Civilization and Beyond: Learning from HistoryNearing, Scott
History
Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History
Nearing, Scott
Civilization -- History
After the 1936-1945 war Washington played the same role with regard to
China, refusing for twenty-two years to recognize Socialist China
diplomatically, leading the drive in the United Nations to exclude China
from membership, although the United Nations Charter specified that
China should be one of the permanent members of the Security Council.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles justified the policy of
blacklisting and boycotting China by declaring that there was no such
nation as China on the Asian mainland, only 650 million slaves, and that
Chiang Kai Shek's rump government on the island of Formosa was the
"China" specified in the U.N. Charter.
Under the Truman Doctrine announced immediately after war's end in
1945, the United States refused to tolerate any extension of socialism,
whether by revolution from within or by invasion from without any
country. This doctrine was applied to Greece, to Iran, to Guatemala, to
Santo Domingo, to Chile. During the Korean War, which began in June,
1950, one of President Truman's first directives ordered the United
States Seventh (Pacific) Fleet to occupy the waters about Taiwan
(Formosa), which was historically part of China.
In order to implement this anti-communist policy, Washington used a
newly created international secret service, the Central Intelligence
Agency or C.I.A., gave it an initial appropriation of $100,000,000 and
turned it loose to spy, corrupt, undermine and overthrow governments
that refused to accept or follow Washington's leadership.
Between 1815 and 1914 the planet enjoyed a measure of peace and order.
In the three decades between 1914 and 1945, two general wars, a plague
of lesser wars, a general economic depression and a hurricane of
revolutions scourged the planet. Meanwhile, the revolution in science
and technology and its products penetrated almost every crack and cranny
of human society.
Had the changes incidental to these rapid transformations been carefully
planned and supervised, the disturbances in the ecology and the shocks
to human society would have been less disturbing and upsetting. In the
absence of any planet-wide authority, there could be neither general
planning nor general supervision. There were warnings aplenty from
liberals and radicals who were attempting to keep the situation in
perspective, but such utterances failed to reach the great bulk of
mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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