Weekend
Edition
April 23 / 24, 2005
Alternatives
to Imperial Ideologies
Free Elections
for Empire or Democracy?
By
JAMES PETRAS
It
is a well-established fact that US intelligence and state agencies
have penetrated civil and political society directly or via intermediary
organizations, foundations and other ostensibly private groups.
Penetration
involves funding, influence, control and setting political agendas
that serve US imperial state and business interests and is largely
directed at destabilizing or pressuring regimes and securing their
acquiescence with US policies. As the final, and oft used sanction,
penetration broadens its scope to overthrowing regimes and putting
in power obedient clients
.
In the post-Communist, post-nationalist world barriers to US penetration
has been drastically reduced while Washington has vastly expanded
its activities in penetrating and controlling regimes and opposition
via what are called “civil society” movements.
From as early as the mid 1960s the US state, its intelligence
and overseas “aid” institutions were deeply involved
in influencing electoral processes and financing client organizations,
particularly in Latin America, whenever one of the contending
parties ran on a nationalist or socialist program. A well-documented
case in point was the Chilean elections of 1964, where the CIA
poured millions into the election campaign of Christian Democrat
Eduardo Frei in order to defeat the Socialist Salvador Allende.
Earlier, in the 1940s, large-scale US penetration of the Italian
and French political system took place to promote the electoral
victories of anti-Communist candidates.
Since
the 1990’s and increasingly in the first decade of the 21st
century, US penetration and organization of “shock troops”
– ostensible “civil society” organizations –
have served as a battering ram to overthrow regimes and organize
electoral outcomes favorable to US clients.
Few
have been made to discuss the theoretical implication and practical
consequences of large-scale, long-term US penetration of civil
society and electoral processes. At what point does a “free
election” cease to be “free”? Is it ‘free’
when an imperialist superpower and its “private associates”
(like the Soros Foundation) finance and train national networks
of cadres, mass media outlets, provide innumerable advisers, high-tech
communications and transport to bring about an electoral outcome
favorable to the imperial state? How does large-scale imperialist
intervention affect “free choice”, electoral competition
and the capacity to mobilize for street warfare? In what sense
can one speak of free elections when the “external factors
of power and influence” play such a large role in shaping
the leadership, activities, agendas and outcomes of elections?
What are the alternatives to imperialist penetration and manipulation
of civil society, its organizations, and the electoral contests?
Should multi-party elections be abridged, restricted or regulated?
Should the recipients of outside funding agencies be prosecuted?
How about NGO’s and foundations which act as imperial state
conduits of influence and finance to local clients – should
they be prosecuted, regulated or allowed to carry on as if they
were really “non-governmental”? These questions are
central to the discussion of democracy, free elections and citizen
choice. They are especially important today because the US imperial
state is increasingly bent on dominating the world – as
its leading politicians and ideologues openly declare.
The
two principle tools of empire building are political penetration
where possible and military wars and assassinations where necessary.
Much has been written about the war strategy – its critics
are numerous; few however have studied the “other track”
– the political penetration strategy. In fact, some of the
“critics” of imperial war strategies are advocates
of the ‘political or, ar they choose to call it, ‘democratic
peaceful approach’. This posing of alternatives is highly
misleading, as the long-term, large-scale effects of political
penetration can be just as destructive of national sovereignty,
living standards and social services as open warfare.
The
Incompatibility of Free Elections and Democracy with Imperialist
Penetration
While
elections take place between competing candidates and parties,
the major organizers, financial sponsors, propagandists and media
operators of the US electoral clients are not elected, not responsible
to any of the electors and have a political-economic agenda designed
to favor the economic interests of imperial investors, creditors,
multinational corporations and their local corrupt clients and
oligarchs. “Free elections” take place in context
of non-accountable (to the voters) electoral backers acting at
the behest of a foreign power, in order to subordinate popular
sovereignty and national independence to imperial interests.
Without
national independence or popular sovereignty, “free elections”
have no political significance or positive outcome for the voters.
All the slogans designed to manipulate voters “freedom”,
“democracy”, “independence”, “prosperity”,
and “partnership with the West” are devoid of content.
Following
the elections, the large-scale, long-term entry of imperial banks,
investors, military advisers, IMF and World Bank officials impose
macro-economic policies which deny the populace the very rights
which they were promised by the imperial candidates before the
elections. The regimes pass from ‘local’ authoritarian
regimes to international tyrannies.
While
imperial ideologues speak of elections “legitimating”
their newly elected clients, in fact they have no grounds for
such a claim given the fact that the outcomes were largely determined
by the exercise of power by external intervention.
No
election has legitimacy when national independence is compromised.
Imperial promoted candidates and electoral processes make a mockery
of the notion of popular sovereignty. In order for free elections
to occur the absolute minimum conditions demand that the populace
(citizens) are sovereign: The candidates, parties and electoral
process emerge from the ‘give and take; of the citizens
of the country. Popular sovereignty can only occur if a country
is independent, that the only governing authority is not beholden
to a foreign power. Before one can speak of “free elections”
the political boundaries defining the nation-state must be firmly
established and within those boundaries, civil society and its
organizations are the exclusive domain of national citizens. National
independence and popular sovereignty are essential pre-requisites
for free elections. Given the gross violation of both conditions
by imperial agencies (their pervasive political, financial and
media penetration of the political processes up to and including
electoral outcomes) the elections are illegitimate exercises of
great power, empire building. The elections do no express the
popular will ; they measure the imperial capacity to intervene
in civil society, change regimes and restructure the economy to
maximize their interests.
The
paramount goal of the nation-state, the essential framework which
might allow free elections, is the securing of national independence
and popular sovereignty. This means the effective exclusion of
imperial penetration of civil society and political processes
by whatever means necessary. This may mean constraints and legal
restrictions on domestic groups financed, supported and directed
by imperial state and para-state organizations and NGO’s.
Imperial
intervention in the electoral processes is based on long-term
and short-term policies and strategies, most of which are not
framed in terms of overt empire-building language, but rather
in terms of “enhancing our long-term interests”.
First
and foremost is the recruitment, education and ideological indoctrination
of “the willing” among future “opinion leaders”
and potential leaders. The US has a ready-made systems for education-cum-indoctrination
particularly in all of its “prestigious” universities:
the “leading professors” move in and out of imperial
state and corporate organizations and think tanks. The imperial
state agencies and their auxiliaries in the “private”
foundations provide scholarships, training programs, seminars,
conferences, media attention, lucrative stipends, attention, flattery
and promises of a ‘golden future’ in the recruitment
and formation of future client rulers and organizers of future
“civil society” revolutions. Many if not all the leaders,
who have emerged, supposedly from the grass-roots struggle have
biographies closely inter-linked with imperial indoctrination
and educational backgrounds.
In
the organization of the ‘soft coups’ or ‘civil
society revolutions’ as the imperialist ideologues prefer
to call it, a vast array of imperial institutions converge to
promote escalating protests, exploiting local grievances. The
National Endowment for Democracy, the Democratic and Republican
Institutes, Agency for International Development, CIA front groups,
the mass media, the Soros Foundation and especially imperial-funded
NGOs intervene in the mechanics of destabilizing a regime, de-legitimizing
and demonizing its leaders, propagandizing populist slogans as
a prelude to overthrowing a regime and “winning an election”.
The imperial-trained and indoctrinated clients emerge as the ‘popular
democratic candidate’, who then proceeds to privatize public
enterprises into the hands of imperial investors, invite US military
base builders, provide mercenary soldiers for imperial assignments
and ‘yes votes’ in international forums, while skimming
off commissions for self, family and cronies. In other words,
imperial-conducted elections led by penetrated “civil society”
organizations violate all of the pro-requisites for free elections
and not surprisingly lead to the formation of client regimes embedded
in a web of imperial economic and strategic interests, in which
corruption and nepotism erode the initial democratic façade.
In
the electoral process, the political contest between competing
domestic political factions, class and ethnic interests is irreparably
distorted by the vast disproportion in financial resources, personnel,
media access, organizational capacity and political reach of the
intervening imperial power. The ‘political weight’
of the imperial power in electoral contests usually (but not always)
makes a mockery of the notion of free elections. In many cases
and for a long time, presidential candidates for office throughout
Latin America (from Brazil to Honduras) visit Washington to secure
a certificate of good behavior in exchange for pledging to ‘respect’
US property, trade and debt obligations as well as to assure their
support of the general contours of US global endeavors. This is
done, I have been told by Presidential candidates, in order to
avoid US electoral intervention (or to secure financial support)
prior to the elections and to avoid destabilization after the
elections.
In
other words the threat of imperial civil society penetration shapes
the operative political agendas under which the incoming regime
will govern, not the “populist” electoral program
presented to the electorate during the electoral campaign.
The
tremendous resources which the imperial state possesses in electoral
financing, organizational capacity, mass media influence and societal
penetration generate competitive advantages in both electoral
and non-electoral “extra-parliamentary” mobilizations
against typical elitist regimes. The cumulative advantages which
accrue to imperialist strategists begin with financing potential
leaders, advisers, and NGOs. This provides the basis for pro-imperial
media outlets self-described as “independent” or “democratic”.
Such media, financing and organization lead to intense propaganda
and mobilization campaigns to create “civil society”
movements, while the imperial state recruits or “neutralizes”
officials in the targeted state with threats of international
sanctions if repression is ordered to establish law and order.
Having seized the political initiative, the imperial clients launch
a frontal assault on the institutions of the state, imposing new
elections or toppling the regimes prior to convoking elections.
Riding the wave of mass mobilizations, external funding, subsidized
‘civil society’ organizations and advisers, the US
–backed clients win the elections and quickly move the regime
into the imperial orbit.
When
Imperialist Electoral Strategies Fail: The Military Option
The
“soft coup” or electoral strategy does not always
work. At different times and places, popular regimes have effectively
resisted and overcome the electoral strategies, economic advantages
and civil society destabilization campaigns of imperial strategists
and proceeded to defeat client candidates. When the electoral
and civil society strategies fail to bring to power US clients,
Washington resorts to violent intervention, preceded by direct
economic embargoes, financing of terrorist surrogates, direct
military intervention or military coups by client generals. In
the 1950s reformist regimes in Iran (Mossadegh), Guatemala (Arbenz)
and Guyana (Jagan) were elected by popular majorities despite
Anglo-US electoral intervention. Having lost elections, Washington
organized military coups in Guatemala and Iran, while in Guyana
the British, with US trade union support, provoked a destabilization
campaign as a pretext for British intervention to displace Jagan.
In the 1960’s, the US electoral clients were defeated by
nationalist and democratic candidates in Brazil (Goulart) and
Dominican Republic (Bosch). The US backed a military coup in Brazil
and the Dominican Republic. When the constitutionalist forces
in the Dominican Republic were on the verge of restoring constitutional
democracy, the US military intervened, savagely repressed the
democratic forces, restored their clients, the military and paramilitary
groups and then organized ‘elections’ to provide a
pseudo-constitutional façade to imperial supremacy.
In
the seventies the US poured millions into its electoral and destabilization
strategies to defeat elected Chilean President Salvador Allende.
When Allende’s support actually increased over his term
of office, the US combined a heavily financed “civil society”
destabilization campaign with a military coup. Where the US lacked
a capacity for electoral intervention and mobilization because
“civil society” was under worker (as opposed to client)
hegemony as in Bolivia, Washington simply backed a military coup
to decimate the popular organizations of civil society.
In
the 1980s in Central America, Washington faced highly organized
and politicized popular civil society organizations, which challenged
US client regimes, and civil organizations. In response, Washington
financed and advised para-military death squads and special military
forces to engage in genocidal massacres of popular civil society
organizations. The strategy of “death squads and elections”
ensured the continuity of US client rulers.
In
Nicaragua, popular civil society organizations overwhelmingly
backed the nationalist-populist Sandinista government. Washington
combined continued financing of the internal elite with the arming
, advising and financing of a mercenary invasion army, the Contras.
In the1984 elections the US was the only country which refused
to recognize the Sandinista election; instead the US government
intensified its military and economic warfare, bleeding the government
of resources, devastating economic activities and inflicting heavy
casualties on the civilian population. After a decade of warfare,
the US poured tens of millions of dollars in advisers and propaganda
and threats of continual warfare into the election campaign of
1989, leading to the election of a US client “President”.
The
only popular regime which Washington was not able to reverse through
the 1960s to the present was the revolutionary government of Cuba,
which organized highly regulated elections, anchored in public
institutions loyal to the national government. The US had no leverage
in the electoral system and was not able to utilize the military
to counter or overthrow the revolutionary government.
In
the new millennium Washington has made several efforts to overthrow
the Chavez regime including a military coup, an elite-sponsored
economic lock-out and the electoral process. All were defeated
because of Chavez regime’s powerful organized support among
the mass of poor in civil society, the allegiance of sectors of
the military and the inclusive social welfare reforms.
In
several countries in Latin America, namely Argentina, Bolivia
and Ecuador, popular civil society organizations have ousted pro-imperialist
US client regimes, despite institutional repression. Efforts by
US imperial strategists to build pro-regime “civil society”
organizations were a dismal failure, despite no lack of mass media
support, an army of client NGOs, vast expenditures of financial
resources and the dispatch of political advisers. In Latin America
the growth of independent mass movements in opposition to US client
rulers presiding over the imperial plunder and impoverishment
of their people has forced the US to resort to recruiting ‘outsiders’,
former leftists labeled ‘center-left’ and to strengthen
the formal and informal repressive apparatus. This has facilitated
the election of client presidents, but has weakened Washington’s
influence in civil society.
Conclusion
What
are the alternatives to US-controlled electoral processes and
imperial penetration of civil society organizations designed to
curtail national independence and popular sovereignty?
The
first point of departure is recognition that there is a serious
problem with the very way in which the entire electoral process
is organized to favor imperial outcomes in most Third World countries.
The second is to recognize that some regimes are extremely vulnerable
to imperial electoral strategies –because they are corrupt,
elitist and divorced from organized independent mass support.
This is most notable in the former Eastern European and ex-Soviet
Republics where the ruling elites have used state enterprises
for personal enrichment, creating a new oligarchical class of
predators who try to play off Russia against the EU and the US.
These regimes manipulate voter outcomes to remain in power –
but have little or no capacity or interest in mobilizing significant
sectors of the population in the face of US-NGO orchestrated street
protesters. In many cases these regimes may have originally been
encouraged or supported by Washington in the break-up of the Soviet
Union but subsequently may have used up their credibility, retained
some economic and military links to Russia, a mixed state-private
economy, or “privatized” economic enterprises under
circumstances in which local cronies were favored and major foreign
investors excluded.
The two countries which have, at least for an extended period,
won elections contested by imperial clients are Nicaragua (1984)
and President Chavez in Venezuela (1998 to the present 2005).
In both countries the regimes carried out important socio-economic
reforms which elicited wide-spread mass support, governed with
a modicum of honesty under the law, secured the loyalty of at
least sectors of the military and had some access to mass media
outlets. Most of all these regimes engaged organized masses in
class and national struggles which politicized and mobilized them
and created a level of anti-imperialist consciousness and independent
class-based national organizations. In the case of both countries
successful struggles against local imperial clients created an
identity of interest between regimes and mass supporters which
were instrumental in neutralizing the corrupting influx of massive
imperial funding of local clients and the propaganda effects of
imperial funded mass media outlets.
Nevertheless,
in Nicaragua a prolonged war of attrition (over a decade) which
destroyed the economy and the unregulated electoral process allowed
the US to pour tens of millions of dollars to promote NGOs, political
parties and mass media outlets, resulting in an electoral victory
for Washington’s electoral clients in 1989.
In
Venezuela, the unregulated electoral process allows ongoing US
intervention of electoral processes and penetration of “civil
society” organizations despite resounding defeats of imperial
clients in municipal, gubernatorial, congressional and presidential
elections. Washington’s shift to military threats has not
precluded funding of local elites, and Colombian paramilitary
and military forces poised to intervene on any pretext.
In
these circumstances of pervasive and persistent imperialist penetration
of civil society and massive intervention in the electoral process
what can be done to protect and promote citizen choice and free
elections (that is – free of imperial intervention)? How
can the integrity of the electoral process be protected from the
massive intrusion of public and “private” imperial
funding and training operations?
First
of all, free elections cannot take place unless national independence
and popular sovereignty is put at the center of political practice
and discourse. The left and progressive intellectuals and politicians
have totally ignored the vital issue of national security and
the measures necessary to protect the electoral process from imperial
penetration. Virtually no serious debate or discussion of practical
policies has taken place within left movements, parties, journals
or social forums, despite the widespread and pervasive nature
of imperial intervention in electoral processes. History teaches
us that this ignorance or ‘laisser faire’ attitude
has disastrous results in political terms (destroying democratic
procedures and the integrity of free elections) as well as catastrophic
socio-economic consequences, by bringing to power pro-Western
predator regimes which sell off strategic resources to multi-national
corporations at bargain prices and impose IMF austerity programs.
Clearly new electoral and political regulations and laws are in
order.
In
the first place legal measures must be passed which prohibit any
and all funding by imperial sources or their “front groups”
of local political parties or social organizations. All groups
which receive foreign funding must register as foreign agents
and face stiff jail sentences and fines if they fail to register.
Secondly
all funding for electoral and social activity over a given level
must be accounted for before an impartial tribunal.
Thirdly
groups or institutions acting in concert with armed imperial organizations
or clients to overthrow legally constituted regimes should be
subject to public prosecution, and their property confiscated.
“Private” foundations with a history of imperial collaboration
in destabilizing regimes should be denied licenses and their recruiting
activities terminated.
The
purpose of these electoral regulations is to level the playing
field for electoral competition and to eliminate many of the financial
and political advantages which the imperial infiltrators utilize
to manipulate elections. Tighter regulations on the use of the
mass media and media ownership, and the opening of media channels
for the expression of popular views and organizations should create
a pluralistic exchange of ideas. Restriction on the ownership
of media outlets by foreign interests would constrain imperial
media propaganda and incitement to violence. Consolidation of
national independence requires the limitation of imperial penetration
of civil society and the state (especially the military). All
joint military activities with imperial powers should be curtailed
and overseas educational programs should be regulated to ensure
that students avoid the major propaganda mills in the overseas
studies programs, especially in the social sciences, law and commercial
schools. A balance needs to be established between openness to
diverse cultural influences and exchange of ideas and the need
to eliminate the negative influence of cultural imperialism and
recruitment of future clients.
While
these and other regulations of political and electoral processes
are necessary, they are not sufficient or even effective if there
is no deliberate effort to politicize and educate civil society.
Mass democratic organizations, class based social and economic
reforms, citizens militias, defense of the national economy and
open public debate can create a democratic class consciousness
and minimizes imperialist media manipulation and the provision
of monetary enticements to act via phony ‘civil society’
organizations. Vigorously enforced security and electoral regulations
and an active participatory citizenry which experiences the positive
effects of egalitarian socio-economic reforms are the best way
to ensure that free elections take place in the service of democracy
and not empire building.
James
Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton
University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle,
is an adviser to the landless and jobless in brazil and argentina
and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). He
can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu