Politicians like Barack Obama and a majority of Americans who continue to defend the use of military force as a way to promote democracy and export the American laissez-faire economic model to other countries, are woefully ignorant of the record the United States has in exporting its economic and political institutions around the world. In a recent campaign season filled with politicians from both political parties trying to blame China for America’s continuing economic malaise, a cursory review of countries in Asia stretching from Japan to Indonesia, reveal that most of these countries achieved their economic well-being by ignoring almost every article of wisdom preached in American economics departments and propounded by various American administrations.
Contrary to the popular belief that South Korea prospered economically as a result of following the American laissez-faire economic model, a close examination of South Korean history reveals a country that pursued the political economic model of mercantilism. Although the South Korean economy did grow as a result of American forces protecting the country, a significant factor contributing to that growth was due to South Korean leaders not having to spend a large amount of its limited resources in the 1950s and 1960s on military equipment. This decision by South Korean leaders however came with a price, as we will later see when we examine the political history of South Korea.
Overshadowed by Cold War era politics of the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. military, aided by the military industrial congressional complex, contributed millions of dollars into the South Korean economy as U.S. military bases were built around the country. At the same time, instead of following the American laissez-faire economic model, South Korean government officials began to protect several industries and corporations through subsidies, tax cuts, and other forms of trade protection. Some of the most popular trade policies that South Korea pursued which allowed it to become the world economic power it is today, included legislation that maximized exports, minimized imports through select subsidies, and creating import barriers. The South Korean Ministry of Commerce and Industry decision in 1985 to postpone the import liberalization of automobiles from foreign countries is an example of South Korea supporting the political economic model of mercantilism.
While most Americans are tragically unaware how the military industrial congressional complex (MICC) undermines their own democracy, even more Americans are woefully ignorant of how the MICC and the national security state apparatus have undermined some of America’s closest allies during the Cold War like South Korea and Italy.
As masterfully recounted by Chalmers Johnson in his book, Dismantling the Empire, the former CIA analyst and expert in Asian affairs details the many instances in recent South Korean history where the United States supported military dictators like General Park Chung Hee and Major General Chun Doo Hwan.
From the book, Dismantling the Empire, by Chalmers Johnson:
During the 1950s, we backed the aged exile Syngman Rhee as our puppet dictator. When in 1960, a student movement overthrew Rhee’s corrupt regime and attempted to introduce democracy, we instead supported the seizure of power by General Park Chung Hee.
Educated at the Japanese military academy in Manchuria during the colonial period, Park had been an officer in the Japanese army of occupation until 1945. He ruled Korea from 1961 until October 16, 1979, when chief of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) shot him to death over dinner. The South Korean public believed that the KCIA chief, known to be “close” to the Americans, had assassinated Park on U.S. orders because he was attempting to develop a nuclear weapons program, which the U.S. opposed. After Park’s death, Major General Chun Doo Hwan seized power and instituted yet another military dictatorship that lasted until 1987.
In 1980, a year after the Park assassination, Chun smashed a popular movement for democracy that broke out in the southwestern city of Kwangju and among students in the capital, Seoul. Backing Chun’s policies, the U.S. ambassador argued that “firm anti-riot measures were necessary”. The U.S. military then released to Chun’s control Korean troops assigned to the U.N. command to defend the country against a North Korean attack, and he used them to crush the movement in Kwangju. Thousands of prodemocracy demonstrators were killed. In 1981, Chun Doo Hwan would be the first foreign visitor welcomed to the White House by the newly elected Ronald Reagan.
After more than 30 postwar years, democracy finally began to come to South Korea in 1987 via a popular revolution from below. Chun Doo Hwan made a strategic mistake by winning the right to hold the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988. In the lead-up to the games, students from the many universities in Seoul, now openly backed by an increasingly prosperous middle-class, began to protest American backed military rule. Chun would normally have used the army to arrest, imprison, and probably shoot such demonstrators, as he had done in Kwangju seven years earlier, but he was held back by the knowledge that if he did so the International Olympic Committee would move the games to some other country. In order to allow the Olympics to go ahead, Chun turned over power to his coconspirator of 1979-80, General Roh Tae Woo. In order to allow the Olympics to go ahead, Roh instituted a measure of democratic reform, which led in 1993 to the holding of national elections and the victory of a civilian president, Kim Young Sam.
In conclusion, since politics is the art of deception, as masterfully illuminated by Nicolo Machiavelli who is considered the father of modern political theory, the political rhetoric used by American leaders over the last 60 years, that military force is needed to allow democracy to flourish in a country, proves how easily Americans can be deceived and manipulated.
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