Reminder of regime changes past

It really is remarkable how confident American policymakers still are about the American ability to stage "regime change" operations, despite their actual record. John Prados' Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (2006) describes how bumbling many of them have been and how even the two postwar regime-change operations considered big successes at the time - in Iran and Guatemala - were successful in large part through dumb luck.

And, of course, we're still wrestling with the consequences of the "successful" regime change operation in Iran. President Obama's decision to lift the embargo against Cuba is also a recognition of how poorly our regime-change efforts in Cuba worked. Poorly, as in total failure in Cuba's case.

I was reading an interview with German writer and political activist Günter Grass, in which he mentions in passing the democratic revolution in Portugal of 1974. (Andrej Ivanji, Günter Grass: "Der dritte Weltkrieg hat begonnen" Der Standard 20.12.2014) Henry Kissinger was then Republican President Gerald Ford's Secretary of State. And as Grass reminds us, he regarded the revolution much as he regarded Salvador Allende's elected government in Chile and wanted to handle it the same way, i.e., to overthrow the democratic government and substitute and authoritarian dictatorship. As Grass says, Willy Brandt was then head of the Socialist International, the international organization of social-democratic parties, and the SI had much more significance as a leadership group than it does now. (It has very little at all now.) But, in Grass' account, Brandt in particular along with other social-democratic leaders, blocked Kissinger's regime-change aspirations for Portugal.

The American record on regime change hasn't improved much since 1974.

Pat Kennelly reports on the status of one of our more recent regime-change adventures in The Unspeakable in Afghanistan Truthout 12/21/2014:

2014 marks the deadliest year in Afghanistan for civilians, fighters, and foreigners. The situation has reached a new low as the myth of the Afghan state continues. Thirteen years into America’s longest war, the international community argues that Afghanistan is growing stronger, despite nearly all indicators suggesting otherwise. Most recently, the central government failed (again) to conduct fair and organized elections or demonstrate their sovereignty. Instead, John Kerry flew into the country and arranged new national leadership. The cameras rolled and a unity government was declared. Foreign leaders meeting in London decided on new aid packages and financing for the nascent ‘unity government.’ Within days, the United Nations helped broker a deal to keep foreign forces in the country, while simultaneously President Obama declared the war was ending—even as he increased the number of troops on the ground. In Afghanistan, President Ghani dissolved the cabinet and many people are speculating the 2015 parliamentary elections will be postponed.

While the exact role of the US in the change of regime in Ukraine earlier this year is contested, it's very clear from what's in the public record that neocon US Ambassador to Ukraine Victoria Nuland and the neocon-run and Congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) were actively and recklessly working for regime change against the elected pro-Russian government that was overthrown by the rebellion earlier this year. (See for instance: Angela Merkel: Victoria Nuland's remarks on EU are unacceptable; Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leak1ed Nuland-Pyatt call BBC News 02/07/2014; Ed Pilkington and Luke Harding, Guardian 02/07/2014)

The Institute for Policy Studies' Right Web information page on the NED (updated 03/02/2014) includes the following:

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s to push democratic reforms and roll back Soviet influence in various parts of the globe. In his 1983 speech inaugurating NED, President Ronald Reagan said: "I just decided that this nation, with its heritage of Yankee traders, ought to do a little selling of the principles of democracy."[Ronald Reagan, "Remarks at a White House Ceremony Inaugurating the National Endowment for Democracy" NED, 12/16/1983]

The private, congressionally funded NED has been a controversial tool in U.S. foreign policy because of its support of efforts to overthrow foreign governments. As the writers Jonah Gindin and Kirsten Weld remarked in the January/February 2007 NACLA Report on the Americas: "Since [1983], the NED and other democracy-promoting governmental and nongovernmental institutions have intervened successfully on behalf of 'democracy'—actually a very particular form of low-intensity democracy chained to pro-market economics—in countries from Nicaragua to the Philippines, Ukraine to Haiti, overturning unfriendly 'authoritarian' governments (many of which the United States had previously supported) and replacing them with handpicked pro-market allies."[Jonah Gindin and Kirsten Weld, "Benevolence or Intervention? Spotlighting U.S. Soft Power" NACLA Report on the Americas Jan/Feb 2007] ...

Allen Weinstein, a member of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) working group known as the Democracy Group, which first proposed the formation of a quasi-governmental group to channel U.S. political aid, served as NED's acting president during its first year. Talking about the role of NED, Weinstein told the Washington Post in 1991 that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."[David Ignatius, "Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups" Washington Post 09/22/1991 September 22, 1991]

Günter Grass stirs up the German election campaign a bit

The 85-year-old writer and public intellectual Günter Grass has inserted himself into the German election campaigned. And inserted his foot into his mouth.

Grass blasted former SPD Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine, who infuriated the SPD leaders by switching to the Left Party in 1999, where he became a prominent spokesperson for the Party and helped it shed some of its "eastern" image. (Daniel Brössler, Literatur-Nobelpreisträger Grass rechnet mit Lafontaine ab Süddeutsche Zeitung 13.08.2013)

Albrecht Müller notes, as have other including Lafontaine himself, that the former Finance Minister no longer plays a prominent role in national politics for the Left Party. (Günter Grass lässt sich leider wieder einmal in eine Kampagne einspannen – wie schon des Öfteren seit 40 Jahren. Und diesmal besonders komisch: zugunsten des Machterhalts von Merkel. NachDenkSeiten 13.08.2013)

Grass' expressed complaint against Lafontaine is that he is the one preventing electoral cooperation and the prospect of the SPD joining the Left Party in a national coalition because, says Grass, Lafontaine has always been against it. Both Lafontaine and Müller object that in fact it's the SPD that has consistently refused such a possibility while Lafontaine has advocated it.

Günter Grass was a prominent figure of the intellectual left in Germany for decades. He was particularly outspoken about the need for Germans to recognize, analyze and understand the Nazi era and the crimes committed then. He wasn't entirely consistent himself about this, however. In 2006, he publicly explained for the first time that at age 17, he had been a member of the notorious Waffen-SS. A fact of which Lafontaine reminded him and the public in his reply this week to Grass' criticism.

This BBC News article, Guenter Grass served in Waffen SS 08/11/2006, reports on that revelation. As I explained in my post D-Day, 1985 05/29/2004:

The SS (Schutzstaffel, or "protective detachment"), also known as the Blackshirts, were an elite Nazi group headed by Heinrich Himmler. The SS operated the concentration camps, and its members were infamous for their sadism, fanaticism and murderous brutality.

The SS grew into a large, complex organization. The Waffen-SS was attached to regular military units and, unlike most of the SS, included conscripts as well as volunteers. Nevertheless, the Waffen-SS earned its own notoreity. It was the First SS Panzer Division who, on December 17, 1944, in the Battle of the Bulge, had murdered 71 unarmed American prisoners of war in the Belgian town of Malmedy. Malmedy was the worst massacre of U.S. POWs during World War II.

From what Grass said, as quoted by the BBC, he was a conscript: "It happened as it did to many of my age. We were in the labour service and all at once, a year later, the call-up notice lay on the table. And only when I got to Dresden did I learn it was the Waffen SS."

Still, it was a real embarrassment for him and detracted from his image as a public intellectual.

Albrecht Müller points out that in his interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Grass praises the "Agenda 2010" neoliberal reforms, which are good example of neoliberal "reforms," this having lowered wages and heightened social insecurity in Germany. And he accuses Grass of echoing the criticism that financial lobbies directed at Lafontaine, which were a major factor in his resignation in 1999. Lafontaine resisted the neoliberal drift and demanded better regulation of the finance sector.

Müller is right that the only was the SPD has a likely chance of forming the next government is with the support of the Left Party. So he argues that Grass' misleading trashing of the Left Party only increase the likelihood of Merkel continuing as Chancellor.

It certainly appears that SPD Chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrück is really aiming to become the junior partner to Merkel in a new CDU/SPD Grand Coalition.

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, günter grass, peer steinbrück, spd