Long before George W. Bush, the U.S. adopted a you’re either for us or against us stance towards third-world countries. From Visayas Outpost at visayasoutpost.substack.com:
Good morning, Space Rangers.
It is a sad day as another icon falls. No, I’m not talking about Trump’s ongoing endorsement of the vaccines, I am referring to the very man who first warned us about the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex.
Up until a few weeks ago, I had never in my life heard of the Jakarta Axiom. Sorry about that, Mr. Glossner, I know you did your best in 9th grade History. Yet in true hive-mind form, all things Eisenhower started dropping into place out of the ether. Recognizing these are probably just seeded into the public conscience, I am therefore doing my diligence to present it. Curses on the narrative managers, but maybe we can steer this in a direction they won’t expect.
The Golden Age?
The Jakarta Axiom was a simple yet pragmatic piece of foreign policy which established that neutral Third World states like Indonesia were on their own following WWII. Many of those islands in the Pacific Theater had been pulverized, but were neither allies nor enemies and therefore did not benefit from the rebuilding efforts Uncle Sam was keen on pursuing elsewhere. Third World nations and kingdoms were now free from their Colonial bonds, in some cases since the 1500’s, so it must have been naïve hope that the newly-formed United Nations offered them a world built on actual equity. For the first time, a seat at the table was possible, along with the dream of no longer being subject to the whims of the powerful.
But 1953 changed everything. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first year in office and the first foreign coup ever carried out by the CIA, Operation Ajax. Absorb the irony for a moment — that Ajax was put together at the request of the British against Iran to protect oil interests, and that it gave rise to the Shah. Such were the heady days of the early Cold War when the foreign policies that still plague us today, like Iran, were being formed. Khrushchev had just risen to power in the Soviet Union, and the NSA and CIA were both vying for relevance within the halls of US power. McCarthyism was in full effect, and the Reds were behind every blade of grass. Eisenhower didn’t create these perceptions, but he was elected to combat them.
Eisenhower felt some guilt regarding the beyond and was worried about his family getting caught up in a major WAR?
Imagine George S. Patton as president in the 1950s!
We wouldn’t be where we are now.
Joseph McCarthy is a great American hero.