Este blog ha
posteado varias notas relativas al papel de las "ONGs"
"pro-democracia" en la realización de los golpes de estado
conytemporáneos en diversas regiones del globo. La siguiente nota, aparecida
estos días en el sitio web "Sic Semper Tyrannys" del ex funcionario
del Pentágono Patrick Lang, es sencillamente luminosa. ¿Para cuando una lista
de los beneficiarios locales de estas organizaciones?
Título: Soft
Power, or Regime Change à l'américaine
Texto: One
commenter on this comittee recently remarked the following: "Ukraine had
an NGO driven bloodless coup (kind of). This coup was clearly the doing of the
U.S. ... The CIA appears to have a record of incredible incompetence".
That is not so, not quite, and that deserves some elaboration.
The CIA just
doesn’t do coups anymore
Of course, Bush
43 authorised the CIA do do destabilisation missions in Iran to achieve regime
change, so take that with a grain of salt. But today, regime change is largely
run out of the State Department. In the 70s, the CIA's history of coups and
regime change caught up with it and was met with a public backlash that
culminated in the climatic Church comittee hearings.
The politicians
who wanted to keep doing these things irrespective of that moved the programs
out of sight, and shipped staff and shop over to other organisations and found
new sources of funding.
Lest these
programs be again interrupted through pesky "oversight" by elected
representatives, the new venue needed to be outside the bodies of the executive
branch. The solution was government funded NGOs in the mold of Germany's
Parteinahe Stiftungen.
Regime change à
l'américaine is a group effort now
Today, to the
extent they concern 'soft power', such activities are run by the State
Department through surrogates - semi official (USAID, NED, NDI, IRI, CIPE and
ACILS), contractors and public relations firms or (congenially) entirely
private (Soros' Open Society Foundation) and professional activists (OTPOR
veterans). This is being supported by sympathetic journalists (providing
friendly coverage or joining the fight) and pundits, lobbies (especially the
transatlantic ones - Marshal Fund, Atlantic Society etc.) and think tanks
(think Freedom House etc).
The
semi-independent 'NGO' character of USAID, NED, NDI, IRI, CIPE and ACILS
guarantees continuity in the democratising mission even with changes in
government. The diverse ideological thrust of each organisation also addresses
different different segments in the society of "to be developed"
countries. It also provides plausible deniability. Also, these programs may be
run by genuine idealists, who are not serving the US government, let alone the
CIA, and will not think of themselves that way.
A lot of US
support to Poland's Solidarity movement during the Cold war went trough the
AFL-CIO linked ACILS, who apparently were far better connected than the CIA.
In a nutshell,
these bodies run their various programs autonomosly in a decentralised fashion.
In the absence of intervention, they do so on auto-pilot in accordance with the
bipartisan consensus (on regime change in Russia, Cuba, Venezuela etc pp), much
like on tram lines - and they may not get every memo.
A perfect example
for that is the recent case of USAID vs. Cuba in which USAID sponsored a free
twitter-ish program to organise resistance to overthrow the Castros - while the
US administration at the same time pursued normalisation with Castro's Cuba.
Soft Power
Projection at work
That is not to
say that the efforts of these NGOs are entirely without merit. But it becomes
problematic when they conflate legitimate political work with taking sides in
another country's domestic politics.
It is interesting
to read the narrative of someone sympathetic to such programs. The author
concludes:
"While
Vladimir Putin wants to see the dark hand of American spymasters manipulating
protesters in Tahrir Square and the Maidan—and triumphalist American accounts
of the end of the Cold War have promoted a similar narrative—a close review of
the past shows that the U.S. government lacked mechanisms for any direct
political control over revolutionary movements in Eastern Europe. The United
States did not call the shots. Washington was actually quite chaos averse
itself, choosing to promote stable, evolutionary change rather than a
revolutionary clean sweep. Over the long term, if Putin wants to keep power he
should worry about maintaining his domestic legitimacy, not the actions of
outside powers."
The extent to
which NGO activities are funded by or coordinate with the US government is a
point the author doesn't see when he writes that Putin ought to just mind
"maintaining his domestic legitimacy".
The fine line
between meddling and legitimate NGO action
Point is, the US,
and US semi-governmental NGOs, are not hesitant at all to decide who's
legitimate and who isn't. This is where problems arise, after all the flipside
of sovereignty is that other countries do not meddle in another country's
internal affairs. In such cases, when NGO's support or directly fund groups
that make that argument, these NGO's are seen taking sides.
The problem is
exacerbated when the US government then im- or explicitly endorses that view.
For instance, the US has explicitly called Yanukovych 'illegitimate' during the
Maidan, urging the protesters to carry on.
When McFaul, the
then fresh US ambassador to Russia, invited opposition to the embassy, iirc
even before the first meeting with the Russian president (then Medvediev), what
point does he make? Very much in line with that approach, Joe Biden apparently
went to Russia before Putin ran for office after his break, informing him that
the US felt he shouldn't run for office again. Not subtle.
In light of that
general picture, Putin likely couldn't care less through what specific alphabet
soup group the US choose to launder money for a given NGO or program, or
whether privateer Soros is at it again. On the receiving end it is largely a
distinction without a difference. The projection of soft power is power
projection no less.
Our esteemed
correspondent David Habbakkuk put it just perfectly when he wrote:
And it seems to
me likely that in both places, and in others, it will be taken by those most
hostile to the U.S. as proof that the 'conspiracy' rather than 'cock-up' view
of American policy not just towards the Middle East but in other areas has been
conclusively vindicated. Moreover, those with more sanguine views are likely to
be, as it were, placed on the back foot.
In using USAID,
NED, NDI, IRI, CIPE and ACILS for 'soft power' projection and regime change the
US is discrediting NGO activities in general by charging domestic political
activity in foreign countries with foreign policy.
The president in
full control of US policy?
All that makes me
wonder about the extent of control the US president has on foreign policy in
face of such actors, and in face of so many independent actors. Take the
strange case of John McCain:
When John McCain
ran his private foreign policy during the early Obama years, just as if he
didn't notice having lost the US elections to Obama, he did so as president of
IRI, the International Republican Institute. In that function he went to photo
ops in Syria, on the Maidan, to Libya, where he egged the protesters on to keep
going, because their government was 'illegitimate'.
As a private
citizen heading an NGO, and as a mere US Senator and head of the Senate Armed
Services Comitee he naturally does not represent the US administration and what
he sais naturally does not reflect their views. Really?
Obama is facing
in this permanent foreign policy establishment with its burrowed members in the
bureaucracy (think Nuland) a force that needs to be reckoned with. To overcome
them will require political will. Will he expend the political capital needed?
The ideological
Cold War never ended
Not only did the
US not reduce their forces after the end oft he first Cold War, they also
didn’t reduce the accompanying ideological warfare establishment. Worse, the
narrative that the US won the cold war has led to a general feeling of
ideological vindication in the US.
USAID, NED, NDI,
IRI, CIPE and ACILS were formed to fight the ideological cold war. They still
do that. The end of the Cold War and the democratisation of the East initially
gave them plenty of work doing 'democratisation' that resulted in considerable
influence and access in these countries, reinforced by these countries entering
NATO. But then, there was no mission beyond that.
What would be
closer than to expand on the achievements and 'enter new markets', closer to
the Russian heartland? That is IMO what we are seeing today.
Freedom™ or bust!
Foreign policy in
the US is today being run by ideologues of the neo-liberal, R2P or neocon
persuasions. They are simply utterly tone deaf to the reality that Russia would
predictably object to them spreading their influence at Russia's expense.
In Ukraine, the
US offer was to choose between either the US or Russia. The aim was cearly
prying loose Ukraine, irrespective of the sizeable ethnic Russian population in
Ukraine, from Russian influence and draw it into the US orbit as a new
satellite. And they thought Russia, distracted by Sochi, could be steamrolled if
presented with a fait accompli in Kiev?
At the same time
the US pursue their low key efforts to unseat Russia's elected government in
favour of something different. What are the Russians to conclude from that?
What the US
apparently think is that, if not for Putin, that devil, Russia would be pro-US,
just as it was when everything was swell and Americans practically ran the
Kremlin (and in the process ruthlessly betrayed Russia) under an incapacitated
Jelzin.
No matter! There
today is just one legitimate sphere of influence and that is that of the Free
World, i.e. of those who share the Washington Consensus (with an emphasis on
Washington) and are thus invited to the in-crowd's G-meetings.
This blind
ambition for expansion coupled with vain self-righteousness just may get us all
into an escalation towards war between NATO and Russian.
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_International_Development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Institute_for_International_Affairs
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Republican_Institute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_International_Private_Enterprise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Center
(American Center for International Labor Solidarity)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Society_Foundations
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