) against other, Soviet backed leftists. What might have happened if that support had been continuous is hard to say, but I'm not really sure that the periods when the Ba'athists did have support provide much hope that it would have achieved somethng positive.

Iraq used to be a major ally in Cento. Qasim wanted to be non-aligned. We could have made use of him. Instead we decided any thing right, was better than a semi-leftist. We had the money to out spend the Soviets. If we had backed Ho and Castro we could have said, see we don't just want to stop the spread of Stalinism, not impose a new colonialism.

Egypt had some possibilities before 1952, which would have involved stepping on Britain's toes & throwing some weight around in Egypt to push the King to be more democratic. Again, it could be argued that Nasser & co. could have been treated differently, though it would have involved sorting out or ignoring conflict with Israel - neither a particularly straightforward idea. If you were arguing that America could have done more the push Sadat/Mubarak toward a freer society you might be correct. I don't know enough about what was possible (given the desire to keep Russia out & relations with Israel good) to comment. It strikes me that, if anything, a less despotic Egypt might actually have been more of a threat to Israel. Hard to imagine that after 56, 67 & 73 that the Camp David Accords would have been the popular thing to do in Egypt.

After the Suez crisis, we had some street cred with Nasser. We could have leveraged it differently, we were still not Israel's big brother, France was.

I would agree that Iran & India present some intriguing prospects, as do a series of left wing governments & movements in Latin America. The longstanding policy of supporting the likes of Pakistan over India has struck me as one of the most foolish & shortsighted policies America has adopted. backing dictators in Pakistan has brought little but grief & dissolution to that nation, while backing India's democracy would not only have set a fine example, but it might have given the US more influence among the 'non-aligned' bloc, which tended to be left-leaning for fairly obvious historical reasons.

Bingo

Iran still strikes me as a great tragedy whose last chapter has yet to be written. A neutral, secular Iran that was home to a more traditional version of Shi-ism could actually have been a force for stability & progress in the region in a way that it was hoped the Shah would be. Obviously the USSR would have tried to interfere, but it strikes me that of all the ways to prevent that, installing the Shah was one of the worst & most short sighted.

bingo x2

In addition to pretty much the whole of Latin America, a place that would have benefitted enormously from the US not interfering was Cambodia. Granted, Sihanouk was no democrat, but by supporting his overthrow & indulging the fantasies of his successor the US paved the way for the Khmer Rouge in a way that I doubt would otherwise have taken place.

Back to Ho, if we had supported the self determination movements and the Viet Minh our street cred and thus ability to use soft power would have been much greater.

I guess the question from all of this is what the broader impact of such changes in policy might have been? Would it have significantly changed the course or outcome of the Cold War, or would it just have been local impacts (which, granted, might have saved millions of lives).

A less direct and bloody opposition to the Soviets using soft power- trade culture, ideals might not only have prevented several key soviet allies from ever emerging, but blocked a lot of purely military Soviet ambitions. If Cuba is non-aligned, then the USSR just has to suck an egg over the US nukes in Turkey. With no Vietnam, no Soviet navy base to threaten Asia after we left. Fewer civil wars in Africa and Latin America means fewer propaganda victories for the reds etc. We could have contained a lot of the Soviet effort just by using the positives of American society.

[Aussiegunner]

aussie,

both. remember that US policymakers (correctly) saw communist/leftist parties in western europe as basically fronts for the USSR (they had been for decades). same thing in eastern europe, with the exception of tito.

they were aware of the nationalist overtones of the leftist movement but were profoundly unsure about whether that would clash with the soviets or fall in behind them. there was a minority which argued that the US should try to play it off, which only became actual policy when it became clear in the mid-late 60s (with the sino-soviet split, and later, the sino-vietnam war) that the Domino Theory was incorrect.

pretty much people whom condemn the US for the overthrow are looking back with the benefit of hindsight. the US was frightened of the USSR winning iranian and middle eastern sympathies and creating proxy states out of all of them, which would have been a disaster of the first magnitude (giving the Soviets control of the Suez plus huge oil reserves). against that, the threat of iranian backlash was decidedly of less concern.

Astralis,

It is probably an opportune moment for me to make it clear that I accept that the US was in a hideously difficult position when it had to make these decisions. The situation was far from clear, the stakes were very high and there was a great degree of legitimate fear as it appeared that the Soviets might be hell bent on World domination, the Soviet-Backed North Korean invasion of South Korea would have been at the front of decision makers minds as confirming that fear.

Never the less I think that there is the possibility that there was information available at the time that might have led to better decisions, had there been better analysis. I doubt that Iranian nationalism was an unknown concept, but there seem to me to be other factors weighing against Iran falling into the Soviet sphere. Iran's natural endowment with oil was in competition with the Soviet economy which had heaps of its own, but is complementary to that of the West. Iran couldn't have afforded to have that endowment locked away from it's most important customers. Furthermore the importance of religion for Iran would have played into Western hands. It would have been easy for the West to point out that the Soviets were athiests bent on the destruction of religious influence.

The presence of a miniority who you say "got it" on playing off Iranian nationalism suggests to me that had the majority also "got it", a better decision might have been made. I imagine the situation at that time being much like I remember back at the beginning of the WOT, where the majority of us were paranoid that Iran was going to give fire a WMD off at Israel out of shear irrational spite and advocated taking preventative military against them. Luckly we were all too tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan to do that, but I don't think that it was ever out of the question and I think that the results would have been disasterous.

There were some who "got it" then too, Bigfella if I recall was one of them, who said "hang on, the regime there has survived for over 20 years by being pretty rational and calculating, what makes you all think that they are going to do something now that will see them destroyed?" I would suggest that nearly another decade of WOT without any WMD's being lobbed at anybody is a pretty solid indication that he was right, which shows that good analysis can produce the right solutions.

[zraver]

There were some who "got it" then too, Bigfella if I recall was one of them, who said "hang on, the regime there has survived for over 20 years by being pretty rational and calculating, what makes you all think that they are going to do something now that will see them destroyed?" I would suggest that nearly another decade of WOT without any WMD's being lobbed at anybody is a pretty solid indication that he was right, which shows that good analysis can produce the right solutions.

Hold on, there was a silent civil war in the Guards and A-jads faction won. Its a totally new game now. I won't say A-jad wants WWIII, but he is not opposed to it in principle. Such a conflict might bring back the Hidden Iman. The Supreme Leader has thrown in with A-jads faction in what appears to be an attempt to have his son succeed him in what will effectively be a new religious dynasty. Khameni is already viewed as illegitimate by many Shia clerics who feel he did not earn the title Grand Ayatollah. Denied wide religious support, the Guard are his only hope for creating a dynasty. This would also follow the pattern set in early Islam where a religious caliph and a secular Sultan shared power in made but the Sultan had it all in practice.

[Aussiegunner]

Hold on, there was a silent civil war in the Guards and A-jads faction won. Its a totally new game now. I won't say A-jad wants WWIII, but he is not opposed to it in principle. Such a conflict might bring back the Hidden Iman. The Supreme Leader has thrown in with A-jads faction in what appears to be an attempt to have his son succeed him in what will effectively be a new religious dynasty. Khameni is already viewed as illegitimate by many Shia clerics who feel he did not earn the title Grand Ayatollah. Denied wide religious support, the Guard are his only hope for creating a dynasty. This would also follow the pattern set in early Islam where a religious caliph and a secular Sultan shared power in made but the Sultan had it all in practice.

Who knows what degree of power A-jads actually has and why the Supreme Leader even wants him there. I suspect he is just a puppet whose job is to look scary to the rest of the world. In any case, I would suggest that if the Iranians wanted to use WMD's against Israel they could have done so already by supplying them to Hezbollah, for use in their rocket forces against Israel. Of course doing that would probably lead to them being nuked, but an irrational state as people were suggesting they were at the beginning of the WOT and which some still do wouldn't care about that would they.

[S2]

Alternative Reality

There's been a lot of discussion about American perceptions of external events surrounding us in the late 40s, 50s, and 60s. Some of it accurate. Some not so much.

So far, there's been an avoidance of the psychological profiles of American policy-makers in this timeframe. These were men largely shaped by W.W.I, post W.W.I Europe (to include the rise of a Leninist Soviet Union), an epic global economic collapse and, later, W.W.II.

They also were nearly exclusively W.A.S.P. and more than a few harbored latent and overt indications of racism. The range of personalities reached as far back as the likes of FDR, J. Edgar Hoover, George Catlett Marshall and Ike to relative youngsters like Dick Nixon and JFK. Those are but a few of the more notables.

Then there was a host of critical underlings serving as statesmen, policy analysts and pundits from left-leaning Edgar Snow, George Kennan, the Bundy Brothers, Henry Morganthau, Dean Rusk, Dean Acheson, James Forrestal, Robert McNamera and many others.

Those perceptions, btw, were shared by many MEN in Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and western Europe who shared similar if not completely congruent views of the world. This society of mutual reinforcement was many centuries in the making and took many decades to dissolve into what we see today.

Then there were the dilemmas-the demise of colonialism, the rise of nationalist-inspired communism, the rise of nationalism, NUCLEAR WEAPONS and their attendant but not-yet developed nuclear employment doctrines, post-war reconstruction, the revolution in technologies, etc. All were decisions reached incrementally, ad hoc, and often only after perceived successes or failures which were too often inadequately analyzed for, again, a variety of reasons.

As much as we look and wonder about, variously, Iran, Cuba and Latin America, Egypt, India, Vietnam and other seeming failures those American policy-makers had perceived victories in Greece and S. Korea (as example) relatively early that suggested communist ambitions could be combatted and thwarted.

There was never a conscious decision I can recall to posture American foreign policy strategy on STRATEGY. American foreign policy, instead, was an evolution that was implicitly seeking consensus from internal and external stimuli.

This is a massive endeavor that, frankly, frightens me in its scope and size. Good luck.

Carry on...

[Aussiegunner]

S-2

The nature of the people involved may have had a lot to do with it, I don't think the US government had had much experience in cross-cultural diplomacy at that stage had they? - at least not in the Middle-East. The sad irony is that the people who were probably best at cross-cultural work at the time of the Iranian affair were the British, who were the bastards in this instance.