Intervention And Underdevelopment

. . . this ground-breaking study by Jon Kofas . . . provides an insightful analysis of the American aid program that determined the political and economic configuration of postwar Greece. Kofa's analysis, however, is equally significant for United States history because it was on Greek soil that American counterinsurgency, pacification, and containment tactics were evolved, tested, and later applied elsewhere in the Third World. Those who seek meaningful reappraisal rather than beguiling rationalization might well begin with this study, solidly grounded on all available sources. It presents a revisionist perspective regarding both the economic and the political development of Greece under American tutelage. The declared objective of the economic aid was to avoid restructuring of the Greek economy, and to preserve Greece as an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods. Kofas asserts that an alternative program similar to that of the northern Balkan countries was feasible, and that failure to undertake such a program is vulnerable of today's Greek economy. Likewise in the political realm, Kofas rejects the Washington dogma that Greece has to be in either the Soviet or the American camp, and therefore must be in the latter. Kofas proposes as a &"plausible alternative&" a social-demographic regime that, in addition to socioeconomic reforms at home, could have pursued abroad a pro-Greek rather than a pro-Soviet or pro-American course. The victory of the American-supported forces in Greece obscured this alternative vision for decades. Yet it was persistently propounded, in the face of discouraging odds, by a variety of centrist and leftist leaders. With the coming to office of Andreas Papandreou, this vision has become official policy in Athens. Furthermore, assorted versions of this alternative strategy are cropping up globally, which is the underlying reason why the Third World today is out of control. And also why superpower doctrines and projects not recognizing this indisputable and irreversible fact are experiencing difficulties as embarrassing as they are predictable. Hence the broad significance of this thoughtful and thought provoking study. &—From the Foreword by L. S. Stavrianos

Failed states are a huge problem in international relations, threatening world order in a number of ways. Conflicts in failed states often spill unto neighbouring states, failed states make for unreliable partners in the resolution of global social problems such as poverty and AIDS, and failed states magnify the effects of natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. In response to the multiple threats posed by failed states, working states, sometimes acting alone sometimes in concert with others, have undertaken military operations, often under the rubric of humanitarian intervention. This book is a historical study of state failure, underdevelopment and foreign intervention in light of the Haitian experience with all three. Its main thesis is that state failure has been a recurring feature of Haitian political life for much of the country’s history, and this inability of the Haitians to craft a viable political order is at the heart of Haitian poverty and underdevelopment. Haitian state-making failure is underwritten by a complex array of deleterious local and external institutions, as well as natural constraints, including class, lack of elite cohesion, geography, population growth, the social origins of the Haitian polity, imperialism, and technology.

This book has focused on the dialectic between state construction and the political process in Pakistan in the first decade of its independence. Using Dependency Paradigm as the evaluation tool, it examines the international political and economic factors, which in alliance with the domestic and regional factors shaped the structure of the Pakistani state according to the interests of the players of the neo-colonial world in the Cold War era. The first decade of Pakistan's history (1947-1958) produced developments of great significance for the construction of the post-colonial state that needs to be examined in the context of Cold War era. It was during this period that democratic institutions were destroyed and authoritarianism was consolidated, which generated underdevelopment, and Pakistan took the shape of a 'client' state of the United States. These developments concluded in the first direct military rule in 1958, and since then the military intervention in political domain has become a permanent feature of Pakistan's life at the cost of evolution of civil society and participatory institutions. An analytical study of the formative years of Pakistan in the context of 'dependency paradigm' may provide new insights for understanding the broader issues of military intervention in politics and the authoritarian nature of the state and its links with underdevelopment in the Third World, particularly in South Asia.

Mahdi Amel (1936–87) was a prominent Arab Marxist thinker and Lebanese Communist Party member. This first-time English translation of his selected writings sheds light on his notable contributions to the study of capitalism in a colonial context.

Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.

This book presents a new theory explaining underdevelopment in the global South and tests whether financial inputs, the government-business-media (GBM) complex and spatiotemporal influences drive human development. Despite the entrance of emerging powers and new forms of aid, trade and investment, international political-economic practices still support well-established systems of capital accumulation, to the detriment of the global South. Global asymmetrical accumulation is maintained by ‘affective’ (consent-forming hegemonic practices) and ‘infrastructural’ (uneven economic exchanges) labours and by power networks. The message for developing countries is that ‘robust’ GBMs can facilitate human development and development is constrained by spatiotemporal limitations. This work theorizes that aid and foreign direct investment should be viewed with caution and that in the global South these investments should not automatically be assumed to be drivers of development.

This book describes the interlocking relationship of government and multinational corporations (MNCs) that led to U.S. intervention in Guatemala in 1954. It explains the intervention in terms of the continuous penetration of the extended domain of the metropole.

Using Germany as a case study of the impact of American culture throughout a period characterized by a totalitarian system, two destructive wars, ethnic cleansing, and economic disaster, this book explores the political and cultural parameters of Americanization and anti-Americanism.