Rollback Doctrine 1945-1980

from the book

ROLLBACK

Right-wing Power in U.S. Foreign Policy

by Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert Gould

South End Press, 1989

Soon after World War II a shift occurred in the foreign policy of the U.S. right wing from isolationism to military interventionism. Abandoning the view that world problems are someone else's business, the Right took on a crusade to wipe communism off the face of the globe. By 1950, people who had resisted U.S. entrance into World War II were calling for U.S. military power to "liberate" China from the communists and were proposing atomic war against the Soviet Union. This was the foreign policy of global rollback.

The Origins of Rollback

In The Logic of World Power, an insightful study of the postwar world, Professor Franz Schurmann explains the switch from isolationism to rollback. The ideology that linked pre-war isolationism and postwar rollback was nationalism. Nationalists opposed getting involved in entangling alliances or in other people's wars, but believed in the extension of manifest destiny westward and southward The United States expanded from thirteen colonies on the Atlantic coast across the North American continent to the Pacific. Mexico was defeated and a large portion of its territory taken. The Monroe Doctrine justified interventions in Latin America (which took place at least 55 times prior to World War II) any time U.S. property was threatened. The United States went into an underdeveloped Pacific island, Hawaii, and remade it in the U.S. image. Thus it was perfectly natural to continue Westward, bringing U.S. civilization and business to the entire Pacific basin. But the Chinese Revolution of 1949 got in the way, and had to be reversed. In its initial expression, rollback was a modem extension of "Go West, young man."

Schurmann viewed the nationalists as competing with the Roosevelt internationalists, who were concerned with the fate of Europe and who saw the United States as part of the world economy rather than as simply a domestic (albeit expanding) economy. The nationalists, of course, had economic reasons for their ideology. They tended to represent either domestic business whose profits did not come from international trade, or business with specific interests in the Pacific and Latin America rather than in Europe. They tended to be located more in the South and West of the country, giving them a more Pacific and Latin American outlook than the Atlantic worldview of the "Eastern Establishment" internationalists. The nationalists were protectionists while the internationalists, who tended to profit from foreign trade especially with Europe, were ardent free traders. Schurmann argues that the internationalists had reservations about getting into wars because, for business based on trade, "peace was best for profits." For the nationalists, military power was the way to expand the United States into the Pacific, and military industry became an ally of the nationalists. Since communism was the arch-enemy of private property, both nationalists and internationalists were fiercely anti-communist.,

Because nationalist businesses tended to have interests in the Pacific rather than in Europe, the nationalists wanted the U.S. government to place its priority on Asia rather than on Europe. They were "Asia-firsters," (and later on with the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979, ``Latin America-firsters") as opposed to the "Europe-firsters" of the internationalist Eastern Establishment. The nationalists, who also tended to be anti-New Deal in their domestic policy, strongly opposed the taxes needed to support big government; they disliked expensive foreign aid programs to shore up the European economies. Such programs as the Marshall Plan meant paying higher taxes to stimulate Atlantic trade for the benefit of the internationalists. But the nationalists had their own fiscal dilemma: the military power needed to support their expansionist aims in Asia cost money, Their solution was to oppose the expensive peacetime draft and employment of U.S. troops in foreign land wars. Instead they favored the air for and the A-bomb: a cheap and effective way to project U.S. military power

Two events had transformed the nationalists from isolationists to international rollbackers. The first was Pearl Harbor. While, as Asia-firsters, they had opposed entering the European war against Hitler, they strongly believed in fighting the Japanese. The second event was the Chinese Revolution. China made rollback doctrine a serious current in U.S. foreign policy. The China of the 1950s is linked to the Nicaragua of the 1980s-not only in rollback ideology but also by the specific people who put that ideology into practice.

During and after World War II, representatives of internationalist business ran the Executive Branch of government. The six "Wise Men"-Dean Acheson, Charles Bohlen, Averell Harriman, George Kennan, Robert Lovett and John J. McCloy-who led in setting the course Of U.S. foreign policy from 1947 to the present-were generally Ivy League, connected to the Wall Street banking-trade establishment, and groomed in the Rockefeller-linked Council on Foreign Relations. These individuals spoke for the traditional conservative elites. Between 1945 and 1947, these men became convinced that the Soviet Union was a deadly beast that must be forcibly contained in its cage. Thus the term containment.

The man who crystallized the Eastern Establishment's overriding concern with the Soviet Union was George Kennan. In his February 1946 "Long Telegram" from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow where he was charge d 'affaires, Kennan stated: "At the bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity." The Russians see the outside world as ``evil, hostile and menacing." Kennan warned of the

" ... steady advance of uneasy Russian nationalism, a centuries-old movement in which conceptions of offense and defense are inextricably confused. But in the new guise of international Marxism, with its honeyed promises to a desperate and war tom outside world, it is more dangerous and insidious than ever before....ln summary, we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi."

Even with this blast, Kennan did not call for rollback. He cautiously concluded: " the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping."

By the middle of 1947, almost the entire political spectrum accepted the key premise of containment: that Soviet communism, which had already expanded into Eastern Europe, would continue to expand and become a danger to the United States. The historical analogy was Munich, where in 1938 the British had tried to stop Hitler by making concessions. Since the appeasement of Hitler led to World War II, the appeasement of Russia could only lead to World War III. For the internationalists who made postwar U.S. foreign policy, Munich "came to not merely an analogy, but an iron law-never again."

*****

... selected rollback actions directed at governments that were socialist, nationalist, or simply uncooperative with U.S. business interests, remained as a constant, generally covert, feature of U.S. foreign policy [after World War II]. In each case ... rollback was conducted when the United States could get away with it.

U.S. Rollback Actions, 1950-1980

In August 1918, 7,000 U.S. Marines landed at Vladivostok, Russia, and remained until January 1920, as part of en allied occupational force with the aim of rolling back the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In September 1918, 5,000 U.S. troops joined the Allied intervention force at Archangel. The U.S. forces suffered 500 casualties. They left in June 1919, thereby forever ending U.S. attempts at direct military rollback of the Russian Revolution.

Rollback Doctrine: 1945-1980

Eastern Europe

While the United States made some attempts following World War II to aid insurgents in the Ukraine and the Baltic states, the first actual rollback action-a minor one-targeted Albania. Frank Wisner, the first director of CIA covert operations, called the Albania operation "a clinical experiment to see whether larger rollback operations would be feasible elsewhere." In 1950, small groups of CIA-trained Albanians were landed in the country, were unable to find any viable resistance movements, and were generally killed or captured. The Albanians became disillusioned; as one complained, "We were used as an experiment. We were a small part of a big game, pawns that could be sacrificed." The operation was liquidated. Albania showed the CIA that Eastern European rollback was not so simple. After 1953, CIA director Allen Dulles was anxious to continue operations in Eastern Europe, but a study concluded that there was little hope of success. The liberation from communism rhetoric hit reality squarely in the face. Reality won.

China, 1950-1961

In China, by contrast, the CIA pursued a far-reaching covert war of rollback in association with Chiang Kai-shek. These operations resulted from the compromise made with the Asia-first right wing when overt war against China had been rejected by the Truman administration. Following the Chinese Revolution, many Nationalist soldiers fled to Burma, where the CIA trained a 10,000 soldier army that made incursions into China. For example, in April 1951, a few thousand troops, accompanied by CIA advisors and supplied by U.S. air drops, crossed the border into Yunnan province, but were driven back within a week. Another 1951 raid took the invaders sixty-five miles into China. Such harassment continued until 1961. The reasoning behind these operations was that between 175,000 and 650,000 guerrillas were supposedly fighting inside China who would link up with the incursion teams. In fact, such guerrilla movement was minimal. The vast covert apparatus developed by CIA chief Allen Dulles involved Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Burma. By the 1950s, the rollback policies advocated by right-wing Republicans in the late 1940s had become bureaucratically entrenched in the ClA, which came to be the locus of rollback policy within the U.S. national security apparatus.

A related rollback operation was underway in Tibet, where a substantial resistance developed to Chinese rule. By 1957, 80,000 Tibetans, trained and armed by the CIA, were fighting. The strategy behind the effort was that success in Tibet would stimulate similar efforts in other Chinese border regions, thus tying down the Chinese in innumerable border wars, and enabling Chiang Kai-shek to begin making raids from Taiwan. In fact, 100,000 Chinese troops were required to put down the Tibetan rebellion, which sputtered along for years even after Kennedy greatly reduced its scope.

Iran, 1953

The ClA's first rollback success was achieved in Iran in 1953. Nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, elected by the parliament, had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The British asked for assistance and the CIA sent Middle East expert Kermit Roosevelt with a team and plenty of dollars for the purposes of bribery. In a series of machinations, the CIA overthrew nationalist Mossadegh and brought the pro-U.S. Shah into power. A key factor had been the provision of weapons, supplies, and money to Iranian army officers, winning them to the Shah's side.

Guatemala 1954

In February 1953, the government of moderate rationalist Jacobo Arbenz expropriated almost 400,000 acres of unused United Fruit Company land as part of a moderate land reform program. Compensation was offered, which United Fruit rejected. United Fruit approached the CIA to take action. The CIA trained a small army, and arranged for the ClA-run airline Civil Air Transport to conduct bombing raids flown by Chinese nationalist pilots. The main thrust of the operation was psychological warfare, organized by E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame. A ClA radio station was set up to create rumors making the government and population think that a major rebellion was taking place. As a result, the small ClA army and a few bombing raids created a panic leading Arbenz to flee. Since this rollback operation, Guatemala has suffered one after another military dictatorship or military-controlled government with a high level of political repression.

Belgian Congo, 1960

Patrice Lumumba was chosen prime minister of the Belgian Congo by the newly-elected parliament following independence from Belgium in June 1960. Lumumba was extremely popular, and left-leaning. ClA Director Allen Dulles authorized a fund of up to $100,000 to replace Lumumba's government with a pro-Western regime. With ClA help, Lumumba was successfully deposed, first by President Joseph Kasavubu, and later by Army strongman (cultivated by the ClA) Joseph Mobutu. The ClA, according to the 1975 U.S. Senate "Church Committee," concocted a plan to assassinate Lumumba with poison carried from the United States by ClA operative Sid Gottlieb. The poisoning plan aborted, but Lumumba was caught with the ClA's help and murdered. Former ClA operative John Stockwell has written that another ClA officer told him of driving around with Lumumba's body in the trunk of a car trying to dispose of it.

Cuba, 1961-1968

On March 17, 1960, President Eisenhower approved a ClA plan to arm and train Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro. Chinese nationalist pilots recruited through ClA-run Civil Air Transport trained Cuban exile pilots. On April 17, 1961, the exiles, with the help of CIA-organized air strikes, landed a force of 1,400 men at the Bay of Pigs. Numerous logistical errors took place resulting in the exiles' rapid defeat by Castro's army. Whereas President Kennedy accepted blame, in fact there was no resistance movement in Cuba for the invaders to link up with, and the rollback operation would probably have failed in any case.

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Kennedy administration redoubled its efforts to get rid of Castro with Operation Mongoose. The ClA station in Miami, directed by Theodore Shackley with close oversight by Robert Kennedy, became a $50 million per year enterprise with several thousand Cuban exile agents. During the 1960s, Cuba was subjected to countless sea and air commando raids inflicting damage on oil refineries, chemical plants, railroad bridges, sugar mills, and other targets. Several assassination attempts were made on Castro, some involving Mafia figures, utilizing techniques of shooting, bombing, and poisoning. Meanwhile the U.S. economic embargo had the aim of destabilizing Cuba economically in order to increase domestic discontent and spawn insurgent movements. One phase after another of the rollback operation failed. The net effect was that Cuba-needing economic assistance to overcome the embargo-was pushed closer and closer to the Soviet Union.

Brazil 1964

In 1960, Janio Quadros was elected president. Under pressure from the military, Quadros resigned in 1961, and Vice President Joao Goulart took over. A 1962 referendum supported Goulart's presidency by a wide margin of 4 to 1. The United States opposed Goulart because of his pro-labor and nationalist leanings; Goulart passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit out of Brazil. President Kennedy stated that he would not be opposed to the overthrow of Goulart.

In the 1962 congressional elections, the ClA funded about 850 anti-Goulart candidates to run for state and federal offices, spending between $12 and $20 million. The ClA carried out a constant and vicious propaganda campaign against the Goulart government, including the financing of a right-wing newspaper chain. U.S. ambassador Lincoln Gordon met frequently with Goulart's right-wing enemies, and U.S. military attache Vernon Walters cultivated his friend Gen. Humberto Castelo Branco for a military coup. The ClA organized anti-Goulart labor unions, and many anti-Goulart military officers were trained in the United States. Major U.S. military assistance programs influenced much of the Brazilian army to oppose Goulart.

By 1964, coup plans were being made in Washington, with General Castelo Branco the chosen successor. Elaborate arrangements were designed for direct U.S. assistance if needed: air-drops of clandestine arms, U.S. emergency oil supplies, and U.S. paratroopers from bases in Panama. A U.S. Navy task force went to Brazilian waters during the coup. On March 31, 1964, the coup took place; there was virtually no resistance. Castelo Branco instituted a military dictatorship with many arrests, tortures, disappearances, and death squads. The Brazilian coup was perhaps the largest and one of the most significant rollback operations ever undertaken by the United States; with Brazil's size and importance in Latin America, this event had a major impact on subsequent South American history.

Dominican Republic, 1965

In December 1962, liberal Juan Bosch was elected president with 60 percent of the vote. Kennedy initially supported Bosch but fumed against him when he initiated modest land reform and minor nationalizations. In fact, Bosch was supportive of foreign investment, and was opposed by the communists as overly friendly to the United States. Because of Bosch's apparent independence in a nation long under tight U.S. control, a press campaign was started against Bosch, inaccurately linking him with communists. Kennedy fumed off any new aid to the Bosch government; the ClA and U.S. military were in contact with right-wing military officers opposing Bosch. The ClA-created union federation publicly supported a coup against Bosch. In September 1963, after only seven months in office, Bosch was overthrown and Colonel Wessin y Wessin took over.

Younger elements in the armed forces, the constitutionalists, worked with Bosch's political party in a campaign to return Bosch to the presidency. On April 24,1965, the constitutionalists initiated a revolt which spread rapidly throughout the armed forces and the population. The United States immediately persuaded pro-U.S. officers, especially in the air force, to bomb the capital city. By April 25, it was universally recognized that the pro-Bosch forces were victorious. But that afternoon the Dominican air force attacked the national palace. A bloody battle broke out which the constitutionalists, supported by masses of people in the streets, were on the verge of winning. On April 28, President Johnson ordered in the Marines, a total of 23,000. Johnson's major justification for the action was to prevent a communist takeover, though the communists were minimally involved in the revolution. The revolution was put down, 2,500 civilians died in the fighting, and the Marines occupied the country until a sufficiently pro-U.S. government could be found to take ovens'

Indonesia, 19581965

On December 17, 1965, Time Magazine ran the following story on Indonesia:

" Communists, red sympathizers and their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backlands army units are reported to have executed thousands of Communists after interrogation in remote jails. Armed with wide-bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of Communists, killing entire families and burying the bodies in shallow graves...The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travelers from those areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies.

Estimates indicate that perhaps 500,000 to one million people were killed during the military coup in which General Suharto overthrew the government of President Sukarno, a nationalist who had the support of several political parties including the Communists. This slaughter was based on U.S. policy - initiated during the Eisenhower administration - to roll back the Sukarno government.

Bolstered by CIA successes in Iran and Guatemala, John Foster Dulles had wanted to rid Indonesia of President Sukarno. By the mid-1950s, the CIA was spending millions to finance two parties in opposition to Sukarno. The CIA supplied weapons and advice to anti-Sukarno rebels on the island of Sumatra and sponsored their 1958 revolt, providing bombing missions in support. Planes and pilots for the bombings came from Civil Air Transport, the CIA proprietary airline. However, CIA pilot Allen Pope was shot down during a May 18 1958 bombing raid, the U.S. involvement was exposed, the CIA pulled out, and the rebellion fizzled.

A CIA memo of June 18, 1962, reveals that Kennedy wanted to continue efforts to oust Sukarno. Following the failed rollback attempt of 1958, the United States switched to the strategy of winning over the Indonesian military. By 1965, almost half the officer corps had received training from North Americans. Economic aid to Sukarno was cut off but direct aid to the military was increased-a pattern used in Chile after 1970. According to the New York Times of April 27, 1966, the CIA had thoroughly infiltrated the Indonesian government and army.

While the U.S. military kept an extremely low profile during the 1965 coup itself, James Reston wrote in the New York Times on June 19, 1966: "it is doubtful if the coup would ever have been attempted without...the clandestine aid it has received indirectly from here." Following the coup, Marshall Green, U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia in 1965, said: "what we did we had to do, and you'd better be glad we did because if we hadn't Asia would be a different place today."

Greece, 1967

In 1964, liberal George Papandreou was elected prime minister of Greece; in July 1965, he was maneuvered out of office by a coalition of rightists assisted by the CIA. Two years later, the Right consolidated its power in a military coup. Of the five officers taking power, four were intimately connected with the U.S. military or CIA. The leader, George Papadopoulos, worked with the Nazis in World War II, was trained in the United States, and had been on the CIA payroll for fifteen years. Since 1947, the Greek army and the U.S. military aid group in Athens had worked as part of the same team. Following the 1967 coup, the Papadopoulos dictatorship instituted widespread repression; Amnesty International documented not less than two thousand people tortured.

Southeast Asia, 1958 -1970

In Laos, the U.S. government almost certainly engineered coups during the period 1958-60, and possibly again in 1964, to ensure that the Laotian government would not take a neutralist stand in the Southeast Asian conflict, and to keep the leftist Pathet Lao out of coalition governments. For many years, Laos was one of the major sites of CIA covert activity in the affairs of China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.

In March 1958, the National Security Council adopted a rollback policy document on Vietnam calling for its eventual reunification under anti-communist leadership. The Vietnam War had aspects of both containment and rollback: while the land war in South Vietnam was a containment action, the air war on North Vietnam had strong elements of rollback.

Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia represented a major problem for the United States in Vietnam due to his neutralist stance. Cambodia was a vital supply line from North to South Vietnam and the United States wanted the supplies shut down. The Pentagon wanted to get rid of Sihanouk, and, in March 1970, he was ousted by former Defense Minister Lon Nol, a man with close ties to the U.S. military.

In 1969, Lon Nol was approached by agents of U.S. military intelligence and asked to overthrow Sihanouk. The ClA-financed Khmer Serai and the Khmer Krom were anti-Sihanouk Cambodian groups working under direct U.S. military command in the Green Beret special forces. The United States had a plan code-named "Dirty Tricks" to infiltrate mercenaries from both groups into the Cambodian army which was generally loyal to Sihanouk. By the end of 1969, 4,000 Khmer Serai and Khmer Krom members-presumably still under U.S. command- had joined Lon Nol's forces. The U.S. military had several days notice of the coup and a request for assistance if needed.

Because of the interrelatedness of the 1958-70 events in Southeast Asia, and the resolve of the United States to keep control of all governments in that region, the rollback activities in Southeast Asia can be considered as one complex, prolonged, major covert operation working in conjunction with the overt Vietnam War.

Chile, 1970-1973

On September 4, 1970, socialist candidate Salvador Allende received the plurality of votes in the Chilean election. A congressional runoff erection was required to decide between the top two candidates, and Allende's victory in Congress was assured because he had the support of the third-place candidate. On September 8, Henry Kissinger ordered a "cold-blooded assessment" of "the pros and cons and problems and prospects involved should a Chilean military coup be organized now with U.S. assistance...." On September 15, President Nixon told CIA Director Richard Helms and Henry Kissinger that they must do everything possible to prevent Allende from assuming power.

As a result of the Nixon order, CIA operatives were sent into Chile to pass money and weapons to right-wing Chilean military officers to assassinate Allende. A quarter of a million dollars was authorized to bribe members of the Chilean Congress to vote against Allende. The CIA and U.S. Army attache Col. Paul Wimert contacted two groups of right-wing Chilean officers, headed by Gens. Roberto Viaux and Camilo Valenzuela, to arrange a coup or assassination. U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry, who advised against such action, was not told of the U.S. plots. On October 22, Gen. Rene Schneider was murdered by Viaux's people in the hopes that the resultant upheavals in the military would precipitate action against Allende; Schneider was a moderate and opposed any military action against Allende. However the Schneider killing angered Chilean moderates, thus ensuring Allende's election in the October 24 congressional vote.

Following this failure, the United States began a policy of economic destabilization. National Security Decision Memorandum 93, of November 9, 1970, called for an end to guarantees for U.S. private investment in Chile, a limitation on international credit for Chile, a ban on bilateral economic aid, and a plan for adversely affecting the world price of copper which is critical to the Chilean economy. The World Bank, the Export-Import Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank-all run or heavily influenced by the United States-shut Chile out of international credit markets. U.S. suppliers refused to sell needed parts to Chile, causing buses and taxis to remain out of commission for months, and ensuring prolonged breakdowns in the copper, steel, electricity, and petroleum industries. International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), which owned the Chilean telephone company and which had given large sums of money to prevent Allende's electron, stated in 1970, "A more realistic hope among those who want to block Allende is that a swiftly-deteriorating economy will touch off a wave of violence leading to a military coup."

While U.S. economic aid disappeared, aid to the military and U.S. training of military personnel increased. CIA covert tactics continued at the cost of several million dollars per year. The CIA financed long strikes, particularly in the trucking industry, disrupting distribution of consumer goods and creating shortages of necessities. The ClA trained members of the extreme rightist organization Patria y Libertad in bombing and guerrilla warfare. The CIA recruited agents within the Chilean military. The CIA sponsored the spreading of false rumors about the government. Right-wing newspaper El Mercuno received considerable ClA funds. The ClA collected names of pro-Allende individuals to be targeted for arrest after a coup and supplied plans for which installations should be occupied during a coup. During the September 1973 coup, U.S. military attaches were in the field with the Chilean army, a Navy commando team landed in Chile, U.S. ships were in Chilean waters, and U.S. fighter planes were at an Argentine base just across the Chilean border.

Following the coup which installed Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship, Richard Helms, CIA Director during the Chilean operation, denied in sworn testimony that the CIA had tried to overthrow Allende. Helms was later indicted for perjury and pleaded no contest.

Jamaica, 19741980

In 1972, democratic socialist Michael Manley was elected prime minister of Jamaica. Henry Kissinger initiated measures to destabilize the government, including a withdrawal of U.S. aid and the sending of CIA-trained Cuban exiles to Jamaica to instigate violent incidents which had a devastating effect on the tourist business, critical to the Jamaican economy. CIA-trained labor leaders engaged in anti-government strikes and U.S. aluminum companies reduced their Jamaican production, further damaging the economy. The United States closed Jamaica out of the international public and private lending market. Economic austerity measures initiated by the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund led to price increases and wage freezes. While Manley won re-election in 1976, he was defeated in 1980 as the deterioration of the economy turned the public against his government. The Jamaican operation introduced a sophisticated form of economic destabilization/electoral rollback which could become a pattern for the future.

Containment = Selective Rollback

... thirteen major rollback operations [occured] between 1950 and 1980: Korea, China, Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Cuba, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Greece, Southeast Asia, Chile, and Jamaica. The criteria for ... these thirteen episodes are: 1) there is clear evidence of significant U.S. participation in the overthrow or attempted overthrow of a government, 2) the outcome or attempted outcome was or would have been significant to the political development of the involved region, and 3) the overthrow was of a government (whether communist or nationalist) believed to be overly independent from U.S. influence...

... these rollback operations did not coincide with Republican presidents; in fact, they were equally associated with Democrats and Republicans. Four of the thirteen rollback operations took place in the 1950s, six in the 1960s, and three in the 1970s. Four were conducted by Democrats, three by Republicans, and six by both parties.

A number of the operations stretched across one or more administrations: Cuba between Eisenhower and Kennedy, Indonesia from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson, Brazil from Kennedy to Johnson, Cambodia from Johnson to Nixon, Jamaica from Nixon through Carter. Underlying changes in the presidency was an apparatus that conducted rollback. According to [Prof. Franz] Schurmann, the locus of rollback in the U.S. government has been the CIA and to some degree the military, and the power of these establishments cannot be disregarded by the president. Schurmann also makes the point that a deal was made between the presidency and the national security apparatus by which the president would have power over nuclear weapons and the U.S.-USSR relationship, which would be governed by a policy of containment; and in return, the military-CIA-right wing would have freedom to conduct regional policy, including covert operations and rollback.

The specific interests behind the rollback operations differed from case to case. Guatemala in 1954 was by and large a business deal on behalf of United Fruit Company. The Chilean rollback was strongly related to the interests of ITT and U.S. copper companies. Indonesia and Brazil had geopolitical motivations, keeping entire regions of the world within the U.S. orbit.

U.S. postwar policy, generally called containment, on closer inspection is actually a hidden policy of selective, deliberate overthrow of governments in the Third World, with the ultimate long-term goal of disintegration or "mellowing" of socialism in the Soviet Union. In other words, containment in practice has meant selective rollback. In essence, containment is realist rollback: overthrow unfriendly governments when feasible without risking major war. The main historical debates between the traditional conservative elites and the right wing have not really been about containment vs. rollback, but about realist or selective rollback vs. global rollback.

Rollback

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