Volume 4 | Issue 5 | Article ID 1644 | May 06, 2006 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus

Exporting the American Model: Markets and Democracy

Chalmers Johnson

Exporting the American Model: Markets andIndonesia, Indochina, Algeria, Korea, the Democracy Philippines, Malaya, and virtually all of Africa by European, American, and Japanese By Chalmers Johnson imperialists. [This interview with Chalmers Johnson first We Americans have never outgrown the appeared at Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the narcissistic notion that the rest of the world Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of wants (or should want) to emulate us. In , alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom bringing democracy became the default excuse Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co- for our warmongers -- it would be perfectly founder of the American Project and plausible to call them "crusaders," if Osama bin author of The End of Victory Culture.] Laden had not already appropriated the term -- once the Bush lies about Iraq's alleged nuclear, There is something absurd and inherently false chemical, and biological threats and its support about one country trying to impose its system of government or its economic institutions on for al Qaeda melted away. Bush and his neocon another. Such an enterprise amounts to a supporters have prattled on endlessly about dictionary definition of imperialism. When how "the world is hearing the voice of freedom what's at issue is "democracy," you have the from the center of the Middle East," but the fallacy of using the end to justify the means reality is much closer to what Noam Chomsky (making war on those to be democratized), and dubbed "deterring democracy" in a notable in the process the leaders of the missionary 1992 book of that name. We have done country are invariably infected with the sins of everything in our power to see that the Iraqis hubris, racism, and arrogance. did not get a "free and fair election," one in which the Shia majority could come to power We Americans have long been guilty of these and ally Iraq with Iran. As Noah Feldman, the crimes. On the eve of our entry into World War Coalition Provisional Authority's law advisor, I, William Jennings Bryan, President Woodrow put it in November 2003, "If you move too fast Wilson's first secretary of state, described the the wrong people could get elected." United States as "the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter In the election of January 30, 2005, the U.S. of the world's disputes." If there is onemilitary tried to engineer the outcome it historical generalization that the passage of wanted ("Operation Founding Fathers"), but time has validated, it is that the world could not the Shiites won anyway. Nearly a year later in help being better off if the American president the December 15, 2005 elections for the had not believed such nonsense and if the national assembly, the Shiites won again, but United States had minded its own business in Sunni, Kurdish, and American pressure has the war between the British and German delayed the formation of a government to this . We might well have avoided Nazism, moment. After a compromise candidate for the Bolshevik Revolution, and another thirty to prime minister was finally selected, two of the forty years of the exploitation of ,most ominous condottiere of the Bush

1 4 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF administration, Secretary of State Condoleezza are various well-known ways to do this, but the Rice and Secretary of Defense Donaldemphasis should be on shared institutions. Rumsfeld, flew into Baghdad to tell him what he had to do for "democracy" -- leaving the With that in mind, let's consider the export of unmistakable impression that the new prime the American economic, and then democratic minister is a puppet of the United States. "model" to Asia. The countries stretching from Japan to Indonesia, with the exception of the Hold the Economic Advice former American colony of the Philippines, make up one of the richest regions on Earth After Latin America, East Asia is the area of the today. They include the second most productive world longest under America's imperialist country in the world, Japan, with a per capita tutelage. If you want to know something about income well in excess of that of the United the U.S. record in exporting its economic and States, as well as the world's fastest growing political institutions, it's a good place to look. large economy, China's, which has been But first, some definitions. expanding at a rate of over 9.5% per annum for the past two decades. These countries achieved The political philosopher Hannah Arendt once their economic well-being by ignoring virtually argued that democracy is such an abused every item of wisdom preached in American concept we should dismiss as a charlatan economics departments and business schools anyone who uses it in serious discourse without or propounded by various American first clarifying what he or she means by it. administrations. Therefore, let me indicate what I mean by democracy. First, the acceptance within a Japan established the regional model for East society of the principle that public opinion Asia. In no case did the other high-growth matters. If it doesn't, as for example in Stalin's Asian economies follow Japan's path precisely, Russia, or present-day Saudi Arabia, or the but they have all been inspired by the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa under overarching characteristic of the Japanese American military domination, then it hardly economic system -- namely, the combining of matters what rituals of American democracy, the private ownership of property as a genuine such as elections, may be practiced. right, defensible in law and inheritable, with Second, there must be some internal balance of state control of economic goals, markets, and power or separation of powers, so that it is outcomes. I am referring to what the Japanese impossible for an individual leader to become a call "industrial policy" (sangyo seisaku). In dictator. If power is concentrated in a single American economic theory (if not in practice), position and its occupant claims to be beyond industrial policy is anathema. It contradicts the legal restraints, as is true today with our idea of an unconstrained market guided by president, then democracy becomes attenuated laissez faire. Nonetheless, the American or only pro forma. In particular, I look for the military-industrial complex and our elaborate existence and practice of administrative law -- system of "military Keynesianism" rely on a in other words, an independent, constitutional Pentagon-run industrial policy -- even as court with powers to declare null and void laws American theory denies that either the military- that contravene democratic safeguards. industrial complex or economic dependence on arms manufacturing are significant factors in Third, there must be some agreed-uponour economic life. We continue to procedure for getting rid of unsatisfactory underestimate the high-growth economies of leaders. Periodic elections, parliamentary votes East Asia because of the power of our of no confidence, term limits, and impeachment ideological blinders.

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One particular form of American economic Cambodia until we were finally expelled from influence did greatly affect East AsianIndochina. In addition, we ran among the most economic practice -- namely, protectionism and extensive international terrorist operations in the control of competition through high tariffs history against Cuba and Nicaragua because and other forms of state discrimination against their struggles for national independence foreign imports. This was the primary economic produced outcomes that we did not like. policy of the United States from its founding until 1940. Without it, American economic On the other hand, democracy did develop in wealth of the sort to which we have become some important cases as a result of opposition accustomed would have been inconceivable. to our interference -- for example, after the The East Asian countries have emulated the collapse of the CIA-installed Greek colonels in U.S. in this respect. They are interested in what 1974; in both Portugal in 1974 and Spain in the U.S. does, not what it preaches. That is one 1975 after the end of the U.S.-supported fascist of the ways they all got rich. China is today dictatorships; after the overthrow of Ferdinand pursuing a variant of the basic Japanese Marcos in the Philippines in 1986; following the development strategy, even though it does not, ouster of General Chun Doo Hwan in South of course, acknowledge this. Korea in 1987; and following the ending of thirty-eight years of martial law on the island of Marketing Democracy Taiwan in the same year.

The gap between preaching and self-deception One might well ask, however: What about the in the way we promote democracy abroad is case of Japan? President Bush has repeatedly even greater than in selling our economic cited our allegedly successful installation of ideology. Our record is one of continuous democracy there after World War II as (sometimes unintended) failure, although most evidence of our skill in this kind of activity. establishment pundits try to camouflage this What this experience proved, he contended, fact. was that we would have little difficulty The Federation of American Scientists has implanting democracy in Iraq. As it happens compiled a list of over 201 overseas military though, General Douglas MacArthur, who operations from the end of World War II until headed the American occupation of defeated September 11, 2001 in which we were involved Japan from 1945 to 1951, was himself and normally struck the first blow. (The list is essentially a dictator, primarily concerned with reprinted by Gore Vidal in Perpetual War for blocking genuine democracy from below in Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated, favor of hand-picked puppets and collaborators pp. 22-41.) The current wars in from the prewar Japanese establishment. and Iraq are not included. In no instance did democratic governments come about as a When a country loses a war as crushingly as direct result of any of these military activities. Japan did the war in the Pacific, it can expect a domestic revolution against its wartime The United States holds the unenviable record leaders. In accordance with the terms of the of having helped install and then supported Potsdam Declaration, which Japan accepted in such dictators as the Shah of Iran, General surrendering, the State Department instructed Suharto in Indonesia, Fulgencio Batista in MacArthur not to stand in the way of a popular Cuba, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Augusto revolution, but when it began to materialize he Pinochet in Chile, and Sese Seko Mobutu in did so anyway. He chose to keep Hirohito, the Congo-Zaire, not to mention a series ofwartime emperor, on the throne (where he American-backed militarists in Vietnam and remained until his death in 1989) and helped

3 4 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF bring officials from the industrial and militarist popular aspirations -- or movements toward classes that ruled wartime Japan back to nationalist independence from American power. Except for a few months in 1993 and control. In Asia, in the post-World War II 1994, those conservatives and their successors period, we pursued such anti-democratic have ruled Japan continuously since 1949. policies in , the Philippines, Japan and China are today among the longest- Thailand, Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, and lived single-party regimes on Earth, both Vietnam), and Japan. In Japan, in order to parties -- the nucleus of the Liberal Democratic prevent the Socialist Party from coming to Party and the Chinese Communist Party -- power through the polls, which seemed likely having come to power in the same year. during the 1950s, we secretly supplied funds to the representatives of the old order in the Equally important in the Japanese case,Liberal Democratic Party. We helped bring General MacArthur's headquarters actually wartime Minister of Munitions Nobusuke Kishi wrote the quite democratic Constitution of to power as prime minister in 1957; split the 1947 and bestowed it on the Japanese people Socialist Party by promoting and financing a under circumstances in which they had no rival Democratic Socialist Party; and, in 1960, alternative but to accept it. In her 1963 book backed the conservatives in a period of vast On Revolution, Hannah Arendt stresses "the popular demonstrations against the renewal of enormous difference in power and authority the Japanese-American Security Treaty. Rather between a constitution imposed by athan developing as an independent democracy, government upon a people and the constitution Japan became a docile satellite of the by which a people constitutes its ownUnited States -- and one with an extremely government." She notes that, in post-World inflexible political system at that. War I Europe, virtually every case of an imposed constitution led to dictatorship or to a The Korean Case lack of power, authority, and stability. In South Korea, the United States resorted to Although public opinion certainly matters in far sterner measures. From the outset, we Japan, its democratic institutions have never favored those who had collaborated with Japan, been fully tested. The Japanese public knows whereas North Korea built its regime on the that its constitution was bestowed by its foundation of former guerrilla fighters against conqueror, not generated from below by Japanese rule. During the 1950s, we backed the popular action. Japan's stability depends aged exile Syngman Rhee as our puppet greatly on the ubiquitous presence of the dictator. (He had actually been a student of United States, which supplies the national Woodrow Wilson's at Princeton early in the defense – and so, implicitly, the fairly evenly century.) When, in 1960, a student movement distributed wealth -- that gives the public a overthrew Rhee's corrupt regime and stake in the regime. But the Japanese people, attempted to introduce democracy, we instead as well as those of the rest of East Asia, remain supported the seizure of power by General Park fearful of Japan's ever again being on its own in Chung Hee. the world. Educated at the Japanese military academy in While more benign than the norm, Japan's Manchuria during the colonial period, Park had government is typical of the U.S. record abroad been an officer in the Japanese army of in one major respect. Successive American occupation until 1945. He ruled Korea from administrations have consistently favored 1961 until October 16, 1979, when the chief of oligarchies that stand in the way of broad the Korean Central Intelligence Agency shot

4 4 | 5 | 0 APJ | JF him to death over dinner. The South Korean Olympics to go ahead, Roh instituted a measure public believed that the KCIA chief, known to of democratic reform, which led in 1993 to the be "close" to the Americans, had assassinated holding of national elections and the victory of Park on U.S. orders because he was attempting a civilian president, Kim Young Sam. to develop a nuclear-weapons program which the U.S. opposed. (Does this sound familiar?) In December 1995, in one of the clearest signs After Park's death, Major General Chun Doo of South Korea's maturing democracy, the Hwan seized power and instituted yet another government arrested generals Chun Doo Hwan military dictatorship that lasted until 1987. and Roh Tae Woo and charged them with having shaken down Korean big business for In 1980, a year after the Park assassination, bribes -- Chun Doo Hwan allegedly took $1.2 Chun smashed a popular movement forbillion and Roh Tae Woo $630 million. democracy that broke out in the southwestern President Kim then made a very popular city of Kwangju and among students in the decision, letting them be indicted for their capital, Seoul. Backing Chun's policies, the U. military seizure of power in 1979 and for the S. ambassador argued that "firm anti-riot Kwangju massacre as well. In August 1996, a measures were necessary." The American South Korean court found both Chun and Roh military then released to Chun's control Korean guilty of sedition. Chun was sentenced to death troops assigned to the U.N. Command to and Roh to twenty-two-and-a-half years in defend the country against a North Korean prison. In April 1997, the Korean Supreme attack, and he used them to crush theCourt upheld slightly less severe sentences, movement in Kwangju. Thousands of pro- something that would have been simply democracy demonstrators were killed. In 1981, unimaginable for the pro forma Japanese Chun Doo Hwan would be the first foreign Supreme Court. In December 1997, after peace visitor welcomed to the White House by the activist Kim Dae Jung was elected president, he newly elected Ronald Reagan. pardoned them both despite the fact that Chun had repeatedly tried to have Kim killed. After more than thirty postwar years, democracy finally began to come to South The United States was always deeply involved Korea in 1987 via a popular revolution from in these events. In 1989, when the Korean below. Chun Doo Hwan made a strategic National Assembly sought to investigate what mistake by winning the right to hold the happened at Kwangju on its own, the U.S. Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988. In the lead-up government refused to cooperate and to the games, students from the manyprohibited the former American ambassador to universities in Seoul, now openly backed by an Seoul and the former general in command of increasingly prosperous middle class, began to U.S. Forces Korea from testifying. The protest American-backed military rule. Chun American press avoided reporting on these would normally have used his army to arrest, events (while focusing on the suppression of imprison, and probably shoot suchpro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing in June demonstrators as he had done in Kwangju 1989), and most Americans knew next to seven years earlier; but he was held back by nothing about them. This cover-up of the costs the knowledge that, if he did so, theof military rule and the suppression of International Olympic Committee would move democracy in South Korea, in turn, has the games to some other country. In order to contributed to the present growing hostility of avoid such a national humiliation, Chun turned South Koreans toward the United States. over power to his co-conspirator of 1979-80, General Roh Tae Woo. In order to allow the Unlike American-installed or supported

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"democracies" elsewhere, South Korea has having terrorized the country through the use developed into a genuine democracy. Public of unrestricted military force. opinion is a vital force in the society. A separation of powers has been institutionalized Bremer is a former assistant and employee of and is honored. Electoral competition for all Henry Kissinger and General Alexander Haig. political offices is intense, with high levels of Negroponte was American ambassador to participation by voters. These achievements Honduras, 1981-85, when it had the world's came from below, from the Korean people largest CIA station and actively participated in themselves, who liberated their country from the dirty war to suppress Nicaraguan American-backed military dictatorship. Perhaps democracy. Khalilzad, the most prominent most important, the Korean National Assembly official of Afghan ancestry in the Bush -- the parliament -- is a genuine forum for administration, is a member of the Project for a democratic debate. I have visited it often and New American Century, the neocon pressure find the contrast with the scripted and empty group that lobbied for a war of aggression procedures encountered in the Japanese Diet or against Iraq. The role of the American military the Chinese National People's Congressin our war there has been an unmitigated striking indeed. Perhaps its only rival in terms disaster on every front, including the of democratic vitality in East Asia is the deployment of undisciplined, brutal troops at Taiwanese Legislative Yuan. On someplaces like the Abu Ghraib prison. All the occasions, the Korean National Assembly is United States has achieved is to guarantee that rowdy; fist fights are not uncommon. It is, Iraqis will hate us for years to come. The however, a true school of democracy, one that situation in Iraq today is worse than it was in came into being despite the resistance of the Japan or Korea and comparable to our tenure in United States. Vietnam. Perhaps it is worth reconsidering what exactly we are so intent on exporting to The Democracy Peddlers the world.

Given this history, why should we be surprised Chalmers Johnson is, most recently, the author that in Baghdad, such figures as former head of of The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, the Coalition Provisional Authority L. Paul and the End of the Republic, as well as of MITI Bremer III, former Ambassador Johnand the Japanese Miracle (1982) and Japan: Negroponte, and present Ambassador Zalmay Who Governs? (1995) among other works. This Khalilzad, as well as a continuously changing piece originated as "remarks" presented at the cohort of American major-generals fresh from East Asia panel of a workshop on power-point lectures at the American"Transplanting Institutions" sponsored by the Enterprise Institute, should have produced Department of Sociology of the University of chaos and probable civil war? None of them has California, San Diego, held on April 21, 2006. any qualifications at all for trying to "introduce The chairman of the workshop was Professor democracy" or American-style capitalism in a Richard Madsen. highly nationalistic Muslim nation, and even if they did, they could not escape the onus of Posted on Japan Focus May 16, 2006.

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