Understanding CIA Interventions during the Cold War
Did the CIA back military coups in Guatemala and Iran to protect American economic interests, or to contain Soviet influence?
On March 12th, 1947, President Harry Truman declared that “it must be the policy of the United States to assist free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities and by outside pressures.”
The “Truman Doctrine” was a bold commitment to contain Soviet expansionism and uphold the new liberal world order American officials had sought to establish after World War II. However, despite lofty rhetoric about protecting freedom, Washington’s promotion of democracy was far from consistent throughout the Cold War. While American officials advanced liberal values in Europe (for the most part) and Japan, they backed anti-communist tyrants in the third world as a part of a containment strategy. The US even abetted the overthrow of democratically elected leaders it suspected of sympathizing with Moscow, and replaced them with reliable strongmen.
While these notorious covert regime change efforts are now well-known to observers of international affairs, the underlying intentions behind them are still debated. For instance, many “revisionist” critics of US Foreign Policy describe the CIA backed coup of Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz as a response to his expropriation of land owned by the United Fruit Company. Similarly, they they argue that the CIA joined the MI6 to topple Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh in order to restore the flow of oil to the US after Mossadegh nationalized the Iranian oil industry. The revisionists claim that Arbenz and Mossadegh’s allegiances to Communism were tenuous, and that the fear of Communism was simply a facade to pursue more sinister, imperialistic objectives.
However, a “post-revisionist” examination of the coups in Guatemala and Iran confirm that while economic interests were not immaterial, they were not central to the decision making process of US officials. Arbenz and Mossadegh may not have explicitly been Communists, but in Washington’s eyes, they did have concerning affiliations with pro-Soviet political parties. The main weakness of the revisionists’ argument is a failure to understand the CIA’s perception of Arbenz and Mossadegh in the context of the Cold War. Post-revisionists also point out that throughout the Cold War, American statesmen frequently (and sincerely) conflated Third World nationalist movements with Communist subversion.
Moreover, President Eisenhower, who authorized these coups, was extremely wary of validating Soviet propaganda of the West as capitalist imperialists out to dominate the world’s resources — this is why he furiously ordered the British, French, and Israelis to withdraw from the Suez Canal in 1956, and threatened them with severe economic sanctions. Thus, it only makes sense that a genuine fear of Communism and Soviet influence would drive Eisenhower to risk America’s image in the international community, even through covert operations where US involvement would likely be suspected.
It is also important to note that in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the US was on the receiving end of several Cold War developments: losing its nuclear monopoly to the Soviets, the success of the Communist Revolution in China, and the retreat of South Korean and American troops across the Korean Peninsula after a successful offensive by Chinese-backed North Korean forces. These setbacks significantly predisposed Washington to view the international arena through a purely Cold War lens.
Jacobo Arbenz and Guatemala’s Communist PGT Party
In 1952, democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz initiated a much needed land reform policy in Guatemala, where the majority of the population was landless peasants, and the top 2.5 percent owned over 70 percent of usable land. The United Fruit Company (UFC), an American corporation that had profited from production in Guatemala, protested Arbenz’s allegedly insufficient compensation after he expropriated uncultivated land held by the company and divided this among the peasants.
At this point, the UFC began intensively lobbying the US government to overthrow Arbenz. However, President Eisenhower himself was not concerned with the protection of American investments, but the possibility of a “Soviet beachhead” in the Western Hemisphere. Eisenhower deemed the land reforms initiated by the Arbenz government to be so extreme that it must have been orchestrated by Moscow-sympathizing Communists. The UFC fueled these fears with a misleading propaganda campaign against Arbenz, but the seeds of suspicion had already been planted. Around the time Arbenz enacted the land decree, he legalized the Communist party (PGT) as an opposition party. During a Congressional delegation, Eisenhower claimed that, “the Reds are in control and they are trying to spread their influence to San Salvador as a first step of the breaking out to other South American countries.” By mid 1954, Eisenhower authorized a CIA intervention called Operation PBSUCCESS to oust Arbenz and replace him with right wing dictator Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.
It is true that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA director Allen Dulles were former legal advisers to the UFC. However, they were also fervent anti-Communists. John Foster Dulles organized the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, a strategic alliance between the US and Southeast Asian countries to counter the spread of Communism in the region. Allan Dulles developed an extensive intelligence apparatus to monitor international Communist movements and check Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe. Richard Bissell, the CIA director of PBSUCCESS, had no ties to the UFC, and confirmed in interviews that Allen Dulles had not mentioned anything about the company’s interests prior to the operation.
Did the CIA overstate the Communist threat and Soviet influence in Guatemala? Certainly. But this does not necessarily mean that all these errors were willful. In fact, some of the intelligence assessments of Arbenz’s ties to PGT were accurate. According to Piero Gleijeses, who wrote about his interviews with members of the PGT in Shattering Hopes, Arbenz was highly influenced by the ideas of high ranking officials in the PGT, and at times even considered himself to be a Communist. Jose Manuel Fortuny, the former leader of the PGT and Arbenz’s close friend and speechwriter, verified that US intelligence had correctly gauged that Arbenz’s land reforms were guided by the Communists, and were intended to lay the groundwork to “radicalize the peasantry” and extend the influence of the PGT. Fortuny himself acknowledged, “they would have overthrown us even if we had grown no bananas,” and Arbenz agreed from his exile in Cuba that it was anti-Communism that had set off the intervention.
Moreover, while the PGT did not have ties to the Soviet Union, they were actively attempting to reach Moscow. The Soviets declined because they were more preoccupied with spreading Marxist-Leninism in Europe and Asia, and regarded aiding Latin American Communist movements as unfeasible at the time. Arbenz’s decision to purchase weapons from Czechoslovakia, a member of the Soviet bloc, was also a major “Red” flag for Washington.
US officials did expect the new Armas regime to restore the rights of American corporations — but these were secondary to the primary security interests. Perhaps most illustrative of Eisenhower’s indifference towards the UFC was that shortly after PBSUCCESS, he permitted the Justice Department to proceed with an antitrust suit against the company, which would weaken its monopoly and eventually lead to its downfall.
This post-revisionist account is consistent with the US policy towards Latin America during the Cold War, where Washington was willing to sacrifice short term economic interests to prevent Communists from coming to power. As noted by historian Odd Arne Westad, the Brazilian Junta backed by the US in the 1970s developed state-owned industries, practiced import-substitution, and even manipulated its currency to gain an advantage over the US dollar — but Washington didn’t mind, since the Brazilian military was reliably anti-Communist.
Mohammad Mossadegh and the Communist Tudeh Party of Iran
In 1951, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized the Iranian oil industry, including the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Britain was furious, since Iran was its main oil partner in the Middle East, and put an embargo in place on Iranian oil to foment domestic opposition to Mossadegh. London also appealed to the United States to overthrow Mossadegh, framing him as an lackey of the Communist Tudeh Party.
The Truman Administration, however, refused, perceiving Mossadegh more as a nationalist than a Communist. But things started to change in 1952. Internal turmoil caused by Britain’s oil embargo drove Mossadegh closer to left wing Iranian parties, including the Tudeh. US officials became increasingly concerned about the growing infiltration of the Tudeh Party into Iranian politics. For instance, the American Embassy in Iran reported that a pro-Mossadegh demonstration consisted of about 3,000 Mossadegh loyalists, but over 12,000 Tudeh party members.
A declassified National Security Council document makes clear that Washington did not fear that a Communist takeover in Iran was imminent in 1953 — rather, it suspected that long term instability and domestic power struggles would continue fueling the Tudeh party, and lead to Communist victory at some point in the future. American officials also saw working with Britain to overthrow Mossadegh as an opportunity to forge closer ties with London and establish a more united Western front against the Soviet Union. In 1953, Eisenhower decided to join the British in overthrowing Mossadegh in Operation Ajax. During the Operation, the conservative opposition to Mossadegh, including the military, Shah (monarch), and Islamic clergy, crushed the Tudeh party, much to the relief of the CIA.
Of course, oil was a factor in Eisenhower’s decision, but not necessarily because of the demands of American oil companies. Iran’s oil wealth made it an influential player in the Middle East, and thus Soviet influence over Iran would give Moscow a major strategic victory in terms of global power politics. In other words, these concerns over oil were derivative of broader Cold War strategic objectives and balance-of-power calculations. The new Shah that the US and Britain put into power, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, did restore oil flows to the West, but his primary benefit to Washington was his anti-Soviet stance. To American statesmen, Big Oil profits were a secondary, if not tertiary, motive to Cold War objectives.
Why does it matter?
“Why does it matter,” you may ask? Both regime change efforts yielded disastrous consequences, regardless of intentions. In the case of Guatemala, the overthrow of Arbenz and installation of a right-wing regime paved the way for a bloody civil war that would last for over 30 years. The Shah’s authoritarianism, alienation of Shiite clerics, and mismanagement of the Iranian economy fueled the Islamic Revolution that eventually succeeded in 1979.
Nonetheless, the motivations behind the covert actions are revealing in terms of assessing America’s Cold War priorities. Did the US fear the spread of Communism in the Third World because left-wing governments posed a threat to American economic interests by nationalizing foreign-owned industries and undermining favorable trade conditions? Or was it more concerned about Soviet expansionism and the global balance of power shifting towards Moscow? The underlying reasons for Operations PBSUCCESS and Ajax seem to confirm the latter theory.
Sources
- The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad, 2017
- “Interpreting the 1954 U.S. Intervention in Guatemala: Realist, Revisionist, and Postrevisionist Perspectives” by Stephen M. Streeter
- “The devastating effects of American intervention in Guatemala”: https://thepanoptic.co.uk/2016/11/19/american-intervention-guatemala/
- “You can own the world” by Evan Thomas: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1995/10/22/you-can-own-the-world/c772e3f1-2634-4fb1-a223-b681d63a539d/
- National Security Archives, United States policy regarding the current situation in Iran (1952): https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/iran521120.pdf
- “US Perceptions of Communist Threat in Iran during Mossadegh” Era by Mark J. Gasoriowski:
https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_a_00898
