Imperial Perspectives (Part XII)

by Jim Miles

2005

World War II ended with America predominant and Europe and Eastern Asia in tatters. In part XII, European Phoenix, Imperial Perspectives looks at how Europe rose from the ashes of war, with American aid designed for maintaining the power of western business interests.

XII. European Phoenix

As with the First World War when the opposing soldiers gathered to play soccer at Christmas in spite of all the jingoistic rhetoric on both sides, not all of the participants of the Second War were fooled by the patriotic drivel that tends to emanate from governments during such times. Expressed by one GI after the war, it was all about money, not a bit surprised “that the people that start wars and promote ‘em are the men that make the money, make the ammunition, make the clothing.” [1] An expression in simple terms, but stating what many working class people understand, that war is business taken to the extreme.

After the Second World War, two main themes in support of business, a major and a minor, developed and oversaw the path taken through the second half of the Twentieth Century. Communism became the beast that threatened America both internally and externally and provided the fear factor, enforced by the ownership on both sides of nuclear weapons, that allowed great manipulation of principally the American public but also global politics in general. An underlying theme saw the gradual increase towards a global governance model, not as commonly held out with the United Nations, but through the various trade and business agreements and institutions set up mostly beyond the realm of control of national governments. The two were effectively orchestrated to develop and create the environment necessary for the American empire, in the form of corporate global neoliberalism, to expand and reach for the…well, almost literally, the stars.

National Self-interst: the Marshall Plan

Europe remained in chaos after the war. Governmental institutions were under the control of occupying forces or were subject to the disruptive ‘factionalism’ that can serve democracy so well after major crisis, industrial capacities and transportation were restricted or non-existent, and agricultural commodities were limited. The occupying forces did not show much concern for any of this until the laws of economics, such as they are, and the rising threat of populist socialism awakened American business to the probable threat to markets and business.

Two years after the war ended, the Americans realized that they faced political and business losses throughout Europe. George C. Marshall, a true American amalgam of businessman, warrior, and politician, then Secretary of State, proposed a plan for the rehabilitation of Europe, which was implemented the following year, fully three years after the end of the war. Superficially the plan provided economic assistance to various European states in order to help in their economic recovery, but it served more than that. Stated quite explicitly by Dean Acheson the government was “…carrying out a policy of relief and reconstruction today chiefly as a matter of national self-interest.” [2] Before the plan was instituted, it had been argued that Americans had “a very real economic interest in Europe…as a market and as a major source of supply for a variety of products and services.” [3] Accordingly, “extending credit to Europe and Japan was to become a crucial component of U.S. policy as it would enable these two zones to buy technological and energy products, primarily oil.” [4]

CIA Interventions

But business was served in a different way than direct contributions of American dollars, either through loans from government to government, or government credits, or business investments and loans. Some of that money went by way of the CIA and its interventions in Italy, France, and Greece. Italy had elected a government that contained a majority of Communists and Socialists, ultimately creating a coalition with ministers from both parties into cabinet offices. France had appointed Communist cabinet ministers within its government. The Greek left, who had fought so successfully and aggressively against the German occupation, were involved in a civil war attempting to rid the country of its repressive and violent British supported government. All three were subject to CIA interventions, in association with other economic interventions.

The Italians had a large electoral campaign directed at them from America involving many kinds of media publicity, political pressure, financial contributions from the CIA and American governments and disinformation ‘services’. The communist scare was essentially just that as the Soviet government itself recognized that it was not ready to get involved against the West after having suffered so heavily during the conflict (remembering that U.S. industrial and agricultural output remained unscathed behind the protection of two oceans.) Not surprisingly the Christian Democrats were the clear winners with forty-eight per cent of the vote in the 1948 election. Beyond that time the CIA remained in Italy over at least the next twenty years, funding the Christian Democrats, publishing their own newspaper, and supporting aspects of the Catholic Church among other interventions. [5]

Reacting to events in Greece and Turkey, President Truman introduced his doctrine of support that signalled America’s intention to be interventionist in the name of freedom, stating, “I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.” The hypocrisy of this statement, this sound bite, is evident in the many interventions globally by the United States since that time to disrupt any attempts at self-rule that did not serve the purposes of the American businessman. The over-arching cover for these interventions conveniently fell under the banner of a new global communist conspiracy.

Truman’s argument on Greece initiated the domino effect theory of one country falling after another to the communist threat, “If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East.” That confusion would mainly be to American business interests (oil) and, without being stated as such yet, the containment of Soviet influence through the region. Should Greece have gone communist, it would have done so without Soviet support and it would have eliminated a repressive British-assisted monarchy supported only by the minority.

Siding with the neofascist forces that battled the popular leftist uprising in Greece, the United States shipped in large amounts of men and materials, and, as was becoming standard against guerrilla movements, forcibly removed thousand from their homes to isolate the guerrillas from their support. Eventually the United States prevailed, establishing a “dictatorial and brutal” military junta that accepted “investment capital from Esso, Dow Chemical, Chrysler and other U.S corporations” while “illiteracy, poverty, and starvation remained widespread.” Greece of course is on the edges of the Middle East and recognized as being a controlling point for that areas “great natural resources”. [6] Non-democratic and violently repressive governments, supported by the CIA, continued to plague Greece up into the 1980s.

France did not suffer such direct attention as either Italy or Greece, but as indicated by French Premier Ramadier “A little of our independence is departing from us with each loan we obtain.” [7] The American tone for the rest of the world was being set in Europe – financial coercion where possible, subversion where needed, and direct military assault when required. The atmosphere of ‘fear of communism’ became established early, and the means for dealing with it as well.

Phoenix

It is at this point that considerable confusion enters the picture as to the benefits of American intervention. Certainly from all superficial measurements of the economies of eastern and western Europe, western Europe surpassed the economies of the east, the standards of living as measured by demographic factors were better, and the individual people had more freedom of movement, but that has always been so historically. Apart from the Scandinavian countries, there are no countries in the world in which socialism has been allowed to develop as a democratic process in society without calling down the wrath of American military and economic intervention and CIA subversion. It can only be speculation as to the direction that Europe would have taken had the Americans not intervened so heavily – but that again raises the idea that the intervention was their not so much for the “free peoples to work out their own destinies” but for the creation of markets and financial resources for American business. And it raises the point that it was done violently and repressively in some instances.

Further, the European states, especially the western nations, were all of the same imperialist cloth that America is made of; the United States as indicated before is a split from the British Empire in order that those states could pursue their own particular form of empire. In Europe, there were changes, but mainly in power and size but not type. Royalty remained as a European feature, the landed aristocracy and the large corporations regained or resumed their previous ambitions and positions, and the working class remained the working class with improved benefits. To repeat again though, those improved benefits were not ‘donated’ to the workers but were determined by the workers ability to stand up for their rights, which in the European case included voting for the communist and socialist parties of the day. To pre-empt a lot of the power of the rising working class who were thoroughly disillusioned with the previous autocratic regimes, the mainstream absorbed and used some of their ideas.

In Europe then it was a renewal of what had previously existed with the wealthy still retaining their position and power, it was business as usual after the masses had been quieted. The mythological Phoenix had risen from its ashes. There were no problems with race. No indigenous people had to be quashed for the empire to thrive (except save Greece). Raw materials were not a problem, in as much as European countries scoured abroad for their material and agricultural resources as much as the Americans. Governments and large corporations operated in collusion (a powerful word that I will return to later) to re-establish the status quo. While these articles are nominally about the American empire, Europe is a part of that package, historically in its creation, and, as will be seen later, contemporarily with the drive for global governance by the multi-national corporations that are split somewhat equitably between the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

Elsewhere on the globe, the Truman Doctrine, the fear of communism, worked to tear apart nascent democratic institutions that did not fit the American empirical mould. East and Southeast Asia arguably suffered the worst of this.

Notes

[1] Zinn, Howard Passionate Declarations Essays on War and Justice. Perennial, HarperCollins, New York, 2003. p. 104.
[2] Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States 1492 – Present. Perennial Classics, HarperCollins, New York, 2003. p. 238.
[3] Ferguson, Niall. Colossus The Price of America’s Empire. Penguin Press, New York, 2004. p. 82.
[4] Halevi, Joseph and Varoufakis, Yanis. “The Global Minotaur”, Pox Americana Exposing the American Empire. Monthly Review Press, New York, 2004. p.78.
[5] Blum, William. Killing Hope U.S. military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press, Munro, Maine, 1995 p. 27-34. and p. 119-21.
[6] Zinn, ibid, p. 426-7.
[7] Blum, ibid, p. 29

© Jim Miles. Used with permission.