I’ll start. But just to be fair, I’ll start with one of the biggest successes.

What if the US had never gotten involved in Czechoslovakia?

Now, from what I know, most of the soft power that the US brought to bear in Czechoslovakia was overt. Our ability to take dissident writings smuggled out of the country and broadcast them back into the country via Radio Free Europe provided a way to extend opposition (or, at the very least, heightened awareness of the regime propaganda) beyond the small circle of dissidents. I know there were other covert operations in Czechoslovakia. But here’s something funny. A colleague of mine participated in a CIA conference in the months leading up to the Velvet Revolution; the CIA didn’t have a good idea of the leaders on the ground and they needed to ask the academic experts. My colleague was surprised at the think knowledge of the CIA about the individual dissident leaders, at a time when there was clearly unrest (and when so many of the leaders had been involved in 1977 or 1968). (FWIW, I believe the CIA did a lot more to support Solidarity, which then had an influence in Czechoslovakia, so my question is not entirely fair.)

In any case I guess I’d have to conclude that whatever covert ops we didn in Czechoslovakia empowered the indigenous dissidents. But it wasn’t until the endgame when the US started picking favorites.

I’d say the world would be much worse off if the overt and covert things we did hadn’t helped to bring about the Velvet Revolution. Now I’m biased (because I’ve been able to spend a lot of time in Prague, one of the most beautiful cities on earth). But I think you can argue for benefit just in the way that 1989 and 1991 led to warmer relations in cenral and eastern Europe, to standing down some of our military tension.

But then again, a lot of what was effective was overt; Russia objected to our commuications policies, but we had that fight in public, even if it was one of the reasons we pulled out of UNESCO.

NP

Geez, I hadn’t even considered that. Two wars and more than $200 billion here we are again.

William

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And what would have happened if they were socialist, as opposed to communist (though I think all may have easily fallen into communism).

Also, I think Italy counts as covert there, Germany and Japan as overt.

a very good question.

a question like your question a few months back about the opportunity costs of the iraq war

jacob arbenz in guatemala in the 50’s.

mohammed massadegh in iran in the 50’s.

patrice lumumba in congo(?) in the 60’s.

larry johnson at no quarter likened the chaney/white house iraq-war propaganda to the kind of propaganda the cia employed in places like greece (maybe italy and a couple more countries i can’t remember of the top of my head) in order to influence elections there.

my personal view is that clandestine info gathering makes a lot of sense.

clandestine killing or meddling with another country’s politics i consider of questionble value, despite the many brave narratives one reads about the importance of these interventions.

my reason for this is that

we are no better at controlling all the variables that come into play when a leader is forced out, a government overthrown, or a form of government changed

than soviet economists were at running the soviet economy from moscow.

nothing demonstrates this better than the blind optimism of the bush administration as they motored into baghdad in april, 2003.

it’s a little off topic but speaking of clandestine operations, there is an absolutely chilling piece in this months’s atlantic about two of the (irish) men who spied on the ira for the british gov?

If the CIA hadn’t fought the Soviets in Afghanistan: would the USSR have collapsed anyway, would Muslim extremists be less organised, would the middle east be more democratic, would Osama have gone into construction, would a nuclear Pakistan still be a US ally, would AQ Khan have started his Walmart, would Afghanistan be more stable today, would Iranian fundamentalists have even less support, would the US have been free to disrupt things elsewhere (Iran instead of Iraq)?

I’d say yes to all these. An interesting assignment ew, the questions just keep expanding.

kim

Those are really good questions. A lot of people say the shoulder launched missiles that could take down Russian helicopters were decisive, which is something that probably wouldn’t have happened without our involvement. But what if he had defended Pakistan rather than taken the offense against Russia?

Though, documents from the start suggest Zbigniew thought of the plan (which was not at all fleshed out) partly in response to the Iranian Revolution. In which case, we go back to the questions of 1953 in Iran.

What if we hadn’t pushed Castro into the arms of the Soviets? If Cuba had stayed democratic-socialist, there wouldn’t have been a Cuban missle crisis. Or, for that matter, a Cuban exile community in Miami.

Don’t guess that counts as a strike against our covert ops though; we were shoving Castro around in public, if I recall that history right.

Mossadegh seems like the great big huge example from here.

There is some interesting political theory about the pattern of aftermath when colonial occupations ended, variously, Brittain, France, Portugal, Spain. I would be interested in hearing EWheel on Argentina’s storied transitions; we have rescued their national debt from near civil revolution several times, though the spy stuff is outside my curiosity.
Take the Czech Republic and Slovakia; my view was only that of a racconteur who, having a house guest CZ MD tossed that independent minded intellectual a preVelvetR challenge by framing CZ’s condition in terms contrasting colonialism with a prior Prague Spring. I doubt there was a language barrier there, but the VRev ensued in short order.
On secret ops I think not so much now of nation grabbing, rather the misaligned argument in Gore v Bush, utilizing a Microsoft bashing attorney instead of one more adroit on voting and electoral matters. And I think of voter registrar Sancho’s plight in Leon County FL last week where conservatives are trying to force flawed electronic voting devices upon him in the name of HAVA.
I guess I am a process guy, though there are important moments when a well thought comment advances an idea or aspiration much; which is what Voice of A knows; and the intelligence agencies try to be there first with the good history.
But all this spy stuff is too complicated and not at all the way to draw a globe map. I heard a political speaker once describe it as an innovation in US foreign policy that took hold during Gen.Ike’s term more strongly than ever before in US policy. Then I met a professor from a high born China family and heard the cryptic tale of Taiwan’s infusion of free thinkers. I would guess intellect helps but information gathering is risky for multiple reasons, principal among them that the gatherer often has little chance to alter the course of history or to infuse a dialog with new vision.
The essence, to my IMO, to observe webspeak here, is that a society fosters original perspectives and insight within its own self and openness to the outside.
Slightly off topic, EW, is this link to a great E+P article today about a kind of reverse propaganda which must be driving Rove out the driveway from the WH; imagine: a reporter parsing straw-opponent grammar in the presidnet’s speechmaking as Armando might.

Sometimes I thought Isabel’s supporters more conservative than the prior leader; parallel Bushes 1 and 2, in some ways, cliques of conservatives serving to bind the second administration into some semblance of cohesive rule; though, as you observe, a vastly different politicoeconomic and societal landscape.

As a former cattleman I appreciated the remarks on trade, as well; so mundane, yet vital to how we live and manage our businesses here and our trade with other nations. There were times during our peak production years on our place that Argentine beef was so competitive we would skip going to auction until the next season to see how commodity prices were at a more favorable time. Yet, it is always nice to be a citizen of the international community and afford the competitor who needs so much bolstering and stabilizing of their economy a grace period in which to out compete us here at home.

emptywheel,

I was talking about the covert money that the CIA poured into Japanese and Greek politics (although in the Greek case there were probably more, ahem, direct methods used as well). When people talk about covert ops they usually think of the coups (e.g. Arbenz in Guatemala). I think we’ve been more influential by spreading money around. As to whether we’re better off or not, that’s an impossible question best left to the alternate history novelists. I think it was wrong. We subverted a lot of democracies by supplying covert money, poltical advisors, and quiet muscle to mostly right-wing politicians. We were operating based on fear and loathing and that is always a mistake.

EW, that’s a good observation about developing Pakistan in the 1980s. I remember a classmate in college who’s father (Pakistani) was a military guy there, before the Soviet â€invasion†of Afghanistan. The relations with Pakistan were good then, so this would have been a big opportunity (assuming the people in charge had a remarkable vision of how things are today). Working with Pakistan against the Soviets probably also did good things for the relationship (though this whole question is wrapped in most supreme mystery).

Holy shit lukery

I’ve been wondering, kind of back of my mind, where Wilson is now (as I look forward to DeLay when he’s in his post Texas brashness career). I didn’t know that. Thanks for pointing it out.

Re: Wilson. imdb.com shows a movie in the works based on the Crile book, staring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

i wrote a couple of posts about the pakistan / 911 commission lobbying here and here
By all accounts, a lobbyist told pakistan that there was some damaging info in the final draft of the 911 report and pakistan paid the lobbyist a bunch of money to bribe the commissioners to clean up the report. We aren’t entirely sure whether it was a lobbying shakedown, or if the cleansing actually took place.

wilson sounds like a riot – cocaine and beautiful women and all that.

Culturally, the US Intelligence tradition is copied from the Brits — with the copy being made in the few years before World War II. Our tradition previously had been to stand up services for wars, and then take them down afterward — meaning they did not have legacy bureaucracy — but they also had to re-invent skill sets.

Thus Oss which re-emerged as CIA in 1947 always had a bias for empire in it, given its origins. and much as the British institution, ours is also a rich man’s club — Yale to Wall Street bias. There was always (and still is) a profound bias against using the strengths of our ethnic and immigrant communities for intelligence purposes. Reading Gary Berntsen’s recent book about the CIA directed invasion of Afghanistan includes several good examples — while he had recruited Arabs who had been in the Marines for ten years, and Pashtun speaking Afghani’s, the CIA was afraid to sent them into the field, and instead put them at desk jobs translating marriage records. He points out that until he really forced the issue some of the vaulted CIA-Northern Alliance cooperation was conducted in Pidgin Russian.

Probably the best Intel group going is the Chinese — who have been at it for several thousand years. China is characterized as requiring hunderds of data points on something of interest, all collected independently. They don’t conclude an analysis or consider a move until they are satisfied they look at something important from all possible angles. It is an interesting contrast to our practice.

The KGB — Soviet Era — and U suppose its successor has a built in weakness because it combines domestic security and control with international information gathering and comparatively weak analysis. Such a combination almost guarentees that anaylsis will reflect political imperatives. Of the Soviet bloc services during the Cold War, the Stasi had the same problem — domestic and foreign matters were too closely related, but in the end I think Stasi was far more effective in spying on the US and NATO than the KGB.

Good intelligence, the argument goes, whether collected by observation, agents in place or disruptive (disinformation) tactics can, in the best of all possible worlds keep countries out of conflict. Done well, intelligence collecting and analysis can show something is not what it seems. In fact it now looks like the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was precisely that sort — they could not find evidence that Saddam had WMD’s so they had to fix their facts. The shame here is more on the consumer of intelligence than the producers.

I suspect Iran in 1953 was much more about fear that Iran would slip into the Soviet Orbit than anything else. It was the heighth of militarized ’Containment†— and in a sense Ike had to fear the â€China Lobby†and McCarthy on his political right. The Dulles brothers were both in his inner circle, and the Brits did most of the planning. Ike’s more independent operations were the overflights — first on the SU’s borders, and then when the U2 was available after 1956 — real cross country overflights. The Eisehnower era did the basic research for spy sattalites. We have to assume the communications technology was at least as advanced for those times.

Griffon

One of the reasons I raised the question is to try to think of the counter examples. If we could have taken out Saddam with a covert op (that is, if we didn’t fuck it up so badly), and leave the Iraqis with infrastructure in place but without the strongman, would I do it? If a covert op would have prevented the Rwandan genocide, would I have done it? I’m not interested in seeding violent coup attempts. But covert ops can also be soft power. Having read this thread, I think I’d say it seems like your soft power ops don’t need to be covert, perhaps are better if they’re not covert (though when organizations like Soros’ Open Society Institute become tainted, presumably incorrectly, as CIA fronts, then you have a problem). But I do want to honestly consider whether covert ops are an effective tool at all.

eRobin

I guess, if we were to include the Economic Hitman stuff, we’d have to reframe who we’re talking about as the operative order. In which case, all these fuckups begin to look smart. For them.

I guess that’s part of the problem.

EW, the problem with covert ops is that they require a nuanced detailed understanding of local conditions to work. Outside of Western Europe, the US National Security elite are clueless, won’t get human intelligence, and can’t read it when it shows up out of the blue from some other country’s intelligence service. We live on a diet of signals and satellite intelligence, which leads us to whack jobs, like the Dora Farms bombardment at the start of our most recent Gulf War. The Brits, Russians, and Israelis know how to pull such operations off but we don’t, so we should leave them alone. Blowback, eh?

An interesting thread. But I’m a bit surprised at some of the missing events, and the cost of those:

No mention of Operation Phoenix in Vietnam. Depending on who you talk to, the deaths from this assassination program totaled at least 40,000. Results: some dead â€Viet Cong,†some dead VC sympathizers, some dead people that other people wanted out of the way for reasons having nothing to do with politics; some dead people due to misidentification. Current government: Red semi-capitalist.

Laos: CIA-backed coups in ’58, ’59 and ’60. Another coup in ’64. The CIA’s covert Army of Meo tribespeople and mercenaries from Thailand and Vietnam were just one aspect of the whole secret war, which included massive covert bombing (covert from the American people, not from the Laotians, obviously). As many as 100,000 Laotians were assassinated by covert agents in the employ of the CIA. total dead in the war: 350,000. Current government: Red.

The 1970 coup in Cambodia. There’s no direct evidence that the CIA was involved in the actual coup. But the Green Berets had been out to get rid of Sihanouk for years, and in 1969 had approached Lon Nol, who had numerous strong ties to the American military to initiate a coup. The coup was the beginning of the end. Within a decade, up to 2 million Cambodians were dead, the country’s infrastructure wrecked, two generations of educated people wiped out. Current government: multiparty democracy no thanks to U.S. efforts to prop up the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese for more than a decade.

So, what would the world look like if the U.S. had not engaged in these intertangled covert ops?

—

Texas Dem, while I’ve been a foe of U.S. policy toward Cuba all my adult life, I think it’s safe to say that by the time he arrived in Havana in 1959, Castro was already no social-democrat.

Thanks for not taking my comments as a personal attack. It kinda read that way to me afterwards.

I’m going to quote you and disagree, again!

â€If we could have taken out Saddam with a covert op (that is, if we didn’t fuck it up so badly), and leave the Iraqis with infrastructure in place but without the strongman, would I do it?â€

There are so many unwritten assumptions behind this question I don’t know where to start. The nature of a violent intervention is a â€fuck upâ€.
If you have ANY designs on their resources, then it soon degenerates into exploitation if, indeed, it doesn’t start there.
If you are motivated entirely by humanitarian concerns, then where do you start in the world and where do you finish? Even an ardent advocate for intervention must admit that a percentage of these intervention/incursions will â€fuck upâ€. Who wants to put their hand up for the responsibility of the death toll? Would you, Emptywheel?

â€If a covert op would have prevented the Rwandan genocide, would I have done it?â€

Being a cynical person, I googled â€Rwanda + resouces†and guess what? Lots of gas.
I was tempted to do the same thing with Czechoslovakia after you mentioned it, but didn’t. But I’ll ask you, â€Were there any sizable resources that were in State hands that are now privatised i.e. in the Global Corporatists’ bag?

Milosevic’s crime was not selling off the States resources which happened promptly after liberation (and the bombing of cultural icons).
I don’t want to say that your motivations are the same as the corporations, but does it matter if the results flow from the actions rather than the motivations behind them?

â€I’m not interested in seeding violent coup attempts.â€

I would hope not, but is â€violent†the operative word here?

Chomsky said something like â€If you want to stop terrorism, then stop engaging in itâ€!

If I were the Potus, I would enact William Blum’s answer internationally and, domestically, I would set about building an equitable and just society. I would turn it into a model for the world. Few realise that the current fascist model is incredibly inefficient prosperity wise – all that internal conflict. All those resources devoted to â€controlling†the problems created by the exploitation of the system.

Then the US could say â€This is what we have done and this is how we did it. We will help any country do the same if they askâ€

Do you think that this would create internal pressure against tyrannical regimes?
All tyrannies require fearful co-operation from the populace to function.
Non-violent non co-operation is the key to overthrowing so called â€strongmenâ€.

Violence just gets more violence.

I come back to –
The end is just the result of the means.

â€(Though our propaganda has gotten so bad, that we’re at no risk of having unidentified propaganda floating about. Might as well stamp it, â€This bullshit brought to you by Karen Hughes and a bunch of other Texans who can’t even understand other American cultures, much less yours.â€â€

Yup. That’s great!

I welcome the oportunity to answer your question (such that I can) but I don’t want to ramble and apologise â€for the long letter as I didn’t have time to write a short one†(Oscar Wilde). I’d like to be as succinct as I can.

So lemme think about it and I’ll come back later tonight or tomorrow.
But to give you the flavour, I regard international propoganda the same way as you might the neighbour who, without invitation, tells you how to raise your kids.

The short answer, Emptywheel, is that it is not a question of where do you stop but rather should you start? And my answer is no. And the short answer to the reasons why is, â€Read Daniel Quinn’s â€Ishmaelâ€â€.

An observation – It is pretty easy to see that the rednecks have been drinking â€The Kool-Aid†but can you see the stuff that you have swallowed? I suggest a long hard look at the concept of being â€the leader of the free worldâ€. Who voted for you (USA)? Who wants the USA to lead them? What gives the USA the right to intervene in other countries future? Are you prepared to tolerate others interfering with your future?
Everybody’s views are based on premises that they usually grew up with and each culture has it’s own particular brand of brainwashing aimed at furthering the interests of the elite of that culture or at least the status quo.

The longer answer follows-

Any covert operation is going to bring unwanted consequences because being covert is being dishonest and you will be found out. When that happens, who is going to trust you? No trust equals no credibility. So now the only way to influence is more deceit through cutouts and frontmen leading to more exposes and scandal and ever more denial. Remind you of anyone?

But why should any country seek to influence another against it’s will other than to exploit it?

European â€civilisations†are not living sustainably as far as the world ecology is concerned but more to the point is that they are not living sustainably within the ecology of their own national borders. You can’t expect unsustainable nations to come together and create a worldwide sustainability.

Globalisation is some nations maintaining their unsustainability at other nations expense be it stealing other nations natural resources, their people as in plantation slaves or their labour as in third world sweat shops.

The cultures of Europe, England, USA and Japan have flourished as a cancer flourishes at the expense of healthy life, the chief example being the indigenous peoples around the world. Ironically, the very people who KNOW how to live sustainably within their borders. These peoples trade with others but not for the necessities of life. This breeds dependence, vulnerability and WILL be abused.
Cancer has a very finite life and is strongest the moment before the host dies. The same goes for parasites.

European wars have been over trade and between trading partners, each one wanting not to be restrained by the limits of it’s own natural resources.

If you still want to influence other countries out of purely humanitarian motives, then the only honest and effective way to do it is by example.
Turn the USA into the land of Freedom, Equality and Justice for all it’s citizens and being dependent on no one, be it a foreign country or a foreign or domestic corporation.

And it can be done through organising non violent, non co-operative campaigns. It will need ingenious and lateral thinking and military style strategy and organisation.

With the experience gained from being successful at resting power from the â€powerful†you are then in a position to teach this to others WHO ASK.

For anyone wanting to find out more about this, I recommend googleing â€Gene Sharpâ€.

This is a bit of a hobby horse for me, Emptywheel, and I am grateful for the opportunity to write about it.

Event of 5-6 july 1997 in cambodia