Throughout its history and up to the present day, the United States has had close ties with authoritarian governments. (review) During the Cold War, the U.S. backed anti-communist governments that were authoritarian, and were often unable or unwilling to promote modernization. U.S. officials have been accused of collaborating with oppressive and anti-democratic governments to secure their military bases in Central America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The Economist Democracy Index classifies many of the forty-five currently non-democratic U.S. military base host countries as "authoritarian governments".
During the Cold War, the U.S. provided support for state terrorism and anti-communist mass killings, including Operation Condor in South America and the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66.Mark Aarons (2007). "Justice Betrayed: Post-1945 Responses to Genocide." In David A. Blumenthal and Timothy L. H. McCormack (eds). The Legacy of Nuremberg: Civilising Influence or Institutionalised Vengeance? (International Humanitarian Law). Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. pp. 71 & 80–81 In cases like the 1953 Iranian, 1954 Guatemalan, and 1973 Chilean coup d'états, the United States participated in the overthrow of democratically elected governments in favor of dictators who aligned with the United States. The U.S.' claimed justification for support of authoritarian right-wing governments was the resulting stability that would facilitate economic progress and the idea that democratic institutions could be encouraged and built. Some critical scholars and journalists argue that it was intended to reinforce American business interests and to expand capitalism into countries of the Global South who were attempting to pursue alternative paths.
Background During the Cold War, leaders of developing countries received political and economic benefits, such as financial support and military assistance, in exchange for their alliance with either the United States or the Soviet Union. As a result, some dictators amassed fortunes at the expense of their nations and were able to maintain their rule by building substantial militaries. The Soviet Union and the United States gained access to markets for their manufactured goods, and locations for their military bases and missile stations. According to Chirico, the two superpowers supplied weapons to dictators, which strengthened their armies and helped quell uprisings. According to a 2017 blogpost by anthropologist David Vine, the U.S. often rationalized the siting of its military bases in non-democratic nations as a necessary but undesirable product of defending against the communist threat posed by the Soviet Union. Few of these bases have been abandoned since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins writes that the Cold War violence of the United States, in particular coups and the propping up of pro-capitalist military despots throughout the Global South, has deeply shaped the world we live in today, a "worldwide capitalist order with the United States as its leading military power and center of cultural production." Much of this violence was not directed against governments and movements aligned with the Soviet Union, but the Third World movements which were attempting to build something different, and thereby "destroyed a number of alternative possibilities for world development." He argues that contrary to the popular notion that much of the developing world peacefully and willingly adopted the capitalist system advocated by the United States and its allies, it's possible that without this violence, "many of these countries would not be capitalist at all," or at the very least would have banded together to "insist on changing the rules of global capitalism."
Ruth J Blakeley argues that the U.S. justification given for facilitating state terrorism and coups and installing military dictators, the containment and defeat of Communism, paints a distorted picture as it was also a means by which to buttress the interests of US business elites and to promote the expansion of capitalism and neoliberalism in the Global South.
Mark Aarons posits that right-wing authoritarian regimes and dictatorships backed by Western powers committed atrocities and mass killings that rival the Communist world. According to Latin Americanist John Henry Coatsworth, the number of repression victims in Latin America alone far surpassed that of the U.S.S.R. and its East European satellites between 1960 and 1990.
Examples The U.S. government provided military, logistical and other aid to the Chinese government led by Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) in its civil war against the indigenous Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong. Both the KMT and the CCP were fighting against invading Japanese forces, until the Japanese surrender to the United States in August 1945. This surrender brought to an end the Japanese Puppet state of Manchukuo and the Japanese-dominated Wang Jingwei regime.
After the Japanese surrender, the US continued to support the KMT against the CCP. The US airlifted many KMT troops from central China to Manchuria. Approximately 50,000 U.S. troops were sent to guard strategic sites in Hubei and Shandong. The U.S. trained and equipped KMT troops, and also transported Korean troops and even former Imperial Japanese Army troops back to help KMT forces fight, and ultimately lose, against the People's Liberation Army. In his memoirs, President Harry Truman justified deploying Japanese troops against the CCP: "It was perfectly clear to us that if we told the Japanese to lay down their arms immediately and march to the seaboard, the entire country would be taken over by the Communists. We therefore had to take the unusual step of using the enemy as a garrison until we could airlift Chinese National troops to South China and send Marines to guard the seaports."Harry S. Truman, "Memoirs, Vol. Two: Years of Trial and Hope," 1946–1953 (Great Britain 1956), p. 66 Within less than two years after the Second Sino-Japanese War, the KMT had received $4.43 billion from the United States—most of which was military aid.p. 23, U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, William Blum, Zed Books 2004 London.
After World War II, the United States was in opposition to the Soviet Union, which it regarded as totalitarian and expansionist. During the U.S.'s global effort to organize the Western Bloc and oppose communist expansion, the People's Republic of China was also seen as an expansionist, totalitarian dictatorship.
In the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa, the U.S. supported authoritarian governments such as those of the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, the Somoza dynasty of Nicaragua, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.
American diplomat Henry Kissinger initiated the U.S.'s arms-for-petrodollars program for the autocratic governments of Saudi Arabia and pre-1979 Iran, supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America, and supported Indonesian dictator and close U.S. ally Suharto. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) under President Ronald Reagan, was praised for her open support of pro-Western and right-wing oppressors including the Shah of Iran and Nicaragua's military dictator Anastasio Somoza, both of whom "were positively friendly to the U.S., sending their sons and others to be educated in our universities, voting with us in the United Nations, and regularly supporting American interests and positions even when these entailed personal and political cost".
Nigerian political scientist Claude Ake stated that while the U.S. continued to present itself as the leader of the free world in the 1990s, it sold more weapons to developing countries than all other arms traders combined. According to U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney and Senator John Kerry; "[d]espite rhetorical pledges to promote democracy and constrain the spread of weaponry worldwide, the Clinton administration has continued the Cold War and Bush administration policy of providing substantial amounts of weapons and training to the armed forces of non-democratic governments". In a 1997 report, Demilitarization for Democracy (DFD) said while democratic governments received 18 percent ($8 billion), non-democratic governments received 82 percent ($36 billion) of the $44.0 billion in arms and training provided to countries with U.S. Government approval during Bill Clinton's first four years in office. The authors concluded; "[t]he United States is increasingly dependent on the developing nations to keep its high share of the global arms market".
After International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over suspected war crimes in Gaza, American politicians have threatened to impose sanctions on officials at the ICC.
Table of authoritarian governments supported by the United States
+CountryRegime or leaderTime periodSee also or notesRefNational Reorganization Process1976–1978, 1981–1982Argentina–United States relationsVarious1991–presentUnited States–Azerbaijan relationsCivic-military dictatorship of Uruguay1973–1985Operation Condor, Dan MitrioneGetúlio Vargas1937–1945Brazil–United States relationsMilitary dictatorship in Brazil1964–1985Brazil–United States relationsRené Barrientos1964–1969Bolivia–United States relationsHugo Banzer1971–1978Military dictatorship of Chile1973–1976Chile–United States relationsSomoza dictatorship1961–1977Nicaragua–United States relationsGreek Junta1967–1974Greece–United States relations"The Poly-Papadopoulos ". Time. 3 April 1972. Archived from the original on 13 December 2008. Many democratic-minded Greeks resent the open U.S. support of the Papadopoulos dictatorship. Last month Washington gave further evidence of its acceptance of his regime by negotiating for home-port rights in the bays near Athens for the Mediterranean-based Sixth Fleet. In addition, the Nixon Administration is trying to persuade Congress to up military aid to Greece from about $90 million to $118 million.Mohammed Ayub Khan1958–1969Pakistan–United States relations The authoritarian regime of Ayub Khan was backed by the United States as a bulwark against the influence of the Soviet Union in South Asia. Henry Kissinger, a powerful US diplomat, was wary of the left-wing sympathies of the Indian government, and exploited the historic tension between Pakistan and India for American interests.Yahya Khan1969–1971Zia-ul-Haq1978–1988Lon Nol Pol Pot1970–1975Cambodia–United States relations