Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation-Building in the American Century

About the Author, Back Cover

Jeremy Kuzmarov received his PhD in history from Brandeis University in 2006 and holds BA and MA degrees from McGill University. He has taught at Bucknell University and Emmanuel College and is J. P. Walker Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009). In 2010, Kuzmarov was named a Top Young Historian by History News Network. He lives in Tulsa with his wife, Ngosa, and daughter, Chanda. "This page intentionally left blank" As American troops became bogged down first in Iraq and then Afghanistan, a key component of u.s. strategy was to build up local police and security forces in an attempt to establish law and order. This approach, Jeremy Kuzmarov shows, is consistent with practices honed over more than a century in developing nations within the expanding orbit of the American empire. From the conquest of the Philippines and Haiti at the turn of the twentieth century through Cold War interventions and the War on Terror, police training has been valued as a cost-effective means of suppressing radical and nationalist movements, precluding the need for direct u.s.military intervention and thereby avoiding the public opposition it often arouses. Unlike the spectacular but ephemeral pyrotechnics of the battlefield, police training programs have had lasting consequences for countries under the American imperial umbrella, fostering new elites, creating powerful tools of social control, and stifling political reform. These programs have also backfired, breeding widespread resistance, violence, and instability- telltale signs of "blowback" that has done more to undermine than advance U.S. strategic interests abroad. "A timely and important work, impressive for the breadth of its research, the clarity of its organization, the depth of its insight, and the acuity of its focus on a problem that has remained, for over a century, central to U.S. foreign policy:'- Alfred W. McCoy, author of Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State "A splendid contribution to the existing literatures that will be highly valued and much quoted by scholars and practitioners alike:'-Martha D. Huggins, author of Political Policing: The United States and Latin America Jeremy KUlmarov is Jay P. Walker Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tulsa and author of The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009). Cover design by Jock Harrison Cover photograph: Members of anti-riot forces stand behind razor wire during an anti-government demonstration in central Baghdad, March 4, 2011. REUTERS/ Mohammed Ameen A volume in the series Culture, Politics, and the Cold War University of Massachusetts Press Amherst & Boston www.umass.edu/ umpress ISBN·13: 978-1-55849·917·1 II III 90000 9 78 99171 IIII1 I1111 ...