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On
OVERTHROW
America's Regime Change From Hawaii to
Iraq
An exclusive
interview with
Stephen
KINZER
"It
cannot be one country that decides alone
which governments may live and which governments
must die. That always harms, not just
the victim country, but also the country
that is making this decision." Stephen Kinzer, April 25, 2006, NYC.
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| Overthrow by
Stephen Kinzer, published by Times
Book in April 2006 in NY |
Stephen Kinzer
- Author, Former Foreign Correspondent
of New York Times & Professor
in Journalism @Northwestern University
in Illinois. |
by Bircan ÜNVER
For
the Light Millennium
For Preface>
This is Page: 1
For
Page II>
Profile
of Stephen Kinzer
- What made you move from journalism to
teaching?
I
spent more than twenty years as a correspondent
for the New York Times. It was a fascinating
experience, but after a while, it's frustrating
to cover only daily news. I began to ask
myself what's lying behind the daily news,
what ties all this together, why is this
happening. And by leaving the New York
Times and setting out in a world where
I'm teaching and writing books, I'm hoping
I'll be able to answer some of those questions.
- How do you compare the satisfaction of teaching and direct
connection with your students to that
of journalism?
One of the odd factors of being a newspaper reporter, especially
if you're working abroad, is that you
send in your stories and that's the end
of it. You usually don't see the paper
maybe until many days later you don't
know anyone else who sees the paper. So
you feel like you're sending your stories
often to a kind of a black hole. In a
classroom, of course, you're getting instant
response and it's great to be around young
people that are curious and interested
and questioning. So the combination of
that experience with the ability to write
long articles and books is what I hope
will allow me to keep exploring some of
the more interesting questions and the
issues that are shaping the world today.
- How many students do you have and which classes do you teach?
- I'm teaching a class in journalism but the other course I'm teaching
is about American intervention. In that class they
allowed only 30 students but we had more
than 100 who applied. So I'll be offering
it again at the next semester.
-
I always thought that you also have a
great TV personality. When are you moving
to that direction?
- Actually being in front of this camera right now for Light Millennium
is one of the preparations for my big
TV career; so let's see how I do on this
one and then maybe from there I go to
the "Today Show." (This interview
is also video-recorded for the LMTV Series
@QPTV.)
- You are very modest. Thank you.
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A
Summary of the OVERTHROW: From
Hawaii to Iraq
"A fast-paced narrative history of the coups, revolutions,
and invasions by which the United
States has toppled fourteen foreign
governments—not always to
its own benefit "Regime change"
did not begin with the administration
of George W. Bush, but has been
an integral part of U.S. foreign
policy for more than one hundred
years. Starting with the overthrow
of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893
and continuing through the Spanish-American
War and the Cold War and into our
own time, the United States has
not hesitated to overthrow governments
that stood in the way of its political
and economic goals. The invasion
of Iraq in 2003 is the latest, though
perhaps not the last, example of
the dangers inherent in these operations.
In Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer tells
the stories of the audacious politicians,
spies, military commanders, and
business executives who took it
upon themselves to depose monarchs,
presidents, and prime ministers.
He also shows that the U.S. government
has often pursued these operations
without understanding the countries
involved; as a result, many of them
have had disastrous long-term consequences.
In a compelling and provocative history that takes readers to fourteen
countries, including Cuba, Iran,
South Vietnam, Chile, and Iraq,
Kinzer surveys modern American history
from a new and often surprising
perspective."
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- Overthrow is really a stunning book. It has really
helped me, I'm sure it'll help whoever
reads it too; understand how this world
has been structured! How did your concept
of "regime change" evolve for
your book?
- I've studied the situations in various countries in the world
over a period in many years and I came
to ask myself after a while: Why are certain
countries so poor, so torn by violence?
In many countries when I began to research
their histories, I saw that there was
a motive when the United States intervened
to interrupt that country's political
development. Now in my new book, I put
together the stories of fourteen different
times when the US overthrew a foreign
government. Most of these episodes have
been described in various books before,
including some books that I have written,
but what's new about this book is that
it sees these overthrows of foreign governments,
not as a series of independent, unrelated
incidents, but as part of a long continuum
that stretched over more than a hundred
years. So what I'm doing is telling the
story of each of these fourteen cases
in which the US overthrow a foreign government,
and then asking three questions. The first
question is: What happened, how did we
overthrow the government of a particular
country? The second question is: Why did
we do it? And the third question is: From
the perspective of today, from the perspective
of history, what have been the long-term
effects of that operation? By studying
all fourteen of these overthrows of foreign
governments together, I begin to see certain
patterns that don't become clear if you're
just studying the different episodes individually.
-
When I read the introduction, and the
book itself, I asked: Why does the US
feel that it has a right, an obligation
to intervene? And, what about the rights
of others?
Americans have always believed that we are an especially fortunate
people. We have been given a tremendous
gift. We live in a very large and powerful
country; we enjoy freedom and prosperity.
That has led many Americans to believe
that we have found the magic formula that
will make people and countries happy.
Because of our messianic view of the world,
we believe that we have, not just the
right, but perhaps even the divine responsibility
to share the benefits of our society and
our experience with other people. In many
parts of the world, people don't want
to have governments and cultures and political
systems like ours, but we want them to
because we think our system is best for
everybody. In many cases, we have insisted
on trying to impose our system even when
people in other countries didn't want
to accept it. I think that there is a
sense in American spirit that only bad
people would want to resist American influence.
There is a sense that any government,
which would disagree with the US, which
would bother or harass or nationalize
an American or other foreign corporation,
must be repressive, evil, anti-American,
brutal, and unlawful and probably the
tool of some obscure foreign force that
is seeking to undermine American power
all over the world. We believe that people
in every country would like to embrace
the US and would like to live the way
we do. We feel that in countries that
don’t embrace the US and don’t
live like we do, the reason is just that
there is a tiny group of dictators or
brutes at the top of society that’s
preventing the society from becoming naturally
pro-American. And if we would just remove
those few tyrants, those few evil people,
the countries would return to their natural
state of loving America. Only a people
as naïve and compassionate as the
US is and as Americans are would be able
to believe this. It’s this combination
of a compassionate, genuine desire to
help other people and a tremendous naiveté
about the outside world that allows the
US to carry out these operations time
after time.
“The
US who wants to intervene abroad for very
ignoble reasons always wrap their interventions
in this rhetoric of liberation, spreading
freedom, and helping people in foreign
countries.”
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It is hard to accept the way the US practices
and presents these overthrows. I don’t
see any relation, any concern, any faith
for others’ rights, nothing... Politically,
the US could make up reasons and at the
end it gets what it wants. But as you
underline perfectly, the US also overthrows
democratic governments too. I don’t
understand this!
- One of the patterns that I see in my book that happens time and
time again is on the question of why we
do it, why do we overthrow foreign governments,
and here’s the pattern. There are
usually three phases in each of these
interventions. The first phase is that
the leader of a foreign country gives
some kind of a problem to an American
or foreign company. He wants to restrict
them, he wants to force them to obey labor
laws, or they must pay taxes or they’re
going to be expropriated or nationalized.
That’s the beginning. There is a
clash between the leader of a country
and a foreign corporation. So then, the
leaders of that company go to the US government
and complain. That’s the first phase.
So it’s this economic problem, this
clash between what a nationalist government
wants and what companies want. That starts
the process in motion. Then, once the
White House and the US foreign policy
establishment become involved, they change
the motivation a little bit. They claim
that they are acting, not for business
reasons, not to protect individual American
companies, but that they are acting for
a political or a geo-strategic reason.
They conclude that no government would
be giving trouble to an American company
unless it was anti-American. And then
it becomes a geo-strategic imperative
to overthrow that government. Then there
comes a third phase: How do we sell this
intervention to the American people? Then
American leaders do not talk about the
business motivation. And usually they
don’t talk about the political or
strategic motivation. They have another
one that they wrap this in. And that is,
we are only doing this to liberate poor
foreign victims of oppression. This is
an argument that is very well tailored
to the American spirit. Because first
of all, we don’t know very much
about the outside world, and secondly
we feel like we want to help people because
we actually are very compassionate. That’s
why leaders of the US who want to intervene
abroad for very ignoble reasons always
wrap their interventions in this rhetoric
of liberation, spreading freedom, and
helping people in foreign countries.
- As in some cases in the book (Philippines, Guatemala…), what is really defined as genocide?
- I give one example. The US overthrew the government of Guatemala
in 1954. That was an elected government;
it was relatively popular at home; the
president was going to finish his term
and then be replaced by another president;
everything was going according to law.
But that country, that government had
come into conflict with a big American
company; that was United Fruit. So the
US overthrew the democratically elected
government of Guatemala. Soon thereafter,
the repression that was imposed by the
leader that we put in power led to an
explosion of popular discontent that led
to army reaction. And that set off a civil
war that lasted for 30 years and resulted
in the killings of hundreds of thousands
of people. I actually covered part of
that war in Guatemala and I realized that
civil war is actually the wrong term for
it. Essentially, it was just a series
of massacres of unarmed mine villagers
who happened to be living in the wrong
part of Guatemala. Had this kind of a
thirty year tyranny with so many tens
and hundreds of thousands of deaths happened
in some other part of the world, and been
carried out by somebody else other than
a client of the US, we would probably
be calling it genocide.
-
Right. Then who’s going to be compensated?
Who’s going to be responsible for
it?
-
Well, the pattern that emerges from these
interventions is that after the US overthrows
a government, it essentially forgets about
the country. It imposes some tyrant and
then goes its own way. This is what happened
in Guatemala and in so many other countries.
We feel that our job is finished. Once
we’ve overthrown the government,
we never take the challenge of stabilizing
society. And actually the people in those
countries who we claimed we wanted to
liberate actually wind up paying a terrible
price for our intervention.
‘It
cannot be one country that decides alone
which governments may live and which governments
must die. That always harms, not just
the victim country, but also the country
that is making this decision.’
-
When do you think, what it was presented
to the US people and the actual action
will be matched?
- Do I think that will ever happen?
- Yes, and when?
- If there is one trend that runs through all American history,
it is expansionism. The US has essentially
been expanding ever since the pilgrims
landed. And before my book even begins,
the US fought a number of Indian wars
in North America, also fought against
Mexico and seized half of Mexican territory.
And then the US, once North America was
filled, began expanding overseas. So this
is a long theme that runs through American
history. Now I believe that, given the
situation in the world, and the power
of the US, the US is going to continue
to intervene in countries in the future.
What I hope to be able to show from my
book is that there are some very bad ways
to intervene. That is the way we have
been doing in the past. In the future,
interventions need to be carried out with
legitimacy. It cannot be one country that
decides alone which governments may live
and which governments must die. That always
harms, not just the victim country, but
also the country that is making this decision.
Now, if that's possible to think of something
positive coming out of our trouble in
Iraq, maybe it will be that Americans
will be a little bit more reluctant in
the future to embark on these kinds of
interventions. Maybe Americans will begin
to ask themselves what's going to happen
after the intervention. We have no trouble
overthrowing any government in the world.
That only takes military power and we
have great military power. But when you
overthrow a government, you're doing something
like releasing a wheel at the top of a
hill. You have no idea how it's going
to bounce or it's going to end up. These
interventions always have terrible, unpredicted
consequences. And I think it's important
that Americans realize that they cannot
predict and they cannot control the course
of events after they overthrow a foreign
government.
Interview
date: April 25, 2006, Page I, NYC, by
Bircan Ünver, The Light Millennium,
Inc., Summer 2006, New York.
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