Time For a "New" Foreign Policy

Edward J. Dodson

[Reprinted from Equal Rights, Spring 1985]

There is, I believe, a common link between the "less developed nations" that has prevented development of our form of political economy. That link is the sequence of historical changes in the form of system in relation to population increase. Most of the world has gone through a period of colonial control by an outside power, followed by unrest and eventual independence (either through armed rebellion, but on occasion out of negotiation). A few former colonies (e.g., the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) successfully achieved independence and established relatively long-lasting democratic forms of government. Most other former colonies have not been able to do so. One might ask the reasons.

Stated in obviously oversimplified terms, what the successful democracies had and the unsuccessful ones lacked was the conditions of an initially low population size in relation to frontier, a government lacking repressive police powers (to enforce the type of "traditional" government-sanctioned monopoly powers existing elsewhere) and minimum threat of military intervention by external powers (i.e., a sense of national security).

Those additional nations which have successfully established democratic structures in the modern era have done so only after the forceful removal of prior governments following military defeat. Thus, the democratic alliance invoked the power of the triumphant to establish constitutional democracies in Japan, West Germany, Italy, Austria and (to a lesser extent) Taiwan following the Second World War. The Soviet Union and China have been similarly successful at instituting satellite systems in those areas similarly occupied (albeit under conditions of severe repression of individual rights).

What has also been overlooked by American foreign policy makers is that these same societies, struggling for national identity, are plagued by many structural remnants of colonial rule. People do not willingly submit to external subjugation; even limited control requires a marriage of power between a society's traditional ruling class of landlords (who, as technology is introduced, also become the indigenous "industrialists") and their foreign counterparts. An end to colonial rule does not automatically end the concentration of power of this wealth-owning class. Hence, the continuous clamor for land reform and land redistribution programs in those societies where the foreign power has been replaced by so-called right wing dictatorships. In such cases (and the Philippines appears to be an example), an autocratic governing body uses the police powers of the state for as long as possible to maintain and increase the concentration of land, resource and capital ownership.

What occurs is a natural response on the part of those excluded from participation in the political economy, a slow but relentless process of political unrest. The general citizenry identify the concept of "capitalism" with their experience of repressive government (first through the colonial rule and then by its replacement autocracy). To the people, socialism seems to provide the solution with its to confiscate and redistribute the land and to take control of industry. A term more appropriate as descriptive of the system socialism desires to replace is "landlord-industrialism". Before we, as the leader of the "free" world can serve as a positive force in the cause of democracy, our leadership must recognize and acknowledge as fundamental those aspects of political economy differentiating the capitalist model from the system of landlord-industrialism. Unfortunately, our ability to aggressively advocate reforms is hampered by the pressures brought to bear by those multinational business interests that have benefited by receipt of government-sanctioned monopolies on resources and markets. Additionally, land reform has continually failed because the fear of confiscation has discouraged capital investment in agriculture and much of the rural land is left idle while investment financing disappears to more stable environs. A growing number of the land economists are convinced that an equitable means of redistributing wealth without such confiscation is through adoption of land value taxation (the means proposed in the last century by Henry George).