American Diplomatic History

THE WRONG ENEMY: AMERICA IN AFGHANISTAN 2001-2014 by Carlotta Gall

szfreiberger American Diplomatic History, Military History, United States Foreign Policy 1 Comment

 

As presidential election results in Afghanistan are being counted one must ask the question; how much better off is Afghanistan today, as compared to the period before the American invasion following 9/11?  Further one must ask; what is the future outlook for Afghanistan as the United States and its NATO allies are about to withdraw by the end of the year?  Carlotta Gall, a New York Times reporter who has worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than ten years attempts to answer these questions and many others in her new book, THE WRONG ENEMY, AMERICA IN AFGHANISTAN 2001-2014.  A number of  books have been written about America’s role in Afghanistan and its relationship with Pakistan the best of which are Steven Coll’s GHOST WARS, Ahmed Rashid’s DESCENT INTO CHAOS, and Barnet R. Rubin’s AFGHANISTAN FROM THE COLD WAR THROUGH THE WAR ON TERROR, but what sets Gall’s apart is her knowledge of the region and her ability to coax interviews with villagers, mujahideen, Taliban fighters, government officials, intelligence sources, and major decision makers involved on both sides of this never ending war.  Gall takes the reader inside councils held by the Taliban, government meetings in Kabul, decision making within Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and discussions among village elders as they try to cope with the threats they face on a daily basis.  Gall’s premise is that the United States has failed to confront the real enemy in its Afghani war, Pakistan.  Gall argues that the Pakistani governments, including its presidents over a period of time and the ISI have pursued a duplicitous policy by publicly claiming to be an ally in the war on terror with the United States, but privately creating and supporting the Taliban as a means of manipulating events in Afghanistan and controlling its government in Kabul.  These conclusions are sound, well argued, and supported by abundant research and sources that only she has had access to.

From the outset Gall writes from the perspective of the victims and does not claim to be objective.  She argues persuasively that the ISI is the real power in Pakistan and controls its press and media.  By December, 2001 after the Taliban’s leadership misjudged the strength of the American attack, and their standing with the Afghani people, thereby forcing them to flee to the safety of Peshawar across the Pakistani border.  Soon after, Taliban commanders convened a council of war which included Afghan Taliban commanders, their Pakistani allies from the Pashtun border areas, and Pakistani militant and religious leaders to discuss how they should respond to the American attack.  Watching from the sidelines, but present at these meetings were representatives from the ISI and Pakistani Special Forces who had been involved with the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.  Also in attendance was the son of the powerful Taliban commander and minister, Jalaluddin Haqqani, a stalwart against the Soviet Union and a favorite of Pakistani intelligence and Arab donors.  The goal of the Taliban was to create an Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan would now be continued as a guerilla war against the United States and its western allies.  The goal for Pakistan was to continue to employ “proxy forces, Afghan mijahideen, Taliban in Afghanistan, and Kashmiri militants against India to project its influence beyond its border.”(21) As Seth Jones, the author of IN THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES: AMERICA’S WAR IN AFGHANISTAN wrote in the New York Times on April 10, 2014, “Islamabad’s rationale for supporting Afghan insurgents is straightforward and, in many ways, understandable.  Hemmed in by its archenemy, India, to the east, Pakistan wants an ally in the west.  It doesn’t have one at the moment.  Instead, New Delhi has a close relationship with the Afghan government.  Feeling strategically encircled by India, Islamabad has resorted to proxy warfare to replace the current Afghan government with a friendlier regime.”

Gall follows the war as the United States pursued its neocon agenda of the Bush administration and shifted important resources from Afghanistan to support its ill conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003.  This left open the door for the Taliban to try and recapture its position in Afghanistan.  Many have asked why the United States chose Hamid Karzai to head the government in Kabul.  Gall concludes that he was a compromise candidate as he was Pashtun and acceptable in the northern part of the country.  Gall accurately concludes further that Karzai was the problem from the outset.  For the next thirteen years Karzai would oversee the most corrupt country in the world as stated in the “Transparency International Scale”, as  it was tied with Myanmar,” with only Somalia lower. (216)  the key to the Taliban resurgence would be their “friends and supporters in power in Pakistan’s border provinces.” This would allow Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader to emerge in February 2003 and publicly call on all Afghans to wage holy war against American forces. (67)

Galls details the Taliban resurgence and Pakistan’s role in their successes and points out the flaw in American policy towards Afghanistan.  According to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who wrote a strategic review on Afghanistan for the incoming Obama administration in 2009, the Bush administration considered the Taliban irrelevant once they were defeated.  In addition, the Bush White House never gave instructions to its intelligence officials in Pakistan to follow the Taliban and CIA officials in Pakistan saw the Taliban as a “spent force.” (75)  The road was open for the Taliban to succeed especially when the ISI forced many Taliban exiles that fled to Pakistan to join the insurgency.  Gall describes the situations in northern and southern Waziristan were foreign militants were sheltered in tribal areas and foreign journalists were banned by the Pakistani government from traveling.  Gall explores the role of President Pervez Musharraf and his double dealing with the United States.  He would feign being an ally and turn over a few Taliban wanted by Washington, but in reality was training, supplying, and encouraging the insurgency to the detriment of Afghanistan who he needed to control because of his fears of India.

Gall correctly argues that America’s approach in dealing with counter terrorism through the use of massive bombing was self defeating.  It alienated the Afghan villagers and turned the Afghan people further against what they viewed as their corrupt government in Kabul that was allied with the United States.  In 2004 the United States supported the reelection of Karzai, but despite his reelection his policies under the heavy handedness of his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was in charge of the southern part of the country further alienated the Afghan people and did little to counter the onslaught of the Taliban.  With the economy in dire straits and little hope for improvement, “young unemployed men were going to Pakistan in search of work and being recruited by the Taliban….who paid $175 a month to join and fight.” (133)

Gall makes many important observations in her narrative.  It was clear that America’s NATO allies were not very successful.  With only 2000 Canadian troops in the south the task for the Taliban to seize control of the Kandahar region was made easier.  The U.S. asked its allies for further troop commitments, but they refused.  Exacerbating the problem was the increase in suicide bombings in 2006, many of which were in the south.  Gall accurately describes the voyage of young men to madrassas to receive suicide bombing indoctrination and the final committing of the act.  Most were traced back to Pakistan were Islamic cells functioned quite freely.  Afghan intelligence would share information with NATO allies, who would forward the information to the ISI, which was like warning the suicide cells and resulted in the torture and death of Afghan informers.  The nexus of Pakistani support for the Taliban was Quetta and other border areas.  “The madrassas are a cover, a camouflage,” a Pashtun legislator told the author, “behind the curtain, hidden in the shadows, lurked the ISI.” (159)  From Gall’s extensive interviews in the border region her contention that the ISI played the major role in the Taliban success is well founded.

Some of Gall’s most interesting chapters deal with militant blow back in Pakistan as the ISI periodically would lose some control and then recover, a cycle that went on for years; how close the Taliban came to conquering the south as they reached the outskirts of Kandahar; and the role of Ahmed Karzai.  Many Americans have grown tired of Karzai’s act over the years believing he was ungrateful for the sacrifices and support given by the United States.  However, despite his antics Karzai’s point of view is important in understanding the events of the last thirteen years.  Gall does a remarkable job presenting Karzai’s perspective and making sense out of his statements and actions.  Granted his government was corrupt and appointments were based on tribal membership or political faction, but the United States was aware of the political culture around him from the outset.  But as Gall correctly points out that when a society functions “on patronage, a duty to help your relatives and clans comb[ined] with Karzai’s poor management and the influx of vast sums of assistance, often poorly administered by donors, [it] created the most corrupt regime Afghans had ever seen.” (216)  By 2010, $900 million in loans disappeared implicating Karzai’s family.  The problem is that Karzai is not personally corrupt, yet he has tolerated and benefited from it.  Karzai would brush off complaints “as a necessary way of doing business in cash strapped country.” (217)

By 2009, after the United States mistakenly bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan and Washington’s failure to deal with Pakistan, Karzai became convinced that the US was not going to defeat the Taliban. As Pakistan continued to ignore American requests to reign in the Taliban, Karzai’s bitterness increased and he decided the only way forward that made sense was to negotiate peace with the Taliban and Pakistan.  Richard C. Holbrooke, the US Special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan began back channel contacts with the Taliban.  Holbrooke realized the difficulty Karzai faced and realized further that peace with Pakistan was the key; as he summed up the situation in 2010, “we may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country.” (222)

In 2009 the Obama administration also announced a “surge” of 30,000 troops in the south as Kandahar was in danger of falling to the Taliban.  The joint operation with Afghan and Canadian troops lifted the Taliban siege and Gall’s description of the fighting as she went on patrol with US troops brought the reader to the battlefield.   The IEDs, the mines, the booby traps, the rigged houses provide insight into Taliban tactics and what American and Afghan troops faced and have to undo.  However, the Taliban hold in the south was broken.  Over the next three years the Taliban would be kept at bay, but a new crisis developed with Pakistan over the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden.  Gall has an excellent chapter on the raid and Pakistan’s culpability in having Bin Laden seized from under its nose.  From Gall’s interviews it is clear that Pakistani officials were involved with Bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad.  Whether it was military or ISI involvement is not totally clear, but it’s beyond the pale to imagine that the Pakistani government was not involved.

Gall closes her book with a somewhat optimistic chapter about the future of Afghanistan, however the threat from Pakistan remains constant and they must be reined in.  At the outset of this review I asked whether Afghanistan was in a better position since the pre-9/11 period.  One thing is clear the United States has brought modernity, rebuilding and bright educated graduates in every government office, but “the fundamentals of Afghanistan’s predicament remain the same: a weak state, prey to ambitions of its neighbors and extremist Islamists.” (286)  2014 is a perfect storm for Afghanistan, NATO and US forces are withdrawing, the election of a new president and the appointment of a new government, and the handover of security to Afghan forces in the middle of the summer fighting season.  What will the future hold?  I would be naive to think that once the US withdraws the security situation will not collapse, but we will see.  For those who are interested in reaching an educated guess about Afghanistan’s future I would read Carlotta Gall’s powerful new book.

THE TWILIGHT WAR by David Crist

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I have followed US-Iranian relations for over forty years and David Crist’s work is the best that I have come across. It is a maticuously researched book that explores most diplomatic and military aspects of the American-Iranian relationship since the decline of the Shah and his overthrow in 1979. Crist explores the role of all the major players during the period and he raises important questions as to whether the deterioration of Washington’s relationship with Teheran could have been avoided are at least lessened significantly. The importance of this book can not be measured as Christ provides insight as to why Teheran has been the real victor resulting from the American invasion of Iraq. the twilight war may someday evolve into a “hot” war and policy makers and the general public should read this book very carefully. It is written in such a manner that the general public and the academic can benefit from. Based on current events Crist lays out some scary possibilities whether it pertains to the past or the future.

THE SECRETARY: A JOURNAL WITH HILLARY CLINTON FROM BEIRUT TO THE HEART OF AMERICAN POWER by Kim Ghattas

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At a time when the rumors surrounding the candidacy of Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 seems to permeate every news cycle Kim Ghattas presents the public with a marvelous book that describes not only her personal journey from the civil war in Lebanon in the 1980s to the present, but allows the reader to enter the decision making process of the State Department. THE SECRETARY: A JOURNAL WITH HILLARY CLINTON FROM BEIRUT TO THE HEART OF AMERICAN POWER provides a unique perspective as the author, the BBC State Department correspondent shares with the reader her world- wide travels over hundreds of thousands of miles with Secretary of State Clinton. What emerges is an understanding of the motivations and the limitations of American power. Entering office the Obama administration set as one of its major goals a corrective foreign policy designed to repair the damage caused to America’s reputation abroad that resulted from Bush administration policies. In the book Ghattas described Clinton’s strategy, which at times differed from President Obama, in trying to restore trust in the United States among allies, and improve relations with those countries that were skeptical about working with Washington. Interwoven in this journey are the author’s memories and emotions related to her upbringing in war torn BeIRUT and how she relates her personal observations and emotions to American actions be they in Libya, Syria, dealing with China, or a myriad of other topics. The conclusion that Ghattas has reached is that Clinton has been successful in laying the foundation for the reorientation of American policy where “working with the United States is once again desirable” (333) It is no longer “you are with us or against us,” the mantra of the previous administration. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the intricacies of the development of American “smart power,” and the implementation of Hillary Clinton’s style of personal diplomacy.

THE BROTHERS: JOHN FOSTER DULLES,. ALLEN DULLES AND THEIR SECRET WORLD WAR by Stephen Kinzer

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Having written or co-authored books on the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, ALL THE SHAH’S MEN, Jacobo Arbenz, BITTER FRUIT, and a general compendium of American coups in OVERTHROW it seems inevitable that Stephen Kinzer, an award winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times would proceed to publish a work on the two men whose goal centered on maintaining American corporate interests abroad and were obsessed with the concept that indigenous nationalism was another term for communism.  Kinzer has accomplished his mission in his new dual biography of John Foster and Allen Welsh Dulles who served respectfully as Secretary of State and Director of the CIA during the Eisenhower administration.  In THE BROTHERS: JOHN FOSTER DULLES, ALLEN DULLES AND THEIR SECRET WORLD WAR Kinzer presents an in depth study of Foster and Allen (as he refers to them in the book) as they implement American foreign policy during the Cold War.  The author goes beyond the analysis of the individual decisions that they made as he places events within the context of American foreign policy today.  As a result he reaches the conclusion that both men were active proponents of what has been termed “American Exceptionalism,” which many of our leaders still affirm, and their actions help explain many of the foreign policy problems the United States currently faces.  Since the work of the Dulles brothers still rings true today, “understanding what they did, and why they did it, is a step toward understanding why the United States acts as it does in the world.” (328)  If that was what Kinzer was trying to achieve in his latest work, he has been remarkably successful.

Kinzer minces no words as he traces the early years of the brothers.  The reader sees that foreign policy and government overthrow were in their DNA as their grandfather; John Watson Foster was Secretary of State in 1893 when he helped direct the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.  Keeping with tradition, Eleanor Dulles, Foster and Allen’s sister married Robert Lansing, who became Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson.  For the brothers many doors were opened by these family connections including  positions at the Wall Street law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell.  It was early in Foster’s legal career during W.W.I.  under the auspices of “Uncle Bert,” (Robert Lansing’s nickname) that he participated in his first foreign intervention as Sullivan and Cromwell clients’ interests were threatened in Cuba in 1917.  Foster and Uncle Bert agreed to send American destroyers to Cuba along with marines to protect American corporate clients.  As Kinzer correctly points out it showed Foster “how easy it can be for a rich and powerful country, guided by the wishes of its wealthiest corporations, to impose its will on a poor and weak one.” (25)

Foster became the managing partner at Sullivan and Cromwell at the age of thirty-eight at a time when the United States went from a debtor nation to a creditor nation for the first time.  New York would replace London as the world’s financial capital and wealthy Americans spread their money and financial interests around the world, and those wealthy Americans “clamored for Sullivan and Cromwell’s services.  “The list of those Foster represented reads like a guide to the upper reaches of American commerce, manufacturing, and finance.” (37-38) It was from this perch that Foster and Allen, who joined the firm in 1926, would develop their unquestioned belief in “liberal internationalism,” the idea “that trouble in the world came from misunderstanding among ruling elites, not from social or political injustices, and that commerce could reduce or eliminate this trouble.  This was a refined version of the ‘open door’ policy the United States had embraced for decades… [a policy] aimed at forcing other countries to accept trade agreements favorable to American interests.  At its core was the reassuring belief that whatever benefited American business would ultimately benefit everyone.” (55-56)  According to Kinzer it was this firm belief held by the brothers that guided them through their careers whether it was support for Hitler and the Nazis before Pearl Harbor or the myriad coups they arranged to protect American corporate interests in the 1950s.

World War II found Allen’s career in espionage take off as a member of William Donavan’s inner circle at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), first as a station chief in New York then moving to Bern, Switzerland to develop American spy capabilities in Europe.  He was able to create a web of spies that allowed the United States to learn what was happening behind enemy lines and inside Nazi Germany itself.  Following the war Allen’s career took a hit as President Truman abolished the OSS.  During the war Foster emerged as one of the top two foreign policy spokespersons for the Republican party (Arthur Vandenberg was the other) as an advisor to Thomas Dewey who ran for President in 1944 and 1948.  It was during this period that Foster honed his view of communism that began in the 1920s as the Soviet Union struggled to survive.  By the end of WWII Foster was warning that the Soviet Union was bent on “eradicating the non-Soviet type of society and that if the United States did not strike back, an alien faith will isolate us and press in on us to a point where we shall have be faced with surrender or with a new war.” (83)

The shift in American foreign policy in 1950 was embodied in NSC-68, a document that redefined the communist threat and by arguing “that the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.”  As a result Truman now facing the North Korean invasion of the south immediately asked Congress for $10 billion to expand the army.  After the North Korean attack Walter Bedell Smith became head of the CIA and named Allen as Deputy Director of Operations.  By 1952 with the election of Dwight Eisenhower as President, Smith became Undersecretary of State, allowing Allen to replace him as head of the CIA, and Foster became Secretary of State.  Now all was in place for the brothers.  As Kinzer points out, never in history did two siblings hold such powerful offices together and their missionary zeal, belief in American exceptionalism, years of defending corporate interests, and a view of themselves as instruments of destiny would now be put to the test.

When one reads THE BROTHERS, the author’s command of his material as he synthesizes the most important works on Foster and Allen is readily apparent.  This is true as he explores how the brothers  overthrew of Mohammad Mossedegh in Iran, removed Jacobo Arbenz from power in Guatemala, tried to deal with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, sought to win Gamal Abdul Nasser to the western point of view, failed to replace President Sukarno in Indonesia, participated in the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and failed to cope with Fidel Castro leading to failure at the Bay of Pigs.  In all instances the brothers refused to accept the concept of indigenous nationalism and argued that it was nothing more than an excuse for communism.  They made no attempt at understanding Third World nationalism and its roots.  Once independence was gained many former colonies  joined a “neutralist” movement highlighted by the Bandung Conference in 1955. The brothers saw neutral nations as nothing more than communist puppets.  They refused to engage “the aspirations of hundreds of millions of people who were emerging from colonialism and looking for their place in a tumultuous world.” (313)

When one thinks about all the covert operations attempted in the 1950s one must ask were the brothers totally responsible and what role did President Eisenhower play.  For many years historians assumed that John Foster Dulles set the agenda and Eisenhower allowed him to carry it out.  During the last twenty years as further and further documentation emerged the reverse is now believed.  One of the first to argue this view was Richard Immerman in his HIDDEN HAND DIPLOMACY and I found in my own research for DAWN OVER SUEZ that Eisenhower held the levers of power and he used them.  According to Kinzer it was Ike who ordered the death of Patrice Lumumba, it was Ike who was the guiding hand behind the Bay of Pigs operation.  In these and other “coups” the only thing that mattered to Eisenhower was that they be successful and could not be traced back to the United States.  According to Blanche Wesson Cooke in her study DECLASSIFIED EISENHOWER there were more coups attempted during the Eisenhower administration than any other in American history.  As Richard Bissell, the CIA operative in charge of the Bay of Pigs recalled, “Eisenhower was a tough man behind that smile.” (293)

Kinzer discussion of the overthrow of Mohammad Mossedegh in 1953 was a recapitulation of material he presented in his previous works.  Operation AJAX was fully approved by Eisenhower and Foster’s law firm Sullivan and Cromwell had the most to lose once Mossedegh came to power as one of Allen’s most important clients, “the J. Henry Shroder Banking Corporation served as the financial agent for Anglo-Iranian Oil Company… It also jolted Foster who was then seeking business in Iran for another Sullivan and Cromwell client, the Chase Manhattan Bank.” (123)  Mossedegh’s attempt at having the Iranian people benefit from its country’s own resources was abhorrent to the Dulles brothers because of self-interest which was couched in virulent anti-communism.  After the overthrow of Mossedegh the next target was Jacobo Arbenz the president of Guatemala who wanted to institute land reform.  His proposal was simple, it required large landowners to sell the uncultivated part of their holdings to the government for redistribution to peasant families.  The problem was that the United Fruit Company, a Dulles client of which Foster held stock in controlled 85% of Guatemala’s uncultivated land.  As Kinzer pointed out in a previous book he co-authored on the Guatemalan coup, BITTER FRUIT, the United Fruit Company was the power and the Guatemalan government was the subsidiary.  Arbenz was overthrown and Brother’s policy in Central America was clear, “they embraced the regions dictators while working to undermine its few democracies.” (159)  The next target for the brothers was Ho Chi Minh who had written President Truman and asked him to support Vietnamese independence and not allow the French to return after WWII.  The rationale was simple, “they singled him out not simply because who he was, but where he was.  Europe had settled into its Cold War pattern, and although Foster and Allen still considered it the center of the world, they believed the front line had moved to East Asia.  They mistakenly saw China as a pawn of the Soviet Union, and Ho, also mistakenly, as a puppet of both.” (176)  Following the defeat of the French at Dienbienphu, the Geneva Conference in April, 1954 decided to divide Vietnam at the 17th parallel, Ho receiving the north, and the new western mandarin, Ngo Dinh Diem as the leader of the south.  In addition within two years elections would be held to unify the country.  Edward Landsdale was the CIA operative in charge of dealing with coup. His instructions were clear, to recreate his earlier success in the Philippines when he installed Ramon Magsaysay to national leadership and crushed a guerilla insurgency.  Landsdale could not repeat history and by early 1956 it was clear Ho might garner 85% of the vote.  Landsdale’s major success was organizing the mass movement of one million Catholics from the north to the south by employing psy-ops and other propaganda means.  Since Diem was a catholic (in a country that was 90% Buddhist) he thought it could help solidify Diem’s reign after the United States refused to allow an election to take place.  For the United States the Vietnam War had begun.

The only area that I have reservations about Kinzer’s analysis is the Middle East.    As mentioned earlier the Dulles brothers abhorred the concept of neutralism and the neutral bloc that emerged from the Bandung Conference in 1955.  One of its leaders was Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser.  Kinzer skirts over all American policy in dealing with Nasser up until the United States reneged on a deal in July 1956 to build the Aswan Dam.  He fails to discuss secret project ALPHA which was designed to try and bring about peace between Israel and Egypt and then use Nasser as sort of a pied piper in leading the other Arab states into a Middle East Defense Pact.  Nasser played the United States along until a peace mission led by former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson finally failed.  The result was a shift in US policy.  At a National Security Council meeting on March 28, 1956 Eisenhower and his Secretary of State implemented Operation OMEGA designed to replace Nasser as the preferred Arab leader with King Saud of Saudi Arabia and the withdrawal of food and other financial aid that was designated for Egypt.  A March 28 Dulles memo concluded that “planning should be undertaken at once with a view to possibly more drastic action in the event the above courses of action do not have the desired effect.” (Memorandum from the Secretary of State to the President, March 28, 1956, Eisenhower Library, Ann Whitman File)  Kinzer further skirts Foster disingenuousness after Nasser seized the Suez Canal in July, 1956 and fails to mention that on October 29, 1956 the same day that Israel invaded the Sinai as part of its conspiracy with England and France that led to the Suez War, an American-sponsored coup was scheduled to take place in Syria, which because of the invasion was rescinded. (DAWN OVER SUEZ, 188) Kinzer correctly points to the issuance of the Eisenhower Doctrine in January, 1957 as another attempt to control communism in the Middle East, but Dulles’ policy in the region would be a failure especially with the overthrow of the pro-western Nuri al-Said and King Feisal II in Iraq in 1958 by the military, and the continued machinations by Nasser throughout the region as he emerged from the Suez War as an Arab hero.  Kinzer quotes historian Ray Takeyh who believes that Suez was “a sideshow that disrupted Eisenhower’s policy of covertly undermining Nasser and his radical allies.” (224).  I would respectfully disagree as events in France under DeGaulle, Foster’s move to get closer to Israel, and the complete failure of the Eisenhower Doctrine have shown.

As the 1950s was drawing to a close the Dulles brothers continued to pursue foreign policy by coup despite the fact that their record was not as stellar as they believed.  When President Sukarno became a major proponent of neutralism in Indonesia and accepted $100 million dollar loan from the Soviet Union in 1957, the brothers began planning a military coup with disgruntled officers.  In the end, Operation ARCHIPELAGO’s attempt to foment a civil war by providing weapons, planes and other logistics was concluded in failure. By May, 1958 the coup was called off as The Director of the CIA called the Secretary of State and told him “We’re pulling the plug.” (241)  After Foster died in 1959, Allen was left to deal with the next target on the American “hit list,” Patrice Lumumba, the newly elected president of an independent Congo.  Both the United States and Belgium, the former colonial overlord of the Congo, opposed Lumumba because the southeastern province of Katanga was “an invaluable source for industrial diamonds, and strategic metals like copper, manganese, zinc, cobalt and chromium.” (260)  Once Lumumba began speaking out against the colonialism that dominated the Congo’s past he had to disappear.  Working with Belgium, President Eisenhower order Lumumba’s murder, and for the first time an American president ordered the death of a foreign leader.  The United States and Belgium fostered the secession of the Katanga province under the leadership of Joseph Mobutu, a Congolese military officer, who had Lumumba captured, tortured, and then murdered. Not what Allen Dulles had expected.  The last failure of the Dulles reign of coups was the Bay of Pigs.  So much has been written about this catastrophe, but Kinzer brings up a number of interesting points.  First, Allen Dulles did not direct the operation, he put it in the hands of Richard Bissell.  Dulles’ hand off approach would cost him a great deal in the end to his reputation and it eventually cost him his job.  Secondly, Eisenhower was directly involved at all stages of planning and was able to convince John F. Kennedy to continue the operation once the senator from Massachusetts was elected president.  Kennedy would fire Dulles and because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco developed an aversion to accepting advice from the CIA and the Pentagon at face value.

The Brothers policy of replacing governments was mostly a failure if one takes into account the long range implications of what they tried to accomplish.   Allen emerges “not the brilliant spymaster many believed him to be.  Nearly every one of his major covert operations failed or nearly failed.  Foster’s diplomatic planning and Allen’s operational failures spread all across the globe: Berlin, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Indonesia, Tibet, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Cuba, and beyond.” (319)  In the end Foster and Allen could not have attempted what they had without the complete support of President Eisenhower.  In the final analysis, “Foster and Allen were born into privilege and steeped in the ethos of pioneers and missionaries.  They spent decades promoting the business and strategic interests of the United States.  More than any two figures of their age, they were the vessels of American history.  No other secretary of state or director of central intelligence could have done what they did.  Only brothers could have achieved it—and only these two.” (319)  As Kinzer correctly points out, we are still reaping the “lack of benefits” from what they sowed—this is why this book is an important read.

JOHN HAY: GENTLEMAN AS DIPLOMAT by Kenton J. Clymer

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The book seems to be an outgrowth of the author’s graduate school Ph.D dissertation. Clymer reviews Hay’s ideological development and comes to the conclusion he was typical of his age as he held strong racial and cultural views that sought to expand Anglo-Saxon influence in the world. In discussing Hay’s career outside of diplomacy the reader is presented with a hard nosed business type who vehemently disliked labor unions, in part because he did not trust the Irish and was an extreme Anglophile. Hay’s role in the diplomatic issues of the period are presented in detail and are somewhat dated as the book was published in 1975. Issues such as Panama, the open door to China, boundary disputes with Canada and others are seen from Hay’s prism and other figures of the period. One of the more interesting chapters deals with Hay’s relationship with Teddy Roosevelt. The author concludes that Hay had one foot in the 19th century and one foot in the 20th, but he tried not to be totally drawn into the bombastic nationalism that afflicted the United States after the Spanish-American War. Since the book is somewhat dated he would direct anyone interested in reading about John Hay to a new biography due out around May 20, 2013 by John Taliaffero.

DIRTY WARS by Jeremy Scahill

szfreiberger American Diplomatic History, American Political History, Military History 2 Comments

The reemergence of the Benghazi attack as a partisan political issue, the popularity of the film “Zero Dark Thirty” and the recent bombing in Boston have refocused Americans on the issue of terror and its threat. Did the FBI and CIA miss intelligence in dealing with the Tsarnaev brothers and other questions regarding the devastation at the Boston marathon have been discussed repeatedly during our twenty four hour news cycle and the question must be asked are we doing enough in terms of protecting the Homeland. The appearance of Jeremy Scahill’s new book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield is very timely as it posits the argument that after 9/11 the Bush administration implemented numerous policies that aborted many civil rights that Americans cherish and created a new world view that assassinations would be a central part of our national security and the secret operations infrastructure to carry out that mission. According to the author this had tremendous consequences for the United States as our policy decisions created the opposite results in countries like Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq and ostensibly world wide as our counter terrorism decisions allowed our enemies to recruit more followers and became an even greater danger than they were before. Offshoots from the original al-Qaeda in Afghanistan emerged in Yemen under the banner, al-Qaeda Arab Peninsula (AQAP), al-Shabab in Somalia and others. It fostered new spokespersons, even American citizens like Anwar Awlaki. In 2008 when President Obama was campaigning he argued against the tactics that were developed by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, but as Scahill lays out his case, the President not only did not change any of the policies of the Bush administration that argued that “the world is a battlefield,” but the Obama administration has gone even further in implementing an enhanced version of counter terrorism that relies on targeted killing and drone strikes worldwide.
The key domestic political component in the implementation of enhanced interrogation techniques, renditions, black sites, assassinations etc. was to make sure that there would be no Congressional oversight for these policies. This was the goal of the Cheney-Rumsfeld partnership after 9/11 that was accomplished with the creation of a separate counter terror infrastructure in the Pentagon and away from the CIA. Scahill does an excellent job detailing how this was accomplished as Cheney and Rumsfeld were victorious in their “turf battles” within the Bush administration after 9/11. The result was that the Bush administration “asserted the right under US law to kill people it designated as terrorists in any country even if they were US citizens.” (78) Scahill reviews the lead up to the invasion of Iraq that has been detailed in books such as The Dark Side by Janet Mayer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer, and Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas Ricks and the author reaches the same conclusions concerning Bush administration deception, lies, and a lack of strategy in all areas. The development of “enhanced interrogation” techniques to obtain information is argued pro and con, but what is important is how the Bush Justice Department developed the legal rationale for such techniques. As the separate infrastructure for counter terrorism was developed with the attendant lack of oversight the United States ignored its own laws and the Geneva Convention resulting in what the author describes as a “prophetic backlash” that would cost us dearly.
Scahill provides intricate details of events in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. The reader is brought into US decision-making and the missions that resulted. We see the development of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) as a separate tool apart from the CIA and how it was led, funded, and carried out its killing operations. In fact the “JSOC was free to act as a spy agency and a kill/capture force rolled into one.” (171) Important figures involved in this process are presented from General Stanley McCrystal, Vice Admiral William McRaven and others who implemented counterterrorist policy, to the pseudo allies in foreign countries like General Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, the Ethiopian military, warlords in Somalia, among many others. The victims of American policy are delineated in detail be it the massacre at Gardez in Afghanistan, al Majalah in Yemen, to targeting and killing the likes of Anwar Awlaki, and the persecution of journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye. These policies and negative outcomes did not only take place on the Bush administration watch, but were continued at a new level under the Obama administration.
According to Scahill the Obama National Security team is as guilty as the previous administration no matter how much former Vice President Cheney has “chirped” over the years how weak Obama has been in the war on terror. While Obama was receiving his Nobel Peace Prize the US was targeting AQAP in Yemen and al Shabab in Somalia. The basic difference between the two administrations is that the Obama people wanted to make the war on terror more efficient. All one has do is to look at Obama’s national security team to see that it was not going to change policy. Obama did take more responsibility than President Bush by approving certain operations, but that did not alter the overarching policy goals.
Other topics of importance that Scahill discusses include the outsourcing of the war on terror including an in depth look at the role of Blackwater (which the author has presented in his previous book, Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army), the strange case of Raymond Davis, the killing of Osama Bin Laden and many others. What is unique in this work has been Scahill’s access to many of the characters he presents, the impeccable research, and the ability to put forth material in a logical and cohesive manner. From my own readings what is presented in Dirty Wars is historically accurate and his conclusions are extremely scary as we continue the war on terror in the future. I recommend this amazing narrative of the history of “targeted killing” and other policies of our government to those who are concerned about America’s reputation in the world and what kind of nation we would like to be in the years to come.

ALL THE GREAT PRIZES by John Taliaferro

szfreiberger American Diplomatic History, Biography Leave a comment

When I think of individuals who have had a major impact on American history after the Civil War, but about whom little known is known, two names come to mind, Henry L. Stimson and John Milton Hay. Stimson served as Secretary of War under William Howard Taft and Franklin D. Roosevelt, in addition to being Secretary of State under Herbert Hoover. Luckily we have excellent biographies that cover Stimson’s career; Geoffrey Hodgson’s THE COLONEL: THE LIFE AND WARS OF HENRY L. STIMSON, David Schwitz’s HENRY L. STIMSON: THE FIRST WISE MAN, and the classic portrayal by Elting Morrison, TURMOIL AND TROUBLE. In the case of John Hay, until now, there has not been a major biography since 1934. The book I am referring to is ALL THE GREAT PRIZES by John Taliaferro who has presented an extraordinary narrative that bookends Hay’s career as one of Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretaries, his service under Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, William McKinley, and ending as Secretary of State under Theodore Roosevelt. Taliaferro’s work encompasses all aspects of Hay’s private life and career and is an exceptional book.

Hay’s intellectual development is explored in a very insightful manner through his relationship with Abraham Lincoln. The author notes that “through his own experience Hay came to know Lincoln. Through Lincoln he began to know himself.” (37) Taliaferro provides the usual storyline and explanations in describing the course of the Civil War. We see the issues with General George McClellan, through Hay’s eyes ; the rationale and passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as Lincoln’s travails with John C. Fremont, Salmon P. Chase and others. In exploring Hay’s relationship with Lincoln the author reaches the same conclusion as others that Hay became “if not a surrogate son, then a younger man who stirred a higher form of paternal nurturing that Lincoln, despite his best intentions, did not successfully bestow on either of his surviving children.” (54) Hay had observed Lincoln at his best and worst and developed into a sounding board to be trusted, employed in a number of sensitive missions throughout the Civil War. Lincoln became a role model for Hay that would last a lifetime and following Lincoln’s assassination, he would mourn him for the rest of his life.

Taliaferro does a nice job integrating Hay’s own personal descriptive prose employing his diaries, written works, and diplomatic papers throughout the book. In pursuing biography as a tool writers must be careful not to engage in hagiography. At times Taliaferro does present an overblown portrayal of his subject as he states that when Hay returned to the United States in September, 1870 there were few men in America “who could match his understanding of foreign affairs or for that matter, politics of any provenance.” (129) In discussing Hay’s relationships with Nannie Lodge, the wife of Henry Cabot Lodge, and Lizzie Cameron who was married to a senator from Pennsylvania, Taliaferro is very careful in presenting what appears to be at least one extra-marital affair and possibly two. There are other examples that some would find to be overly subjective, but to the author’s credit they are kept to minimum.

The author’s rendering of the relationship with Henry Adams, the famous historian, is one of the highlights of the book. In describing their relationship Taliaferro states “For reasons that no one but they fully understood, and not even they articulated, Adams was the person in whose company Hay felt most himself. And Adams, the more irascible and phlegmatic of the two, recognized in Hay an admirable peer who consented to put up with him just as he was.” (177) Since Hay was a rather conservative individual politically and socially, and Adams leaned toward a much more of liberal bent in an number of areas, viewing the history of this period through their relationship and writings is certainly a treat for the reader. Hay’s friendship with Adams and his wife Clover, his relationship with Clarence King, a noted geologist, and Hay’s wife Clara was encapsulated in their own “club” entitled the “Five of Hearts,” which is described in detail. Hay’s summer retreat at Lake Sunapee, named the Fells was built and developed as a place they could sojourn to and as a place to escape the heat and humidity of Washington, DC. I was surprised to learn as close as they were and how much they supported each other emotionally and financially in the case of King, they hardly met as a group, perhaps a half a dozen times. Since Patricia O’Toole has written a fascinating book entitled THE FIVE OF HEARTS I would have expected greater contact amongst the five.

Hay was truly a “Renaissance” individual. Apart from his diplomatic career Hay was a poet and a novelist whose works include THE BREAD-WINNERS, a book that lends insight into the author’s political views as it is a tract against socialism and labor unions. Other works written by Hay include PIKE COUNTY BALLADS, CASTILIAN DAYS, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A BIOGRAPHY (10 Vols) co authored with John G. Nicolay, and a number of books of poetry. Hay also had a career as a newspaper editor at the New York Tribune as well as a writer who chronicled events from Europe. The one aspect of Hay’s life that Taliaferro could have explored further was Hay’s acquisition of wealth. Obviously a very rich man with homes on millionaires row in Cleveland, Lafayette Square in Washington, in addition to the Fells I felt that Hay’s marriage to Clara Stone, the daughter of Amasa Stone, a very wealthy industrialist should have been dealt with in greater detail. The reader is told that Hay was given certain gifts, was employed by his father-in-law, but then pursued a diplomatic career in the Hayes and Garfield administrations. Hay was a plutocrat in addition to being a man of letters and that could have been detailed further.

Taliaferro’s discussion of Hay’s tenure as Secretary of State under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt is well conceived. We see the supposed “soft hand of diplomacy” as practiced by Hay as opposed the more overt imperialist approach as employed by the likes of Henry Cabot Lodge and his good friend, Theodore Roosevelt. Negotiations dealing with the British are framed nicely, first from the perspective of Hay’s tenure as Ambassador to the Court of St. James and then at the State Department. Issues dealing with the Alaskan Boundary dispute, the Venezuelan Crisis, and early developments in building the Panama Canal are presented based on all the relevant primary and secondary sources. It shows a competent diplomat who knows how to achieve his goals. Once Theodore Roosevelt assumes the presidency following the assassination of McKinley Hay adapts well to a more “boisterous” executive who liked to “carry the big stick.” Surprisingly Hay worked well with the former Rough Rider and is able to guide American diplomacy resulting in the Open Door Policy, setting the building of the Panama Canal in motion, and navigating the minefield that was the Russo-Japanese War. It is interesting to note that the “egoistic” Roosevelt gave Hay a tremendous amount of credit while he lived, but once his Secretary of State passed away he pursued a revisionist approach to events that gave himself what seems to be 99% of the credit for all diplomatic accomplishments.

If I had two major suggestions I would ask the author to edit more carefully and avoid the practice of overstatement. There are a number of editing issues, i.e. stating that Roosevelt’s running mate in 1904 was Albert Beveridge, in fact it was Charles W. Fairbanks, which is repeated a few times. In his introduction the Taliaferro states that America’s China policy preserved the integrity of the “Middle Kingdom”. He goes on to restate this proposition later in the book by arguing that the Open Door Policy was responsible for maintaining China as a whole. Geographically that is true but economically the spheres of influence and unequal treaties between the European powers and China dating back to the First Opium War and the 1842 Treaty of Nanking did not end, in fact the Chinese economy was still under the thumb of foreign nations for decades after Hay’s policy was announced. This policy preserved American trade which it was designed to do, but territorial, political, and economic integrity is a myth. Another example of over statement was the author’s discussion of the Franco-Prussian War which he seems to blame totally on Louis Napoleon III. Though I agree that the French Emperor deserves some of the credit for the plight of his empire due to his own incompetence, the machinations of the future German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck is mostly responsible for the events of 1870-1.

Overall the book is a fine work of narrative history. Dealing with a subject who had such an important political and diplomatic career, was also friends with the likes of Mark Twain, Henry Adams, Rudyard Kipling, and William Dean Howells among so many others cannot be other than a fascinating read. The author spent years researching and writing ALL THE GREAT PRIZES and it is reflected in the final product. It is easy to forgive any blemishes one might find and I recommend to all who would like to explore a previously unknown historical character, as following the publication of this biography John Milton Hay’s reputation will soar, to do so.