From A Different Perspective — Iran, Venezuela, North Korea
It is far too easy to misunderstand the motivations of leaders of other countries when we don’t understand the histories of those countries. And when a majority of Americans don’t understand the histories or motivations of foreign leaders, that lack of understanding can be exploited and used to spread fear or anger. The antidote to this, obviously, is education. It is with that goal in mind that I write this article. We have been hearing our national leaders talk about Iran, Venezuela and North Korea as places ruled over by cruel, heartless leaders that starve, oppress and imprison large numbers of their populations. Its never a good idea to take one side of a disagreement as the gospel truth without hearing the other, so I decided to dig deeper. Let’s dig in!
Iran
Military commander Reza Khan seized power in the 1920’s and, a few years later, changed his name to Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi tried to modernize Iran (then known as Persia) which included changing the country’s name to Iran and allowing the creation of political parties. [1] He was deposed, partially because he was friendly with the Germans during World War II, and was replaced on the throne by his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
The new king vowed to be a constitutional monarch and defer to the parliament, but couldn’t help himself and continually got involved in governmental affairs or thwarted strong prime ministers. [2] He was a friend to the west and advocated reform policies, culminating in the 1963 program known as the White Revolution, which included land reform, the extension of voting rights to women, and the elimination of illiteracy. [2]
In 1951, a political opponent of Pahlavi’s, Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq tried to get the parliament to nationalize the oil industry. [3] The main benefactor of Iranian oil was Great Britain, which imposed an economic embargo on Iran and brought the matter to the International Court of Justice, which decided not to intervene. Winston Churchill pushed for a U.S./UK backed coup. [3]
A power struggle ensued between Pahlavi and Mosaddeq, and Pahlavi had to flee the country, but in 1953, Mosaddeq was overthrown as Prime Minister, in a CIA funded coup, and Pahlavi returned. [1] In 1967 Pahlavi crowned himself emperor. First the White Revolution measures, and then the new title of emperor, and the increasing arbitrariness of the Shah’s rule, provoked both religious leaders who feared losing their traditional authority and students and intellectuals seeking democratic reforms. These opponents criticized the Shah for violation of the constitution, which placed limits on royal power and provided for a representative government, and for subservience to the United States. [4]
In 1979, Pahlavi was overthrown in an Islamic Revolution [5], which brought a regime to power that uniquely combined elements of a parliamentary democracy with an Islamic theocracy run by the country’s clergy. [3] During the Islamic Revolution, Pahlavi again fled the country, this time to the United States, which refused (under Jimmy Carter) to extradite him. This was the motivation behind taking 52 Americans hostage inside the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, beginning eight years of war. [6] In fact, despite western leaders efforts to paint Iran as hostile, the last time Iran invaded another country was in the early 1700’s. Modern Iran sees Hassan Rouhani as its president and Ali Khamenei Supreme Leader. Popularly elected officials have been trying to create reforms for many years, but the Supreme Leader maintains the most power, controlling the military, the media and more. And history has shown, time and again, that those in power rarely give it away freely.
Now, Iran did start enriching uranium in the 2000’s and refused inspections. This continued for years, despite negotiations. In 2015, Iran signed the “nuclear deal” with the United States and 5 other countries, in return for relief from sanctions.[6a] In 2018, the United States Congress voted to sanction Iran, despite their compliance with the agreement, then Donald Trump declared that he would back out of Iran’s nuclear deal. Iran has always maintained that the pursuit of nuclear capabilities was peaceful- as an energy source for their cities (Tehran has a population that approached 9 million).
Venezuela
In 1993, President Carlos Andrés Peréz was impeached for embezzling 250 million bolivars, which he and his supporters said was used to help the Nicaraguan electoral process. [7] This was his second term in office, in which he had denounced the economists on the World Bank’s payroll as “genocide workers in the pay of economic totalitarianism” and the IMF as “a neutron bomb that killed people, but left buildings standing”. [8] But the economic problems he was inheriting (his first and second terms were non-consecutive) never got better, and he was forced to accept austerity.
Hugo Chávez led a failed coup attempt against the IMF readjustment program, which was brutally put down, Chávez jailed. [8] Following Peréz’ impeachment, and a year of interim President Ramón José Velásquez, Rafael Caldera was elected (also to his second non-consecutive term) in 1994. But Caldera inherited falling oil prices, a banking crash and an economic recession. [9] He bailed out the financial sector, made budget cuts and had the Venezuelan economy on the mend.
In 1998, Hugo Chávez won popular election with a turnout of 63% and 56% of the vote. [10] Academic analysis of the election showed that Chávez’s support had come primarily from the country’s poor and “disenchanted middle class”, whose standard of living had decreased rapidly over the previous decade[11]. Chávez began as a moderate and a capitalist, although not a neoliberal, but by 2013 he was openly blaming capitalism for climate change: “ The rich are destroying the planet. Do they think the can go to another when they destroy this one? Do they have plans to go to another planet? So far there is none on the horizon of the galaxy.” [12]
Chávez was an eclectic president, creating his own television show, with episodes that ran on for as long as he wanted, but also set into motion a social welfare program called Plan Bolívar 2000. He said he had allotted $20.8 million for the plan, though some say that the program cost $113 million. The plan involved 70,000 soldiers, sailors and members of the air force repairing roads and hospitals, removing stagnant water that offered breeding areas for disease-carrying mosquitoes, offering free medical care and vaccinations, and selling food at low prices.[13]
Chávez was elected to four terms, although that’s not to say that there wasn’t opposition to his administration. The corporate interests, opposition parties and most of the media organized a collective group called Coordinadora Democrática de Acción Cívica (CD), but Chávez defeated them repeatedly. Venezuela’s voting system has long been maligned by U.S. leaders and media, but experts recognize Venezuela for having the best run voting system in the world.[14] Jimmy Carter, who ran the Carter Center said “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” [15]
Although Chávez won his fourth term, he was never inaugurated. He had gone to Cuba for some medical treatment and died, either from colon cancer [16] which he had been struggling with for the last 2 years or a heart attack, possibly aggravated by the cancer [17]. Vice President Nicolás Maduro took over in early 2013. It is difficult to get reliable, non-biased information on Venezuela in the U.S. For instance, U.S. media paints Chávez and Maduro both as cruel dictators who starve their own people, but Maduro won re-election in 2018. U.S. media reports, in lock step, how fraudulent that election was, despite that the process was watched over by 150 international observers from over 30 countries, among them former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who said (Telesur, 5/20/18): “I do not have any doubt about the voting process. It is an advanced automatic voting system.” Another election observer was former Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa, who announced via Twitter (5/20/18):The Venezuelan elections are developing with absolute normalcy. I’ve attended four polling stations. There is a permanent flow of citizenship, with short waiting and voting times. Very modern system with double control. From what I’ve seen, [it’s] impeccable organization.[18]
North Korea
“The Korean peninsula was annexed by Japan in 1910, modernizing and industrializing much, but also oppressing Koreans. During World War II, Koreans were sent to the front as “Japanese” soldiers while Korean women provided sexual services to Japanese soldiers.” [19] After the war, the United States and Soviet Union divided the peninsula into zones of influence, along the 38th parallel.
When Kim Il-Sung tried to unify the country again, he started the Korean War. The United States intervened on behalf of the south, which was badly outgunned. China, fearful of U.S. capitalists too close to their borders, intervened on behalf of the north. The war ended in a stalemate, in 1953, without any surrender signed (the war is technically not over). The new boundary was the old boundary.
600,000 Korean soldiers died in the conflict according to U.S. estimates. About one million South Koreans were killed, 85 percent of them civilians. According to figures published in the Soviet Union, 11.1 percent of the total population of North Korea died, which indicates that around 1,130,000 people were killed. The total casualties were about 2,500,000. More than 80 percent of the industrial and public facilities and transportation infrastructure, three-quarters of all government buildings, and half of all housing was destroyed.[20] The devastation and enormous loss of life may lend some insight into modern relations between the U.S. and North Korea.
During the 1960’s, in South Korea, there was growing instability, several years of military rule, followed by several years of economic growth, even though farmers and laborers had to suffer with low wages in order to manufacture that growth. [21] Meanwhile, in the north, the state seized control of just about everything, restricted the media and travel, and sorted everyone by perceived loyalty to Kim and to socialism. [22] This dictated where you could live, what schools you could attend and what job you could be placed in. Free speech became an offense punishable by arrest or maybe even death.
Through the next two decades, growth slowed and remained stagnant. In 1994, Kim Il-sung died. When the government stopped providing food, people foraged and sold anything they could to buy food at small, illegal markets that began to spring up, creating a process of bottom-up marketization. Some fled to China, leading to a wave of refugees from North Korea, while information about the outside world slowly began to flow back into the country. Some resorted to prostitution or crime. What was once a highly ordered and controlled society gave way to a disorganized and fluid society.[22]
The new leader, Kim Jong-Il, announced that he would withdraw from the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty in 1994, refusing international inspections. President Bill Clinton, after negotiations with North Korea, established a deal known as the Joint Framework Agreement which offered $4 billion worth of nuclear, energy, economic and diplomatic benefits in exchange for the halting of North Korea’s nuclear program in 1994. The deal also included two light-water nuclear reactors, which were believed to be more difficult to use to make weapons than Pyongyang’s plutonium reactor.[23] But Republicans took control of the Congress and refused to honor the deal. [24]
The leaders of north and south met in Pyongyang, in the north, in 2000. The economy and the people finally began to recover, although the country would remain , subject to food shortages. South Korea adopted a “Sunshine Policy” of unconditional aid to North Korea. South Korean companies began hiring North Korean workers. China strengthened ties with the country. Then, in 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and resumed nuclear research.
President George W. Bush was able to get North Korea to agree to “six-party talks”, with Japan, Russia, Germany, the U.S, and South Korea. These talks carried over into the Obama administration. Kim Jong-il died, and was replaced by his son, Kim Jong-un, who agreed to halt nuclear tests in exchange for food, but the nuclear program continued. I’ll bet you think that brings us to today, and that’s where I’m going to end.
But there’s one piece of the puzzle that I haven’t mentioned yet, and that is the annual joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea in the South China Sea. These exercises began 16 months after the end of the Korean War (1955).[25] Now, if we look at the whole picture, here is this tiny country, brutally colonized by Japan, divided in two, and then devastated by war, primarily with the United States. And almost immediately following the war, the United States is holding military maneuvers off its shores. You can begin to see how this would be perceived as a threat.
Kim Il-sung didn’t seem to know how to react, if there was a right way to react. He began trying to provoke the exercises, militarily. During the 60’s and 70’s, conflicts and provocations reached such a point that this period earned a reputation as the “second Korean War”. But the joint military exercises grew bigger. In 1976, the alliance introduced a new exercise, dubbed “Team Spirit” which combined several exercises into one very large exercise. By the late 1980s, 200,000 American and South Korean troops were participating. [26] “Team Spirit” has been a major issue in negotiations over the years.
Now, I cannot tell you what motivates Kim Jong-un, or what motivated his father, or his father before him. But the threats and posturing that we see today have a purpose- whether it’s to stop the U.S. military exercises in the South China Sea with South Korea, or whether there is genuine fear of another U.S. invasion, perhaps it really has always been about food, I really don’t have that answer. Perhaps it is all of the above. It strikes me as obvious, but I don’t hear many people saying it (perhaps because of a lack of historical context) that North Korea behaves as the victim of a severe beating by a neighbor, if that neighbor makes a point of regularly sparring with a friend outside that person’s door. I think, when you look at it in that context, the behavior that we’ve seen during the last decade and a half- the behavior the American corporate media paints as erratic, crazy- is a little more understandable, not that I am attempting to justify threatening a nuclear attack, but I can really see what circumstances brought about that position. And I hope you can too.
I hope you enjoyed the reading, and I hope that I’ve helped to dispel some of the illusions that the leaders of these three nations act, somehow, without logic or reason. The narrative of crazy, abusive and power-hungry is everywhere in the western media, regarding these three nations. It is difficult to see anything else. But with a bit of digging and a smidge of empathizing and a touch of cultural understanding, maybe we can start to de-escalate tensions between our country and these now, before our “leaders” see any need of military resolution.
Peace,
Jason Kishineff
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[1] -https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14542438
[2] -http://www.iranchamber.com/history/pahlavi/pahlavi.php
[3] -https://www.britannica.com/place/Iran/Wartime-and-nationalization-of-oil
[4] -http://www.iranchamber.com/history/mohammad_rezashah/mohammad_rezashah.php
[5] -https://www.nytimes.com/topic/destination/iran
[6] -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War
[6a] -https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/history-iran-nuclear-deal
[7] -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Andr%C3%A9s_P%C3%A9rez
[8] -https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/09/1
[9] -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Caldera
[11] -Wilpert, Gregory (2007). Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government.
[12]-https://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/03/06/hugo-chavez-on-climate-change-and-capitalism/
[13] — Gott, Richard (2005). Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.
[14] -https://popularresistance.org/on-the-technical-aspects-of-voting-venezuela-does-it-right/
[15] -https://www.truthdig.com/articles/venezuela-defeated-the-u-s-in-its-election-now-it-must-build-an-independent-economy/
[19] -https://www.history.com/topics/korea/north-korea-history
[20] -http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Korean_War
[21] -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea
[22] -https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/learn-north-korea-history/
[24] -https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-bush-clinton-obama-trump-649522
[25] -https://www.38north.org/2014/02/rcollins022714/
[26] — John Farrell, “Team Spirit: A Case Study on the Value of Military Exercises as a Show of Force in the Aftermath of Combat Operations,” Air and Space Power Journal, Fall 2009.
