A Little Historical Context
Think back to your American history class in high school. Remember the Monroe Doctrine?
The Monroe Doctrine is a U.S. doctrine which, on December 2, 1823, said that European powers were no longer to colonize or interfere with the affairs of the newly independent nations of the Americas. The United States planned to stay neutral in wars between European powers and their colonies. However, if later on, these types of wars were to occur in the Americas, the United States would view such action as hostile. President James Monroe first stated the doctrine during his seventh annual State of the Union Address to Congress, a defining moment in the foreign policy of the United States. Most recently, during the Cold War, the doctrine was invoked as a reason to intervene militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of Communism.
Consider the last sentence: “Most recently, during the Cold War, the doctrine was invoked as a reason to intervene militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of Communism.” We’ll be referring back to it later.
Next, think of the Spanish American War.
The Spanish-American War was a military conflict between Spain and the United States that began in April 1898. Hostilities halted in August of that year, and the Treaty of Paris was signed in December.
The war began after the American demand for Spain’s peacefully resolving the Cuban fight for independence was rejected, though strong expansionist sentiment in the United States may have motivated the government to target Spain’s remaining overseas territories: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam and the Caroline Islands.
Riots in Havana by pro-Spanish “Voluntarios” gave the United States a reason to send in the warship USS Maine to indicate high national interest. Tension among the American people was raised because of the explosion of the USS Maine, and “yellow journalism” that accused Spain of extensive atrocities, agitating American public opinion. The war ended after decisive naval victories for the United States in the Philippines and Cuba.
Only 109 days after the outbreak of war, the Treaty of Paris, which ended the conflict, gave the United States ownership of the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam.
Think of how strategically important these islands were during WWII. Even completely insignificant islands like Midway and Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima became prized strategic and geopolitical assets for both the Allies and the Japanese as refueling stations and bases from which attacks could be launched. Think of how many lives were lost in the battles over these areas, on both sides. While Midway and Iwo Jima might have been otherwise worthless territory, they were geopolitically and strategically priceless, and any amount of blood spilled to control them would be worth the cost.
Now, consider the actions of Turkey during WWII.
Throughout the World War II Turkey was neutral just until towards the end of the war when the Allied forces advanced in Germany then Turkey supported the Allied forces economically and politically. However, Turkey did not participate in any military activities throughout the war. They did support other countries with military supplies.
Turkey, as you may know, is a member of NATO and has been since its creation. Consider Article 5 of the NATO Charter.
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.
In other words, an attack on any member of a NATO country will be considered an attack on all the members, who can and will use retaliatory force. Clearly this was directed at the USSR—if you attack any member state then you have to deal with the other members, namely the US and UK and other major military powers. However, why Turkey? It did nothing during WWII to really earn a place at the table. If it looked like Nazi Germany was going to win they would likely have allied themselves with the Germans. So why did we pay such great deference to Turkey? Simple geopolitics.
Consider the world during the time of the Cold War. Here is a map of the region that comprised the Soviet Union. Look down in the bottom left corner, where the USSR borders the Middle East. This is where, on a modern map, you will find the country of Georgia, which was previously a satellite state of the USSR. Bordering Georgia are two countries, Turkey and Iran.
What is immediately to the south of Turkey and Iran? Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and a whole shitload of oil.
Turkey is in NATO for one reason and one reason alone—to act as a buffer zone between the USSR and the oil. If Turkey had not been made a member of NATO the Soviets could have invaded it, then rolled the tanks right down into the Middle East and captured the oil supplies there. Thus Turkey was given consideration far and above what it had really earned as a nation simply because of geopolitical concerns. Not only did the west want to prevent the USSR from getting at Middle Eastern oil, we wanted to make sure that we had unfettered access to the supplies, which necessitated our cozying up to the House of Saud and other deplorable regimes.
What about Iran? The Shah was in power from 1941 onwards. However, there was an oil-based threat from Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
In the early 1950s, there was a political crisis centered in Iran that commanded the focused attention of British and American intelligence agencies. In 1951 Dr. Mossadegh came to office, committed to re-establishing democracy and constitutional monarchy, and to nationalizing the Iranian petroleum industry, which was controlled by the British. From the start he erroneously believed that the Americans, who had no interest in the Anglo-Iranian Oil company, would support his nationalization plan. He was buoyed by the American Ambassador, Henry Grady. However, during these events, the Americans supported the British, and, fearing that the Communists with the help of the Soviets were poised to overthrow the government, they decided to remove Mossadegh.
After a CIA-backed coup in 1953 Mossagdeh was assassinated. Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even admitted it in 2000.
“In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”
Of course, in typical Clintonian fashion, she blames Iranian “resent” on this incident, when the reality is, of course, vastly more complicated. Nonetheless, in the Shah we had an ally an an anti-communist. At the time of the 1979 Islamic revolution the US was fulfilling an order for a class of destroyers based on the Spruance class hull design. (I was a sailor on a Spruance class destroyer, the USS Hayler, DD-997.) After the revolution the US Navy assumed these ships and they became the Kidd class. However, considering their original destination, sailors still refer to them as “Ayatollah Class” destroyers.
The Kidd class destroyers were decommissioned in the 1990s. In a sign of the geopolitical circle of life, they were sold to Taiwan in 2001. What goes around comes around.
How does all this come together? The Monroe Doctrine established the principle that we would, in essence, establish a buffer zone in which we would not allow any outside interference from other nations. During the Cold War we expanded this to prevent Central and South America from communist influence. Remember when Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada? It was based on this doctrine.
On March 13, 1979 the New Jewel Movement under Maurice Bishop launched a revolution against the government of Eric Gairy to establish a people’s provisional [i.e. communist] government. The new government suspended the constitution and began to rule by decree. All other political parties were banned and no elections were ever held. Internationally, the government quickly aligned itself with Cuba and other communist governments. Under Bishop, Grenada began a military build-up.
The government also began constructing an international airport with the help of Canada, Mexico and other nations. In March 1983 U.S. President Ronald Reagan called this runway evidence of “Soviet-Cuban militarization” and a potential threat to the United States. Pointing to the 9,000-foot (2,700 m) runway and the oil storage tanks, he asserted that these were unnecessary for commercial flights, and could only mean that the airport was to become a Cuban-Soviet airbase.
In other words, the tiny nation could have been used as a refueling station for Soviet bombers should WWIII ever commence. We declared certain areas off limits to enemy influence, and were willing to use force to keep it that way. With Turkey, by including them in NATO we expanded our sphere of influence to the very border of the USSR, guaranteeing that the Soviets would not have access to the oil that their economy so desperately needed.
Everyone with me so far? Good.
I bring this up because last night I was having a discussion with my friend about this very subject, geopolitical spheres of influence and such. Then the subject of Tibet came up, and I remembered this article that I blogged on the other day. Consider:
At the same time that Mao was fighting the civil war, he was also laying the groundwork for taking control of the buffer regions. Interestingly, his first moves were designed to block Soviet interests in these regions. Mao moved to consolidate Chinese communist control over Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, effectively leveraging the Soviets out. Xinjiang had been under the control of a regional war lord, Yang Zengxin. Shortly after the end of the civil war, Mao moved to force him out and take over Xinjiang. Finally, in 1950 Mao moved against Tibet, which he secured in 1951.
The rapid-fire consolidation of the buffer regions gave Mao what all Chinese emperors sought, a China secure from invasion. Controlling Tibet meant that India could not move across the Himalayas and establish a secure base of operations on the Tibetan Plateau. There could be skirmishes in the Himalayas, but no one could push a multi-divisional force across those mountains and keep it supplied. So long as Tibet was in Chinese hands, the Indians could live on the other side of the moon. Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria buffered China from the Soviet Union. Mao was more of a geopolitician than an ideologue. He did not trust the Soviets. With the buffer states in hand, they would not invade China. The distances, the poor transportation and the lack of resources meant that any Soviet invasion would run into massive logistical problems well before it reached Han China’s populated regions, and become bogged down—just as the Japanese had.
We in the west love to drive around with our FREE TIBET bumper stickers on our gas guzzling vehicles, when the fact is that China is merely doing exactly the same thing, from a geopolitical standpoint at least, that we did with Turkey and Grenada. A Tibet under Chinese control gives China a buffer zone between the PRC and India, a democratic state with strong ties to the US. Imagine, from a Chinese perspective, a free Tibet. It would be a total disaster, opening up China to possible invasion should a war ever break out over, say, Taiwan. If the Chinese were to withdraw from the region, aid and attention from all over the world would pour into it. So would troops from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and many other nations under the auspices of UN peacekeeping. Even if Tibet never became a democracy per se it would be like opening the door to your house when there’s a murderer in your front yard. In the event of rising hostilities, the US could have a whole division parked inside India within a matter of a few weeks, right on the border, and then China goes from fighting a one front war to a two front war. If you add in the possibility of an invasion or blockade of China’s eastern coast and they immediately place their army in an almost unwinnable situation.
In short, from a geopolitical standpoint, the Chinese would have to be fucking insane to ever withdraw from Tibet. And, from that same geopolitical standpoint, they’re doing nothing substantially different than what the United States has done for the past 150 years or so.
Now, you can certainly argue with China’s techniques, that’s open to fair criticism. (And I’m hardly drawing some kind of equal parallel between communism and representative republican democracy.) But, if criticizing China’s methods is fair game, then so is the history of the US cozying up to authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, the Philippines, Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, and other areas. None of the aforementioned areas had (or have) what you’d call stellar human rights records, either, but we didn’t press the issue because of the geopolitical significance that these areas represented. For China, Tibet is very much their Turkey or Philippines, a buffer through which they can guarantee their own security.
Remember the sentence from the beginning of the post: “Most recently, during the Cold War, the doctrine was invoked as a reason to intervene militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of Communism.” Think of the word “communism” as “political ideology antithetical to its beliefs.” What you have is a justification for intervention in a foreign nation to stop the spread of a political ideology antithetical to America’s beliefs. In Tibet, China is doing more or less exactly the same thing.
Consider, too, what happened to the USSR once the magic of “democracy” was introduced. Rather than solving all their problems and ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity the country splintered. Look at all those former Soviet Republics—many of them are now members of NATO, and many others are what are referred to as “allied partners.” Thus, from a geopolitical standpoint, the buffer zone of Russia has been substantially weakened. Not only that, but their economy went completely into the shitter, and the rule of the mob began as former government elements began operating in the underworld, creating the rise of the Russian Mafia. The people, seeing that democracy was not the magical panacea that they had always been told, have turned back to strong, authoritarian leaders like Putin. Stalin is the most admired of all the former heads of state. They may have been poor but they were secure, and they were once a mighty nation. Now they are still more or less poor, their status on the world stage has been emasculated, and because of the loss of the buffer zones and the expansion of NATO that prior status will likely never be regained.
China is in almost exactly the same boat that the USSR once was. It, however, still has its buffer zones. Unlike the USSR, China had a leader with foresight in Deng Xiaoping, who saw the need for foreign engagement in order to strengthen China. (Upon assuming power Deng purged all of Mao’s old loyalists and installed his own, which set China down the path that it is on today.) If China were to democratize, its fate would likely be almost identical to that of the USSR. Unlike the Russians, China has an economy which is exploding, a booming middle class (at least in the cities), and stands on the verge of taking the place that the USSR once held.
Why, from a geopolitical standpoint, would the Chinese people want to bite the hand that is currently feeding them so well? ("Well," of course, being a comparative term to what their lives were like, say, 20 years ago.) You can perhaps view it as a billion and a half people with a collective case of Stockholm Syndrome, but it can’t be denied that just a couple of decades ago things were really, really bad, and now things are an order of magnitude better.
Just a little food for thought.
