Beyond Allies and Adversaries | Ted Galen Carpenter | Cato Institute: Commentary

Beyond Allies and Adversaries | Ted Galen Carpenter | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The binary approach to global affairs had unfortunate policy consequences in other respects. The inability of U.S. policy makers to accept the reality that a nation might wish to be neither friend nor foe led to CIA-orchestrated coups against the left-leaning but independent nationalist governments in Iran and Guatemala. Instead of tolerating such ideological ambiguity, the Eisenhower administration viewed those regimes as nothing more than Soviet puppets and reacted accordingly.

Unfortunately, the binary attitude persisted long after the 1950s. It was a major factor that prevented the United States from recognizing that North Vietnam's communist regime was primarily nationalist and was not going to be a surrogate of either the Soviet Union or China. A similar blind spot impelled Washington to embrace such corrupt and thuggish "friends" as South Korea's Park Chung-hee, Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza and Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko."