Derangement Unbound

Karl Marx famously said in the Eighteenth Brumaire that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” While there are many examples of this insight from history, Marx could not foresee how farce would become the staple of the US ruling class, how elites would defend what they see as their interests with a web of calculated deception extending beyond the limits of the absurd.

Like the mad General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s great film, Dr. Strangelove, an Air Force four-star General, Mike Minihan, “sent a memo on Friday [January 27] to the officers he commands that predicts the U.S. will be at war with China in two years and tells them to get ready to prep by firing ‘a clip’ at a target, and ‘aim for the head,’” as reported by NBC News. Further, the deranged General “directs all AMC [Air Mobility Command] personnel to ‘consider their personal affairs and whether a visit should be scheduled with their servicing base legal office to ensure they are legally ready and prepared.’”

Further evidence of the 1950s Cold War-like craze possessing the military and infecting a gullible public came on February 1 when the US Air Force designated a proposed Chinese-owned corn mill as a “significant threat to national security.” With 370 acres of farmland, Shandong-based Fufeng group saw an opportunity to mill corn to supplement the company’s food additive business. According to Yahoo!news, the locals saw the corn mill as an “economic development success” until the military warning turned them against the plans. North Dakota’s two Senators loudly led the chorus shutting down the project.

The Great Balloon Fiasco

The world woke up during the first week of February with a new and ominous threat-- a great balloon was floating slowly through the Stratosphere across some Western US states. Unnamed “officials” declared that the balloon was a Chinese spy balloon, sent to discover some profound military secrets. The declaration was followed by incriminations from politicians of both major parties, denouncing the treacherous Chinese Communists for their perfidy.

As hysteria mounted and civilians began to report new sightings of imaginary new balloons, a few dissident voices noted that balloon spying was a dated, obsolete technology superseded by advanced high-altitude, manned airplane overflights, which have been themselves replaced by satellites and high-tech cameras. Why would the Chinese use a balloon for espionage?

But “experts” emerged who claimed that there may well be an ever-so-slight advantage to be gained by proximity and slow speed. None of the overpaid newsreaders who occupy network anchor chairs noted that since the balloon had first been detected over Alaska, the military authorities had plenty of time to rush out to Walmart to buy tarpaulins to cover the sensitive military installations from the prying eyes of the balloon’s master.

Officials in Peoples’ China admitted that it was their balloon-- a meteorological balloon-- but denied that it was a spy balloon. They might well have pointed out that it was odd that the US government would make such a fuss when it publicly claimed nearly a year ago that it was planning to engage in balloon-spying and to direct it at the Russian Federation and the Peoples’ Republic of China!

But it gets better…

As the balloon precedes slowly across the US on a course bound for the mid-Atlantic states, politicians, retired military experts, and pundits denounce the inaction on the part of the Biden Administration and the military. Goaded into a response, the military launched its most sophisticated stealth jets to intercept it-- apparently to ensure that the enormous balloon could not take evasive action. A $400,000 Sidewinder missile brought the balloon down off the coast of South Carolina before the intruder could escape our valiant air-defense command.

Not only was the South Carolina engagement the most expensive combat victory over a balloon in history, but it was the first kill for the US’s most expensive fighter, except in war games, movies, and novels. No doubt the pilot will stencil a balloon on the fuselage of his F-22.

But this last-minute response to the cackling of the chicken hawks would not suffice. The naysayers continued to attack the Administration’s response-- not enough, too late. At the same time, comedians could not resist poking fun at the alleged national-security threat from a mere balloon.

To respond to both and underscore the seriousness of the balloon threat to our security, unnamed officials announced that spy balloons had penetrated our stout defenses earlier, including at least three times during the Trump administration. Rather than quieting the warmongers and snuffing out the levity, the defense officials opened a new can of worms.

Trump’s defense officials, including career bureaucrats and Trump haters like China-phobic John Bolton, claimed no knowledge of earlier incursions.

Even the unimaginative, power-ingratiating media could not reconcile the two claims: documented balloon incursions and an unknowing Administration. Did the military shield the information from civilian authorities? Was this proper? What does this mean?

To resolve this dilemma and close the can of worms, unnamed senior Biden Administration officials came forward with a new narrative: The earlier incursions were unknown at the time and only discovered later, after the change in administration.

This led to the undoubtedly unintended parody embedded in The Wall Street Journal headline: U.S. Says Balloons Weren’t Detected. If they weren’t detected, how do we know they were there?

Of course, the military has an answer: they found out later, but how they found out must remain a secret. “Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of U.S. Northern Command, said Monday that the Defense Department ‘did not detect’ the previous balloons, adding that the intelligence community was made aware of them through other means of information collection,” according to Politico.

CNN reports that General VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, attributes the failure to a “domain awareness gap”. Thus, the failure to detect three balloons, but to discover their presence later, is explained through a mystifying, arcane piece of military jargon: a “domain awareness gap.” Shades of “Advance to the rear!”

Predictably, the stalwart defenders of our interests in the House of Representatives voted 419-0 denouncing China’s “brazen violation of United States sovereignty,” with a balloon.

Like its precedent in the 1950s, today’s war mongers advance Cold War hysteria, regardless of how we view The Great Balloon Fiasco.

If the balloon were merely an errant private meteorological balloon, then the fact that its predecessors advanced across the US undetected would demonstrate the need for more vigilance, more advanced detection capacity, better interception possibilities, and more personnel-- a gift to the Pentagon’s budget.

But if the balloon is authentically a surveillance device, then we presumably have more reason not to trust the Communist leaders and must prepare for further aggression-- with a bigger military budget.

Both are ridiculous conclusions that follow from ridiculous, outlandish, and malignant premises. Balloons constitute no more security risk than the spy satellites that are commonplace today and ensure a relatively fair playing field in international affairs.

Yet the US State Department used the ill-fated balloon as an excuse to cancel Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s trip to Beijing-- a trip scheduled to reach understanding and lessen the tensions between the two countries, a peace that the US government doesn’t want.

While it is impossible not to see the absurdity-- the farce-- in these developments, they have deadly serious consequences. As their historical precedents did in stirring the Cold War pot, China-bashing prepares the US for war. The reckless provocations, the groundless charges, and the constant baiting of Peoples’ China all raise the risk of war.

We have seen this before, most recently in the US behavior leading up to the war in Ukraine.

It must be resisted.

Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com

postscript: Yesterday, February 10, the US government announced that they had shot down "a high altitude object" over Alaskan air space. According to The Wall Street Journal, an unnamed Defense Department official said that "[t]he object didn't initially appear to belong to a government." Aliens, perhaps? The insanity continues...

It’s Now Biden’s Cold War

 

Biden’s first week or so in office proved eventful. He began to aggressively undo much of what Trump undid of the Obama Presidency. In essence, he is returning US politics to 2016. For those who longed only for the exit of Trump and a return to what they saw as the comforting past, the Biden victory is cause for celebration.

For those who want an answer to a raging pandemic that has taken more US lives than World War II, for those who fear for the future of the millions newly unemployed by the pandemic, for those millions in arrears on their rent and eventually facing eviction, and for the nearly three million households forced into forbearance on their mortgage payments, there is little yet to celebrate.

Despite the formal changing of the guard, the distance between the haves and have-nots in the US continues to grow. And more and more working people are impressed into the army of the have-nots. The catastrophic pandemic year has further brought mass insecurity and fear, prompting a strong pullback in consumer spending over the last three months.

It is doubtful that 2016 answers will solve 2021 problems. 

Biden’s Obama redo is not absolute, however. There are elements-- arguably, some of the worst elements-- of Trump’s policies that the new administration plans to keep. For example, Biden will continue, even intensify Trump’s xenophobic “Buy American” campaign. 

Biden shows no stomach for undoing Trump’s encouragement of Israeli apartheid and aggression.  

In addition, the Biden team seems inclined to continue Trump’s war-by-sanctions emphasis. Where Obama waged war by surrogates and drones, Trump, and apparently now Biden, enforced US policy through-- equally destructive, but seemingly less depraved-- economic and political sanctions. Biden has not indicated that he will remove or loosen the noose that the US maintains around the economies of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, Cuba, or other states defying our leaders.

To his credit, Biden has shown a desire to extend the important START treaty with Russia, a treaty limiting nuclear weapons. This is a big deal.

At the same time, Biden has shown a frightening escalation of belligerency against the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC). Hostility toward the PRC took a leap in the Obama administration with his euphemistically named “Pivot to Asia,” which redirected military attention to the PRC.

In his inimitable fashion, Trump further stoked this hostility, following up with massive tariffs and punitive sanctions. With a subservient media, popular approval of the PRC sank dramatically.

Now, Biden has promised to get tougher on the PRC, an ominous and dangerous threat against the world’s second or third greatest military power.

It takes only a glance at recent history and at the relevant economic data to understand the source of the hysterical reaction to the PRC on the part of the US ruling class. The economic collapse of 2007-2009 nearly brought down the US and European economies, while the PRC barely faltered; quick stimulative action restored a vibrant Chinese economy. In fact, it could be argued that the Chinese ‘bounce’ was a necessary, if not sufficient condition of the global recovery.

A little over a decade later, with a raging worldwide pandemic, the global economy is again in a deep funk, with the PRC economy showing resilience and growth. In both cases and in the interim period, the Chinese economy has made remarkable gains against its Western rivals (PRC consumer spending has grown by 171.2% since 2010, compared to 35.2% growth in the US).

Since 2016, the PRC share of global GDP has risen from 14.2% to 16.8%, while the US share has dropped slightly to 22.2%. And in the pandemic year, Chinese GDP grew by 2.3% against a global economic performance estimated to drop by 4.3% and a US GDP sliding by 3.6%. As the PRC economy gains, one can understand the frustration in US ruling circles as they witness a rival growing in strength and global influence.

Despite the aggressive tariff policy of the Trump administration, Chinese exports (and imports) expanded dramatically in late 2020. Exports grew by 21.1% in November and 18.1% in December over the prior year, assuring the PRC an even bigger slice of global trade.

But, perhaps, the most alarming statistic for US policy makers reveals that the PRC has, for the first time, passed the US in new foreign direct investment. While the US has accumulated far more foreign direct investment, the new data show that investors now look at the PRC as a better haven for profit taking than the US. This surely sends a shock wave through the US capitalist class. 

It is not alleged Chinese human rights violations, Chinese income inequality, Chinese belligerency or aggressiveness that drives US hostility, but the PRC’s challenge to US economic and political hegemony. With global economies so intertwined and with a growing dependence on Chinese supplies and Chinese domestic demand, foreign obeisance to US capitalism is threatened. The US cannot so easily dictate the foreign policy of others nor force open the doors for US capitalism. Put simply, the PRC presents a growing challenge to US imperialism.

History shows that rivalries and challenges to imperialist powers create the conditions for war; all of the great wars of the era of monopoly capitalism began as wars over markets, resources, capital expansion, and capital penetration. From the wars of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, through two world wars and wars of national liberation, to NATO’s encirclement of Russia and the US “Pivot to Asia,” all major wars and warlike confrontations are imperialist wars. 

The fact that both US political parties concur on policy toward the PRC (and Russia) only underscores the degree of danger posed by US aggressiveness. The consensus extends to the media which failed to force even a minimal discussion of policy toward the PRC into the Presidential debates or their election coverage. 

Sadly, with the election of Biden, much of the left and the New York Times-addicted liberal set may return to their slumbers as they did during the Obama administration, entrusting foreign policy to their elected leaders. 

This will be a tragic mistake.

We desperately need a mass anti-war movement-- vigilant and independent-- to stave off the dangerous machinations of US imperialism and its death-dealing war machine.  

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com 

A Chapter in a Declining Empire

Everyone not yet anesthetized by the anti-Russia hysteria, should read Robert Parry’s The Rise of the New McCarthyism. The estimable Parry argues for similarities between today’s overheated political antics and those of an earlier time. He likens the relentless Russia-baiting of 2017 with the red-baiting of the post-war period often identified with Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy.

But that is not quite right. Labelling the post-war delirium, characterizing the anti-Communist frenzy of the period as “McCarthyism” places far too much weight on that sole figure. True, Joe McCarthy exploited the climate, pushing the absurdity of the times to even more absurd levels. Yet we overlook the causes of the poisoned atmosphere just as surely as we would if we labelled this moment we live in as “Maddowism,” after the woman committed to exploiting the mania for ratings, after Rachel Maddow’s prodding anti-Russian sentiment to ever greater heights.

Political fever, like that of 1919 in the US, 1920-22 in Italy, the 1930s throughout Europe, 1946 and 2003 in the US, and again today in the US, is usually driven by crises-- threats or perceived threats to the system. It reflects weaknesses or vulnerabilities resulting from economic distress or international conflict. Whether the threat is real or perceived, identifiable or mythical, ruling classes use a crescendo of fear and alarm to foster an atmosphere of conformity and compliance.

During and after World War I, the Bolshevik revolution frightened the US ruling class into its first “Red scare,” an orgy of war-induced patriotism and media-crazed fear of mythical Red barbarity, an orgy resulting in mass arrests and deportations.

Similarly, the victory of the Soviet Union, the expansion of socialism, the intensifying struggles for national liberation, and a domestic left third-party challenge to two-party hegemony spurred the ruling class to spark a second Red scare. A critical mass of consensus was quickly achieved, persisting throughout the Cold War. Thus, it is misleading to say, as Parry does, that “...the 1950s version was driven by Republicans and the Right with much of the Left on the receiving end, maligned by the likes of Sen. Joe McCarthy as ‘un-American’ and as Communism’s ‘fellow travelers.’”

In fact, except for the “fellow travelers,” most of the non-Communist left and most liberals gleefully joined the red-baiting hunting party for “subversives.” Those who didn’t enthusiastically join the mob did little or nothing to diminish the campaign. Certainly, when the purges began to target the moderate anti-Communists, liberal voices did pathetically stir.

Consequently, those familiar with the history of Cold War US repression are not surprised by liberal complicity in the anti-Russia madness today. It should be no surprise that the liberals and the petty-bourgeois left betray the truth, make common cause with the forces of hate, distrust, and prejudice. In times of crisis, that’s what they too often do.

Outside of a few notable voices, liberal/left intellectuals are buying the anti-Russia frenzy. Despite the fact that US security services have an unbroken record of lies and manipulations, they are today manufactured to be the saviors of US “democracy.” The entertainment industry has cast “deep throat” Mark Felt-- a crazed, disgruntled FBI official, bitter because he didn’t inherit the directorship from J. Edgar Hoover-- as the hero of the Watergate debacle. Industry moguls stretch credulity to portray him as the courageous forerunner of the sleazy James Comey.

How quickly the liberals have forgotten the shame of 2003, when a ruling class-induced frenzy of lies and distortions prompted an unprovoked US invasion of a sovereign country. Have the scoundrels fabricating “evidence” against Iraq left or have they been removed from the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, etc.? Or are they still there, now busy spinning lies against Russia?

Liberals and the weasel-left should heed Parry’s warning: “Arguably, if fascism or totalitarianism comes to the United States, it is more likely to arrive in the guise of “protecting democracy” from Russia or another foreign adversary than from a reality-TV clown like Donald Trump.” Apart from flirting with war, the new consensus against Putin and Russia further erodes the remaining vestiges of democratic life in the US. Fear has brought us an Orwellian destruction of privacy and freedom, along with a murderous foreign policy and, now, a shamefully uncritical conformity.

War by Other Means

If “The New McCarthyism” is an inaccurate description of our times, what would be more suitable? Perhaps “The New Cold War” would be more appropriate since US aggression is both global and endless. The US is conducting war or war-like actions in Africa, the Middle East, South America, the Caribbean, and in Asia. Any and every country that fails to accept US global leadership becomes a target for US aggression.

This constitutes a desperate attempt on the part of US elites to maintain their place at the top of the hierarchy of imperialism, their ultimate mastery over all global affairs.

After the arrogant declaration of victory in the Cold War and the presumption of global governance, matters begin to fall apart for the champions of US global dominance. Former clients like Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein began to defy US hegemony. States like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador choose paths independent of the US template for the global economy. Other states like Yugoslavia, Cuba, and DPRKorea refused to acknowledge that socialist economic relations were outlawed in the post-Soviet era. Still other states like Iran, post-Yeltsin Russia, Libya, and Syria reject US interference in their and their neighbors’ affairs. And, of course, the world’s largest economy (PPP)-- PRChina-- does not accept a subordinate role in global affairs.

In short, the US role as self-appointed world policeman has been answered with far-from-servile acceptance by the world’s people.

The US response to resistance has been violence. Uncountable deaths and injuries from invasion, occupation, and remotely-mounted attacks have been visited upon combatants and civilians alike. The stability of numerous countries has been disrupted, usually under the cynical banner of human rights. Over the last two decades or so, US imperialism has restructured its aggression, relying more and more on surrogates, drones, and economic aggression, but with the same deadly results.

Obama’s cabal of liberal interventionists has refined and expanded the tactic of imposing international sanctions, a particularly brutal, but seemingly high-minded form of aggression.

We should not deceive ourselves. International sanctions may masquerade as a mechanism of civil enforcement, but they are, in fact, acts of war-- war by other means. The current world balance of forces allows the US to cajole, intimidate or manipulate UN member states to endorse strangling the economies of US adversaries under the guise of UN sanctions. The UN virtually rubber stamps the US initiatives to cut the lifelines of countries, organizations, even corporations that dare to ignore US dictates Similarly, the EU and NATO act as sanction lapdogs.. The consequences of sanctions can be just as destructive, as death-dealing, as overt military aggression. Shamefully, even Russia and PRC-- the victims of sanctions-- have collaborated on these sanctions in recent years, an opportunistic approach meant to ingratiate themselves with US leaders.

At the same time, no UN economic sanctions have been imposed upon the serial human rights violator, the apartheid state of Israel-- merely calls, resolutions, and condemnations.

In a toxic atmosphere of incredulous “sonic” attacks charged to Cuban authorities, provocative claims of Russian government meddling in everything from the electric grid to Facebook, allegations of Venezuelan drug trafficking, suspicions of Chinese espionage, and the many other marks of induced paranoia, the fight for truth is the only escape, the only response to the ugly throes of a diseased, embattled empire. Most assuredly, the empire is in decline, though most of its citizens are unaware, sheltered by a thick curtain of deceit.

Greg Godels (Zoltan Zigedy)
zzsblogml@gmail.com 

Book Review: The Brothers-- John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War

In a different time, a time when we escape the cultural waste excreted by decadent capitalism, a time without Fast and Furious 23 and the abominable cable television mini-series Spartacus, some creative and capable filmmaker might make a fascinating bio-pic out of the lives of the Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster. Until then, we must make do with a new biography of the important duo (The Brothers, Times Books, 2013) written by Stephen Kinzer, and another, hopefully soon-to-be-available book on the subject by David Talbot.

Kinzer's book gives a fascinating, but unsatisfying look at the lives of two public figures who wielded an unprecedented concentration of global power. For the better part of a decade-- from 1953 to 1959-- the two brothers together shaped nearly the entire US policy toward the rest of the world. As director of the Central Intelligence Agency, brother Allen decided the US clandestine activities toward friends and foes alike. At the same time, he shaped the extent and few limits of the newly founded agency.

Brother John Foster did the same for the US's overt role in the world. As President D. D. Eisenhower's Secretary of State from 1953 until Dulles's death in 1959, he served the same goals and interests as his brother.

The unusual circumstance of such complete and convergent power sharing was neither coincidental nor the result of a ruthless power grab. In fact, it was consensual.

But who gave the necessary consent? Certainly not the electorate, since neither brother held elected office. Nor was it the tacit consent of the public given Allen Dulles's secretive role and publicly unknown activities. The consent question can only be answered by positing the existence in the US of a mechanism capable of deciding questions of ultimate leadership, a mechanism that could entrust US foreign policy to these two long-groomed brothers. While we cannot be sure of who exactly operates this mechanism and how it specifically functions, we can be sure that it exists with the same certainty that we can affirm the unseen existence of gravity.

It should be equally obvious that the work of the Dulles brothers through their eight years of common leadership coincided broadly with the “interests” of the US as defined by the privately-held, corporately organized heights of the US economy. While their policies only occasionally directly benefited individual capitalists (usually former legal clients), their actions were decidedly intent on benefiting the capitalist class as a whole.

It is through this mechanism that the interests of the capitalist class are protected and promoted. It is, in the end, the way in which a ruling class rules. In the end, it constitutes the best Marxist evidence for the existence of a ruling class.

Ruling class-deniers are compelled to explain how the Dulles brothers came to enjoy such exceptional power precisely at a time when US elites felt most threatened by the specter of Communism. They must offer an alternative account that brings two imposing figures associated with power, wealth, and anti-Communism to the pinnacle of power outside of the bourgeois democratic process.

Kinzer, a reliable foot soldier in the New York Times corporate empire, does not hide the uniqueness and oddity of the ascent of the brothers. But he would certainly have nothing to do with the forbidden idea of a ruling class in the US.

Nonetheless, his account offers revealing hints about how the Dulles brothers were vetted and selected, how one qualifies to be trusted agents for ruling class interests.

As early as 1921, the Dulles brothers participated in the creation of an important part of the mechanism of capitalist class rule: The Council on Foreign Relations and its subsequent public discussion journal, Foreign Affairs. To this day, the Council and its publication remain essential elements in crafting and debating foreign policy options congruent with the interests of capital.

Armed with Ivy League, foreign policy and clandestine service credentials, the Dulles brothers easily passed through the filters of ruling class trust. For John Foster, this brought him to the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, perhaps the leading legal agent for the international interests of US capital at the time. While rising to the top of the firm, the elder Foster ensured that US corporations, especially financial firms, were advanced and protected overseas. Kinzer recounts how the law firm could always call on the US military to back up its deal making. Moreover, he doesn't hide the close, welcoming relationship of Sullivan and Cromwell with fascist regimes. Even in the inter-war period, Foster was obsessed with forging unity with any enemies of Communism. Like the Council on Foreign Affairs, Sullivan and Cromwell was another component of the ruling class mechanism. Allen worked for the firm as well.

With much of the history of the ruthless, violent, and undemocratic trajectory of US foreign policy in the 1950s now widely acknowledged, Kinzer cannot mask the devious and bloody role of the brothers in orchestrating it. Instead, he does a shrewd job of softening it by focusing on only six covert plots against foreign “monsters” perceived as standing in the way of US interests. The six-- Iran's Mossadegh, Guatemala's Arbenz, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, Indonesia's Sukharno, Congo's Lumumba, and Cuba's Fidel-- are specifically targeted by the Dulles brothers for having the audacity to defy the US. All six cases are well-documented independently, with the Sukharno case the least well-known (Kinzer fails to fully indict the CIA in its collaboration in assassinating a million Indonesian Communists and their allies).

This spin on CIA extra-legal killings, coups, and assassination attempts feeds a simple-minded psychological explanation of the Dulles disposition to rearrange the world to suit US capital. Drawing on a bizarre interpretation of the celebrated movie, High Noon, Kinzer paints the Dulles brothers as counterparts to the cowboy hero “...reluctant to fight, but moved to do so because otherwise good people will suffer.” What makes this particular allusion so twisted is that the screenwriter, Carl Foreman, intended the film to be a less-than-veiled attack on the cowardice of those lacking the spine to confront anti-Communist blacklisting and McCarthyism. What was meant as an attack on the Cold War mentality is converted by Kinzer into an excuse for that Cold War mentality. Oddly, many right wingers see High Noon as Kinzer does. But the old loud-mouthed red-baiter, John Wayne, knew better-- he refused the lead because he smelled an anti-blacklist allegory.

Kinzer postures his account as a study of an aberration, a time when well-meaning people did some now embarrassing things because they exaggerated the Soviet threat. But none of these postures are proven by Kinzer; they are merely stated as fact. There seems no good reason to view two Cold Warriors as well-meaning when they brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and caused the deaths of literally millions. There is no compelling reason to conclude that there really was a Soviet threat to the security of the US, unless one assumes the Soviet desire for world socialism was somehow more intrinsically aggressive than the US desire for a capitalist world. But posturing the Dulles's foreign policy as an aberration is preposterous. The aggressiveness of the CIA and the US military after the reign of the brothers only intensified. Kinzer surely can't be blind to the US interventions in Vietnam, Angola, Panama, Grenada, Chile, and right up to the more recent aggressions against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, and Syria. The Dulles brothers provided a blue print and not an aberration.

So why does a distinguished writer for The New York Times writing for Times Books choose to write a critical, but sympathetic biography of these two ruthless Cold Warriors?

One finds the answer in the final chapter. Kinzer quotes Senator William Fulbright, an often lonely critic of the Fosters and US foreign policy, as saying that John Foster “misleads public opinion, confuses it, [and] feeds it pap.” But if Dulles fed the public “pap,” he did it through the intermediary of the US news media, including The New York Times. It is transparently obvious that the media of the Dulles era not only failed to challenge the Dulles world view but actively promoted and disseminated it. In that regard, Kinzer's employer is complicit in fanning the flames of Cold War fervor and sanctioning the violence and lawlessness that emerged from it.

To escape this unpleasant judgment on the Cold War media, Kinzer finds a convenient, handy scapegoat: the US public. Amidst splashes of psycho-babble, Kinzer explains:

Part of the answer lies in their personal backgrounds, part in the realm of psychology. The most important explanation, however, may be: they did it because they are us. If they were shortsighted, open to violence, and blind to the subtle realities of the world, it was because these qualities help define American foreign policy and the United States itself.

The Dulles brothers personified ideals and traits that many Americans shared during the 1950s, and still share... they embodied the national ethos. What they wanted, Americans wanted.

In all of this, the Dulles brothers were one with their fellow Americans. Their attitudes were rooted in the American character. They were pure products of the United States.

Now this is a shabby, dishonest piece of writing. Their “fellow Americans”-- millions of ordinary people-- were not like the Dulles brothers. They were not privileged Ivy League graduates born in the midst of the elite of the elites. Nor is it fair to the millions of US citizens who never had the opportunity to walk the path or through the doors open to the brothers to say that these citizens were “shortsighted,” “open to violence,” or “blind to subtle realities.” Certainly millions of their fellow citizens unwisely trusted these pillars of high society to not succumb to these character flaws. They were betrayed, just as they were betrayed by a compliant, cowardly media.

In his tortured finale, Kinzer persists in excusing the brothers and their Cold War enablers, the media. To his credit, he recognizes some of the great harm incurred on their watch; to his shame, he places the blame at the doorstep of the US public: “The blame, however, does not end with them. To gaze at their portraits and think, 'They did it,' would be reassuring. It would also be unfair. Americans who seek to understand the roots of their country's trouble in the world should look not at Foster and Allen's portraits but in a mirror.”

Kinzer would like us to believe that we collectively bear the blame for despicable deeds that were done behind our backs and without our consent, deeds that a compliant media, including his patron, The New York Times, were only too eager to ignore, distort, and approve.

Following Kinzer's logic, the public is responsible for the hyper-spying of the NSA so recently revealed by Snowden. The fact that it was kept from public scrutiny by the government and the media matters not. If we are indignant over authorities collecting our phone calls and other electronic communications, we should look “in a mirror” and accept the blame.

Of course this is ridiculous.

Kinzer serves a cold dish of obfuscation and blame-deflection with his book, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and their Secret World War. Readers should be wary of this calculated apology for imperialism and its high commanders. There is little new in Kinzer's account apart from some anecdotal hi-jinks. And much of the ugly side of US foreign policy is omitted. There is no indictment of an enthusiastically collaborative Cold War media either, only an embarrassing silence about their role.

Stephen Kinzer's patrons will be happy.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com