This Augean Stable: US and UK foreign policy in the 1980s under Reagan/Thatcher [1987]

[This article by Desmond Greaves was carried in the January 1987 issue of the “Irish Democrat”]

We all remember reading stirring stories of cops and robbers. How many of us expected to see a time when it was hard to tell the two apart? And by the same token the law-makers have become the biggest law-breakers.

Take for example that geriatric reprobate Ronald Reagan. There was an opinion poll taken in the USA recently. One percent of those polled said they believed the President. Ninety-nine percent said they thought he was a liar. Ninety-nine percent!

Take some of the facts that are not disputed. While the USA was denouncing Iran as a centre of terrorism, the CIA was supplying that country with millions of dollars’ worth of arms. True, they made them pay top prices. And they made a handsome profit. That profit was “laundered” through Swiss bank accounts. Where did it end up? “With Nicaraguan rebels”, the so-called “Contras”, came the reply. But the Contras said they hadn’t had a cent of it. So where is it now? Those who are supposed to know are pleading the Fifth Amendment. That means they needn’t talk if they think talking would incriminate them. So presumably it would. 

But that’s only part of it. While the CIA was supplying arms to Iran they were supplying secret intelligence to Iraq as to where the arms might be stored, so as to enable them to bomb the right places [These two countries were then at war]. It looks as if the USA had an interest in keeping that war going. And needless to say, nobody believes that the President was anything but up to his neck in it.

Many people think Reagan is on his way out. Perhaps he might fade out on grounds of health. But left-wing observers in America warn that those even worse are ready to step on stage. There are forces that would like to move the USA into open Fascism, followed by a Hitler-like attempt to conquer the world. With Reagan discredited, there may well be an attempt to stampede the country into accepting an even more adventurist right-wing administration.

It is pointed out that something has been happening in the Republican Party that emerged clearly at its 1985 convention. The party had been taken over by “a coordinated network of fully mobilized, disciplined, sophisticated and well-financed ultra-right and Fascist forces”. 

From a party within a party these became the party, and set about establishing a government within the government. Names mentioned include those of Jesse Helms, Strom Thormond, John Towner, Barry Goldwater, Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jeane Kirkpatrick. The last is seen as the most outspoken and dangerous and there are manoeuvres to get her hands on the levers of power.

It is she who prepared a policy document that reads like Mein Kampf. It includes the following philanthropic paragraph:  “We must establish political dominance over key strategic zones – the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea and over regions producing essential raw materials. We must establish a dominant position in the Third World.”

 The weapon to be used is destabilization. It operates by a “dirty tricks” system, systematic stirring-up of trouble. Hence the establishment of a “shadow government” consisting of a network of military, intelligence and financial agencies. This “invisible junta” surfaced in the Iran affair. 

The Kirkpatrick document was quite specific. The countries listed for “destabilization” were India, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Iran, Libya, South Yemen, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Algeria and Madagascar. The countries to be made use of included Egypt, South Africa, Zaire, Morocco, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and above all Israel. The document announces the aim of “fostering divisions in the Third World and prevention of a united front of developing countries”.

In the light of this one can see the point of selling arms to Iran and giving military intelligence to Iraq. Another feature of imperialist policy is the “Rapid Deployment Force”, to be used if the mischief-making gets out of hand. It would “take immediate action in the event of an oil embargo, rebellion or revolution or the outbreak of local conflict” – that is, local conflicts America’s stooges looked unlikely to win.

 What is taking place in the USA is a merging of the various functionaries of capitalism – corrupt Wall Street financiers, underworld gangster elements, the military-industrial establishment, top civil servants, and the various fascist-minded foundations, think-tanks, lobbyists and press barons. These are the people who make money out of imperialism, and daily they threaten to get unquestioned power and strangle American democracy

It is as well for the future of the world that there are also powerful forces for peace and democracy inside the USA, and these were behind the Reagan set-backs in the recent mid-term elections. These oppose intervention in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan, reject the Star Wars fantasy and want negotiations between the Superpowers.

It is natural that imperialism should most fear an explosion in the Third World. It is there that monopolistic price-fixing has built the mountain of debt and the accumulation of mass poverty and starvation. But the USA is not the only exploiter of the former colonies. Next in importance is Britain. The British have indeed a larger stake than the USA per head of population. This is what accounts for the million people whose jobs depend on the City of London. It accounts for the lush estates between London and the South Coast, and the shift from manufacturing to service industries. Those clapped-out academics who are never tire of yapping about the “new structure of the working class”, usually ignore the connection with imperialism. They also ignore the most dangerous fact of all. The system is very unstable. Britain could become a banana republic without the bananas.

But it’s not only the Third World that suffers from American policy. Britain, France, Germany and other West European countries are locked into this policy through their investments and the fact that only the USA has the military strength to protect them.

The European nations have on several occasions voiced alarm at the increasingly adventuristic policies of the Reagan administration. 

The process of the fusion of the various elements of the imperialist establishment has taken place on a world scale. Alone among the papers published in Britain, the “Irish Democrat” has exposed the operations of the Bilderberg Conference and the Trilateral Commission, which operate as international “shadow governments”, unelected and responsible to nobody, bringing together prominent politicians, the world’s biggest financiers and the top brass of NATO.

Part of this tendency is seen in the ever-increasing attempts to fuse the Common Market in with NATO. This is seen in the “security” commitments of the infamous Single European Act designed to make the military-industrial establishment supreme. 

Europe is being hustled down the road to a military-financial feudalism in which vital decisions are made by faceless, invisible, even illegal interests. The current difficulties of the Thatcher regime show this. An intelligence service used for irresponsible purposes loses the loyalty of its members. Mrs Thatcher is visible, dish-cloth in hand, here, there and everywhere trying to mop up the spillages. If intelligence operators are allowed to burgle citizens’ houses, bug their telephones, subvert elected governments, even bump people off, why should they baulk at the “crime” of giving the show away?

At the end of December Mr Sean MacBride  [former  Irish Foreign Minister] stated publicly that Ireland is swarming with British intelligence agents and that these will at a pinch not stick at murder. Some time one of these is going to spill the beans. And we may not have long to wait for the next set of revelations. 

For sitting in the library of Lewes jail is Ballymena-born Captain Colin Wallace, currently serving ten years for a manslaughter he insists he did not commit. Another former Six-County gum-shoe operator, Captain Fred Holroyd, has turned up fresh evidence in Wallace’s favour and is already in touch with Members of Parliament with a view to a fresh trial. What Captain Wallace claims is that he was in effect framed to shut his mouth about “covert operations” both North and South of the Irish border. 

Of course we don’t take too much notice of much of it. This search for Soviet agents is becoming paranoid. But in view of the Westland and AWACS decisions, some enterprising Member of Parliament might ask the Prime Minister whether she believes there are any American agents in the country. She wouldn’t be one herself, of course.  [The Westland affair  in 1985-6 was an open dispute between Prime Minister Magaret Thatcher and her Secretary of Defence Michael Heseltine over the sale of Britain’s only helicopter manufacturer, Westland, which  Heseltine wanted to sell to EU firms, Thatcher to American ones. It precipitated Heseltine’s resignation.  The AWACS decision referred to the scrapping of a British airborne early warning defence system in favour of buying an American one.]

What is becoming increasingly clear is that imperialism in its dying days is an Augean stable. If the Labour Party were to fight an election on the slogan “clean the country up”, who knows Mr. Kinnock might get in with a much heftier majority than he’ll get by fingering the opinion polls and trying to keep ahead of them.

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