donn@utah-cs.UUCP (Donn Seeley) (09/30/84)
ENDLESS ENEMIES: THE MAKING OF AN UNFRIENDLY WORLD. Jonathan Kwitny. Congdon & Weed, 1984. This book's real theme is stated on the front cover: 'How America's worldwide interventions destroy democracy and free enterprise and defeat our own best interests.' Kwitny's thesis is that American intervention in the affairs of foreign countries has a long history of backfiring, principally because American leaders have such a shallow understanding of the forces at work in the countries involved. He believes that the Russians are no different from us in this respect, and that more intelligent behavior on our part could result in a shift away from the antagonism from Third World countries which has almost become a cliche, and bring the US some respect. This is the Ugly American theme again, but where Lederer and Burdick were content to fictionalize and propagandize, Kwitny is determined to be brutal with facts and accusations about real people and events. Kwitny's greatest skill is his way of presenting the feelings of the inhabitants of the countries he visits, and comparing them against the alleged misinformation in the hands of our government and press. This is a wonderfully convincing technique and it makes 'fictionalization' insipid by comparison. Very early in the book Kwitny takes us to a meeting in New York City to discuss the debt crisis in Zaire. Representatives of all the biggest banks are present, as well as representatives of the US government. The government of Zaire reassures everyone that debt repayments will proceed on schedule, and that the economy has regained some momentum so that Zaire will continue to be a good credit risk. Kwitny punctures the complacency of this meeting by taking us to Zaire and showing us the lives of some of its people and discussing its complicated tribal politics. Zaire is a bomb waiting to go off -- some time soon 'President' Mobutu will die or be assassinated, and chances are that we will be confronted with one of the most radical states on the African continent. Mobutu keeps the country in a military and economic stranglehold while he accumulates enough personal wealth to become one of the richest people on this planet. Much of the money is skimmed off foreign aid and investment; the rest comes from government monopolies on internal trade. Kwitny makes an ironic contrast between Zaire and the neighboring People's Republic of the Congo: ostensibly a member of the 'free world', Zaire is objectively speaking as socialist as any Eastern European country, while the ostensibly communist Congo is a burgeoning free market -- a market founded on goods smuggled in from controlled markets in Zaire. Kwitny takes a mole's eye view of such things as the recent currency devaluations instigated by the IMF. The government decreed that all money outside the central bank (a slush fund for corrupt officials) would be invalidated in three days -- people could exchange up to $1000 worth of old money for new money at central bank offices, and the rest was simply paper. This destroyed what small business there was (competition for the government and its cronies) and straightforwardly cheated all the people who were unable to penetrate the panic at the bank offices, or for that matter were unable to get to a bank in time once they had heard the news. How did things get to be such a mess? It appears from interviews and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information act that our government, through the media of the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department, was directly responsible for ousting the existing Zaire government in 1960 and installing Mobutu and friends. I think Kwitny tends to be a bit paranoid when discussing these things, but some of the details uncovered by the congressional intelligence committee are quite startling, such as the various proposals to murder Patrice Lumumba using poisoned toothpaste and other silly things (provincial Congolese don't use toothpaste anyway). Why were we so desperate to upset Lumumba? Kwitny believes that the Lumumba regime was not particularly competent and would have fallen for internal reasons in a few years; now Lumumba is a household word across Africa, a hero for having resisted American imperialism. Think of all the money we have spent on a country that very likely will become another Iran, when we could have done differently and perhaps have avoided the blame that now attaches to us. The ultimate irony is that all this expense is being paid for by US taxpayers. Not just the costs of the bribes we pay to foreign officials, or the extra costs attached to materials for which government monopolies set prices, not just the costs of keeping covert armies in the field (one chapter is titled 'How the American taxpayer brought the Cuban civil war to Lake Tanganyika') -- but the fact that US banks are giving money to Mobutu to waste as he sees fit, and when Mobutu skips the country, and Zaire is forced to default, you and I will bear the expense of compensating the banks for their lost capital. Didn't you ever wonder why so many banks seem to be so heavily involved in loans to Third World governments? Irresponsible governments have a voracious appetite for money, and the banks can't lose because their loans are guaranteed by the US government. Kwitny's discussion of Zaire is the most interesting, primarily because Kwitny lived in Zaire for some time and experienced some of the events he describes at first hand. But Kwitny also discusses other countries in some detail, among them Nigeria (where the US decided not to intervene in a civil war that really wasn't a result of 'communist infiltration' and made friends), Afghanistan (where the Russians showed how they completely misunderstood the situation, which is great for us, since up to the time of the invasion WE were shooting those nomads, through the Baluchi 'pacification' program of the Pakistani government), and Guatemala (where US representatives in the field praised moves toward democracy, but our government was listening to United Brands instead). Kwitny seems to agree with me that our next foreign policy disaster on the order of Iran will be in the Philippines, which he calls 'the Zaire of Asia'. China, Iran, Grenada, Cuba and Angola are also discussed. This is a very interesting, well-written, well-researched book. About the only qualm I have is that Kwitny is a conspiracy fan; he sees coverups and collusions everywhere. After having seen the documented conspiracies, it's easy to see how Kwitny might be led to conclude that more of them exist. I'm not convinced that our government and large corporations are really clever enough or coordinated enough to pull off most of these conspiracies; considering the ample evidence of our bumbling, I think it's more likely that creatures like Mobutu are taking advantage of us than the reverse. (After all that effort to kill Lumumba, guess how he died? Mobutu and company put him on a plane to Katanga province, where he had savagely suppressed a rebellion; he was probably dead within minutes after being dumped on the runway, certainly within days.) Anyway, I recommend the book highly. Donn Seeley University of Utah CS Dept donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn