Saturday, January 3, 2009

Democracy in Pakistan

By Suhail Hamid

In the Musharraf period, one of the main reasons for the economic growth was a drastic reduction in bureaucratic controls in the economic sector, thereby increasing the participation of the business and service sectors. This in turn led to a rising middle class, increasing consumer spending leading to an economic progress spiral in the classical fashion. Any other country to have put this process in place would have striven to maintain it at all costs. Unfortunately this did not happen, primarily because of the self destructive mindset of some influential segments of our population and the naivete of our leadership.

Let me try to explain this viewpoint from a historical perspective.

Broadly, the global economy can be divided into two stages, a) pre industrial revolution and b) post industrial revolution.

The pre industrial revolution systems are natural resource based or traditional agriculture based. In both these systems the sustenance of human beings is mainly dependent on natural growth of food products.

The post industrial age economy is human resource based, where human sustenance has become dependent on the products of human effort. Essentially this means that manufacturing and services sectors become the primary source for people to get their food and shelter.

The main issue in Pakistan as well as in other third world countries is the transformation of a society from a pre-industrial revolution natural resource and agriculture based, to a post industrial revolution human resource based economy. This transformation becomes necessary when the population of a country increases to a level which exceeds the population support capacity of the traditional economic system. This transformation is generally not achievable through unbridled democracy as it is against the interests of the majority of the population in its earlier stages. Therefore, this change has to be put in place by the ruling establishment, provided they're a) conscious of this fact and b) willing to effect this change smoothly for the betterment of future generations. Once this transformation is achieved, then democracy becomes a sustainable system of governance.

Lets see how this transformation has been achieved in various parts of the world:
1- In the US this was achieved through the civil war of the 1860s. The resistance of the southern states to this transition was so strong that they declared independence and a war was needed to resolve the issue. To end that matter for ever, Gen. Sherman (the commander of the Union forces), totally burnt and destroyed a 50 mile wide strip of land all the way from Atlanta down to the Gulf of Mexico, to prevent the two sides of the Confederacy from ever regrouping. After that democracy has functioned smoothly.
2- In Western Europe, this was achieved over a longer period starting from the French Revolution and lasting till around the mid-19th century. After the French Revolution, the Western European monarchies developed working relationships with the emerging capitalist classes, gradually removing the aristocracy from positions of authority; this policy avoided revolutions elsewhere. As the capitalist economy consolidated, democracy took over as the system of governance.
3- In Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, this transformation took place with the Russian Revolution in 1918. Although USSR finished off in the 1990s, but the transformation to the post industrial revolution human resource based system was completed. This is the real achievement of the Russian Revolution and the succeeding governments in the USSR. Democracy may now become and sustain as the system of governance in these countries.
4- Far East. All the countries achieved or are achieving this transformation through home grown leadership committed to this change. The most prominent example of course being China. The recent Thai developments indicate a growing awareness that democracy cannot achieve this change and in fact becomes an impediment. Countries like S. Korea and Singapore are past that phase and gradually adopting to democracy.

Now lets see some other examples which confirm the same principle:
1- Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait etc. Since their oil production generates the requisite funds to run the country, there is no imminent need for this transition. So the political system of kingdoms is pretty stable and surviving. Even then the kings are effecting a transformation of their countries to modern manufacturing and service sector based economies, with a view to future betterment.
2- India is trying to achieve this transition through democracy but the progress (if really there is any) is extremely slow and painful. This is not very evident to the world because Indians are very good at presenting a bright picture of themselves, but the fact is that they have a pitiably small industrial base and not being able to expand it to the needs of its populace. Their per capita GNP is much lower than Pakistan, a country with directionless politics and a total lack of awareness.

I think our civil society, media and political leadership should understand that elections is a means, not an end in itself. The end is governance through which the national objectives are achieved. In our case, like all third world countries, this objective is to achieve the transformation from agriculture or natural resource based systems (which cannot sustain the increased population), to a modern human resource based system to have a large enough manufacturing and service sector base to support the increased population. Any government (or form of government) which furthers this change is constructive for the society, and those retarding this change are destructive. Unfortunately our parliamentary form of governance invariable always ends up doing the latter function.

A couple of recent examples demonstrating this awareness in some parts of the world:
1- In China, the industrial base covers only about 30% of the population and is dominating the world economies. The Chinese are trying to expand it ruthlessly without any consideration to the immediate concerns of the rural population. However, this policy will benefit the next generations of the rural populace. Had the Chinese adopted democracy 20 years back, they'd probably still be in a quagmire like other third world nations.
2- In Thailand, the military coup of 2006 was supported by the King, a new constitution was adopted that reduced the power of the parliament, increased the power of bureaucracy (incl judiciary) which is now used by the King (aided by army) to keep the transformation on track even if the elected leaders representing the decadent economic classes try to stall it. As you can see various components of the establishment (the royalty, army, businessmen, professionals, bureaucracy, traders etc) collectively trying to steer the country towards its objective. Whether they succeed or fail is another issue that time will tell, but they're at least trying to do that. So I think the Thai case is a very practical demonstration of the limitations of democracy in a developing country.
In our country, except for the royalty, other sections are there similarly but fighting each other for the sake of elections, thereby always handing over power to the decadent classes who, to their credit I must say, are generally willing to adapt to the change when thrust upon them. PML-Q type politicians are typical of our rural establishment and have always been willing to adapt to the changing world, right from the 1960s era of industrialization to the Musharraf era economic growth. The biggest resistance comes from the urban middle classes who, in fact, would be the beneficiaries of this transformation. So I would call it a naive thinking to the extent of downright stupidity on their part. I think that's because the western media has hammered democracy into our heads as a matter of belief not to be questioned like religious belief systems. We should not blame them for doing so as that's the right system for the level of development of their society. Instead we should use try to understand things in a better way, and not get carried away by the herd mentality.

A powerful and aware middle class essential for true democratic governance in Pakistan or anywhere else, is the effect of this economic transformation, and cannot be its cause; the middle classes of our country, in particular, should understand this fact. A real participatory democracy to serve all Pakistanis with appropriate checks and balances, can only be expected after that.

Related Links:

Future of Democracy in South Asia

Middle Class Clout Rising in Pakistan

Is Pakistan a Democracy Now?

Khadim or Makhdoom? (Servant or Master?)

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20090079797

US slaps sanctions on A Q Khan, 15 other people and firms
Press Trust of India
Monday, January 12, 2009, (Washington)

The US on Monday announced sanctions on disgraced Pakistani scientist A Q Khan and 12 other individuals for their involvement in clandestine nuclear proliferation network providing atomic weapon designs and technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya.

"The Department of State announced that sanctions will be imposed on 13 individuals and three private companies for their involvement in the A Q Khan nuclear proliferation network," the spokesman's office said in a statement here.

The sanctions were announced after a "multi-year US government review of the available information pertaining to the activities of this network," it said.

Khan, 72, led an "extensive international network for the proliferation of nuclear equipment and know-how that provided 'one stop shopping' for countries seeking to develop nuclear weapons," the office of the State Department spokesman said in a statement here.

The US said it believes the sanctions will "help prevent future proliferation-related activities by these private entities and provide a warning to other would-be proliferators."

Khan has been kept under house arrest in Islamabad since 2004, when he confessed on state television to have leaked atomic secrets to countries including Iran and Libya.

The scientist retracted the statement after four years, saying he was made to confess under duress.

NSatyabrat said...

Hi Riaz, nice to know that you know so much about world economics. But it would be better if you could discuss more about pakistan's economy rather than india's economy..as entire world knows it's china and India are going to be largest economies by 2025, next to US and Japan. i will personally inivte you to come to india and see the growth and then write about india. India is booming and in the current recession also we are manage to get 7 p.c. growth rate, which is next to china.

Anonymous said...

http://changinguppakistan.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/militants-announce-ban-on-girls-education-in-swat/#comments

Raiaz

this time i am not writing feedback but i am just referring you back to pakistani discusison blog which will highlight the current state of the country with regard to survival of secular civilians

Riaz Haq said...

Satyabrat,

You suggest " if you could discuss more about pakistan's economy rather than india's economy.."

Actually I have written about Pak economy repeatedly along with India, China and other economies.

You also said "i will personally inivte you to come to india and see the growth and then write about india."

Thanks for the invite. But I have visited India many times and I have written about it...about both India's accomplishments and its challenges.

Riaz Haq said...

Fruits of democracy have been elusive in South Asia. Neither Indian nor Pakistani democracy have delivered for the people. British Minister Alexander recently contrasted the rapid growth in China with India's economic success - highlighting government figures that showed the number of poor people had dropped in the one-party communist state by 70% since 1990 but had risen in the world's biggest democracy by 5%.

Mayraj said...

The biggest flaw in democracy is that there is a tendency for the elected representatives' interests and those of the public will oppose each other. Elected representatives whether they are in a developing country (where this shows up quicker) or a developed country can act to serve own interests first. For the public's interests to be served the public needs to be informed, educated and not too busy to impose their will on their representative not just at election time but between elections. Also their needs to be proper money management no matter whose interests are to be served.

When this does not happen, elected reps will run country into the ground. Has happened in US, UK, Greece, Pakistan,. It is hoppening in Germany in slow motion. and when the population ages and expects govt help is when it looks like there will be no money in the till or maybe before if the govt owned banks acting as hedge funds lose big!. In India it will happen as soon as delicate balance of debt bought by locals is disturbed. This happened with oil crisis when India sought IMF help. Can happen again for many reasons. Anyway, due to farmers misuse of water and fertilizers means they will come banging on govt door for aid and not amount of debt will be bought by Indian public to make up for that need! Then the discipline of the bond market, being imposed on Greece will lead to same debacle.

In India IMF intervention meant market was opened and India became this outsourcing hub. But, this small change will not be enough to satisfy angry masses needs.

My assumption was Germany was immune to US, UK developing/ country problem. But this revealed I was deluded.. Yeow! And Germany is the linchpin of EU and Euro. How can Merkel be stern with Greece and not with own states and state owned gamblers? Of course all German parties are guilty, so maybe they cannot see what their own behavior has wrought until it smacks them down.
Pakistan had major problems with its nationalized banks. I never dreamed that Germany would show that state owned banks can make a mess in a country as evolved as Germany.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/05/guest-post-beyond-repair.html

Riaz Haq said...

The recent tragic assassination of Gov Salman Taseer has caused many to rethink whether the South Asian Barelvi or Sufi Islam is really more tolerant than Deobandi or Wahabi Islam imported into Pakistan from Saudi Arabia.

Clearly, the followers of Barelvi Islam have not hesitated in supporting blasphemy laws, and they have shamelessly cheered the murder of Salman Taseer who spoke for repeal of such laws.

I also think the Barelvi or Sufi Islam in Pakistan has been hijacked by the feudal-politcal class of makhdooms (Yusuf Raza Gilani, Shah Mahmmood Qureshi, Javed Hashmi, Amin Fahim, etc) to exploit their self-proclaimed lineage from Prophet Mohammad (their so-called Syed status) as a way to maintain their feudal-cum-spiritual power over the poor peasants in Sind and Southern Panjab.

This feudal domination of politics has badly hurt the emergence of real democracy and any advancement of the poor, illiterate rural folks in Pakistan, and contributed to the growth of religious extremism particularly in rural Punjab.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's "The Other Story" on Salman Taseer seen through thye eyes of Shirin Sadeghi as published in The Huffington Post:

Albert Camus's famous novel, The Stranger, was the story of a man who was killed not because of a crime he had committed but because of a steady rise in publicity about his character faults. Little things bothered people about the Stranger -- he didn't cry at his mother's funeral, he had a steady girlfriend he didn't plan to marry. When he became implicated in a crime, the trial became a showcase of all the tiny things he did in his private life that the public didn't approve of or simply didn't understand -- though none of these things were exactly wrong or immoral, in sum and in public, they cost him his life.

Salman Taseer was a Stranger in Pakistan. His millions of dollars, British mother, private relationships, and extravagant Western lifestyle -- though not in themselves crimes nor even shortcomings in character, could not possibly have been more in contrast with the very poor and increasingly religiously extreme population of Pakistan.

In the last few years, more and more of the private details of his life were leaked into the public consciousness, private photos were obtained and published, personal habits were recounted. Here in the U.S., a large number of tributes to him have framed him as a crusader of human rights who died for good but the fact is -- and most Pakistanis will tell you, if they are not in the habit of pandering to Western imagery, that what really killed Salman Taseer was anything but an isolated -- though brave -- act of heroism.

The ugly truth of Pakistan today is not about a battle between do-gooders and those who oppose them. What killed Salman Taseer was the primary and overwhelming disparity in Pakistan -- the one that has steadily fundamentalized that country since the days of the U.S.-imposed religious dictator Zia ul-Haq, through the first Afghan war and now the new Afghan war that is also blatantly being fought in Pakistan. That disparity is one of wealth, of have-nothings and have-everythings.

The great anger in Pakistan against the current President Zardari, his slain wife and their family has very clearly been against the extravagance of their elite Western lives -- the wealth and abundance, their obvious dismissal of not only the tragic and obvious poverty of the country they rule down on, but the values and traditions of its people which they may never have even learned, or simply choose not to respect.

Salman Taseer was also a multimillionaire -- though many people agree he came upon most of his wealth through industry rather than other means. But in a country as poor as Pakistan whose public has for a generation now increasingly embraced religion as the singular means of acquiring any authority or voice against the feudal lords and wealthy elite who are granted government positions from their friends to rule over people, apart from extreme and flamboyant wealth, the other major crime against decency is being out of touch with the public's values.

Those values include religion, and Taseer, a man who reportedly carried a tiny Koran around his neck, nonetheless did not understand that he had no authority to impinge on religious matters. Strangers cannot afford to be activists, even if it is just once.

Riaz Haq said...

Latest publication of Wikileaks by The Hindu reveals vote buying by India's ruling party in a 2008 confidence vote:

The ghost of bribes for MPs’ votes returned to haunt the government on Thursday with the entire Opposition demanding its resignation over allegations that UPA-I purchased the support of lawmakers to survive the trial of strength at the height of crisis over Indo-U.S. nuclear deal in 2008.

On top of several scams that had surfaced in the last few months, the government faced a torrid time in Parliament on Thursday with Opposition targeting it on the manner in which it won the vote of confidence in 2008 after the Left parties had withdrawn support to it opposing the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.

Both the Houses of Parliament were repeatedly rocked by uproar and adjournments by the Opposition members who demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government saying it did not have any right to continue even for a moment as it was surviving on “political and moral sin“.

The Right and and the Left combined in Parliament whenever it met during the day to launch an assault armed with the claim in a U.S. diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks that an aide of former Union Minister Satish Sharma had shown to the diplomat currency chests that were part of Rs.50 crore to Rs.60 crore money collected by Congress for purchase MPs for the vote in the Lok Sabha.

The only defence that the government came out with was when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told Parliament that a diplomat’s cable enjoyed immunity and he could not confirm or deny its contents.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Prof Anatol Lieven, the author of Pakistan-A Hard Country, explaining P2K in an interview with Harpers magazine:

This represents a shocking surrender on my part to SMS-speak, which comes of associating with students!

What it stands for is “Patronage to Kinship,” which is central to the nature and workings of the Pakistani state and political systems. In my book, I argue that this system—especially in the countryside but to some extent also in the cities—revolves around local elites using their own wealth to gain leadership positions in their kinship groups, using these positions to advance in politics and get elected to the provincial or national assembly (whether under civilian or military rule), and then in turn using their influence on government to extract corruption.

However, by contrast with some systems, like Nigeria’s, the benefits of this corruption cannot simply or even mainly be kept for the immediate beneficiaries. In order to retain support, they have to distribute a reasonable proportion of it to their kinfolk and other supporters—otherwise they won’t go on supporting the leaders for very long. Even within quite tight-knit kinship groups, there is usually a rival relative who will step forward to claim the leadership if the existing leader is seen as mean, greedy, and unresponsive to his followers’ needs. There are two good U.S. quotes which illustrate the morality behind this. The first was said about Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago by his supporters: “He dunks, but he splashes.” The second comes from Bruce Springsteen’s song “Highway Patrolman”: “A man turns his back on his family, he ain’t no friend of mine.”

In my book, I describe this system as “Janus-faced.” On the one hand, because of the way in which it maintains kinship links and spreads a certain amount of patronage through society, it helps maintain the existing system’s resilience in the face of the threat of Islamist revolution. On the other hand, it cripples the state’s ability to generate and spend resources effectively on infrastructure, education, and every other form of state service, and it is therefore disastrous for Pakistan’s economic development and social progress.

I argue that the power and prestige of the Pakistani military within the Pakistani system has been due chiefly to its ability to separate itself from the normal workings of the patronage and kinship system, and to operate as a relatively efficient and honest meritocracy. However—and I do wish more of my critics would notice this—I also say repeatedly that the reason the military has been able to do this is that it has in effect functioned as a giant patronage network, extracting a massive share of state resources and spending them on itself, albeit in an orderly way and with some benefits reaching the ordinary soldiers as well as the officers.


http://harpers.org/archive/2011/05/hbc-90008092

Riaz Haq said...

All the pretensions of western style institutions make little sense to most inhabitants of India and Pakistan and other former colonies.

The colonial legacy of parliamentary democracy and British style rule of law are alien concepts in South Asia and never touch the lives of over 90% of the population.

With few exceptions, the disputes and conflicts are resolved using traditional rules set and adjudicated by local village councils (panchayats and jirgas) which are at odds with the laws passed by the national and provincial legislatures and implemented by the governments' justice system.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a review of "River of Smoke" by Soutik Biswas of the BBC:

It is 1838, and Amitav Ghosh's new novel, River Of Smoke, sails into Canton, a rambunctious, crowded city, and home to seafarers, itinerant merchants, opium traders and many such floating folks. "In China, everything new comes from Canton," says a character, in what is the second book in a planned trilogy.
----
Canton's suburbs are bustling, floating cities on the Pearl River, a veritable "waterborne hive" where up to a million people live in boats moored along the water's edge. At the centre of this maelstrom of commerce, a prosperous Indian Parsi opium merchant, Bahram Modi, negotiates a knotty question of the morality of his trade even as Chinese authorities launch a concerted crackdown.

But beyond the fog of opium and the cacophony of the foreigner's town, River of Smoke is really a scathing parable of globalisation.
---
Last week, on a cloudy Delhi morning, I asked Ghosh, a trained anthropologist from Oxford, whether free trade and globalisation had failed a lot of people. "Of course," he said. "Look around you, look at Greece, look at England. And yes, we keep making and selling things which are of no real use!"

There's an amazing amount of economics in his novel - pushed against the wall, opium merchants talk about setting up an off-share trading base to ship in opium and about the "hand of freedom, of the market", echoing Adam Smith. (Ghosh tells me that a number of traders were Scottish, and would have been influenced by Smith's tracts.) Clearly, globalisation repeats itself again and again - often with unsavoury results - and nothing really changes.

And then there are the ruminations on democracy. "Democracy is a wonderful thing," says Bahram. "It is a marvellous tamasha (spectacle) that keeps common people busy that men like ourselves can take care of all matters of importance. I hope one day India will also be able to enjoy these advantages." I ask Ghosh about the health of democracy in India. He doesn't appear to be very upbeat about it. "Democracy for democracy's sake doesn't make much sense", he says, "unless we strengthen institutions and follow processes." Otherwise, as Bahram says, it can just become a spectacle, involving the institutions, the media and the people.

Two decades after India embraced globalisation and economic reforms, the results are mixed: a rising tide has lifted all boats - to borrow an allegory from Ghosh's sea novels - but many boats are barely afloat. There is valid criticism about a lot of growth being jobless, and inadequate state attention to education and health of the poor. In an intensely media-driven environment, where everybody appears to be playing to the gallery, democracy, many say, is being trivialised.

But, of course, River Of Smoke is more than all this. This masterwork of historical fiction is brimming with characters and colour. Behind its finely etched detail about people, cities, voyages, flowers and food, it is a seriously engaging political novel - perhaps one of the finest ever by an Indian writer. Don't miss it.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14026315

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Russian analyst Anatol Karlin on India's prospects and its comparison with China:

It is not a secret to longtime readers of this blog that I rate India’s prospects far more pessimistically than I do China’s. My main reason is I do not share the delusion that democracy is a panacea and that whatever advantage in this sphere India has is more than outweighed by China’s lead in any number of other areas ranging from infrastructure and fiscal sustainability to child malnutrition and corruption. However, one of the biggest and certainly most critical gaps is in educational attainment, which is the most important component of human capital – the key factor underlying all productivity increases and longterm economic growth. China’s literacy rate is 96%, whereas Indian literacy is still far from universal at just 74%.
-----------
The big problem, until recently, was that there was no internationalized student testing data for either China or India. (There was data for cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai, but it was not very useful because they are hardly representative of China). An alternative approach was to compare national IQ’s, in which China usually scored 100-105 and India scored in the low 80′s. But this method has methodological flaws because the IQ tests aren’t consistent across countries. (This, incidentally, also makes this approach a punching bag for PC enforcers who can’t bear to entertain the possibility of differing IQ’s across national and ethnic groups).
--------------
Many Indians like to see themselves as equal competitors to China, and are encouraged in their endeavour by gushing Western editorials and Tom Friedman drones who praise their few islands of programming prowess – in reality, much of which is actually pretty low-level stuff – and widespread knowledge of the English language (which makes India a good destination for call centers but not much else), while ignoring the various aspects of Indian life – the caste system, malnutrition, stupendously bad schools – that are holding them back. The low quality of Indians human capital reveals the “demographic dividend” that India is supposed to enjoy in the coming decades as the wild fantasies of what Sailer rightly calls ”Davos Man craziness at its craziest.” A large cohort of young people is worse than useless when most of them are functionally illiterate and innumerate; instead of fostering well-compensated jobs that drive productivity forwards, they will form reservoirs of poverty and potential instability.

Instead of buying into their own rhetoric of a “India shining”, Indians would be better served by focusing on the nitty gritty of bringing childhood malnutrition DOWN to Sub-Saharan African levels, achieving the life expectancy of late Maoist China, and moving up at least to the level of a Mexico or Moldova in numeracy and science skills. Because as long as India’s human capital remains at the bottom of the global league tables so will the prosperity of its citizens....


http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2012/02/04/china-superior-to-india/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an LA Times Op Ed on US democracy groups working in developing nations:

Now that seven American pro-democracy workers have been allowed to post bail and return to the United States, perhaps we can examine what the U.S. was up to in Egypt using reason instead of patriotic emotion. The Egyptian furor over such seemingly idealistic work may strike us as wild and idiotic, but in fact, the Egyptians have a right to be suspicious. America's attempt to promote democracy around the world through private organizations has unsavory beginnings and a sometimes troubling history.

The program stems from a discredited CIA operation. In the 1950s and '60s, during the Cold War, the CIA set up a group of phony foundations to funnel CIA money to private groups that were either anti-communist or, at least, non-communist. Among the recipients were the AFL-CIO, the National Student Assn. and the magazines Encounter in London and Transition in Africa. Some did not even realize they were operating with CIA subsidies. When the secret operation was exposed in Ramparts magazine and other U.S. publications, there was great embarrassment, and President Lyndon Johnson put a stop to such CIA funding.

But many in Congress felt that the program's problem lay only in its ties to the CIA. Cut those ties and make everything aboveboard, they argued, and the attempt to win hearts and minds to the American way would be useful and benign. In the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, Congress created the National Endowment for Democracy to take the place of the defunct CIA program.

Under the law, the endowment divided its money among four new institutes created to sponsor programs encouraging democracy throughout the world. The four institutes were run by the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, supposedly ensuring the participation of the major American ideologies and interests.


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-meisler-prodemocracy-20120306%2c0%2c4106995.story

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt of Stephen Kinzer's NPR interview on his book about Dulles brothers:

On the Dulles' ability to overthrow regimes in Iran and Guatemala but not in Cuba or Vietnam

They were able to succeed [at regime change] in Iran and Guatemala because those were democratic societies, they were open societies. They had free press; there were all kinds of independent organizations; there were professional groups; there were labor unions; there were student groups; there were religious organizations. When you have an open society, it's very easy for covert operatives to penetrate that society and corrupt it.

Actually, one of the people who happened to be in Guatemala at the time of the coup there was the young Argentine physician Che Guevara. Later on, Che Guevara made his way to Mexico and met Fidel Castro. Castro asked him, "What happened in Guatemala?" He was fascinated; they spent long hours talking about it, and Che Guevara reported to him ... "The CIA was able to succeed because this was an open society." It was at that moment that they decided, "If we take over in Cuba, we can't allow democracy. We have to have a dictatorship. No free press, no independent organizations, because otherwise the CIA will come in and overthrow us." In fact, Castro made a speech after taking power with [Guatemalan President Jacobo] Árbenz sitting right next to him and said, "Cuba will not be like Guatemala."

Now, [Vietnamese Communist leader] Ho Chi Minh was not establishing an open society ... the fact is, he had a dictatorship, he had a closed, tyrannical society, and that made it much more difficult for the CIA to operate. So we find this irony that if [Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad] Mossadegh and Árbenz had been the tyrants that the Dulles brothers portrayed them as being, the Dulles brothers wouldn't have been able to overthrow them. But the fact that they were democrats committed to open society made their countries vulnerable to intervention in ways that Vietnam and particular North Vietnam then were not.

On how things might have been different had the Dulles brothers not intervened

It's quite possible, even likely, had the Dulles brothers not been [in Vietnam] or had acted differently, there never would've been an American involvement in Vietnam at the cost of a million lives and more than 50,000 Americans. Guatemala wouldn't have suffered 200,000 dead over a period of 35 years in the civil war that broke out after they intervened in Guatemala and destroyed democracy there. Iran fell under royal dictatorship and then more than 30 years of fundamentalist religious rule as a result of the Dulles brothers' operations. Had they not intervened in Iran we might've had a thriving democracy in the heart of the Muslim Middle East. ...

So you look around the world and you see these horrific situations that still continue to shake the world, and you can trace so many of them back to the Dulles brothers.


http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out