政变。美国的错误行为简史

 政变。美国的错误行为简史

关于约翰-博尔顿承认他 "帮助策划政变 "以及美国对颠覆国家的随意做法。

贝伦-费尔南德斯

雅各宾杂志的特约编辑。

2019年，作为国家安全顾问的约翰-博尔顿公开支持委内瑞拉反对派要求军队罢免社会主义总统尼古拉斯-马杜罗[Vladislav Culiomza/Reuters]

有一个老笑话说，为什么美国从来没有政变：因为那里没有美国大使馆。

当然，这个笑话的基础已经有些动摇，因为前总统唐纳德-特朗普被指控在2021年1月煽动了一场 "未遂政变"。然而，并不是每个人都同意 "政变 "的说法--甚至在特朗普的批评者中。

在最近接受美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）关于国会调查此事的采访时，长期从事外交工作的美国人和前特朗普国家安全顾问约翰-博尔顿（美联社报道，他的胡子 "特朗普从来不喜欢"）宣布，将叛乱视为一场 "精心策划的政变 "是一个 "错误"。简而言之，根据博尔顿的说法，特朗普只是太无能了，无法完成那么大的事情。"作为一个曾经帮助策划政变的人--不是在这里，而是，你知道，在其他地方--这需要大量的工作。"

当然，美国参与外国政变并不完全是一个新闻热点，关于这个问题已经有很多文章。首先，请看《纽约时报》前分社社长斯蒂芬-金泽的书《推翻》。美国从夏威夷到伊拉克的政权更迭世纪》--或者《华盛顿邮报》在2016年发现，"美国在冷战期间72次试图改变其他国家的政府"。

但博尔顿承认时的淡定，只是强调了美国对破坏国家和大规模破坏生命的相当随意的做法。可以肯定的是，这种制度化的缺乏同情心的做法在美国持续的军事屠杀的定期国际事件中也有所表现。

然而，鉴于美国当局每当认为其他国家插手不属于自己的事务时就会陷入恐慌，这种轻描淡写的帝国主义态度变得更加令人头疼的虚伪。美国多年来对 "民主 "的吹嘘也不容易与政变调和。

在美国有线电视新闻网的采访中，博尔顿在自己的政变策划履历中唯一关心的具体要点是2019年的委内瑞拉，"结果没有成功"。2019年的行动不能与2002年美国支持的委内瑞拉政变相混淆，这次政变短暂地推翻了乌戈-查韦斯，它需要努力用一个名为胡安-瓜伊多的右翼人物取代当选总统尼古拉斯-马杜罗，他自发地自动宣布为该国的临时总统。

长期以来，委内瑞拉一直是当代美帝的眼中钉，因为它拒绝屈服于华盛顿的半球设计，但说到美国在拉丁美洲和其他地区的政变式干涉，这只是冰山一角。

例如，早在1954年，中央情报局就策划了一场针对危地马拉民选领导人雅各布-阿尔本斯的政变，事实证明他对该国农民的需求非常关注，不愿意允许总部设在美国的联合水果公司继续掠夺性地开采危地马拉的土地，好像这是上帝赋予的权利。

针对阿本斯的政变为残酷的内战铺平了道路，在36年中，有超过20万危地马拉人被杀害或失踪。大多数战时暴行是由美国支持的政府部队犯下的。

恰好，在政变发生时，德怀特-艾森豪威尔政府的主要成员与联合水果公司有着密切的个人关系。那么，公司和国家的分离就见鬼去吧。

前一年，即1953年8月，中央情报局 "在四天内推翻了伊朗的民主制度"--正如国家公共广播电台所言。与阿本茨一样，当选的伊朗总理穆罕默德-摩萨台（Mohammad Mosaddegh）对当权者的经济偏好不够顺从。随之而来的是伊朗沙赫的长期酷刑统治，他是美国武器的狂热消费者。正如埃尔万德-亚伯拉罕在他的《现代伊朗史》中回忆的那样，"军火商们开玩笑说，沙赫吞食他们的手册，就像其他男人阅读《花花公子》一样"。

这个名单还在继续。有1964年美国支持的针对巴西总统若昂-古拉特的政变，1991年美国支持的针对海地总统让-贝特朗-阿里斯蒂德的政变，2004年美国支持的针对阿里斯蒂德总统的政变，以及2009年美国支持的针对洪都拉斯的曼努埃尔-塞拉亚的政变--这使该国或多或少陷入了世界末日般的暴力。

再倒退到1960年，美国支持的针对帕特里斯-卢蒙巴（Patrice Lumumba）的政变--刚果独立的英雄和刚果第一位民选总理--次年的暗杀得到了中央情报局的大力协助。然后是美国支持的1963年11月1日针对南越吴廷琰的政变，吴廷琰在第二天被暗杀。

还有美国对古巴独裁者和政变者富根西奥-巴蒂斯塔的支持，他本人在1959年1月1日古巴革命的胜利中被废黜--此后，中情局忙于设计各种阴谋来杀死革命领袖和潜水爱好者菲德尔-卡斯特罗，其中包括一个涉及油漆精美的装满炸药的软体动物的计划。

很明显，这些阴谋都没有成功，而且--你知道吗？- 古巴继续在约翰-博尔顿的指定敌手名单上占据特殊位置。2002年，作为 "反恐战争 "总指挥乔治-W-布什手下负责军备控制和国际安全的副国务卿，博尔顿有幸将这个加勒比海的小岛国正式列入 "邪恶轴心"。

快进到2019年，博尔顿警告说，马杜罗下台后，古巴政府将成为 "下一个"。

虽然美国的恶行显然并不总是按计划进行，但这并没有阻止这个全球霸主通过军事炸弹、行刑队、瘫痪性禁运以及其他远没有创造性但远比爆炸贝壳更具破坏性的措施，让全世界人民的生活成为噩梦。

按照上述2016年《华盛顿邮报》关于美国在冷战期间72次试图改变政权的报告，"干涉外国选举是最成功的秘密战术"。此外，该报告的作者指出，"秘密的政权更迭可能会破坏目标国家"，使它们 "更有可能遭受内战、国内不稳定和大规模屠杀"。你不说。

现在，在博尔顿的会后启示中，《邮报》的菲利普-邦普对这个问题进行了探讨。"那么，约翰-博尔顿究竟可能参与了哪些政变？"邦普利用伊利诺伊大学克莱恩中心的数据观察到，自博尔顿1982年加入罗纳德-里根政府以来，国际上发生了350多起政变企图--包括2001年9月11日袭击后 "人们可能不认为是政变企图的事件--如美国领导的推翻阿富汗政府的事件"。

邦普写道，在这350多起未遂事件中，有191起发生在博尔顿在美国政府任职期间。然而，布姆普擅自将 "博尔顿在司法[部门]或美国国际开发署工作期间发生的所有企图从等式中删除，假定他对政府领导的任何邪恶行为的参与都是有限的"。不要忘记，美国国际开发署（USAID）已经被酣畅淋漓地揭露为中央情报局行动的一个间歇性幌子。

最终，邦普确定，在有可能与博尔顿有某种联系的政变企图中，只剩下131个例子。然而，归根结底，这根本不是关于博尔顿的问题，而是关于他所代表的随意的、道德上错乱的帝国主义。

随着 "美国政权更迭的世纪 "变成几个世纪，这确实是一个相当大的政变。

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In 2019, John Bolton as national security adviser publicly supported Venezuelan opposition calls for the military to remove socialist President Nicolas Maduro [Vladislav Culiomza/Reuters]

There is an old joke about why there are never coups d’état in the United States of America: because there is no US embassy there.

Granted, the joke’s foundations have been somewhat shaken now that former President Donald Trump stands accused of inciting an “attempted coup” in January 2021. Not everyone is on board with the “coup” designation, however – even among Trump’s critics.

In a recent interview with CNN about the congressional investigation into the matter, longtime US diplomat and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton – whose moustache “Trump never liked”, as the Associated Press reported – declared it a “mistake” to see the insurrection as a “carefully planned coup d’état”. In short, according to Bolton, Trump was simply too incompetent to pull off something of that magnitude: “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’état – not here, but, you know, other places – it takes a lot of work.”

Of course, US involvement in foreign coups is not exactly a news flash, and plenty has been written on the subject. See, for starters, former New York Times bureau chief Stephen Kinzer’s book Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq – or the Washington Post’s finding in 2016 that “the US tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the Cold War”.

But the nonchalance with which Bolton delivered his admission just serves to underscore the United States’ rather casual approach to upending nations and wrecking lives en masse. This institutionalised lack of empathy is, to be sure, also on display in regular international episodes of sustained US military slaughter.

And yet given the apoplexy into which the US establishment enters whenever other countries are perceived to be meddling in affairs that are not their own, the blasé imperial attitude becomes all the more mind-numbingly hypocritical. Nor is perennial US bleating about “democracy” easily reconcilable with, you know, coups d’état.

In the CNN interview, the only specific point Bolton cared to highlight on his own coup-planning curriculum vitae was that of Venezuela in 2019, which “turned out not to be successful”. Not to be confused with the 2002 US-backed coup in Venezuela that briefly ousted Hugo Chávez, the 2019 operation entailed efforts to replace elected president Nicolás Maduro with a right-wing character named Juan Guaidó, who had spontaneously auto-proclaimed himself interim president of the country.

Venezuela has long been a thorn in the side of contemporary American empire on account of its refusal to submit to Washington’s hemispheric designs, but it’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to coup-happy US interference in Latin America and beyond.

Back in 1954, for example, the CIA orchestrated a coup against Jacobo Árbenz, the democratically elected leader of Guatemala, who had proven himself to be irritatingly attentive to the needs of the country’s peasantry and unwilling to permit the predatory US-based United Fruit Company to continue exploiting Guatemalan land as though it was a God-given right.

The coup against Árbenz paved the way for a brutal civil war in which more than 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or disappeared over 36 years. The majority of wartime atrocities were committed by US-supported government forces.

As it so happened, at the time of the coup, key members of the Dwight D Eisenhower administration harboured close personal ties to the United Fruit Company. To hell, then, with the separation of corporation and state.

The previous year, in August of 1953, the CIA “overthrew Iran’s democracy in four days” – as NPR puts it. Like Árbenz, elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh had been insufficiently subservient to the economic preferences of the powers that be. There ensued a long-term reign of torture by the shah of Iran, an avid consumer of US weaponry. As Ervand Abrahamian recalls in his History of Modern Iran, “arms dealers joked that the shah devoured their manuals in much the same way as other men read Playboy”.

The list goes on. There  was the 1964 US-backed coup against Brazilian President João Goulart, the 1991 US-backed coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the 2004 US-backed coup against again President Aristide, and the 2009 US-backed coup against Honduras’s Manuel Zelaya – which plunged the country into more or less apocalyptic violence.

Rewind again to 1960 and the US-supported coup against Patrice Lumumba – hero of Congolese independence and the first democratically elected prime minister of the Congo – whose assassination the following year was significantly facilitated by the CIA. Then there was the US-supported November 1, 1963 coup against South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, who was assassinated the next day.

And there was US support for tyrannical Cuban dictator and coup-monger Fulgencio Batista, who was himself deposed by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959 – after which the CIA busied itself devising a dizzying variety of plots to kill revolutionary leader and scuba diving aficionado Fidel Castro, including one scheme involving brilliantly painted explosives-laden molluscs.

Obviously, none of these plots panned out, and – what do you know? – Cuba continues to occupy a special place on the appointed nemeses list of none other than John Bolton. In 2002, in his capacity as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security under “war on terror” chief George W Bush, Bolton had the honour of officially adding the diminutive Caribbean island to the “axis of evil”.

Fast forward to 2019, and Bolton warned that the Cuban government would “be next” in line after the demise of Maduro.

And while US malevolence clearly does not always go according to plan, this has not stopped the global hegemon from making life a nightmare for people across the world via military bombs, death squads, crippling embargoes, and other measures that are far less creative but far more destructive than exploding seashells.

As per the aforementioned 2016 Washington Post report on the United States’ 72 attempts at regime change during the Cold War, “meddling in foreign elections is the most successful covert tactic”. Furthermore, the report’s author notes, “covert regime change can devastate the target countries”, rendering them “more likely to suffer civil war, domestic instability and mass killing”. You don’t say.

Now, in the aftermath of Bolton’s would-be revelation, the Post’s Philip Bump takes on the question: “So what coups might John Bolton have been involved in, exactly?” Utilising data from the Cline Center at the University of Illinois, Bump observes that, since Bolton joined the Ronald Reagan administration in 1982, more than 350 coup attempts have transpired internationally – including events “that one might not think of as a coup attempt – like the US-led toppling of the government in Afghanistan” after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Out of the more than 350 attempts, Bump writes, 191 took place while Bolton occupied a position in the US government. Bump has, however, taken the liberty of removing from the equation all attempts that “occurred while Bolton was with [the] Justice [Department] or USAID, assuming that his involvement in any government-led nefariousness would have been limited”. Never mind that USAID, the US Agency for International Development, has been soundly exposed as an intermittent front for CIA operations.

Ultimately, Bump has determined, a mere 131 instances remain in the pool of coup attempts that are potentially eligible for some sort of link to Bolton. And yet, at the end of the day, it’s not really about Bolton at all; it’s about the casual, morally deranged imperialism that he happens to represent.

And as “America’s Century of Regime Change” turns into centuries, it is quite the coup indeed.