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Electorial Interventions
A Suspiciously Naive View of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War World
Gill, Timothy M. http://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/09/electoral-interventions-a-suspiciously-naive-view-of-u-s-foreign-policy-in-the-post-cold-war-world/
Publisher: Counterpunch
Date Written: 09/07/2020
Year Published: 2020
Resource Type: Website
Gill explores American intervention abroad, and argues that foreign intervention has been a part of the American policy since the Monroe Doctrime in 1823. He further argues that in the Post-Cold War world, the US has promoted a liberal form of democray where any emphases on social and economic rights are largely absent. He critiques the work of David Shimer, a New York Times correspodent, as being naive and regurgitating the carefully crafted statements of American political elites.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
In its first chapters, Shimer provides a clear view of U.S. intervention in Italy following World War II, as well as U.S. efforts to keep former Chilean President Salvador Allende from coming to power and then collaborating with opposition forces, including General Augusto Pinochet, to have him ousted in a violent coup. The elephant in the room of these discussions, however, is that U.S. intervention existed long before efforts in Italy in the 1940s. Since the inception of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the U.S. had formalized its self-proclaimed dominance over the Western Hemisphere. Shimer admittedly only sets out to examine the last century of intervention; however, there's hardly any mention of U.S. interventionist policies particularly in Central America and the Caribbean during the early 20th century in places such as the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua. During the past century and before the Cold War, such policies extended even beyond the hemisphere into the Philippines and Guam. All of this is a serious omission from the text.
All together, Shimer seemingly excuses U.S. behavior during the Cold War due to existing global relations with the Soviet Union. According to him, the Soviet Union posed a serious threat to the U.S. and, as a result, the U.S. couldn't absolutely pursue its allegedly natural interest in democracy. In doing so, he offers very little in the way of criticism of U.S. support for dictatorial governments. Instead, he opts to humanize many of the actors who manipulated elections and deceived foreign citizens abroad. This is somewhat fascinating at times, but paired with the overall tone of the book, it feels rather celebratory.
In the post-Cold War world, Shimer views the U.S. as finally able to pursue its mission all along: democracy promotion. However, there is next to no critical attention paid to the type of democracy that is promoted, what parties and individuals receive assistance, and what actors are sidelined in the process. There is no critical interrogation of U.S. agencies and their objectives, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (and its associated groups: the International Republican Institute, and the National Democratic Institute), and the U.S. Agency for International Development. There is next to no engagement with literature produced by social scientists or even by former employees of the NED/USAID, some of whom have deeply criticized the partisan nature of U.S. democracy promotion. Instead, Shimer believes that such efforts are truly non-partisan in most instances and that funding flows to any democratic actor interested in receiving it.
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