A Book Review by
JAMES L. ZACKRISON
Joint Force Quarterly, Spring 1996
The Plot to Annihilate the Armed Forces and the Nations of Ibero-America
Washington: Executive Intelligence Review News Service, Inc., 1994
391 pp., $15.00
[ISBN 0-943235-11-1]
It is easy to dismiss the theme of this book as yet another odd conspiracy theory. After all, the blurb on the back cover tells us that the introduction is by "U.S. economist and former political prisoner" Lyndon H. LaRouche. I would suspect this publication has not sold well in the United States: a search of a library network showed only three holdings of the title in the country. Yet it has sold thousands of copies in Latin America, and the Mexican military printed a special edition of more than 500 copies. It is reportedly on the required reading list at several regional military academies and staff colleges. Students of Latin American affairs will ignore this book to their own detriment. But if it is only a LaRouche conspiracy, why is it attracting attention among Latin American readers?
The answer is in its alternative definition of terms used in works on civil-military relations. If one accepts this ersatz jargon, most of the book makes sense. For instance, there is a lot of discussion in the United States over the proper roles and missions of the armed forces of Latin America. There are specialists and policy wonks who think that the money spent on the militaries in the region would be better applied to other government functions. There are those who think that there is no credible regional threat to the sovereignty of the nations in the hemisphere, so their armed forces should be dismantled. There are academics mentioned throughout this book who meet regularly and present papers on such topics. But it stretches credulity to accept that these facts combine to form a conspiracy.
The opening section of The Plot spells out its underlying hypothesis in detail. Essentially there are two conflicting axiomatic social systems. One, based on paganism, posits that man is an animal, or is barely lifted above animals, or perhaps is even a superior animal or "something of that sort." Man can, through some kind of special magic, rise above depravity to become a demigod. The second system, based on the Bible, envisions man as created in the image of God, by "virtue of a creative potentiality which corresponds to God as the Creator of the Universe." Life under the latter system is considered sacred by virtue of the individual being created in the image of God. These systems of society are at odds with one another, and have been since the beginning of recorded history, or as Mr. LaRouche eloquently puts it, "since the role of Solon of Athens in kicking out the usurers and establishing a republic based on law at Athens, which is the real beginning of European civilization."
Without the hyperbole this makes sense. The problem with the book appears quickly, however. A connection is made early on between the militaries of Latin America as defenders of Christian ideals, in that their armies conquered an empire to spread and glorify God and have since been defending Christianity and the Christian states to which they belong. It follows that anyone who opposes the military opposes God and is therefore a pagan—to be subdued at all cost.
The "grand conspiracy" starts here. According to this volume, the elimination of national military institutions is only the latest step in a long effort by the British Empire to bring Spain and her former colonies in Latin America under total Anglo-American rule. "With few exceptions, that strategic objective has dominated United States policy toward Ibero-America since the turn of the century, when Anglo-American empire interests seized firm control over U.S. institutions in the government of that evil Mason and admirer of the Confederate cause in the U.S. Civil War, Teddy Roosevelt." The American Freemasonic movement, the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, and corrupt Catholics in the United States become the agents of British imperialism. This oligarchy uses all its powers to destroy the sovereign nation-states of the region and their institutions, in particular the armed forces who defend that sovereignty. Why? Because the "oligarchy has classified people of Mediterranean, black, and Oriental and so forth origins as being qualified to be helots—as being an animal species on the lower level of society than the 'Elect'." Moreover, their object is to eliminate technological progress and the pursuit of science and reason, abolish self-government, and retain their numbers at desired levels.
And this is where things get complicated. The mechanism for imposing such a viewpoint is the new world order espoused by former President George Bush which is a project to eliminate the armed forces as institutions in Latin America as revealed in a book entitled The Military and Democracy: The Future of Civil-Military Relations in Latin America, edited by Louis Goodman. The agents of this plot range from the International Monetary Fund to left-wing French intellectuals.
The Plot finds a test case in the invasion of Panama, already occupied by U.S. forces and using the U.S. dollar as its currency. The first step taken by Washington after the invasion was to disband the Panamanian military and create a police force. The second case is El Salvador, where the United States had been secretly negotiating with the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). In 1990, according to the authors, General George Joulwan, commander in chief of U.S. Southern Command, ordered a negotiated settlement. FMLN was to infiltrate the government and the armed forces were to be reduced, all in the name of democratizing the Americas. As a result of these two test cases, two military institutions in the region were decreased to negligent threat levels.
While this book rehearses some useful data, it is all manipulated to support the tangled web of conspiracy outlined above and loses credibility. The assumption that the United States, acting at the behest of British imperialism, plots to undermine and destroy the armed forces of the region through nongovernmental organizations, academic symposia, and obscure or nonexistent agents is of course patently absurd. If the U.S. military was plotting to annihilate counterpart militaries in Latin America, it would use its own assets instead of LaRouche's bizarre register of academics, diplomats, and the rest of his cast of characters. While those people no doubt have influence, they certainly do not enjoy as much as The Plot ascribes to them.
The balance of this book is devoted to case studies and an "interview" with LaRouche. While there are numerous examples of the twisted logic which is utilized to weave this conspiracy, a look at only a few demonstrates the alternative reality at work here. In discussing counterdrug efforts as a mission for the military, the term "eradication" is used to indicate the elimination of the illegal drug trade. When the proceedings of a conference published in the United States claim that eradication is not working and that the effort should be reoriented toward interdiction, the authors present this decision as approval of an acceptable level of drug use, thus reducing the overall effort to stop the trade. To everyone else, however, "eradication" is the buzzword for uprooting illegally planted coca or marijuana plants.
Another example that should give Latin American specialists some pause is the definition of geopolitics found in the preface: "[it] arises from the conception that it is nature as such, with its effects upon man, which determines behavior, and thus determines interests accordingly." That is social Darwinism and not geopolitics. Geopolitics is the effect of geography on the nation-state.
For analytical purposes, a critical distinction is contained in the statement that there is "no moral difference between the oligarchy of Britain and the United States—essentially the Scottish Rite-related Freemasonic oligarchy—and Bolshevism. There never was." Although that claim is true, it is also irrelevant. Capitalism and Bolshevism are not concerned with morality, rather they are philosophical arguments for the ownership of property. Even stretching the point to include two different systems yields the same conclusion: neither is about morality. But the authors of The Plot use an illogical and irrelevant connection between two opposing systems to form a key element in their conspiracy theory. Adding the appropriate perspective to that connection removes a basic building block from the theory, thus negating the reasoning of their evidence.
The authors of this book compiled all the right data and then applied it to a single argument. Their logic, however, involves the assumption of a causal relationship between the intent of events and people involved. That assumption is unquestionably false. Nonetheless, the book currently is commanding a growing following within the militaries of Latin America. Thus it should be studied as an insight into one of the influences on members of the armed forces within our hemisphere.
James L. Zackrison is [as of 1996] an analyst with the Office of Naval Intelligence and currently a visiting fellow at the National Defense University.