by Howard Zinn
Southeast Asia would have had to swim the Pacific to get to San Francisco. Did the Soviet
Union, with intercontinental bal istic missiles, with submarines off the coast of Long Island,
need Central America as a base for attacking the United States?
Nevertheless, the Kissinger Commission, set up by President Reagan to advise him on
Central American policy, warned in its report that our "southern flank" was in danger—a
biological reference designed to make al of us nervous.
Even a brief look at history was enough to make one skeptical. How could we explain our
frequent interventions in Central America before 1917, before the Bolshevik Revolution?
How could we explain our taking control of Cuba and Puerto Rico in 1898; our seizure of the
Canal Zone in 1903; our dispatch of marines to Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and
Guatemala in the early 1900s; our bombardment of a Mexican town in 1914; and our long
military occupation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic starting in 1915 and 1916?11 Al this
before the Soviet Union existed.
There was another official reason given for U.S. intervention in Central America in the
1980s: to "restore democracy." This, too, was hardly believable. Throughout the period
after World War II our government had supported undemocratic governments, indeed
vicious military dictatorships: in Batista's Cuba, Somoza's Nicaragua, Armas's Guatemala,
Pinochet's Chile, and Duvalier's Haiti as wel as in El Salvador and other countries of Latin
America.
The actual purpose of U.S. policy in Central America was expressed by Tucker in the most
clear Machiavel ian terms: "The great object of American foreign policy ought to be the
restoration of a more normal political world, a world in which those states possessing the
elements of great power once again play the role their power entitles them to play."12
10
Undoubtedly, there are Americans who respond favorably to this idea, that the United States should be a "great power" in the world, should dominate other countries, should be number one. Perhaps the assumption is that our domination is benign and that our power is
used for kindly purposes. The history of our relations with Latin America does not suggest
this. Besides, is it real y in keeping with the American ideal of equality of al peoples to insist that we have the right to control the affairs of other countries? Are we the only country
entitled to a Declaration of Independence?
Means: The Lion and the Fox
There should be clues to the rightness of the ends we pursue by examining the means we
use to achieve those ends. I am assuming there is always some connection between ends
and means. Al means become ends in the sense that they have immediate consequences
apart from the ends they are supposed to achieve. And al ends are themselves means to
other ends. Was there not a link, for Machiavel i, between his crass end—power for the
prince—and the various means he found acceptable?
For a year Machiavel i was ambassador to Cesare Borgia, conqueror of Rome. He describes
one event that "is worthy of note and of imitation by others." Rome had been disorderly,
and Cesare Borgia decided he needed to make the people "peaceful and obedient to his
rule." Therefore, "he appointed Messer Remirro de Orco, a cruel and able man, to whom he
gave the ful est authority" and who, in a short time, made Rome "orderly and united." But Cesare Borgia knew his policies had aroused hatred, so,
in order to purge the minds of the people and to win them over completely,
he resolved to show that if any cruelty had taken place it was not by his
orders, but through the harsh disposition of his minister. And having found
the opportunity he had him cut in half and placed one morning in the public
square at Cesena with a piece of wood and blood-stained knife by his side.13
In recent American history, we have become familiar with the technique of rulers letting
subordinates do the dirty work, which they can later disclaim. As a result of the Watergate
scandals in the Nixon administration (a series of crimes committed by underlings in his
behalf), a number of his people (former CIA agents. White House aides, and even the
attorney-general) were sent to prison. But Nixon himself, although he was forced to resign
his office, escaped criminal prosecution, arranging to be pardoned when his vice-president,
Gerald Ford, became president. Nixon retired in prosperity and, in a few years, became a
kind of elder statesman, a Godfather of politics, looked to for sage advice.
Perhaps as a way of calming the public in that heated time of disil usionment with the
government because of Vietnam and Watergate, a Senate committee in 1974-1975
conducted an investigation of the intel igence agencies. It discovered that the CIA and the
FBI had violated the law countless times (opening mail, breaking into homes and offices,
etc.). In the course of that investigation, it was also revealed that the CIA, going back to
the Kennedy administration, had plotted the assassination of a number of foreign rulers,
including Cuba's Fidel Castro. But the president himself, who clearly was in favor of such
actions, was not to be directly involved, so that he could deny knowledge of it. This was
given the term plausible denial.
As the committee reported:
11
Non-attribution to the United States for covert operations was the original and
principal purpose of the so-cal ed doctrine of "plausible denial." Evidence
before the Committee clearly demonstrates that this concept, designed to
protect the United States and its operatives from the consequences of
disclosures, has been expanded to mask decisions of the President and his
senior staff members.14
In 1988 a story in a Beirut magazine led to information that Ronald Reagan's administration
had been secretly sel ing arms to Iran, the declared enemy of the United States, and using
the proceeds to give military aid to counterrevolutionaries (the "contras") in Nicaragua, thus violating an act passed by Congress. Reagan and Vice President Bush denied involvement,
although the evidence pointed very strongly to their participation.15 Instead of impeaching
them, however, Congress put their emissaries on the witness stand, and later several of
them were indicted. One of them (Robert McFarland) tried to commit suicide. Another,
Colonel Oliver North, stood trial for lying to Congress, was found guilty, but was not
sentenced to prison. Reagan was not compel ed to testify about what he had done. He
retired in peace and Bush became the next president of the United States, both beneficiaries
of plausible denial. Machiavel i would have admired the operation.
A prince, Machiavel i suggested, should emulate both the lion and the fox.16 The lion uses
force. "The character of peoples varies, and it is easy to persuade them of a thing, but
difficult to keep them in that persuasion. And so it is necessary to order things so that when
they no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force… . Fortune is a woman, and it
is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force."17 The fox uses deception.
If al men were good, this would not be good advice, but since they are
dishonest and do not keep faith with you, you, in return, need not keep faith
with them; and no prince was ever at a loss for plausible reasons
to cloak a
breach of faith… . The experience of our times shows those princes to have
done great things who have had little regard for good faith, and have been
able by astuteness to confuse men's brains.18
This advice for the prince has been fol owed in our time by al sorts of dictators and
generalissimos. Hitler kept a copy of The Prince at his bedside, it is said. (Who says? How do they know?) Mussolini used Machiavel i for his doctoral dissertation. Lenin and Stalin are
also supposed to have read Machiavel i.19 Certainly the Italian Communist Gramsci wrote
favorably about Machiavel i, claiming that Machiavel i was not real y giving advice to princes,
who knew al that already, but to "those who do not know," thus educating "those who must recognize certain necessary means, even if those of tyrants, because they want certain
ends."20
The prime ministers and presidents of modern democratic states, despite their pretensions,
have also admired and fol owed Machiavel i. Max Lerner, a prominent liberal commentator
on the post-World War II period, in his introduction to Machiavel i's writings, says of him:
"The common meaning he has for democrats and dictators alike is that, whatever your
ends, you must be clear-eyed and unsentimental in pursuit of them." Lerner finds in
Machiavel i's Discourses that one of its important ideas is "the need in the conduct even of a democratic state for the wil to survive and therefore for ruthless instead of half-hearted
measures."21
Thus the democratic state, behaving like the lion, uses force when persuasion does not
work. It uses it against its own citizens when they cannot be persuaded to obey the laws. It
uses it against other peoples in the act of war, not always in self-defense, but often when it
cannot persuade other nations to do its bidding.
12
For example, at the start of the twentieth century, although Colombia was wil ing to sel the rights to the Panama Canal to the United States, it wanted more money than the United
States was wil ing to pay. So the warships were sent on their way, a little revolution was
instigated in Panama, and soon the Canal Zone was in the hands of the United States. As
one U.S. senator described the operation, "We stole it fair and square."22
The modern liberal state, like Machiavel i's fox, often uses deception to gain its ends—not so
much deception of the foreign enemy (which, after al , has little faith in its adversaries), but
of its own citizens, who have been taught to trust their leaders.
One of the important biographies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is titled Roosevelt: The
Lion and the Fox. 23 Roosevelt deceived the American public at the start of World War II, in September and October 1941, misstating the facts about two instances involving German
submarines and American destroyers (claiming the destroyer Greer, which was attacked by
a German submarine, was on an innocent mission when in fact it was tracking the sub for
the British navy). A historian sympathetic to him wrote, "Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly
deceived the American people during the period before Pearl Harbor … . He was like the
physician who must tel the patient lies for the patient's own good."24
Then there were the lies of President John Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk when
they told the public the United States was not responsible for the 1961 invasion of Cuba,
although in fact the invasion had been organized by the CIA.
The escalation of the war in Vietnam started with a set of lies—in August 1964—about
incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin. The United States announced two "unprovoked" attacks on
U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese boats. One of them almost certainly did not take
place. The other was undoubtedly provoked by the proximity (ten miles) of the destroyer to
the Vietnamese coast and by a series of ClA-organized raids on that coast.25
The lies then multiplied. One of them was President Johnson's statement that the U.S. Air
Force was only bombing "military targets." Another was a deception by President Richard
Nixon; he concealed from the American public the 1969-1970 massive bombing of
Cambodia, a country with which we were supposed to be at peace.
The Advisers
Advisers and assistants to presidents, however committed they are in their rhetoric to the
values of modern liberalism, have again and again participated in acts of deception that
would have brought praise from Machiavel i. His goal was to serve the prince and national
power. So was theirs. Because they were advisers to a liberal democratic state, they
assumed that advancing the power of such a state was a moral end, which then justified
both force and deception. But cannot a liberal state carry out immoral policies? Then the
adviser (deceiving himself this time) would consider that his closeness to the highest circles
of power put him in a position to affect, even reverse, such policies.
It was a contemporary of Machiavel i, Thomas More, who warned intel ectuals about being
trapped into service to the state and about the self-deception in which the adviser believes
he wil be a good influence in the higher councils of the government.26 In More's book
Utopia, spokesperson Raphael is offered the advice commonly given today to young people
who want to be social critics, prodding the government from outside, like Martin Luther King
or Ralph Nader. The advice is to get on the inside. Raphael is told, "I stil think that if you could overcome the aversion you have to the courts of princes, you might do a great deal of
good to mankind by the advice that you would give."
Raphael replies, "If I were at the court of some king and proposed wise laws to him and
tried to root out of him the dangerous seeds of evil, do you not think I would either be
thrown out of his court or held in scorn?" He goes on,
13
Imagine me at the court of the King of France. Suppose I were sitting in his
council with the King himself presiding, and that the wisest men were
earnestly discussing by what methods and intrigues the King might keep
Milan, recover Naples so often lost, then overthrow the Venetians and subdue
al Italy, and add Flanders, Brabant, and even al Burgundy to his realm,
besides some other nations he had planned to invade. Now in al this great
ferment, with so many bril iant men planning together how to carry on war,
imagine so modest a man as myself standing up and urging them to change
al their plans.27
More might have been describing the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., adviser to President
Kennedy, who thought it was "a terrible idea" to go ahead with the CIA Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, two years after the revolution there. But he did not raise his voice in
protest, because, as he later admitted, he was intimidated by the presence of "such august
figures as the Secretaries of State and Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff." He wrote, "In the months after the Bay of Pigs I bitterly reproached myself for having kept so silent during
those crucial discussions in the Cabinet room."28
But the intimidation of Schlesinger-as-adviser went beyond silencing him in the cabinet
room—it led him to produce a nine-page memorandum to President Kennedy, written
shortly before the invasion of Cuba, in which he is as blunt as Machiavel i himself in urging
deception of the public to conceal the U.S. role in the invasion. This would be ne
cessary
because "a great many people simply do not at this moment see that Cuba presents so
grave and compel ing a threat to our national security as to justify a course of action which
much of the world wil interpret as calculated aggression against a smal nation."29
The memorandum goes on, "The character and repute of President Kennedy constitute one
of our greatest national resources. Nothing should be done to jeopardize this invaluable
asset. When lies must be told, they should be told by subordinate officials." It goes on to
suggest "that someone other than the President make the final decision and do so in his
absence—someone whose head can later be placed on the block if things go terribly wrong."
(Cesare Borgia again, only lacking the blood-stained knife.)
Schlesinger included in his memo sample questions and lying answers in case the issue of
the invasion came up in a press conference:
Q. Mr. President, is CIA involved in this affair?
A. I can assure you that the United States has no intention of using force to
overthrow the Castro regime.30
The scenario was fol owed. Four days before the invasion. President Kennedy told a press
conference, "There wil not be, under any conditions, any intervention in Cuba by U.S.
armed forces."31
Schlesinger was just one of dozens of presidential advisers who behaved like little
Machiavel is in the years when revolutions in Vietnam and Latin America brought hysterical
responses on the part of the U.S. government. These intel ectuals could see no better role
for themselves than to serve national power.
Kissinger, secretary of state to Nixon, did not even have the mild qualms of Schlesinger. He
surrendered himself with ease to the princes of war and destruction. In private discussions
with old col eagues from Harvard who thought the Vietnam War immoral, he presented
himself as someone trying to bring it to an end, but in his official capacity he was the wil ing
intel ectual tool of a policy that involved the massive kil ing of civilians in Vietnam.
14
Kissinger approved the bombing and invasion of Cambodia, an act so disruptive of the delicate Cambodian society that it can be considered an important factor in the rise of the
murderous Pol Pot regime in that country. After he and the representatives of North
