March 8, 1986

World Role Requires Imperial President

The imperial presidency is testing with some success these days -what with Papa Doc Duvalier and Ferdinand Marcos peaceably retired with an assist by Ronald Reagan.

It has not always been so.

U.S. presidents have been reluctant in recent years to exercise the power and trappings of imperialism. Yet it comes with the office and must be used whether boldly or subtly.

George Washington and his three successors toyed with isolation. However, President James Monroe discovered that republican liberty required forceful resistance to a gaggle of other nations that hankered for world domination.

Ever since the Monroe Doctrine - which threatened military retaliation if we were molested - American presidents have carried out their imperial duties with varying success.

William McKinley trumped up the Spanish-American War so he could intervene in British and Dutch attempts to take over Puerto Rico.

During that little fracas, a young colonel named Theodore Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill with his Rough Riders and thereby learned the rules of imperialism first hand.

As president, Roosevelt “spoke softly but carried a big stick.” He demonstrated the effectiveness of this policy when Venezuela balked at letting the U.S. dig a canal across the Central American Isthmus. Teddy engineered a coup, annexed as much of Venezuela as he needed and set up the puppet nation of Panama.

President Woodrow Wilson dealt the U.S. into the First World War to make the world “safe for democracy.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt funneled ships and “lend lease” aid to our friends in Europe several years before Japan dragged us into World War II by the back door.

President Harry Truman launched a war in Korea to keep the communists at bay in Asia.

We make the point of imperial propensity to neither praise nor condemn. It is simply a matter that a long line of presidents and congresses have felt necessary for the good of the country.

As leader of the free world, we have an imperial role that requires us to act in our own best interest and that of our “client states.” The Soviets do likewise for its iron-curtain slave states.

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U.S. imperialism got a bad name starting with President Kennedy. He needed the practical accomplishments of intervention in the affairs of other countries.

However, he was loath to accept the supposed odium that goes with naked force. Americans had come to believe the nonsense about the United Nations wanting universal peace.

Kennedy experimented with halfway imperialism by reneging on air power for the invasion of Cuba and thereby entrenched Fidel Castro. The president’s next attempt was to assassinate Castro with - of all things - an exploding cigar!

After five more unsuccessful attempts to kill Castro, Kennedy turned his attention to President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. Diem was fiercely anti-communist, but corrupt. Somehow, Kennedy and his “ Camelot Court” got more interested in purifying Diem than in defeating communists.

Kennedy promised American aid to those generals who would get rid of Diem. The generals murdered Diem, got the aid and lost the war.

President Jimmy Carter, in pursuit of “human rights” approved a rebellion against the Shah of Iran and got Ayatollah Khomeini. He financed the overthrow of Nicaragua President Anastasio Somoza and got the Ortega brothers.

President Reagan doesn’t flinch from his imperial responsibilities. He sent troops into Grenada to wrest a military airfield from communists. He openly pressured for the election of Jose Duarte as president of El Salvador and backed up his advocacy with guns to fight Marxist guerillas.

Reagan has steadfastly supplied aid to the anti-communist Nicaraguan “freedom fighters.” He twists the arms of European leaders who believe it is better to be red than dead.

He turns the screws on Israel, Lebanon, South Africa, Angola and Pakistan for better governments. But he doesn’t freeze out their cooperation in the crucial fight against what may be the ultimate battle for world dominion.

* * *

The Battle of Armageddon, between good and evil, is already underway. The United States is the defender. The Soviet Union is the aggressor.

The U.S. relies on good example to persuade the “third world” that democracy is the best hope for peace and prosperity.

The Soviet Union gathers its clients by force of arms - either by internal revolution ( Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam) or by direct invasion ( Afghanistan, Poland, Hungary.)

The outcome is in doubt.

Russians make no bones about their imperial ambition. They boast that they intend to impose their system of state socialism on the entire world - the U.S. included.

Perhaps, good example and dollops of U.S. cash will bring the Third World singing into the democratic camp. Haiti and the Philippines may demonstrate the effectiveness of this strategy.

In this final struggle we should not ignore the role of creative imperialism in bringing about the possibility of change to U.S.-style democracy.

Better an imperial presidency than an imperial commissar.

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist