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

Part II. Under the Facade of Benevolence: Police Training and the Cold War in Southeast Asia from the "Reverse Course" to Operation Phoenix

Part II Under the Facade of Benevolence Police Training and the Cold War in Southeast Asia from the "Reverse Course" to Operation Phoenix Humanitarianism is laudable if one can afford it. The greatest act on behalf of all humanity however is for the u.s. to help others from falling under the control of communism. - COLONEL ALBERT R. HANEY, Overseas Internal Security Program planning document, 1957 They called me a red bitch. Any red was not considered human.... They looked at me as if Iwas a beast or a bug.... Because we weren't human, we had no rights. - PAK WAN - SQ, South Korean writer who faced imprisonment and torture by U.S.-trained police Though separated by less than fifteen years from the withdrawal of us. troops from the Caribbean, the post- World War II American occupation ofJapan and the onset ofthe Cold War marked the opening ofan entirely new era, one in which the United States emerged as the preeminent global power. Amidst a flowering of nationalist sentiment- what Tom Engelhardt referred to as the postwar "victory culture"-the United States was bent more than ever before on projecting its power and exporting its institutions to all corners ofthe globe, partly as a means ofcountering the influence of its Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and China. The United States intensified its pursuit, furthermore, ofa coherentglobal strategy designed, in the words ofNoam Chomsky, to carve out a system of"open societies" in which American capital could operate more or less freely. ' While the scope of American interventions consequently increased, they changed in character and became, with some exceptions, more informal than in the past and reliant on indirect mechanisms ofsocial control. The old approach toward colonialism had become discredited as a result ofthe dying ofthe British and French empires and the waning of social Darwinian philosophies in the wake of the Nazi holocaust. No longer could policymakers rationalize their actions by claiming to be "taking 53 up the white mans burden." Nor could they justify the long-term administration ofcolonies. Instead theyfocused on developing pliable proxy regimes that ruled in accord with US. interests. Police training became especially important in this context. Kept largely hidden from the public, it was designed to promote the social stability deemed necessary for liberal capitalist development and to suppress radical nationalist and communist movements, which had become increasingly popular and well organized as a result ofsociohistorical circumstances.2 A new generation ofpolice advisers, now culledfrom the Office ofStrategic Service, the FBI, and state police organizations, embraced the Cold War mission and worked to professionalize the police and improve their capacity to serve as the "first line of defense" against subversion. Believing in the universality of American institutions, they operated predominantly in the shadowsfrom one Cold War trouble spot to the next, providing technical advice and equipment and lectures at American-financed police academies, usually by translation. They received little public acclaim; few Americans even knew that they existed. Many of the police whom they trained, however, rose to positions ofprominence in their own countries, owing in part to the stockpiles of weapons they receivedfrom their generous patron. Throughout the Cold War, the budget for police programs was highest in Southeast Asia. The United States had always prized the region as one of the richest and most strategically located in the world, hoping to convert it into what General Douglas MacArthur characterized as an "Anglo-Saxon lake." In a March 1955 Foreign Affairs article, William Henderson of the Council on American Foreign Relations (which Laurence Shoup and William Minter aptly termed the "imperial brain trust") wrote: 'its one of the earths great storehouses of natural resources Southeast Asia is a prize worth fighting for. Five-sixths of the worlds natural rubber, and more than halfofits tin are produced here. .. . [It] accounts for two-thirds of the world output ofcoconut, one-third of the palm oil, and significant proportions of tungsten and chromium. ... No less important than the natural wealth is Southeast Asias key strategic position astride the main lines of communication between Europe and the Far East.'" Envisioning Chinese Guomindang leader Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) as one ofthefour great policemen ofthe postwar order, American advisersfrom the ass, FBI, Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), and the New York Police Department began instructing his secret police, commanded by Dai Li, in the late 1930s. The focus, ass agent Milton Miles wrote, was on "political crimes and means ofeffective repression" against the communist movement, adding...