America and the Cold War (Part I)

The US pulled out of Vietnam in 1975 after more than a decade and a humiliating defeat. The war had been expensive, the draft unpopular, and too many white boys had come home in body bags. A strong antiwar mood had set in amidst the public and the Congress. Most Americans now believed it was never their war to fight. "Asian boys must fight Asian wars" became the new credo. At least in the short term, direct military engagement in the third world seemed politically unviable for any US administration.

 

At the same time, the US had fought and lost another war in Indochina – in Laos – but rather differently. This was a proxy war, sponsored by the US but led by Hmong mercenaries on the ground. The advantages of such a war were soon evident: it was waged in relative secrecy, far from "congressional oversight, public scrutiny, and conventional diplomacy. Even at the end of the war, few Americans knew that the USAF had fought 'the largest air war in military history over Laos, dropping 2.1 million tons of bombs over this small, impoverished nation – the same tonnage that Allied powers dropped on Germany and Japan during WWII.'"

   

In the 60s and 70s, lots of anti-colonial and nationalistic struggles were cropping up in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Blinded by its Cold War, anti-commie paranoia, the US saw even popular movements for social and economic justice as precursors to communism, or as Soviet proxies, and was determined to combat and crush them. But, given the unviability of direct military engagement on so many fronts, proxy war was the only military option left to the US. There was one minor obstacle though: how to finance all these proxy wars? Many Congressmen asked awkward questions about proxy wars, especially after the disaster in Indochina. Where they agreed, they wanted debates and updates. The idea of a new, recurring source of money – bypassing the Congress – gripped the minds of many.

   

A source was soon identified: illicit drug trade. In the 19th century, Britain had used opium trade to fund its colonial operations in the East. Now it was the turn of the US. Just when the global opium trade was "at its lowest ebb in nearly two centuries"  (opium is the raw material for heroin), the CIA struck alliances with drug lords to greatly expand drug-production in Burma, Laos, Colombia, and Afghanistan, as well as with the mafia to streamline distribution (some of which ended up in the US, extracting 'funds' from the US public in other ways). For protecting their assets or looking the other way, the CIA got a slice of the proceeds that it promptly funneled into covert military operations.

 

During the Cold War, the US funded proxy wars all over the globe, including (but not limited to) Laos, Cambodia, Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Iran, Nicaragua, Granada, Libya, Cuba, and perhaps the most significant of all: Afghanistan. The CIA euphemistically called these "low-intensity conflicts" but which were, in effect and tactic, no different from state-sponsored terrorism. The meteoric rise of Colombian drug cartels coincided with US Cold War operations in Central America, especially Nicaragua. Cocaine trafficking (most destined for the US) soon brought dividends to the Contras and made Pablo Escobar one of the richest men in the world.

 

The US, almost always, supported militant factions that opposed popular movements and employed assassinations, kidnappings, torture, and violent terrorism, causing widespread suffering and civilian casualties. In Guatemala, for instance, the US funded and trained "death squads" that killed tens of thousands of Mayan peasants. In Nicaragua, the CIA funded and trained the right wing Contra rebels in bleeding-edge terrorism (no pun), including psychological warfare targeting special groups – judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. They attacked bridges, power plants, rural health clinics, agricultural co-ops, and civilians. "CIA commandos launched a series of sabotage raids on Nicaraguan port facilities. They mined the country's major ports and set fire to its largest oil storage facilities." In Angola, the US proxy (Unita rebels) starved "civilians in government-held areas, through a combination of direct attacks, kidnappings, and planting land mines on paths used by peasants"  (estimates for the number of amputees begin at 15,000). About 331,000 Angolan civilians died in the 80s and the war cost the country six times its 1988 GDP.

 

The list of such "low-intensity conflicts" waged by US proxies goes on and on. It worked best when combined with a deliberate campaign at home that encouraged mass hysteria about the Soviet machine. Reagan called it the evil empire, a phrase with strong religious overtones. One couldn't possibly make a deal with evil; there was no coexistence possible with the evil. It had to be resolutely opposed, whatever the cost. But the real cost started becoming apparent only a decade later.

 

(To be continued in another post on the Cold War in Afghanistan)