“Anyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of
the world need look no farther than this book.”[1]
“A secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a shocking account of the
misuse of American corporate, political and media power; a shaming reflection
on the moral manners of post-imperial Europe; and an essential allegory for our
own times.” John Le Carré.
Some of you may remember a duo of
Irishmen who delighted listeners of an olde worlde sentimental disposition in
the 1970s and 80s with tear-jerking ballads such as, “When You and I Were Young, Maggie.” Mick Foster and Tony Allen continued
to pluck the heartstrings of loyal fans into the new century – but “Maggie” probably remains their
signature tune.
The song was written in the 1860s by
a Canadian schoolteacher with the illustrious name of George Washington
Johnson. Maggie, apparently, was a student of George’s whom he married – but
lost to illness within a year of their wedding. One-hit-wonder George may have
been, but “Maggie” earned him a place
in the Canadian Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. Wikipedia
assures me that you can visit the schoolhouse in Hamilton, Ontario where
teacher wooed student, and examine a plaque commemorating their enduring love.
 |
| For the love of George and Maggie Click to hear the song |
Stephen Kinzer, on the other hand,
has written a book about a relationship of hate. “During the 1950s,” goes the cover blurb, “when the Cold War was at its
peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of
foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world. John Foster
Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of
the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their
extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He
uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it
does in the world? ‘The Brothers’ explores hidden forces that shape the
national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies, many of which are
about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is
how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their
country’s role in the world. Propelled by a quintessentially American set of
fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against
foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns
helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of
violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation
for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to
Iran.”
“The Brothers” is not a humorous book. For many readers, in fact, it
may be deeply disturbing, even frightening. Kinzer does not undermine the
seriousness of his subject by making jokes. Nevertheless, it is difficult to believe
that his references to “Foster and Allen” throughout the book were unconscious.
There is an irony here that is inescapable:
The green growth is gone from the hills, Maggie
Where first the daisies spring
The creaking old mill is still, Maggie
Since you and I were young.
The dynamic self-belief of 1950s
United States has been replaced by doubt and uncertainty. The naive patriotism
that allowed post-war America to internalise the anti-communist scare-mongering
of the Dulles brothers and their allies has gone like the green growth from the
hills of Maggie's youthful memories. The economic and industrial mill that was
once the wonder of the world may not be completely still, but it is certainly
creaking.
In his introduction, Kinzer mentions
a controversy that surrounded the opening of a state-of-the-art airport in
Chantilly, Virginia in 1962 - controversial because the naming of the facility
after recently deceased Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was only achieved
after some high level lobbying by influential people including Foster’s
brother, CIA head, Allen Dulles. “Half a
century after [John Foster] Dulles’s
death stunned Americans,” Kinzer says,
“few remember him. Many associate his name with an airport and nothing more.” The
larger-than-life bust of Dulles that was once centre-piece of the Virginia
airport vanished into storage when renovations were carried out in the 1990s.
George Washington Johnson, in his
much-loved song, was able to sing . . .
Oh they say we have outlived our time, Maggie
As dated as songs that we've sung
But to me, you're as fair as you were, Maggie
When you and I were young,
but the fair reputation of the
Dulles brothers, that made them two of the most powerful individuals in the
world from the last years of the Truman administration to the first years of
JFK, hardly survived their own lifetimes. Nevertheless, as that cover blurb
goes on to say, “The story of the Dulles
brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern
history of the United States and the world.”
In his dedication, Kinzer quotes
Herman Melville's Captain Ahab: “That
inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be
the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.” For Melville's
legendary Captain Ahab, the white whale represented all the evil of the world. “He piled upon the whale's white hump the
sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and
then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon
it.”[2]
For the Dulles brothers, the evil was international communism and the
threat that national independence struggles posed to the supply of raw
materials on which the US economy depended. For them the welfare of Wall St and
corporate America was synonymous with the good of the world as a whole, and
anything that threatened them was self-evidently endangering the very existence
of the free world.
Kinzer’s book examines six case
studies of leaders in emergent nations whose attempts to assert national
sovereignty were seen as manifesting the malignant aims of Soviet Russia to
achieve world domination. They were perceived or portrayed as puppets of
Moscow, evidence of the domino theory, which held that freedom and democracy
were in danger of being overwhelmed, step-by-step, by the forces of
totalitarianism. That being so, they were hated, and any means taken to remove
them were justified.
Part II of “The Brothers” is entitled “Six
Monsters”. Its six chapters are devoted to accounts of six leaders of
emergent sovereign states, each of whom was identified by the Dulles team as
inimical to American interests and hence an enemy of the free world: Mohammad
Mossadegh in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Ho Chi Minh in Viet Nam, President
Sukarno in Indonesia, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Kinzer describes, in well researched, persuasive and horrifying detail how “Foster
and Allen” used the industrial, economic and military might of the United States
in overt and covert ways to effect the downfall of these undesirable leaders.
Not all of the brothers’
machinations were successful, of course – neither in the short term, in getting
rid of the leader in question, nor more importantly, in the long term, in spreading
the ideals of freedom, democracy and respect for human rights. Ho Chi Minh,
Sukarno and Castro survived CIA moves to oust or assassinate them. Mossadegh,
Arbenz and Lumumba were removed from office – though few would argue that those
countries and their people derived much benefit from the US puppet leaders who
replaced them.
In the end, probably the most
frightening aspect of this book is what it does not say. John Le Carré suggests
that it is “an essential allegory of our
times.” If it is indeed true that those few men were able to persuade the
people of America and that nation’s allies that this course of action was in
the best interests of the world as a whole, why should we think that process
stopped with the deaths of Foster and Allen Dulles?
We now know that the US, under the Reagan
administration, supported and armed the mujahidin (among them, a young Saudi
Arab by the name of Osama bin Ladin) in Afghanistan against Soviet Russia. We
know that in the same years the US sold arms to the Islamic government of Iran
to fund its support of anti-communist guerrillas in Nicaragua. We know that the
US suppled arms and intelligence to Saddam Hussein’s government when Iraq was
at war with Iran. We also know that the present US government is going to great
lengths to suppress and discredit Julian Assange’s Wikileaks, and silence its sources, Edward Snowden and Bradley
Manning.
I am sometimes taken to task by
readers who suggest I am anti-American. I don’t think that is true. This book
was gifted to me by a patriotic citizen of the United States – although
interestingly, Amazon refused to ship
it to Turkey. I have, in fact, like many within America and beyond its shores,
ambivalent feelings towards the world’s one remaining super-power. I grew up
with the products of its music and film industries, and they are a part of my
very being. I admire and benefit from the results of its technological
ingenuity and expertise. I know and respect many of its citizens for their
energy, warmth, intelligence and achievements.
On the other hand, I suspect the
motives of that nation’s ruling class. I question their commitment to the
ideals set out in their exemplary constitution by their founding fathers. I
fear the results in the wider world of their foreign policies. Nevertheless, as
long as such a book can be written and published, there is hope for democracy.
It is your democratic duty to read it!
The Brothers
– John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War,
Stephen Kinzer (Times Books, 2013)
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