Every Dictator the USA Supported (and Why)

Hakim: Every Dictator the US Supported (and Why)

AI Summary

🧨 Main Argument:

The U.S. has toppled democratically elected governments and installed violent dictators to secure corporate profits, suppress leftist movements, and dominate geopolitically.

🕵️‍♂️ Three Case Studies of U.S.-Backed Dictators:

1. Suharto (Indonesia)

CIA-backed coup against left-leaning President Sukarno.
1 million+ people killed, mostly communists and ethnic Chinese.
U.S. provided weapons, training, and funds.
Indonesia was opened to Western exploitation, benefiting corporations like Freeport.
Suharto’s regime led to corruption, environmental destruction, and sweatshop labor.

2. Ríos Montt (Guatemala)

Coup followed U.S. ousting of democratic leader Jacobo Árbenz (1954) to protect United Fruit Company profits.
Montt’s military executed genocide against Indigenous Maya, destroying hundreds of villages.
U.S. (under Reagan and others) funded and trained troops despite knowing about atrocities.
Ongoing militarization enabled resource extraction and violence against activists.

3. Mobutu Sese Seko (Congo/Zaire)

CIA ousted elected leader Patrice Lumumba; Mobutu installed.
Mobutu embezzled $6–10 billion; ruled through corruption and U.S. support.
Congo’s economy collapsed; infrastructure projects favored U.S. firms, not locals.
After Mobutu’s fall, the region erupted in Africa’s First World War, with lasting destabilization.

📣 Broader Context:

U.S. imperial policy uses coups, dictators, propaganda, and militarism to:
- Protect capitalism.
- Access cheap labor and raw materials.
- Maintain global hegemony.
Ideals of democracy and freedom are often a smokescreen for violent capitalist expansion.
Similar tactics have been used globally, disguised as anti-communist efforts.

📚 Suggested Readings:

The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins.
Bitter Fruit (about Guatemala).

💡 Closing Message:

U.S. foreign policy is driven by profit and control, not democracy.

Sources

Section 1

Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “In 1945, the defeat of Germany in World War II resulted in a power vacuum in Europe. To fill this void, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), headed by Joseph Stalin, expanded its sphere of influence – the area in which it expressed substantial military, economic, cultural, and/or political influence. The U.S.S.R. also capitalized on disruptions to the status quo that resulted from the war to promote its Marxist-Leninist ideology. Throughout the world, people wanted to know who were the Soviets and what were their motives. An erudite man and expert on Russia ultimately answered these pressing questions. That man was George Frost Kennan, an American political adviser and diplomat. In 1946, while stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, he sent his famous “Long Telegram” to the State Department in Washington. This 8,000-word secret cable outlined his views of the U.S.S.R. and proposed his strategy to protect the United States (U.S.) from them.” (p. 1)
Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “A year and a half later, Kennan, under the pseudonym “X,” published an essay in Foreign Affairs entitled, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” based on the still classified telegram. This piece has come to be widely known as the “X” article. In these writings, Kennan did not perceive the U.S.S.R. as a military threat but rather as an “ideological-political threat”. The “X” article explained régime, needed to create an external enemy. As a result of the war, Kennan viewed Europe as economically maladjusted and vulnerable to dictatorships, and he feared that the Soviets would exploit this weakness. Perceiving Soviet economics as incompatible with those of the U.S., he believed the U.S. must act to prevent the Soviet takeover of Europe. With the acceptance of this goal to prevent Soviet seizure of Europe, the Cold War began. The U.S. plans incorporated 1) many of Kennan’s ideas, such as the Marshall Plan, 2) some alterations of his theory, including the Truman Doctrine, and 3) many actions that ran counter to Kennan’s strategy all together, for instance the wars in Korea and Vietnam. In the end, the discrepancy between his theory and the U.S.’s praxis led Kennan to see containment as a failure.” (p. 1)
Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Kennan explains, in the “Long Telegram” that at the “bottom of [the] Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is [a] traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,” and the U.S.S.R. would crumble should a “strong resistance [be] encountered at any point”. Kennan proposes that U.S.S.R. can be “contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy”. Despite confusion caused by some ambiguity in his writing, Kennan’s view of Soviet containment was based on the use of soft power, or non-military influence, rather than hard power, or the use of military power to coerce. The definitions herein follow: “Hard power seeks to kill, capture, or defeat an enemy. Soft power seeks to influence through understanding and the identification of common ground”. Kennan publicly stated his support of non-military pressure, yet, many U.S. presidents implemented policies centered on the use of hard power.” (p. 1-2)
Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Kennan’s framing of the Soviet Union as an ideological-political threat and his emphasis on using soft power rather than military force. ‘The only concrete policy proposal included in the “X” article is the section regarding the “application of counterforce,” a term whose meaning can vary and that continues to be misunderstood. Many people famously took counterforce to indicate military action; however, Kennan’s papers propose a more peaceful approach. A draft of the “X’” article from Kennan’s personal documents reads: [T]he Kremlin … must be firmly contained at all times by counter-pressure which makes it constantly evident that attempts to break through this containment would be detrimental to Soviet interests. The irritating by-products of an ideology indispensable to the Soviet regime for internal reasons must not be allowed to become the cause of hysterical alarm or of tragic despair among those abroad who are working towards a happier association of the Russian people with the world community of nations. The United States … must demonstrate by its own self-confidence and patience, but particularly by the integrity and dignity of its example, that the true glory of the Russian national effort can find its expression only in peaceful association with other peoples and not in attempts to subjugate and dominate those peoples. Such an attitude … could not fail to carry conviction and to find reflection in the development of Russia’s internal political life and, accordingly, in the Soviet concept of Russia’s place in international affairs. In other words, Kennan wanted the U.S. to be patient and outlast the U.S.S.R. He believed that the Communists were territorially overstretched, and that America only needed to wait and continue to interrupt the spread of Soviet influence. He viewed any disruption to the “efficacy of the Party as a political instrument” as capable of changing the U.S.S.R. “overnight from one of the strongest to one of the weakest and most pitiable of national societies”. America just needed to maintain its use of liberal democracy and capitalist economics and disrupt Moscow’s plans for expansion without the use of coercion to bring about the collapse of the U.S.S.R.” (p. 2)
Callaghan, J. (2014). Anti-communism in the USA and American foreign policy in the late 1940s. Twentieth Century Communism. “The idea that the USA was faced by a worldwide communist threat centred upon Moscow was also the view that some officials had arrived at. George Kennan’s analysis, for example, from the US embassy in Moscow, was not initially intended for public consumption. His ‘long telegram’ of February 1946 warned that there could be ‘no permanent modus vivendi’ with the fanatic Soviet state and its ‘elaborate and far-reaching apparatus’ for the subversion of other countries. The large impact of the telegram in Washington–where his text was circulated by such confirmed anti-Communists as Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal–suggests that many within the political elite were not merely inclined to support a tougher foreign policy stance, but easily persuaded of the Soviet Union’s ideologically-driven behaviour.” (p. 7)
Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Nitze claimed that he derived the National Council Report 68 (NSC-68), the top secret, 58-page document that provided the actual outline for US containment policy, from Kennan’s earlier paper, NSC-20/4. NSC-68 differed from Kennan’s theory in three major ways. First, Kennan’s strategy confined America to “a few strategic regions,” but NSC-68 called for the U.S. to counter communism globally. Additionally, because a year earlier in 1949 the Soviets developed a nuclear weapon, Kennan suggested that the U.S. “adopt a policy of never using nuclear weapons before the Soviets did”. This policy of no first use would lower the risk of nuclear conflict, but Nitze rejected it. Finally and most importantly, the two papers differed on the question of political or military containment. NSC-68 claimed that the U.S. “could afford a massive arms buildup”. Kennan’s paper did address the need for a larger military and “strong action against the Kremlin,” but its primary focus was soft power, for the U.S.S.R still sought “‘to achieve its aims primarily by political means’”. Kennan was outraged by NSC-68 and claimed that he had nothing to do with its development, saying, “‘I was disgusted about the assumptions concerning Soviet intentions’”. The weapons buildup signaled the hardline victory and the start of an arms race. Kennan saw hazard in this weapons race “not because of aggressive intentions on either side but because of the compulsions, the suspicions, the anxieties such a competition engenders, and because of the very serious dangers it carries with it of unintended complications—by error, by computer failure, by misread signals, or by mischief deliberately perpetrated by third parties”” (p. 4-5)
Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Kennan explains, in the “Long Telegram” that at the “bottom of [the] Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is [a] traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,” and the U.S.S.R. would crumble should a “strong resistance [be] encountered at any point”. Kennan proposes that U.S.S.R. can be “contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy”. Despite confusion caused by some ambiguity in his writing, Kennan’s view of Soviet containment was based on the use of soft power, or non-military influence, rather than hard power, or the use of military power to coerce. The definitions herein follow: “Hard power seeks to kill, capture, or defeat an enemy. Soft power seeks to influence through understanding and the identification of common ground”. Kennan publicly stated his support of non-military pressure, yet, many U.S. presidents implemented policies centered on the use of hard power.” (p. 1-2)
Parry-Giles, S. J. (2002). The rhetorical presidency, propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955. Praeger Publishers. ISBN: 0-275-97463-4. “Thus, while the attempts to influence the domestic news media were successful, international strategies fell short of congressional expectations and proved inappropriate for the international community—a community where certain segments were persuaded by the communist message. In order to meet this changing propaganda environment and the new exigencies in the Cold War, the Truman administration responded with a more determined propaganda effort in April 1950, launching what it called America’s new “Campaign of Truth.”64 In the process, Truman took to the bully pulpit in support of the governmental propaganda program. Even before he began his public crusade, though, he moved toward a more militaristic model of propaganda, designing more secret modes of influence that worked in tandem with the official propaganda activities.” (p. 42)
Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Nearly all post-World War II presidential foreign policy doctrines, up to and including Reagan’s, were promoted under the auspices of containing communist threat. Although Washington implemented the Marshall Plan according to Kennan’s specifications, the Truman Doctrine lacked Kennan’s approval. This doctrine was Truman’s slightly earlier plan to give monetary aid to Greece and Turkey and which was implemented in conjunction with the Marshall Plan. Kennan found in it two main flaws. First, as a defensive act that suggested America would not act without the Soviet threat, it made America look passive and weak. Secondly, he saw that the American public viewed the doctrine as “a blank check to give economic and military aid to any area in the world where the communists show[ed] signs of being successful”. Kennan thought that the U.S. should only offer support if the benefits outweighed the costs and efforts. From the beginning, Kennan supported strict criterion to determine a nation’s eligibility to receive aid based on the following three conditions: 1) America was capable of solving the problem, 2) inaction would aid the Soviets, and 3) the aid would spillover to other nations and advance American goals. Kennan believed that placing troops globally would likely lead to disaster and that America ought not “support free peoples” everywhere as Truman suggested in his speech to Congress in 1947.” (p. 3)
Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “The two most infamous examples of militarism in the name of containment are the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Prior to 1950, America did not see itself as the police force of the world, nor did it desire that burden. It took on the “commitment to contain communism everywhere” just before the Korean War. For the North Koreans, U.S.’s hardline, militaristic containment triggered conflict. Truman claimed that conflict resulted from North Korean threats. The truth is still disputed. Kennan saw the fatal flaws of the U.S. involvement in Korea. First, the “police action” marked a shift from the peaceful Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine towards an aggressive policy.” (p. 4)
Parry-Giles, S. J. (2002). The rhetorical presidency, propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955. Praeger Publishers. ISBN: 0-275-97463-4. “Even though Smith-Mundt supporters defined propaganda as a necessary peacetime element of U.S. foreign policy, they secured bigger budgets for the Campaign of Truth by talking of a stepped-up Cold War crisis. The Hate America campaign weighed heavily on the minds of Truman officials and supporters. Mose Harvey of the State Department charged that the Russian campaign was ‘directed toward creating hatred of the United States … hatred on the part of the Russian people, on the part of the people on the outside.’ Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson argued that the Soviet efforts involved ‘falsification, distortion, suppression and deception’ intended to ‘misrepresent and discredit the aims and nature of American life, and the aims and nature of American foreign policy.’” (p. 59-60)
Desai, R., & Heller, H. (2019). Cold War. In I. Ness & Z. Cope (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1 “By 1929 the USA was the leading foreign investor in Latin America, supporting landlordism and military dictatorship. However, the economic hardship of the Great Depression caused political turmoil in 11 of the 20 Latin American republics. In El Salvador (1932), Cuba (1934), and Nicaragua (1927-1934), there was revolutionary violence. Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil installed populist regimes, coalitions of bourgeois nationalists, organized workers, and peasants, which directed national economic development and redistribution to suppress class conflict through national solidarity. They naturally restricted American corporation’s activities. While Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy refrained from direct intervention, the USA remained wary of populist attempts, for example, to nationalize Mexican oil, or of cautious steps toward land reform in Guatemala.” (p. 9)
Desai, R., & Heller, H. (2019). Cold War. In I. Ness & Z. Cope (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1. “Postwar, populism remained influential. Brazil’s President Getulio Dornelles Vargas (1950 1954) and Argentina’s Juan Peron (1946 1954) challenged resurgent American dominance and the power of domestic landlords and capitalists, introducing social welfare and labor legislation and accelerating industrialization. Eventually, however, the combined forces of the USA and the dominant landed and merchant oligarchies forced them out of power. In this it was helped by the 1947 anti-Communist Rio Pact, into which it had corralled most Latin American republics. It considered an attack on one member as an attack on all. Nearly all Latin America was caught in the US dragnet of counterrevolution. In Bolivia, partial land reform and stepped-up American military aid contained revolution in 1952. In Guatemala, the CIA overthrew the Arbenz government when it nationalized the United Fruit Company’s plantations.” (p. 9)
Desai, R., & Heller, H. (2019). Cold War. In I. Ness & Z. Cope (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1. “In this aperture, the USA arranged a coup d’etat in Brazil and Bolivia in 1964 to quash populist forces, fixed elections to oust a populist government in Guyana in the same year, and military intervention in the Dominican Republic to thwart what it deemed a Communist takeover the following year. The USA supplemented coercion with strengthening Latin America’s substantial middle class of farmers, merchants, bankers, industrialists, and professionals through the Alliance for Progress to foster growth and eliminate poverty, so inoculating Latin America against revolution. Announcing the Alliance for Progress a month before the Bay of Pigs invasion, this alleged Latin American Marshall Plan was projected to combine $20 billion in public and private aid and an estimated $80 billion of local capital to spur growth. While its economic success was highly questionable, it certainly helped insure against revolution.” (p. 11)
Desai, R., & Heller, H. (2019). Cold War. In I. Ness & Z. Cope (Eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_16-1. “In Guatemala, the CIA overthrew the Arbenz government when it nationalized the United Fruit Company’s plantations.” (p. 9)
Callanan, J. (2009). Covert Action in the Cold War. Retrieved from https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/5203466. “In the case of the Guatemala coup, code-named PBSUCCESS, Eisenhower’s primary objective was to remove an overtly leftist government, which implemented policies that, in American calculations, opened the way for the establishment of “a Soviet beachhead in the Western Hemisphere”. Deeper research into the ouster of Guatemalan President, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in June 1954, however, suggests that it was driven by more multifarious motives than at first seems apparent. In brief, PBSUCCESS served as a ready expedient. It drew attention away from the French withdrawal from Indochina while simultaneously acting as a catalyst for Foster Dulles’s achievement of anticommunist hemispheric solidarity in the Americas. Arbenz’s downfall, furthermore, illustrated to informed opinion in the United States that Eisenhower was able to pursue a hard line against what was represented as international communism without resorting to war.” (p. 110)
Starr, A. C. (2013, March 16). The United States’ (mis)interpretation of containment theory. Foreign Policy Journal. “Washington did not heed Kennan’s warning, ignored Korea’s lack of ‘geopolitical significance,’ and was drawn into years of conflict. Thus, Truman applied ‘to East Asia a containment policy that had originally been applied in Europe.’ This error was continued by later administrations in other Asian nations. For instance, Eisenhower, in his 1952 inaugural address, linked the French conflict in Vietnam to the American effort to stifle Communism in Korea, for ‘Communists in Korea and Vietnam were regarded as part of the greater war.’ When America entered Vietnam, Kennan was even more enraged than he was after the U.S. entry into Korea, foreseeing the unwinnable nature of the conflict. He testified to this in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he warned against ‘violent objection to what exists, unaccompanied by any constructive concept of what, ideally ought to exist in its place.’” (p. 4)
Parry-Giles, S. J. (2002). The rhetorical presidency, propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955. Praeger Publishers. ISBN: 0-275-97463-4. “Thus, while the attempts to influence the domestic news media were successful, international strategies fell short of congressional expectations and proved inappropriate for the international community—a community where certain segments were persuaded by the communist message. In order to meet this changing propaganda environment and the new exigencies in the Cold War, the Truman administration responded with a more determined propaganda effort in April 1950, launching what it called America’s new ‘Campaign of Truth.’ In the process, Truman took to the bully pulpit in support of the governmental propaganda program. Even before he began his public crusade, though, he moved toward a more militaristic model of propaganda, designing more secret modes of influence that worked in tandem with the official propaganda activities.” (p. 42)
Parry-Giles, S. J. (2002). The rhetorical presidency, propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955. Praeger Publishers. ISBN: 0-275-97463-4. “Such a new construction of propaganda in the wake of the Smith-Mundt debates shifted the propaganda paradigm to a militarized framework. No longer using a language of news or conceiving of propaganda as a journalistic practice, propaganda officials now equated propaganda with military weaponry and structured the program accordingly. Such a militaristic paradigm not only pervaded the private deliberations over propaganda and psychological warfare strategizing, but also became visible during the Truman administration’s public Campaign of Truth; the practice of propaganda activity and the presidential involvement in such covert and overt actions was altered from that point forward.” (p. 57)
Parry-Giles, S. J. (2002). The rhetorical presidency, propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955. Praeger Publishers. ISBN: 0-275-97463-4. “President Truman personally launched the Campaign of Truth from the bully pulpit during a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 20, 1950 (see chapter 4). Thereafter, a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigated the need for such a program in July of that same year. Both the House and the Senate held special supplemental budget hearings in response to the Truman administration’s request for $32.7 million in regular appropriations and $82 million in supplemental appropriations for fiscal year 1951. The supplemental funds were designed to target twenty-eight critical areas of the world, including Iran, South Korea, Indochina, Thailand, Greece, Afghanistan, Finland, and the Soviet satellite regions.” (p. 59)
Callaghan, J. (2014). Anti-communism in the USA and American foreign policy in the late 1940s. Twentieth Century Communism. “The chairman of the Republican Party, congressman B. Carroll Reece, announced just before the election that ‘the choice which confronts Americans this year is between Communism and Republicanism’; senator Hugh Butler of Nebraska declared that ‘If the New Deal is still in control of the Congress after the election, it will owe that control to the Communist Party in this country’. This was a national motif of the Republican campaign which saw the victory of obsessive anti-communists of the future like Joe McCarthy, Bill Jenner, John Bricker, Harry Cain and James Ken. It was also evident in Richard Nixon’s baptism as a Republican candidate as he followed the pattern, accusing his Democratic opponent, Jerry Voorhis, of being a communist sympathiser who drew upon communist support.” (p. 6)
Callanan, J. (2009). Covert Action in the Cold War. Retrieved from https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/5203466. “Much as Eisenhower found pretexts to delay carrying out NSC 143/2, Allen Dulles adapted the VFC concept to serve CIA designs, recruiting and training Hungarian, Polish, Czechoslovak, and Romanian paramilitary forces at a base near Munich for a large-scale operation that functioned under the code-name of Red Cap. Arms caches were smuggled into the denied areas and buried in preparation for a move by these forces should conditions become ripe for their deployment. In an attempt to ensure that conditions would become ripe, the agency mounted a complementary, political action programme aimed at the identification and recruitment of prominent nationalist-communists who might spearhead anti-Soviet dissent within their respective countries.” (p. 97)
Callanan, J. (2009). Covert Action in the Cold War. Retrieved from https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/5203466. “In terms of offensive covert action outside of Europe, new ventures were launched in locations where communist control was deemed to be tentative and local resistance strong. Most notable among these ventures was the CIA’s STCIRCUS programme, which began in 1956 and exploited deeply felt Tibetan antipathy towards Red China, which had been growing since Beijing laid claim to Tibet in 1949 and seized the capital, Lhasa, in 1951.” (p. 100)
Callanan, J. (2009). Covert Action in the Cold War. Retrieved from https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/5203466. “In the case of the Guatemala coup, code-named PBSUCCESS, Eisenhower’s primary objective was to remove an overtly leftist government, which implemented policies that, in American calculations, opened the way for the establishment of ‘a Soviet beachhead in the Western Hemisphere’.” (p. 110)
Callanan, J. (2009). Covert Action in the Cold War. Retrieved from https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/5203466. “An additional plank in the American strategy, and one that is said by CIA operative F. Mark Wyatt to have been implemented at De Gasperi’s insistence, saw Washington work to fuse the most significant non-communist forces in Italy into a coalescent alliance. Thus, in November 1947 the United States exerted pressure on the Italian Republican Party, the Liberals and Saragat’s Social Democrats (PSLI) to join the Christian Democrat-led coalition. The inclusion of these moderate and secular groupings in a government dominated by the essentially clerical DC freed De Gasperi from the need to rely on neofascist parties.” (p. 29)
Callanan, J. (2009). Covert Action in the Cold War. Retrieved from https://www.torrossa.com/it/resources/an/5203466. “CIA preventive covert action had been sanctioned to depose governing regimes before, but Musaddiq was the first democratically-elected leader to be removed through such methods.” (p. 109)

Section 2

Chomsky, N. (2000). Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. South End Press. “The sordid history must be viewed against the background of US-Indonesia relations in the post-war era. The rich resources of the archipelago, and its critical strategic location, guaranteed it the central role in US global planning. These factors lie behind US efforts 40 years ago to dismantle Indonesia, perceived as too independent and too democratic, even permitting participation of the leftist, peasant-based PKI.” (p. 59)
Simpson, B. (2005). ‘Illegally and beautifully’: The United States, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and the international community, 1974–76. Cold War History, 5(3), 281–315. Taylor & Francis. “Since the overthrow of the Sukarno regime and the Western-backed annihilation of Indonesia’s Communist Party in late 1965 and early 1966, the authoritarian regime of General Suharto occupied a crucial and growing role in many nations’ strategic thinking for the region. The Nixon administration continued and intensified the commitment of its predecessor to forge ‘especially close and cooperative relations’ with Indonesia, viewing the strategically located country as a bastion of anti-Communism and stability.” (p. 282)
Chomsky, N. (2000). Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. South End Press. “Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara informed Congress that US military aid and training had ‘paid dividends’—including half a million corpses—‘enormous dividends,’ a congressional report concluded. McNamara informed President Johnson that US military assistance ‘encouraged [the army] to move against the PKI when the opportunity was presented.’ Contacts with Indonesian military officers, including university programs, were ‘very significant factors in determining the favorable orientation of the new Indonesian political elite’ (the army).” (p. 53)
Chomsky, N. (2000). Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. South End Press. “One gruesome illustration was the coup that brought General Suharto to power in 1965. Army-led massacres slaughtered hundreds of thousands, mostly landless peasants, in a few months, destroying the mass-based political party of the left, the PKI. The achievement elicited unrestrained euphoria in the West and fulsome praise for the Indonesian ‘moderates,’ Suharto and his military accomplices, who had cleansed the society and opened it to foreign plunder.” (p. 53)
Simpson, B. (2005). ‘Illegally and beautifully’: The United States, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and the international community, 1974–76. Cold War History, 5(3), 281–315. Taylor & Francis. “The rich resources of the archipelago, and its critical strategic location, guaranteed it the central role in US global planning. These factors lie behind US efforts 40 years ago to dismantle Indonesia, perceived as too independent and too democratic, even permitting participation of the leftist, peasant-based PKI.” (p. 59)
Leith, D. (2002). The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto’s Indonesia. University of Hawai’i Press. ISBN: 0-8248-2566-7.“More than half the Cabinet and over two-thirds of regional governors were military appointees.” (p. 222-223)
Leith, D. (2002). The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto’s Indonesia. University of Hawai’i Press. ISBN: 0-8248-2566-7. “Corruption, collusion, and nepotism remain entrenched within the Indonesian military, perpetuating the KKN system at all levels of government.” (p. 3)
Leith, D. (2002). The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto’s Indonesia. University of Hawai’i Press. ISBN: 0-8248-2566-7. “Individual soldiers moonlight as guards, Chinese-owned firms pay generals to sit on boards, and ex-generals often run big state-owned enterprises, such as the oil-and-gas leviathan, Pertamina. All told, the military empire is reckoned to be worth at least $8 billion.” ****(p. 222-223)
Pilger, J. (2016). The New Rulers of the World. Verso. “In 1990, the American investigative journalist Kathy Kadane revealed the extent of secret American collaboration in the massacres of 1965–66 which allowed Suharto to seize the presidency. Following a series of interviews with former US officials, she wrote, ‘They systematically compiled comprehensive lists of communist operatives. As many as 5,000 names were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured.’” (p. 42)
Chomsky, N. (2000). Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. South End Press. “Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara informed Congress that US military aid and training had ‘paid dividends’—including half a million corpses—‘enormous dividends,’ a congressional report concluded. McNamara informed President Johnson that US military assistance ‘encouraged [the army] to move against the PKI when the opportunity was presented.’” (p. 53)
Simpson, B. (2005). ‘Illegally and beautifully’: The United States, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and the international community, 1974–76. Cold War History, 5(3), 281–315. Taylor & Francis. “Between 1966 and 1974 Washington and its regional allies, led by Japan, played leading roles in underwriting the Suharto regime through such arrangements as the Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia (IGGI), an aid consortium underwriting more than $450 million annually in economic assistance to Jakarta. The US alone averaged over $200 million per year in economic aid and more than $20 million in military assistance, emerging by 1974 as Indonesia’s leading supplier of military aid.” (p. 282–283)
Pilger, J. (2016). The New Rulers of the World. Verso. “The Americans worked closely with the British, the reputed masters and inventors of the ‘black’ propaganda admired and adapted by Joseph Goebbels in the 1930s. Sir Andrew Gilchrist, the Ambassador in Jakarta, made his position clear in a cable to the Foreign Office: ‘I have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change.’” (p. 43)
Pilger, J. (2016). The New Rulers of the World. Verso. “The greatest massacre of the second half of the twentieth century was not so much news as cause for celebration. The world’s fourth most populous country was ‘ours’. Suharto’s ascendancy was ‘the West’s best news in years’. James Reston, the doyen of American columnists, told readers of the New York Times that the bloody events in Indonesia were ‘a gleam of light in Asia’.” (p. 21)
King, P. (2008). “Corruption Ruins Everything: Gridlock over Suharto’s Legacy in Indonesia.” Asia-Pacific Journal. “The President’s old institutional home, the military, is undoubtedly the biggest single Indonesian beneficiary of illegal logging in Papua.” (p. 8)
Leith, D. (2002). The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto’s Indonesia. University of Hawai’i Press. ISBN: 0-8248-2566-7. “In 1967 Freeport became the first foreign company to sign a contract with the new regime in Jakarta.” (p. 2-3)
Leith, D. (2002). The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto’s Indonesia. University of Hawai’i Press. ISBN: 0-8248-2566-7. “The Indonesian army . . . controls more than 70 firms including plantations, fisheries, banks and other finance firms, construction and transport firms, and companies dealing in pharmaceuticals, wood, metal and even tourism.”
Simpson, B. (2005). ‘Illegally and beautifully’: The United States, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and the international community, 1974–76. Cold War History, 5(3), 281–315. Taylor & Francis. “Indonesian officials repeatedly expressed their ‘sense of urgency’ in improving their military forces, and they adroitly exploited US fears about the impact of its withdrawal from Southeast Asia by suggesting that ‘dwindling U.S. aid levels signals a decline in U.S. interest’, hoping to leverage Kissinger’s obsession with credibility into increased economic and especially military aid.” (p. 283)
Chomsky, N. (2000). Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. South End Press. “There was no condemnation on the floor of Congress, and no aid to the victims from any major US relief agency. On the contrary, the slaughter (which the CIA compared to those of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao) aroused undisguised euphoria in a very revealing episode, best forgotten.” (p. 144)
Simpson, B. (2005). Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.–Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968. Stanford University Press. “A five-month-long pogrom followed, killing between 400,000 and 1,000,000 people. The violence reached its peak in early 1966, with the military killing communists in Java and Bali, and aiding civilian vigilante and Muslim groups to do the same.” (p. 218).
Jannisa, G. (2016). How Many Years? A Century of Mass Killings and State Terror. DiVA Portal. ”In Jakarta, on the night of 30 September 1965, a group of military officers killed six army generals, occupied strategic buildings, and announced the formation of a revolutionary council. Indonesian President Sukarno appointed General Suharto to lead operations against the coup, and in a few days the Indonesian armed forces managed to gain control of the situation. The official Indonesian version was that PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party, was guilty of the coup attempt. In November 1965, Suharto accordingly authorised a ”cleaning out” of PKI, resulting in massacres that cost perhaps one million lives, most of them landless peasants. The army played a key role, in doing some of the killing, supplying trucks and weapons to vigilante death squads, while state-controlled media whipped up a frenzy of hatred. Muslim youth groups comprised the vanguard, but they were not alone. In Bali the killers were zealous Hindis, in Sumatra and the Lesser Sunda Islands many of the perpetrators were Christian vigilantes. Whatever the reasons for the hatred, it resulted in countless acts of exceptional brutality: Most were beheaded, stabbed, or had their throats slit. Others were hacked to death, strang- led, slain with clubs or rocks, drowned, or burned or buried alive. The armed forces delivered victims to village communities for murder … or villages traded victims in order not to have to slaughter neighbours” (p. 132)
Leith, D. (2002). The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto’s Indonesia. University of Hawai’i Press. ISBN: 0-8248-2566-7. ”Within two months of the military coup that eventually toppled Sukarno in late 1965, Freeport geologist Forbes Wilson says he received a call from Freeport’s CEO (chief executive officer), Langbourne Williams, who informed him that he had been privately approached by two Texaco executives from Indonesia with close associations to the new military government and that negotiations would begin immediately over Ertsberg. In fact, five months before this, in April 1965, Freeport had already reached a “preliminary arrangement” with officials in Jakarta to mine Ertsberg. The company’s decision to proceed with the risky project—which would see the company making a financial commitment of well over a hundred million dollars—seemed extraordinary given the politically volatile situation in Indonesia at the time. Freeport’s confidence, however, may be understood in the context of its connections to the highest echelons of power in Washington and that nation’s expanding military role in the region and its interest and influence in the events unfolding in Indonesia. In time Washington was to directly support Freeport’s association with the new regime by guaranteeing $60 million worth of loans the company received from U.S. lending agencies that enabled it to proceed with the project.” (p. 58)
Melvin, J. (2018). The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder. Routledge. “The major hurdle in recognising the 1965–66 killings a case of genocide, he explains, is the exclusion of “political groups” from protection under the 1948 Genocide Convention. 56 He proposes, however, that: “In the slaughter of the Communists, the criterion of past affiliation had a finality and immutability quite comparable to massacre by virtue of race and it was based on a similar imposition of collective responsibility.” 57 The killings, moreover, transcended the boundaries of inter-political group conflict by additionally drawing upon “class” and “religious” differences between victims and perpetrators. 58 Ethnicity was also a factor, as evidenced by the killing of “Chinese merchants and their families”. He thus proposes the 1965–66 killings should be considered as a case of genocide under the Convention. “[T]he major distinction,” he explains, between the 1965–66 killings and classic “racial or ethnic massacres” was that they “did not extend to the same extent to family members.” This caveat is no longer applicable. There is now extensive evidence that family members, including children, of alleged communists were regularly killed during the 1965–66 killings ( chapter 6 ). There is also an understanding that the deliberate “murder of young men, heads of families and community leaders” from a particular target group, as occurred during the Armenian genocide, can be understood as genocidal in intent.” (p. 61).
Melvin, J. (2018). The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder. Routledge. “For the past half-century, the Indonesian military has depicted the 1965–66 killings, which resulted in the murder of approximately one million unarmed civilians, as the outcome of a spontaneous uprising. This formulation not only denied military agency behind the killings, it also denied that the killings could ever be understood as a centralised, nation-wide campaign. Using documents from the former Indonesian Intelligence Agency’s archives in Banda Aceh, this book shatters the Indonesian government’s official propaganda account of the mass killings and proves the military’s agency behind those events. This book tells the story of the 3,000 pages of top-secret documents that comprise the Indonesian genocide files. Drawing upon these orders and records, along with the previously unheard stories of 70 survivors, perpetrators and other eyewitness of the genocide in Aceh province, it reconstructs, for the first time, a detailed narrative of the killings using the military’s own accounts of these events. This book makes the case that the 1965–66 killings can be understood as a case of genocide, as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention.” (p. 1)
Vltchek, A. (2012). Indonesia: Archipelago of Fear. Pluto Press. “General Suharto, and a faction of his military and religious cadres, conducted the 1965 military coup and consequent massacres, although they were orchestrated and strongly supported by Washington. Between 500,000 and 3 million communists, intellectuals, artists, teachers, trade union leaders and members of the Chinese minority were killed. In 1975, the occupation of East Timor (now Timor-Leste) and the liquidation of around 30 per cent of the people of that nation followed. Then came the still ongoing onslaught in Papua, in which at least 120,000 people have already died.” (p. 2)
Simpson, B. (2005). ‘Illegally and beautifully’: The United States, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, and the international community, 1974–76. Cold War History, 5(3), 281–315. Taylor & Francis. “This article examines the international community’s response to Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor in light of recently declassified documents from the US, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It argues that anti-Communist and geopolitical concerns at the end of the Vietnam War were not the only, and perhaps not even the most important explanations of Western support for Indonesia’s takeover of East Timor. Rather, this article suggests that beliefs that East Timor was too small and too primitive to merit self-governance reinforced the perceived imperative of maintaining friendly relations with the Suharto regime, whose growing importance in the regional political economy overshadowed its defiance of international law.” (p. 281)
Pilger, J. (2016). The New Rulers of the World. Verso. ISBN: 978-1-78478-211-5. “The New Rulers of the World sets out to explain something of this new ‘order’ and the importance of breaking the silence that protects great power and its manipulations, notably the current ‘war’. There are four essays, beginning with ‘The Model Pupil’. This is the story of how the ‘global economy’ in Asia was spawned in the bloodbath that brought General Suharto to power in Indonesia in 1965–66. It draws on recently released documents that describe a remarkable meeting in 1967 of the world’s most powerful corporate figures, at which they carved up the Indonesian economy, sector by sector.” (p. 21)
Leith, D. (2002). The Politics of Power: Freeport in Suharto’s Indonesia. University of Hawai’i Press. ISBN: 0-8248-2566-7. ”In 1967 Freeport became the first foreign company to sign a contract with the new regime in Jakarta and became a significant economic and political actor within Indonesia. Today, with estimated reserves of 50.9 billion pounds of copper and 63.7 million pounds of gold, it operates the largest gold mine and the most profitable copper mine on Earth in the area surrounding the now depleted Ertsberg. For more than thirty years the American company, with its rigorous home-state laws against corruption, was able to operate with impunity by adapting to, and indeed thriving in, a business culture anchored in corruption, collusion, and nepotism. (p. 3)
[40] Toussaint, E., & Millet, D. (2005). Indonesia: History of a Bankruptcy Orchestrated by IMF and the World Bank. Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt. https://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=1529. “Suharto aligned his policies closely on US ones. But despite the obvious convergence, the United States did not wish to grant new loans directly to the Suharto regime. As the US had done in 1963 under other circumstances, they decided to entrust management of their interests to the IMF. Fund assistance was conditional on implementation of the policies it recommended. At the end of summer 1966, an IMF mission studied a new stabilisation programme and the government rapidly implemented the IMF’s macroeconomic conditions. Indonesia officially returned to the IMF fold in February 1967. The Western countries were swift to respond. Firstly, they granted 174 million dollars in aid in order to bail out the Indonesian crisis. Then, they proceeded to restructure the debt because 534 million dollars had to be reimbursed for debt servicing (interest, principal and arrears) by the end of 1966. This amounted to 69% of estimated export revenues.)”
Chomsky, N. (2000). Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. South End Press. ”According to reports in Fall 1999, the UN mission in East Timor has been able to account for just over 150,000 people out of an estimated population of 850,000. It reports that 260,000 “are now languishing in squalid refugee camps in West Timor under the effective control of the militias after either fleeing or being forcibly removed from their homes,” and that another 100,000 have been relocated to other parts of Indonesia. The rest are presumed to be hiding in the mountains. The Australian commander expressed the natural concern that displaced people lack food and medical supplies. Touring camps in East andWest Timor, US Assistant Secretary ofState Harold Koh reported that the refugees are “starving and terrorized,” and that disappearances “without explanation” are a daily occurrence.” (p. 59)
Toussaint, E., & Millet, D. (2005). Ibid. “The World Bank cannot simply claim that it was unaware of this. It was also complicit in the violation of the rights of indigenous peoples who had lived in the zones settled by the transmigration project.” (p. 9-10)
Pilger, J. (2016). The New Rulers of the World. Verso. ISBN: 978-1-78478-211-5. ”I found more than a thousand mostly young women working, battery-style, under the glare of strip lighting, in temperatures that reach 40 degrees Centigrade. The only air-conditioning was upstairs, where the Taiwanese bosses were. What struck me was the claustrophobia, the sheer frenzy of the production and a fatigue and sadness that were like a presence. The faces were silent, the eyes downcast; limbs moved robotically. The women have no choice about the hours they must work, including a notorious ‘long shift’: 36 hours without going home. I was assured that, if I wanted to place a last-minute order, that was ‘no problem’ because ‘we just make the workers stay longer’. The workers I met later, secretly, told me: ‘If Gap trousers have to be finished, we don’t leave. We stay till the order is full, no matter the time. If you want to go to the toilet, you have to be lucky. If the supervisor says no, you shit in your pants … we are treated like animals because we have to work hard all the time without saying a word.’ I told them the Gap company boasted about a ‘code of conduct’ that protected workers’ basic rights. ‘We’ve never seen it,’ they said. ‘Foreigners from Gap come to the factory, but they are interested only in quality control and the rate of production. They never ask about working conditions. They don’t even look at us.’” (p. 32)
[44] Officially, all Suharto’s yayasans, were charitable organizations, and funds were to be used to improve the lot of the under-privileged. But with the organizations lacking transparency or accountability and control resting ultimately in the hands of Suharto, any investigation into their activities was impossible. It is widely believed that most of the funds were deposited in the Suharto’s private bank accounts. (p. 31-32)
Jannisa, G. (2016). How Many Years? A Century of Mass Killings and State Terror. DiVA Portal. …‘The IMF discusses the economy of countries …’ Indonesia, once owing nothing but having been plundered of its gold, precious stones, wood, spices and other natural riches by its colonial masters, the Dutch, today has a total indebtedness estimated at $262 billion, which is 170 per cent of its gross domestic product. There is no debt like it on earth. It can never be repaid. It is a bottomless hole. Those who will continue to repay it, at times with their lives, are the ordinary people. I met Zaenal, aged twenty-eight, his wife Ferlios, twenty-two, and their two small children, Abriyan, aged three, and Mohammed, nine months. Both infants have a rare, hereditary blood disease and must have blood transfusions once a month. Their treatment was overdue when I met the family, and it showed in their jaundiced skin and hollow eyes. Another few weeks without new blood, and they would almost certainly die. Zaenal has a job in a coat-hanger factory; half his monthly subsistence wage of £40 goes on the children’s treatment and medication. They live in a labour camp on the other side of a canal from the factory. ” (p. 51)

Section 3

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Jacobo Arbenz | Guatemalan president, CIA coup & legacy. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz. “Jacobo Arbenz, a military officer who received communist support, was elected to succeed Arévalo and assumed office in March 1951.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Jacobo Arbenz | Guatemalan president, CIA coup & legacy. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz. “Arbenz made agrarian reform the central project of his administration. This led to a clash with the largest landowner in the country, the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, whose idle lands he tried to expropriate. He also insisted that the company and other large landowners pay more taxes.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Jacobo Arbenz | Guatemalan president, CIA coup & legacy. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz. “As the reforms advanced, the U.S. government, cued by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, became increasingly alarmed, fearing the threat to sizable American banana investments and to U.S. bank loans to the Guatemalan government as well. Also of concern to the United States were the increasingly close relations between Guatemala and the communist bloc of nations.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Jacobo Arbenz | Guatemalan president, CIA coup & legacy. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz. “A public-relations campaign painted Arbenz as a friend of communists (whose support he undoubtedly had); however, the contention of the U.S. government, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and much of the U.S. media that Arbenz had close connections with the Soviet bloc proved to be unsubstantiated.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Jacobo Arbenz | Guatemalan president, CIA coup & legacy. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz. “The land reform, which had a heavy impact upon the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company, and the growth of communist influence became the most troublesome issues of the Arbenz regime.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Jacobo Arbenz | Guatemalan president, CIA coup & legacy. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz. “The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began efforts to destabilize the regime and recruited a force of Guatemalan exiles in Honduras, which was led by the exiled Col. Carlos Castillo Armas.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Jacobo Arbenz | Guatemalan president, CIA coup & legacy. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz. “Working in Honduras and El Salvador, the CIA helped to organize a counterrevolutionary army of exiles led by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Jacobo Arbenz | Guatemalan president, CIA coup & legacy. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved December 13, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacobo-Arbenz. “Exaggerations of the size of the invading force panicked the capital; the Guatemalan army refused to fight for Arbenz, and he was forced to resign (June 27, 1954) and go into exile.”
Ley, K. (2022). Reagan’s foreign policy and human rights: A Guatemalan perspective. “By 1960, Guatemala erupted into a civil war that would last over three decades, which gave rise to a hellscape of violence, torture, the repression of political, agrarian, and labor movements, and death. The Guatemalan Civil War, characterized by its brutality, disguised the genocide waged against the indigenous Mayan population, particularly in the rural countryside.” (p. 2-3)
Ley, K. (2022). Reagan’s foreign policy and human rights: A Guatemalan perspective. “After constant changes in leadership, years of civil war, mass repression of citizens, and genocide, the government of Guatemala was nearly destabilized and ready to collapse when José Efraín Ríos Montt took power in March of 1982.” (p. 3-4)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). In Dirty hands and vicious deeds: The U.S. government’s complicity in crimes against humanity and genocide (pp. 343–384). “During the latter half of the twentieth century, the United States government’s relationship with Guatemala was nothing short of sordid. Other than the US government’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán in 1954, perhaps the United States’ most egregious involvement in Guatemala occurred during the period commonly referred to as ‘la violencia’ (1978–84). This was particularly true during the rule of President Romeo Lucas García (July 1, 1978–March 23, 1982) and that of Efraín Ríos Montt (March 23, 1982–August 9, 1983), when massive crimes against humanity and then genocide were perpetrated against the Maya people of the Guatemalan Highlands.” (p. 343)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). “Based on evidence collected by the United Nations-sponsored Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (Commission for Historical Clarification, or CEH), it is now known that some 626 villages were attacked by Government of Guatemala troops and/or their paramilitary units; of these, 440 villages were utterly destroyed (CEH, 1999). During the course of this scorched earth policy/counterinsurgency, not only were homes and other structures burned down, but crops were stolen and/or burned and farm animals were killed.” (p. 344-345)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). “Over 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or ‘disappeared.’ At least 83 per cent of those victims were indigenous Maya… Based on its findings, the commission asserted that the scorched earth campaign that the Government of Guatemala carried out against the Maya constituted ‘acts of genocide.’” (p. 344-345)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). “As Schirmer (1998) notes, various officers ‘who served in the Ixil . . . have . . . admitted that unarmed civilians were routinely killed’ (p. 52). Continuing, she quotes one of her interviewees, an intelligence officer, as stating the following: ‘“Everyone, everyone was a guerilla; no difference was made in killing them. The big difference in the shift in strategy after the 1982 coup was that we couldn’t eliminate them all” (Todos, todos no habia diferencia en matarlos. La gran diferencia fue que no podiamos eliminar a todos.)’” (p. 369-370)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). “Fearing a leftist takeover in 1981, the Guatemalan government initiated a scorched earth counterinsurgency effort. Astonishingly, recorded cases of extrajudicial killings rose from 100 in 1978 to over 10,000 in 1981.” (p. 351-352)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). “During this period the United States provided training for Guatemalan military personnel and the military intelligence unit at its infamous US Army School of the Americas. The Guatemalans were instructed in counter insurgency tactics, which the Guatemalan military ultimately put to ruthless, brutal, and deadly use. The US government also provided advisers on the ground, an extraordinary amount of funding, and weapons.” (p. 343)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). “Ultimately, under the leadership of General Óscar Mejía Victores, Guatemala’s military was intent on consolidating control over the entire indigenous population in Guatemala, and military leaders conceived of various, and often brutal, ways to accomplish that goal. First, it formed and mandated that both Maya men and boys join ‘civilian self-defense patrols.’ … Second, the military also forced Maya civilians into model villages, which were essentially resettlement camps cum concentration camps under the control of the Guatemalan army.” (p. 352-353)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). “Not only [did] it undermine the sense of trust and cooperation among family members and neighbors, but the dividing of such loyalties [was] instrumental in perpetuating fear and terror, as family members themselves [were] implicated in acts of violence.” (p. 353)
Bogin, B. (2021). Fear, violence, inequality, and stunting in Guatemala. “The high level of persistent violence creates an ecology of fear, an extreme range of inequalities in Social-Economic-Political-Emotional resources, and biosocial stress that inhibits skeletal growth and causes stunting for people of all income levels.” (p. 1)
Ley, K. (2022). Reagan’s foreign policy and human rights: A Guatemalan perspective. “Shortly thereafter, the Carter administration discontinued military and financial aid to Guatemala because of an increase in killings and disappearances, in the name of sanctioning Guatemala’s human rights violations.” (p. 10-11)
Ley, K. (2022). Reagan’s foreign policy and human rights: A Guatemalan perspective. “Despite the military and economic sanctions, the Carter administration re-classified military supplies under a new name to continue shipments, and approved multiple loans to the Guatemalan government.” (p. 10-11)
Ley, K. (2022). Reagan’s foreign policy and human rights: A Guatemalan perspective. “Conversely, the Reagan administration did not view human rights as a moral dilemma, but instead as a geopolitical tool of furthering Western superiority by pointing out the inferiority and weakness of communist political systems across the globe…In doing so, the Reagan administration embraced the Cold War philosophy of the Kirkpatrick Doctrine.” (p. 11-12)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). “On Dec. 5, 1982, for instance, he [Reagan] met with Rios Montt in Honduras and said he was ‘a man of great integrity’ and ‘totally dedicated to democracy.’” (p. 361-362)
Totten, S. (2018). The United States government’s relationship with Guatemala during the genocide of the Maya (1981–1983). “During this period the United States provided training for Guatemalan military personnel and the military intelligence unit at its infamous US Army School of the Americas. The US government also provided advisers on the ground, an extraordinary amount of funding, and weapons.” (p. 343)
Sveinsdóttir, A. G., Aguilar-Støen, M., & Bull, B. (2021). Resistance, repression, and elite dynamics: Unpacking violence in the Guatemalan mining sector. “Towards the end of the war, governments favouring economic liberalization and decentralization emerged, contributing to consolidate the privileged position of private business in the economy. Following the Peace Accords, the government began implementing a policy package that enabled a new wave of investments in the primary sector, which was embraced enthusiastically by the domestic private sector (Bull, 2005). Furthermore, the new policies highlighted the participation of the private sector in natural resource-based sectors such as agribusiness, hydropower development and extractive industries. The model was also based on close collaboration with private business, both domestic and transnational, in the formulation of laws, the selection of priorities regarding public policy, and regulatory frameworks. Elites’ preferences and strategies profoundly impact on the evolution of state structures, not least in elite-dominated contexts such as the Latin American ones. In the case of Guatemala, the fragmented security state, a state whose security services offer fractured, selective security that reproduces violence in society, particularly amongst the poor and the marginalized, is favoured by the elites because of its permeability to influence peddling, which in turn best protects and promotes their interests. As the case of Guatemala exemplifies, the fragmented security state comes at the cost of public accountability and judicial independence. Furthermore, in such state projects, violence not only remains a state repertoire for governing but is also unbound by legality. The entanglements of bureaucratic and political actors with these elites secure the legitimization of this de facto governance model. The fragmented security state in Guatemala, with violence embedded in its logic, is aimed at guaranteeing impunity and shaping a social order favourable to elite interests. Elites, extractive firms and criminal actors all appear to accept – if not share – an interest in maintaining the “stable instability” emerging from the logics of the fragmented security state. Violence, then, is de facto, an everyday tool of political, social and economic interactions.” (p. 6-7)
Sveinsdóttir, A. G., Aguilar-Støen, M., & Bull, B. (2021). Resistance, repression, and elite dynamics: Unpacking violence in the Guatemalan mining sector. “Alonso-Fradejas argues that a new politics of class-domination has emerged from Guatemala’s transition to liberal democracy. These politics are shaped by a rise in what Alonso-Fradejas calls “authoritarian corporate populism” (authoritarian corpopulism hereafter), a political agenda advanced by the country’s entrenched elite networks and backed by the state to advance resource extraction and agroindustry. The authoritarian corpopulist agenda relies on strategic support from the state and for the private sector and elites to be deeply entangled with the state The result is the reproduction of the racialized class hegemony of the white elites, who have controlled Guatemala’s means of production (land, labour, commercial institutions, banks and industries) and political system since the colony to the present day.” (p. 4-5)

Section 4

Weissman, S. R. (2014). What really happened in Congo: The CIA, the murder of Lumumba, and the rise of Mobutu. Foreign Affairs. **“Both the Soviet Union and the United States were keeping a close eye on the mineral-rich country at the heart of Africa when, on June 30, 1960, it gained independence under a democratically elected government headed by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.” (p. 1)
Weissman, S. R. (2014). What really happened in Congo: The CIA, the murder of Lumumba, and the rise of Mobutu. Foreign Affairs. “The United States, declining the appeals for help from the new Congolese government, instead threw its support behind a UN peacekeeping mission, which it hoped would obviate any Congolese requests for Soviet military assistance.” (p. 1)
Weissman, S. R. (2014). What really happened in Congo: The CIA, the murder of Lumumba, and the rise of Mobutu. Foreign Affairs. “But Lumumba quickly came into conflict with the UN for its failure to expel the Belgian troops and end Katanga’s secession. After issuing a series of shifting ultimatums to the UN, he turned to Moscow for help, which responded by sending transport planes to fly Lumumba’s troops into Katanga.” (p. 1)
Weissman, S. R. (2014). What really happened in Congo: The CIA, the murder of Lumumba, and the rise of Mobutu. Foreign Affairs. “So extensive were these efforts that at the time, they ranked as the largest covert operation in the agency’s history, costing an estimated $90–$150 million in current dollars, not counting the aircraft, weapons, and transportation and maintenance services provided by the Defense Department.” (p. 3)
Weissman, S. R. (2014). What really happened in Congo: The CIA, the murder of Lumumba, and the rise of Mobutu. Foreign Affairs. “The CIA also funded anti-Lumumba street demonstrations, labor movements, and propaganda.” (p. 4)
Weissman, S. R. (2014). What really happened in Congo: The CIA, the murder of Lumumba, and the rise of Mobutu. Foreign Affairs. “And contrary to the conclusion of the Church Committee, Lawrence Devlin, the CIA station chief in Congo for most of the period, had direct influence over the events that led to Lumumba’s death.” (p. 3)
Weissman, S. R. (2014). What really happened in Congo: The CIA, the murder of Lumumba, and the rise of Mobutu. Foreign Affairs. “Even the 1975 U.S. Senate investigation by the Church Committee, which was heavily critical of the CIA, concluded that of the five covert paramilitary campaigns it studied, the operation in Congo was the only one that ‘achieved its objectives.’” (p. 2)
Weissman, S. R. (2014). What really happened in Congo: The CIA, the murder of Lumumba, and the rise of Mobutu. Foreign Affairs. “Not only was U.S. involvement extensive; it was also malignant. The CIA’s use of bribery and paramilitary force succeeded in keeping a narrow, politically weak clique in power for most of Congo’s first decade of independence. And the very nature of the CIA’s aid discouraged Congolese politicians from building genuine bases of support and adopting responsible policies.” (p. 3-4)
McNulty, M. (1999). The collapse of Zaire: Implosion, revolution, or external sabotage? The Journal of Modern African Studies, 37(1), 53–82. “Throughout the 1970s…as much as 2 per cent of the government’s operating budget went directly to the office of the president without any financial control.” (p. 60)
[9] McNulty, M. (1999). The collapse of Zaire: Implosion, revolution, or external sabotage? The Journal of Modern African Studies, 37(1), 53–82. “Mobutu’s theft of a quarter of Gecamine’s gross receipts…cut directly into the export income needed to finance Zaı$re’s mounting debts. Combined with Mobutu’s systematic looting of hard currency reserves, this situation forced the Bank of Zaïre to default on the nation’s foreign debts in 1974 and 1975.” (p. 60)
McNulty, M. (1999). The collapse of Zaire: Implosion, revolution, or external sabotage? The Journal of Modern African Studies, 37(1), 53–82. **“Mobutu was able to retain his grip through two principal means: his control of money and his control of force. His vast personal fortune provided a seemingly inexhaustible source of patronage which created a loyal and/or compromised elite, while facilitating the division or elimination of opposition. Estimated at between $6 billion and $10 billion, it was accrued at the expense of his country’s economy and natural resources, through creation of the quintessential vampire state.” (p. 60)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “Washington responded to Mobutu’s ascendancy in Congo, and bid for regional leadership in Africa, with an unfettered public endorsement from the Nixon‐Kissinger White House, continued military and economic assistance and the active encouragement of growing private investment from the United States in Congo.” (p. 128-129)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “On July 19th, Ford approved the fifty million dollar aid program (including a fourteen million dollar budget increase) to Congo without conditions. While Vance was to urge adoption of the IMF reform package, no such prodding can be found in the reports of his meetings with Mobutu the following week.” (p. 145-146)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “Mobutu’s capacity to provoke crises to secure U.S. aid was exemplified in 1975, when the 40 Committee approved a covert CIA operation (IAFEATURE) to assist anti-MPLA groups in Angola. This effort, paired with Mobutu’s well-timed diplomatic maneuvers, ensured Zaire received a $50 million aid package despite its collapsing economy.” (p. 143-144)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “However, we believe that the stakes in Zaire are so important that we must be in a position to offer Zaire assistance even if Mobutu continues to resist the IMF.” (p. 145)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “The construction of the Inga‐Shaba power line was awarded largely to American firms (Morrison-Knudsen and Fishback & Moore), despite both the World Bank and the Belgian government having declared no interest in financing such projects, ‘based more on political than economic considerations.’” (p. 120)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “A glaring example of such a project was the second phase of the Inga Dam construction, announced in 1973 and completed by 1977 at a cost of some 260 million dollars (twice that of the initial phase of the project) and without a market for the additional seven hundred megawatts now available.” (p. 120)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “In his Les Safaris Technologiques au Zaire, 1970–80, Benoit Verhaegen eloquently illustrates how government-guaranteed financing and private businesses combined to deliver a number of goods and services to Congo that had little to do with actual local demands or the necessities of the country’s development, as has been seen. Instead, grossly wasteful prestige projects, and the corresponding rents from awarding contracts, fed both the ambrosial appetites and the delusions of grandeur of the Kinshasa dictator.” (p. 120)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “As the record of Nixon’s own encounters with Mobutu illustrated, the White House took the lead in defining an approach that ensured security concerns (despite the apparent absence of any Soviet interest in Congo) trumped broader development considerations.” (p. 124)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “Mobutu’s posturing and timing had been flawless. With this, the ‘missionary’ doubters of the Africa Bureau had been outmaneuvered. On July 17th, the 40 Committee approved a covert CIA operation, dubbed IAFEATURE, to assist the FNLA and UNITA in Angola. Two days later, President Ford approved a fifty million dollar aid program to Zaire. For Congo’s president, the rewards were immediate.” (p. 143-144)
Bechtolsheimer, G. (2012). Breakfast with Mobutu: Congo, the United States, and the Cold War, 1964-1981. London School of Economics and Political Science. “Kissinger was not willing to jeopardize his rekindled relationship with Mobutu for the sake of Congo’s economic development. Lynn’s final decision memorandum presented to President Ford thus included an add-on from Kissinger detailing Congo’s economic and political importance to the United States, concluding: ‘We realize that from a purely economic standpoint, it makes sense to insist on an IMF stabilization program. However, we believe that the stakes in Zaire are so important that we must be in a position to offer Zaire assistance even if Mobutu continues to resist the IMF.’ Once again, Kissinger dominated policy, and on July 19th, Ford approved the fifty million dollar aid program.” (p. 145-146)
McNulty, M. (1999). The collapse of Zaire: Implosion, revolution, or external sabotage? The Journal of Modern African Studies, 37(1), 53–82. “By the time of the establishment of the national convention which sought to bring about democratisation, the state’s only apparent function was the systematic exploitation of its people and resources, while it offered nothing in return, not even security; instead, the state itself and its agents were the principal sources of insecurity.” (p. 61)
Ray, E. (2000). U.S. military and corporate recolonization of the Congo. Covert Action Quarterly. “In October 1996, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL), commanded by and composed mainly of Tutsi military forces from Paul Kagame’s Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), along with Tutsi refugees from Zaire and some Congolese patriots, 3 all under the titular leadership of Congolese exile Laurent Kabila, crossed into Zaire from Rwanda and Burundi. In May 1997, after only seven months of fighting, they had overthrown the 30-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko.” (p. 1)
Ray, E. (2000). U.S. military and corporate recolonization of the Congo. Covert Action Quarterly. “While some ‘rebels’ were involved in the invasion (mostly former Mobutu officers), ‘Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers…constitute the major portion of those troops which are combating Kabila’s government,’ according to a statement at the time by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.” (p. 6)
Ray, E. (2000). U.S. military and corporate recolonization of the Congo. Covert Action Quarterly. “An October 1997 Human Rights Watch report with the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues stated, ‘Kabila’s troops, particularly Rwandan allies, segregated and executed young men, former Hutu government officials and Hutu intellectuals.’ They accused the U.S. of ignoring the massacres to ‘hasten a conclusion to the region’s three-year refugee crisis.’” (p. 5)
Ray, E. (2000). U.S. military and corporate recolonization of the Congo. Covert Action Quarterly. “An exception to most media coverage was a revealing Washington Post investigation by Scott Campbell, placing much of the blame on Paul Kagame’s Rwandans, and noting that, while the Defense Department admitted training RPA troops inside Rwanda, ‘knowledgeable witnesses told me they had seen U.S. soldiers in the company of RPA troops on Congolese territory on various dates including July 23rd and 24th of this year… Massacre sites continue to be cleaned up and potential witnesses intimidated… Rwandan officers and troops remain in the Congo in the same areas where they participated in massacres, representing a lethal threat to any who would dare collaborate with the U.N. team.’” (p. 5)
Ray, E. (2000). U.S. military and corporate recolonization of the Congo. Covert Action Quarterly. “Less than a week later, on August 2, 1998, Ugandan and Rwandan regular troops invaded Congo with regrouped, well-trained rebel forces, and began the war to overthrow Kabila that goes on to this day, despite a shaky, much-violated, U.S.-supported cease-fire.” (p. 6)
Ray, E. (2000). U.S. military and corporate recolonization of the Congo. Covert Action Quarterly. “It was only after fierce fighting, with vital military support from the Angolans and Zimbabweans, along with spirited defense from the local populace in Kinshasa, that the rebels were repulsed at the gates of the capital.” (p. 6)
Ray, E. (2000). U.S. military and corporate recolonization of the Congo. Covert Action Quarterly. “It was not long before what the western press would dub ‘Africa’s First World War’ began.” (p. 5-6)