THE COLD WAR 1945-1973

Learning Objective I

Discuss the origins of the Cold War

If we want to gain a better understanding of the world in which we live, we must go back at least to the end of World War II. That war has been described by some historians as the continuation of World War I. At the end of World War I, the statesmen of Europe and the United States had met in Paris to make a peace that would prevent a repetition of another world war . In this they failed miserably because within 20 years the world became involved in a costlier war ... World War II.

Given the earlier failure in 1919, one would have expected the victors in 1945 to have learned from past mistakes and to have given careful thought in advance to the kind of world they hoped to create, once the fighting was over.

The Cold War is the story of two great powers with each with a expectations as to how the other should behave, which neither was willing to fulfill.

The question, "Who started the Cold War?" has little meaning; the important question is, "Why did it happen?". It is impossible to understand the dynamics of this conflict without keeping in mind the stage on which the opening act began in 1945.

In 1945 the Soviet Union and the United States renewed the mutual hostility that had started in 1917. By 1945, each country perceived the other as having gone back on promises and posing a major military threat to its national security.

The war, which had brought all other participants close to economic ruin, victor and vanquished alike, had restored the American economy after the Great Depression and left the United States in a position to manage the reconstruction of the world economy.

True, she was unquestionably the number two power in the world, in part because of her impressive military victories over Hitler, BUT principally because "victory" had spelled the end of the British and French empires that had long dominated European politics, along of course, with the Italian, German, and Japanese empires. Soviet troops were in the middle of Europe, but the new Soviet empire was shaky indeed.

As a result of this imperial creed the Truman administration saw nothing anomalous about insisting on the very rights for the number one power that they would deny the No. 2 power. American diplomats saw nothing wrong with the double standard and believed that the Soviet Union ought to behave in accordance with the new balance of power in the world and expected that the military superiority that the atomic bomb had brought it, together with America's economic strength, would insure a properly "cooperative" Soviet policy.

The defeat of Germany and Japan did not bring stability to the world. Within two years of the end of World War II, the United States was engaged in a global ideological struggle with the Soviet Union that historians call the Cold War.

The United States government developed a Cold War mentality, characterized by a FEAR OF COMMUNIST expansion and a tendency to interpret all revolutionary activity as part of a monolithic communist movement controlled by Moscow.

On the other hand the Soviet Union developed a FEAR OF CAPITALISM and its tendencies towards the creation of economic slaves. Hence; the Soviet Union viewed American economic and political initiatives throughout the world as a threat to its security. Stalin emerged from World War II

resolved to preserve the Soviet state in what he believed to be an even more hostile environment than before the war. Suspicious by nature, conscious that the Nazis were only the latest of a wave of foreign invaders that had ravaged the Russian soil throughout her history, AWARE that a fundamentally anti-Soviet capitalist state had become the giant among nations, Stalin became was obsessed with the question of NATIONAL SECURITY. Hitler was the only man Stalin had ever trusted and he betrayed Stalin and almost cost him his empire.

The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union began gradually. But as mentioned the United States had refused to recognize the Bolshevik revolutionary government in Moscow until it was 16 years old, in 1933. More important Soviet suspicions of the West began to become very strong in 1942 and again in 1943 when the British and United States twice delayed in opening up a SECOND FRONT against Germany, while the red army paid a ghastly price to roll the Nazi invaders back across Russia and Eastern Europe.

For two years (1945-47) after World War II the nations tried to adjust their differences over the (1) division of Europe, (2) postwar economic aid, and (3) the atomic bomb through discussion and negotiation.

The Soviet Union consolidated its grip on Eastern Europe in 1946 and

1947. One by one, Communist regimes replaced coalition governments in Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. Moving cautiously to avoid provoking the West, Stalin used communism as a means to dominate half of Europe, both to protect the security of the

Soviet state and to advance its international power.

Both sides were intent on imposing their values in the areas liberated by their troops. The Russians were no more likely to withdraw from Eastern Europe than the United States and Britain were from Germany , France, and Italy. A FRANK RECOGNITION OF COMPETING SPHERES OF INFLUENCE MIGHT HAVE AVOIDED FURTHER ESCALATION OF TENSION.

But the Western nations , remembering Hitler's aggression in the 1930's, began to see Stalin as an equally dangerous threat to their well-being. Instead of accepting him as a cautious leader bent on protecting Russian security, they perceived him as an aggressive dictator leading a Communist drive for world domination.

Postwar economic aid: World War II had inflicted enormous damage on Russia. The brutal fighting had taken between 16 and 20 million Russian lives, destroyed over 30 thousand factories, and tom up 40 thousand miles of railroad track. The industrialization that Stalin had achieved at such great sacrifice in the 1930's had been badly set back; even agricultural production had fallen by half during the war . OUTSIDE AID AND ASSISTANCE WERE VITAL FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SOVIET UNION .

American leaders knew of Russia's plight and hoped to use it to good advantage. Wartime ambassador Averell Harriman wrote in 1944 that economic aid was "one of the most effective weapons at our disposal" in dealing with Russia. Truman was convinced that economically "we held all the cards and the Russians had to come to us." In January 1945, the Soviets requested a $6 billion loan to finance postwar reconstruction. Despite initial American encouragement , Roosevelt deferred action on this request ; as relations with Russia cooled, and Truman became President in April the chances for action dimmed. While at the same time the United States rubbed salt in Soviet wounds when it abruptly terminated vital lend-lease aid to battered Russia and spumed Moscow's plea for the $6 billion loan it gave a similar loan of $3.75 billion to the British. Deprived of American assistance, the Soviets were forced to rebuild their economy through reparations. The Soviets systematically removed factories and plants from areas they controlled, including their zone of Germany, Eastern Europe, and Manchuria. Slowly the Soviet economy recovered from the war, but the bitterness over the American refusal to extend aid convinced Stalin of Western hostility and thus deepened the growing antagonism.

The atomic bomb: The inability to reach agreement on international control of the atomic bomb greatly added to the mounting tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. With the successful use by the United States in August 1945, of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the new weapon raised problems that would have been difficult for friendly nations to resolve. GIVEN THE UNEASY STATE OF SOVIET-AMERICAN RELATIONS, THE EFFECT WAS DISASTROUS.

The wartime policy followed by Roosevelt and Churchill ensured a postwar nuclear arms race. Instead of informing their major ally of the developing atomic bomb in the late 1930's and early 40's they kept it a closely guarded secret. Stalin learned of the Manhattan Project through espionage and responded by starting a Soviet atomic program in 1943, which he completed in 1949.

After the war and BEFORE the Soviets developed their atomic bomb the United States wanted to develop a disarmament plan which was based on (1) sanctions by the United Nations against violators of the ban on production of the bomb, (2) inspections and (3) taking away the ·veto power the "Big Five" (including the Soviets) had in the Security Council on all matters involving atomic energy. THE NET EFFECT OF THIS PLAN WOULD PRESERVE THE AMERICAN ATOMIC MONOPOLY FOR THE INDEFINITE FUTURE. The Soviets advocated immediate disarmament hoping to neutralize the United States advantage.

These responses were predictable and no agreement was possible. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could abandon its position without surrendering a vital national interest. The nuclear dilemma, inherent in the Soviet- American rivalry, blocked any national settlement. Instead the 2 superpowers agreed to disagree.

Since neither side trusted the other nor any form of international cooperation, each concentrated on taking maximum advantage of its wartime gains. THUS THE SOVIETS EXPLOITED THE TERRITORY THEY HAD CONQUERED IN EUROPE WHILE THE UNITED STATES RETAINED ITS ECONOMIC AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGES OVER THE SOVIET UNION.

Learning Objective II

Discuss the policy of “containment” and the FIVE Phases of its development:

In March 1947 Truman asked Congress for $400 million for military and economic aid and at the same time stated: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure."

In less than 2 years, the civil war in Greece ended, but the American commitment to oppose Communist expansion, whether by internal subversion or external aggression, placed the United States on a collision course with the Soviet Union around the world ...Korea and Vietnam.

In using the atomic bomb, historians initially agreed that ending World War II dominated the president's thinking in the summer of 1945. However, in recent years revisionists have argued that Truman's desire to practice what historian Gar Alperovitz aptly calls "atomic diplomacy" strongly affected his decision to authorize the nuclear attack on Japan. According to this thesis, Truman sought to influence Soviet policy by dramatically proving that the United States possessed an unprecedentedly destructive weapon that American leaders were willing to use against an enemy. With one awesome stroke Truman could show his mettle as a tough warrior, end the war, depreciate the Soviet Union's claim to share the occupation of Japan, and discourage Soviet communism's expansion into Europe and Asia.

Americans and Europeans alike were attempting to apply the lesson of Hitler to the Cold War. But Stalin was not Hitler, and the Soviets were not the Nazis. There was no evidence of any Russian plan to invade Western Europe, and in the face of the American atomic bomb, none was likely. All NATO DID WAS TO INTENSIFY RUSSIAN FEARS OF THE WEST AND THUS INCREASE THE LEVEL OF INTERNATIONAL TENSION.

True rivalry that began in Europe would soon spread into a worldwide contest between the superpowers. By 1950 the Cold War had taken on global proportions.

The two superpowers pulled out most of their occupation forces by 1949. The Russians, however, helped train a well-equipped army in the North, while the United States... fearful that the South would seek unification through armed conquest... gave much more limited military assistance to South Korea.

On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army suddenly crossed the 38th parallel in great strength. Truman saw the invasion as a clear-cut case of Soviet aggression reminiscent of the 1930's. "Communism was acting in Korea just as Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese had acted ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier." Within a few days, American troops from Japan were in combat in South Korea. The c0nflict, which would last for more than three years, was technically a police action fought under UN auspices; in reality, the United States was at war with a Soviet satellite in Asia.

After a year of rapid movement up and down the Korean peninsula, the fighting stalled just north of the 38th parallel. The resulting truce line has divided North and South Korea ever since the July 1953 amnestic.

SECOND PHASE

The second phase of the Cold War came about as a result of (1) the atomic stalemate,

(2) death of Stalin in May, 1953, and (3) the change in political leadership in the United States ushered in "competitive coexistence" 1953-1961, (competing in a nuclear anns race with the threat of massive retaliation) or a SECOND phase of the Cold War. During the Eisenhower administration two key changes in foreign policy developed.

If the nation's major foreign enemy was a worldwide communist movement led by Moscow, they reasoned, the United States did not need to keep a large number of soldiers under arms, because atomic weapons could threaten the Soviet Union directly and force it to back down.

To accomplish this goal the Eisenhower administration expanded its commitment to develop the hydrogen bomb, which they tested in the atmosphere between 1954 and 1958.

This did little to improve the nation's security, as the Soviets matched the United States weapon for weapon in an escalating arms race. While the Soviet Union viewed the Eisenhower- Dulles policies of anticommunist alliances, and massive deterrence as inherently hostile, Eisenhower continued to work toward a negotiated arms limitation agreement. With new long-range ballistic missiles being perfected, it was only a matter of time before Russia and the United States would be capable of destroying each other completely. PEACE, AS WINSTON CHURCHILL NOTED, NOW DEPENDED ON A BALANCE OF TERROR.

In 1953, in order to protect the United States interest in the Middle East the CIA was instrumental in overthrowing a popularly elected government in Iran and placing the Shah in full control of that country. Closer to home, in Cuba, in 1961 Kennedy continued this policy with the Bay of Pigs.

Third and Fourth Phase

While the Eisenhower administration viewed containment through nuclear weapons by use of the strategy of "massive retaliation;" the Kennedy administration would introduce a Third phase on containment which was the ability to mount a "flexible response," one precisely calibrated to meet actual situations that arose.

With the political situation in Saigon growing more hopeless every day, Johnson advisers urged the bombing of the North as the only conceivable solution. American air attacks would serve several purposes: they would block North Vietnamese infiltration routes, make Hanoi pay a heavy price for its role, and lift the sagging morale of the South Vietnamese.

The air strikes, aimed at impeding the Communist supply line and damaging Hanoi's economy, proved ineffective. Johnson then authorized the use of American ground forces in South Vietnam, but he restricted them to defensive operations intended to protect American air bases.

Rejecting the clear-cut alternatives of withdrawal or the massive use of force, Johnson settled for military escalation designed compel Hanoi to accept a diplomatic solution.

In July of 1965, Johnson permitted a gradual increase in the bombing of North Vietnam and allowed American ground commanders to conduct combat operations in the South. These decisions formed an open-ended commitment to employ American military forces as the situation demanded. Convinced that withdrawal would destroy American credibility before the world and that an invasion of the North would lead to World War III, Johnson opted for large-scale but limited military intervention.

Phase Five

With Richard Nixon the Cold War and Vietnam war would come to and end in phase FIVE. Nixon had a three part plan to end the conflict... (1) renewed bombing, (2) a hard line in negotiations with Hanoi, (3) and the gradual withdrawal of American troops. The last tactic, known as Vietnamization, proved the most successful. The plan involved training the troops of South Vietnam to take over the American combat role. The number of American soldiers in Vietnam dropped from 543,000 in 1968 to under 30,000 by 1972, resulting in domestic opposition to the war dropping sharply.

Thus phase FIVE leads to the so-called Nixon Doctrine; which proclaimed that the United States could no longer do it all--that is, provide all the plans, programs, decisions, and defense for the free world. The Doctrine claimed that in the future, Asians and others would have to fight their own wars }Vithout the support of large bodies of American ground troops.

In sum, perhaps the Nixon Doctrine was not a new diplomacy, or at least not to the extent its supporters claimed. Some of the assumptions of the Cold War were passing from American policy by 1969, such as the belief in American having unlimited or universal power and vague ideas about what constituted a threat to American national interests.

Nixon's Detente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with - China seemed signs of a new policy. But there were other signs that the Nixon Doctrine may have been no more than a reasonable attempt to bring American policy into line with capabilities, to draw back definitions of interest to correspond with what American could afford to do and could hope to accomplish.

The Nixon Doctrine was a necessary corrective after a generation of Cold War in which American political and military expanded, in which Americans shouldered burden after burden, only to learn in the latter 1960's that they had overreached their resources.

The climax and final phase of the Cold War came during the Reagan administration (1981-1989).

Learning Objective III

Describe the legacy and consequences of the Cold War

A BRIEFING ON THE HISTORY

OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

By Zoltán Grossman, October 2001

Published in Z magazine. Translations in Italian Polish

Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, most people in the world agree that the perpetrators need to be brought to justice, without killing many thousands of civilians in the process. But unfortunately, the U.S. military has always accepted massive civilian deaths as part of the cost of war. The military is now poised to kill thousands of foreign civilians, in order to prove that killing U.S. civilians is wrong.

The media has told us repeatedly that some Middle Easterners hate the U.S. only because of our "freedom" and "prosperity." Missing from this explanation is the historical context of the U.S. role in the Middle East, and for that matter in the rest of the world. This basic primer is an attempt to brief readers who have not closely followed the history of U.S. foreign or military affairs, and are perhaps unaware of the background of U.S. military interventions abroad, but are concerned about the direction of our country toward a new war in the name of "freedom" and "protecting civilians."

The United States military has been intervening in other countries for a long time. In 1898, it seized the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico from Spain, and in 1917-18 became embroiled in World War I in Europe. In the first half of the 20th century it repeatedly sent Marines to "protectorates" such as Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. All these interventions directly served corporate interests, and many resulted in massive losses of civilians, rebels, and soldiers. Many of the uses of U.S. combat forces are documented in A History of U.S. Military Interventions since 1890:http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

U.S. involvement in World War II (1941-45) was sparked by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and fear of an Axis invasion of North America. Allied bombers attacked fascist military targets, but also fire-bombed German and Japanese cities such as Dresden and Tokyo, party under the assumption that destroying civilian neighborhoods would weaken the resolve of the survivors and turn them against their regimes. Many historians agree that fire- bombing's effect was precisely the opposite--increasing Axis civilian support for homeland defense, and discouraging potential coup attempts. The atomic bombing of Japan at the end of the war was carried out without any kind of advance demonstration or warning that may have prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

The war in Korea (1950-53) was marked by widespread atrocities, both by North Korean/Chinese forces, and South Korean/U.S. forces. U.S. troops fired on civilian refugees headed into South Korea, apparently fearing they were northern infiltrators. Bombers attacked North Korean cities, and the U.S. twice threatened to use nuclear weapons. North Korea is under the same Communist government today as when the war began.

During the Middle East crisis of 1958, Marines were deployed to quell a rebellion in Lebanon, and Iraq was threatened with nuclear attack if it invaded Kuwait. This little-known crisis helped set U.S. foreign policy on a collision course with Arab nationalists, often in support of the region's monarchies.

In the early 1960s, the U.S. returned to its pre-World War II interventionary role in the Caribbean, directing the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs exile invasion of Cuba, and the 1965 bombing and Marine invasion of theDominican Republic during an election campaign. The CIA trained and harbored Cuban exile groups in Miami, which launched terrorist attacks on Cuba, including the 1976 downing of a Cuban civilian jetliner near Barbados. During the Cold War, the CIA would also help to support or install pro-U.S. dictatorships in Iran, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and many other countries around the world. 

The U.S. war in Indochina (1960-75) pit U.S. forces against North Vietnam, and Communist rebels fighting to overthrow pro-U.S. dictatorships in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. U.S. war planners made little or no distinction between attacking civilians and guerrillas in rebel-held zones, and U.S. "carpet-bombing" of the countryside and cities swelled the ranks of the ultimately victorious revolutionaries. Over two million people were killed in the war, including 55,000 U.S. troops. Less than a dozen U.S. citizens were killed on U.S. soil, in National Guard shootings or antiwar bombings. In Cambodia, the bombings drove the Khmer Rouge rebels toward fanatical leaders, who launched a murderous rampage when they took power in 1975.

Echoes of Vietnam reverberated in Central America during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration strongly backed the pro-U.S. regime in El Salvador, and right-wing exile forces fighting the new leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Rightist death squads slaughtered Salvadoran civilians who questioned the concentration of power and wealth in a few hands. CIA-trained Nicaraguan Contra rebels launched terrorist attacks against civilian clinics and schools run by the Sandinista government, and mined Nicaraguan harbors. U.S. troops also invaded the island nation of Grenada in 1983, to oust a new military regime, attacking Cuban civilian workers (even though Cuba had backed the leftist government deposed in the coup), and accidentally bombing a hospital.

The U.S. returned in force to the Middle East in 1980, after the Shi'ite Muslim revolution in Iran against Shah Pahlevi's pro-U.S. dictatorship. A troop and bombing raid to free U.S. Embassy hostages held in downtown Tehran had to be aborted in the Iranian desert.

After the 1982 Israeli occupation of Lebanon, U.S. Marines were deployed in a neutral "peacekeeping" operation. They instead took the side of Lebanon's pro-Israel Christian government against Muslim rebels, and U.S. Navy ships rained enormous shells on Muslim civilian villages. Embittered Shi'ite Muslim rebels responded with a suicide bomb attack on Marine barracks, and for years seized U.S. hostages in the country. In retaliation, the CIA set off car bombs to assassinate Shi'ite Muslim leaders. Syria and the Muslim rebels emerged victorious in Lebanon.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the U.S. launched a 1986 bombing raid on Libya, which it accused of sponsoring a terrorist bombing later tied to Syria. The bombing raid killed civilians, and may have led to the later revenge bombing of a U.S. jet over Scotland. Libya's Arab nationalist leader Muammar Qaddafi remained in power. The U.S. Navy also intervened against Iran during its war against Iraq in 1987-88, sinking Iranian ships and "accidentally" shooting down an Iranian civilian jetliner.

U.S. forces invaded Panama in 1989 to oust the nationalist regime of Manuel Noriega. The U.S. accused its former ally of allowing drug-running in the country, though the drug trade actually increased after his capture. U.S. bombing raids on Panama City ignited a conflagration in a civilian neighborhood, fed by stove gas tanks. Over 2,000 Panamanians were killed in the invasion to capture one leader.

The following year, the U.S. deployed forces in the Persian Gulf after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which turned Washington against its former Iraqi ally Saddam Hussein. U.S. supported the Kuwaiti monarchy and the Muslim fundamentalist monarchy in neighboring Saudi Arabia against the secular nationalist Iraq regime. In January 1991, the U.S..and its allies unleashed a massive bombing assault against Iraqi government and military targets, in an intensity beyond the raids of World War II and Vietnam. Up to 200,000 Iraqis were killed in the war and its imemdiate aftermath of rebellion and disease, including many civilians who died in their villages, neighborhoods, and bomb shelters. The U.S. continued economic sanctions that denied health and energy to Iraqi civilians, who died by the hundreds of thousands, according to United Nations agencies. The U.S. also instituted "no-fly zones" and virtually continuous bombing raids, yet Saddam was politically bolstered as he was militarily weakened.

In the 1990s, the U.S. military led a series of what it termed "humanitarian interventions" it claimed would safeguard civilians. Foremost among them was the 1992 deployment in the African nation of Somalia, torn by famine and a civil war between clan warlords. Instead of remaining neutral, U.S. forces took the side of one faction against another faction, and bombed a Mogadishu neighborhood. Enraged crowds, backed by foreign Arab mercenaries, killed 18 U.S. soldiers, forcing a withdrawal from the country.

Other so-called "humanitarian interventions" were centered in the Balkan region of Europe, after the 1992 breakup of the multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia. The U.S. watched for three years as Serb forces killed Muslim civilians in Bosnia, before its launched decisive bombing raids in 1995. Even then, it never intervened to stop atrocities by Croatian forces against Muslim and Serb civilians, because those forces were aided by the U.S. In 1999, the U.S. bombed Serbia to force President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw forces from the ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo, which was torn a brutal ethnic war. The bombing intensified Serbian expulsions and killings of Albanian civilians from Kosovo, and caused the deaths of thousands of Serbian civilians, even in cities that had voted strongly against Milosevic. When a NATO occupation force enabled Albanians to move back, U.S. forces did little or nothing to prevent similar atrocities against Serb and other non-Albanian civilians. The U.S. was viewed as a biased player, even by the Serbian democratic opposition that overthrew Milosevic the following year.

Even when the U.S. military had apparently defensive motives, it ended up attacking the wrong targets. After the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, the U.S. "retaliated" not only against Osama Bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, but a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that was mistakenly said to be a chemical warfare installation. Bin Laden retaliated by attacking a U.S. Navy ship docked in Yemen in 2000. After the 2001 terror attacks on the United States, the U.S. military is poised to again bomb Afghanistan, and possibly move against other states it accuses of promoting anti-U.S. "terrorism," such as Iraq and Sudan. Such a campaign will certainly ratchet up the cycle of violence, in an escalating series of retaliations that is the hallmark of Middle East conflicts. Afghanistan, like Yugoslavia, is a multiethnic state that could easily break apart in a new catastrophic regional war. Almost certainly more civilians would lose their lives in this tit-for-tat war on "terrorism" than the 3,000 civilians who died on September 11.

COMMON THEMES

Some common themes can be seen in many of these U.S. military interventions.

First, they were explained to the U.S. public as defending the lives and rights of civilian populations. Yet the military tactics employed often left behind massive civilian "collateral damage." War planners made little distinction between rebels and the civilians who lived in rebel zones of control, or between military assets and civilian infrastructure, such as train lines, water plants, agricultural factories, medicine supplies, etc. The U.S. public always believe that in the next war, new military technologies will avoid civilian casualties on the other side. Yet when the inevitable civilian deaths occur, they are always explained away as "accidental" or "unavoidable."

Second, although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites. Whether in Vietnam, Central America, or the Persian Gulf, the U.S. was not defending "freedom" but an ideological agenda (such as defending capitalism) or an economic agenda (such as protecting oil company investments). In the few cases when U.S. military forces toppled a dictatorship--such as in Grenada or Panama--they did so in a way that prevented the country's people from overthrowing their own dictator first, and installing a new democratic government more to their liking.

Third, the U.S. always attacked violence by its opponents as "terrorism," "atrocities against civilians," or "ethnic cleansing," but minimized or defended the same actions by the U.S. or its allies. If a country has the right to "end" a state that trains or harbors terrorists, would Cuba or Nicaragua have had the right to launch defensive bombing raids on U.S. targets to take out exile terrorists? Washington's double standard maintains that an U.S. ally's action by definition "defensive," but that an enemy's retaliation is by definition "offensive."

Fourth, the U.S. often portrays itself as a neutral peacekeeper, with nothing but the purest humanitarian motives. After deploying forces in a country, however, it quickly divides the country or region into "friends" and "foes," and takes one side against another. This strategy tends to enflame rather than dampen a war or civil conflict, as shown in the cases of Somalia and Bosnia, and deepens resentment of the U.S. role.

Fifth, U.S. military intervention is often counterproductive even if one accepts U.S. goals and rationales. Rather than solving the root political or economic roots of the conflict, it tends to polarize factions and further destabilize the country. The same countries tend to reappear again and again on the list of 20th century interventions.

Sixth, U.S. demonization of an enemy leader, or military action against him, tends to strengthen rather than weaken his hold on power. Take the list of current regimes most singled out for U.S. attack, and put it alongside of the list of regimes that have had the longest hold on power, and you will find they have the same names. Qaddafi, Castro, Saddam, Kim, and others may have faced greater internal criticism if they could not portray themselves as Davids standing up to the American Goliath, and (accurately) blaming many of their countries' internal problems on U.S. economic sanctions.

One of the most dangerous ideas of the 20th century was that "people like us" could not commit atrocities against civilians.

• German and Japanese citizens believed it, but their militaries slaughtered millions of people. 
• British and French citizens believed it, but their militaries fought brutal colonial wars in Africa and Asia.
• Russian citizens believed it, but their armies murdered civilians in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere. 
• Israeli citizens believed it, but their army mowed down Palestinians and Lebanese. 
• Arabs believed it, but suicide bombers and hijackers targeted U.S. and Israeli civilians.
• U.S. citizens believed it, but their military killed hundreds of thousands in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Every country, every ethnicity, every religion, contains within it the capability for extreme violence. Every group contains a faction that is intolerant of other groups, and actively seeks to exclude or even kill them. War fever tends to encourage the intolerant faction, but the faction only succeeds in its goals if the rest of the group acquiesces or remains silent. The attacks of September 11 were not only a test for U.S. citizens attitudes' toward minority ethnic/racial groups in their own country, but a test for our relationship with the rest of the world. We must begin not by lashing out at civilians in Muslim countries, but by taking responsibility for our own history and our own actions, and how they have fed the cycle of violence.