D.K. Duncan
"They say what we know is just what they teach us and we're so ignorant cause every time they can reach us through political strategy"
- Robert Nesta Marley
"Ambush in the night", 1976
IN JANUARY 1976, the then United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, addressed the US House Finance Committee. He told the committee that he had instructed US Missions abroad to warn Third World governments that their relations with the US would be judged by their "statements and votes on that fairly limited number of issues we indicated are of importance to us in international fora". So in March 2003, when local US Embassy officials tell us that the recent US request of certain Caribbean nations not to support a move to convene a United Nations General Assembly meeting to discuss the US President's actions in Iraq is simply a routine matter we can believe them. What they do not tell us is that the consequences of ignoring the advice, request or warning of any US administration is also predictable and routine.
In the case of Kissinger in 1976, he had recently returned to the US from a visit to Jamaica in December 1975. While in Jamaica, he took the opportunity to advise Prime Minister Michael Manley "that he would appreciate it, if Jamaica would at least remain neutral on the subject of the Cuban army presence in Angola". Manley recalls in his book "Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery" (1982) that Kissinger "as if from nowhere brought up a subject... the Jamaican proposal for the hundred million dollar trade credit". Manley also recalled, "I had the feeling he was sending me a message". Manley, the Peoples National Party, and the Government continued the support for the freedom fighters in Angola against the military advances from the South African racist regime. Manley did not hear another word about the US$100m trade credit from the US. That was routine.
Four years later in 1979, under a different President and a new Secretary of State, the US administration lobbied Manley to boycott a Non-Aligned Move-ment (NAM) summit which was to be held in Cuba that year. Manley and other Caribbean leaders attended that NAM summit on September 4, 1979. By December 1979, in a hotel room in Miami, Manley was the subject of a live and direct, face to face grilling by US officials on his speech at the September NAM meeting as well as "other issues that were of importance to the US in international fora". The routine consequences of this period is knowable if not known. We may have to await the timely release of documents under the US Freedom of Information Act to confirm some of these routine consequences.
No matter how routine it may seem to our local embassy spokespersons, "he or she who feels it knows it". There is a price you pay for ignoring the advice, warnings or wishes of US administrations. These kinds of advice represents in Mafia language "offers you are not supposed to refuse".
The US-led invasion of Iraq without the support of the UN, the international community or world opinion is also routine. It is grounded in US history. It has its historical basis in the Monroe Doctrine propounded by President James Monroe in his address to the US Congress on December 2, 1823. This doctrine was originally the work of the new Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, who wrote at the time of the US's intention to "guarantee its commercial interests". Initially, a rationale for the assertion of US power in the Americas, it has now become globalised in the era of the single superpower. "Regime change" became routine for the US as it pursued its Manifest Destiny.
US administrations' actions over the last 150 years have been predictable and routine. It has convinced many that "might is right". Others have concluded that, "Power comes out of the barrel of a gun". Still, some learn from the US the principle of "Do as I say - not as I do".
Bob Marley, writing in "Ambush in the night," concludes after reflection with another observation.
"Well, what we know
Is not what they tell us;
We're not ignorant, I mean it".
One love, One heart.
A dental surgeon, Dr. D.K. Duncan, is a former General Secretary and Government Minister in the PNP Administration of the 1970s.
