Examinations of Power
Students Explore U.S. Inititiatives in History Research Papers
A rite of passage for nearly all Class II students is the U.S. History research paper. Most students choose a 20th century topic, according to the history faculty, and engage with primary sources. They work as historians: to discern events, movements, causes and effects from the writings of players in that time period. This year, among the students who chose to write about the power of the United States, are those that follow. Their theses and findings are interesting on a number of levels: why they chose their topics; how they analyzed events; what conclusions they have drawn about this country, its leaders and its actions.

Cathleen Everett

Nick Danforth ‘04
MacArthur’s New
Guinea Campaign: A Road to the Philippines
Reading about the Pacific campaign in World War II led Nick Danforth to William Manchester’s books about General Douglas MacArthur: Good-bye Darkness and American Caesar. As have many before him, Nick became engrossed in MacArthur’s character—military genius; charismatic leader; ambitious conqueror—and particularly his direction of the 1944 New Guinea campaign as a strategy to get back to the Philippines.

Nick’s paper thesis proposed that MacArthur’s New Guinea campaign, over nine months and 1,300 miles, demonstrated wartime strategy based on bold maneuvers, calculated but enormous risks, smart tactics with coordinated technology—in service of a tenaciously held goal. Avoiding confrontation with the Japanese in more conventional sites, MacArthur isolated them and applied massive air, sea and land firepower. He used a relatively lean fighting force, and MacArthur himself has argued that his campaign was efficient and economical in terms of loss of life. Ultimately, he captured two harbors and three airfields, and positioned himself positively for what would be his triumphal return to the Philippines.

Nick was interested in what shaped MacArthur’s power as an individual and a leader. Prior to the War Memorial Lecture given by David McCullough this year, Nick concluded that MacArthur exhibited a set of personal characteristics that Mr. McCullough named as typical of the earliest fighters for American independence: boldness, resoluteness, courage, resourcefulness, inventiveness, will, humor and good spirit. MacArthur’s personal complexity was not lost on Nick, who picked up on MacArthur’s marriage between military drive and his sense of personal obligation. Nick wrote his paper while observing the United States leadership argue for intervention into Iraq. Nick said he supported President Bush’s invasion, but hastened to add that the conflict in Iraq was not comparable in any way to the situations in World War II. “It’s hard to imagine how absolutely uncertain everything was at that time,” he said.

Ben Hur ‘04
The Bay of Pigs
Interested in the role of the CIA in a democracy, and fascinated with the character of John F. Kennedy, Ben Hur examined the failed Bay of Pigs operation. Asking about the political context of the idea, its goals, the path of decision-making that led to its launch, and what went wrong, Ben’s thesis argued that the reasons weren’t as simple as Kennedy’s refusal to authorize a second air strike to support the brigade that had landed on the island. Instead, Ben found a network of patterns, typical of many, if not most, modern power struggles.
New to Ben was the notion of a bipolar political world: two strategic rivals vying for economic dominance and power-enhancing alliances on either side of the Cold War coin. The posturing of political leaders interested in their own longevity was a factor; Castro’s relationship with the Soviet Union developed because of the latter’s promised nuclear protection, and the perception that the United States was planning an intervention into Cuba. The United States’ feeling of vulnerability was a shaping dynamic as well. Perceiving itself to be lagging in scientific progress, economic development, and securing spheres of influence, the United States leadership was threatened by a nearby communist state and its military alliances.

The CIA’s analyses during the Eisenhower administration gave rise to the CIA-authored plan for intervention. The authors’ emotional connection with the idea of the intervention propelled it forward. Later, critics would say that the desire to see it happen superseded the desire to see it succeed. The mission was relocated, down-sized, and the timetable was changed—in response to Kennedy’s concerns about appearing to be the aggressor, the invading force (plausible deniability was the essential requirement of the operation). Political, intelligence and military leaders close to the president chose to support or oppose the mission based on perceptions of their roles in a team, the hierarchy of decision-making or the preservation of status. Kennedy was not well advised, Ben believes. National policy-makers, Ben asserts, did not adequately or realistically inform the decision-making process or the president, so a series of serious mistakes ensued.

Ben closes with a look at Arthur Schlesinger’s note to President Kennedy about two actions he could have taken that may have proved more effective. One option was to induce Castro to take offensive action first, thereby legitimizing an open U.S. intervention against Cuba. The second was to state the values case: set forth for the hemisphere Kennedy’s concept of inter-American progress toward individual freedom and social justice. Schlesinger’s idea was that by making other nations aware of the threat Castro posed to their ideology, the U.S. would garner support from them in actions against Castro.

Ben concludes, “It was his cabinet’s and the CIA’s role to help dig Kennedy out of the emotional battle between the two superpowers and think logically, assessing what would be best for the country, but unfortunately they failed to do so. Forty years have passed since the invasion and the U.S. relationship with Cuba has not changed.”

Tiz Mogollon ‘04
Theodore Roosevelt: The Progressive Era and the Panama Canal
As a Colombian, Tiz Mogollon looks at the building of the Panama Canal from the point of view of someone whose national history was affected by Theodore Roosevelt’s driving vision. Panama was a part of Colombia when Theodore Roosevelt became interested in taking over the bankrupt French effort to build a cross-isthmus canal. The thesis of Tiz’s paper is that each aspect of building the canal: the strategy Roosevelt used to wrest Panama from Columbia, the definition of the project, the justification of it in the face of critics, and its ultimate success, are defining examples of the Progressive Era’s core values. The Progressive Era enshrines the vision of an active government executing decisions with broad positive implications: making changes that include the potential to improve the human condition over time. The power that Roosevelt extended unilaterally in this case has been deemed permissible by the court of history. The United States has extended itself continually into Latin American countries and their destinies, over the last century through the present, Tiz asserts, under the mantle of national values but with cultural insensitivity, and grave negative implications.

Progressivism urged governmental action to create and sustain equality of opportunity and alleviation of poverty. This movement connected action in support of enlightened vision with righteousness, and under that rubric, endorsed the broad uses of power, within the United States and in its foreign relations. In fact, the vision’s inherent righteousness compels action. When the advancement of humankind is at stake, the means justifies the end, which in this case included inciting the Panamanian revolution, broadly interpreting the treaty of 1846 (right of transit across the isthmus) to build a canal through another nation, or crafting the corollary to extend the Munroe Doctrine.

America saw itself as the helping hand, Tiz says, not as the invaders, and in order to advance humankind, the U.S. felt entitled to supremacy over any other government. Tiz cites Henry Pringle’s biography, Theodore Roosevelt, which claims that Roosevelt stereotyped Colombians, who rejected the treaty declaring Panama’s sovereignty and independence, as “foolish and homicidal corruptionists who should not be able to bar one of the future highways of civilization. ...The interest of highly civilized people took precedence over those of backward peoples; and advanced peoples were morally obligated to support the onward march of civilization,” Pringle summarizes.

Roosevelt answered some critics and dissuaded others from their protest when he declared the canal a neutral zone, open to all inter-ocean transit. He let Congress debate the taking of the Canal Zone while the canal was already being built, and asserted to the public that taking it was a righteous act. He expanded his power to benefit his country. Establishing U.S. political supremacy obviously also secured economic domination, as well.

After researching and writing her paper, Tiz found the comparison of Roosevelt’s foreign policy and the current administration’s description of its foreign policy goals unavoidable. She found Bush’s policy of “implementing America’s supremacy and righteousness over other countries overwhelming. While Teddy’s foreign policy approach and objectives were reasonable and virtuous, Bush’s approach and objectives are radical and revengeful, making them hard to compare.”

Albert Kwon ‘04
U.S. Influence on South Korean Economy and Politics in the 1950s and 1960s
In his home country, Albert Kwon says that anti-Americanism among South Korean students is high; Koreans are challenging the long-standing, close economic and political ties with the United States more that ever. The resentment has roots in local issues. A Korean short track skater who finished in first place at the 2002 winter Olympics was disqualified, thereby transferring the gold medal to an American. Koreans are very serious about their short track skaters and expect to win the gold; they feel that the judges were biased and robbed Korea of the medal. A second inflammatory situation involves Korean celebrities. Many are U.S.-Korea dual citizens, and leave for the United States rather than serve their mandatory military duty, as other young Korean men must. Albert is considering his father’s advice, that he seek American citizenship and not plan his adulthood in Korea. In the face of these recent developments, Albert researched the U.S.-Korean interactive economic and political developments of the 1950s and ’60s to determine the outcomes of the long mutual dependency.

America’s hasty decision in 1945 with the Soviet Union to divide Korea along the 38th parallel (and to send U.S. troops into South Korea) was disadvantageous for the South, as more than 80 percent of the country’s heavy industry and the lion’s share of the natural resources were in the North. The South Koreans needed substantial foreign aid to survive and America needed their survival to achieve its interest in containing Communist ambitions. “Korea became dependent upon the United States economically and politically. The dependence deepened after the Korean War when North Korea attempted to unify the peninsula,” Albert writes.

American troops that had withdrawn from the peninsula by 1949 returned to help South Korea against the North, attempted to reunify the country and destroy the communist regime, and remained in South Korea from that time forward. During the next two decades and the administration of presidents Rhee and Park, the United States’ military commitment to South Korea significantly affected the country’s economic and political development, because South Korea’s survival was important to the United States interest in a non-Communist front in Asia.

South Korea’s political stability and economic prosperity today are outcomes of a relationship based on a perception of shared goals and a record of significant and diversified foreign aid. The South Korean story proves again the interdependence of economic stability and political stability. U.S. forces rebuilt Korean roads, schools, and hospitals; they helped in ways from restoring water systems and communication systems to teaching Korean medical students. Annual aid continued at a high level during the ’50s and when aid began to decrease in the ’60s Korean exports increased. “President Johnson helped Koreans establish KIST (the Korean Institute of Science and Technology) so that South Korea could develop its own technology,” Albert noted. “The United States provided a large market for Korean products; the strong technology base in Korea helped South Korean compete internationally.”

The United States also played a major role in setting the foundations of South Korean democracy and in influencing politics over time. Among other things, the U.S. has influenced elections, applied pressure to force power from the military to civilians, forced key policy initiatives such as neutralizing the country’s relationship with Japan, and helped establish the KCIA—the national intelligence operation.
Albert concludes that although South Korea is more self-reliant, it is still dependent upon the American government and its support, and the relationship should continue. The U.S. market is vital to the South Korean economy, and mutual threats still confront the two countries.

Armeen Poor ‘04
Reagan’s Rogues: The Iran Contra Scandal
As an Iranian-American, Armeen Poor was interested in researching a topic that involved these two countries. He began work on the hostage crisis of 1979, but soon discovered the Iran-Contra weapons scandal. That series of events both intrigued and confused him. How could leaders within the executive branch of the U.S. government do what they did? What does the outcome of that scandal mean for the way we should understand the power of the presidency?
Armeen found that the National Security Council operatives who, in the mid-1980s, executed the sale of weapons to Iran and the transfer of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras had violated his sense of democratic values and principals, in spirit and in the law. He further concluded that the administration’s foreign policy goals in this situation were at best confusing, and at worst served United States economic interests in spite of grave humanitarian consequences in three countries: Iran, Iraq and Nicaragua.
President Reagan had imposed an embargo on sales of weapons to Iran and pressured other nations to honor the embargo, opposing the extremist government in Iran and its sponsorship of terrorism. The U.S. supported Iraq, financially and politically, during the Iran-Iraq war. Lt. Col. Oliver North of the National Security Council staff, along with national security advisors Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter set and implemented policies with regard to Iran and Nicaragua in direct contradiction to our public foreign policy posture and to Congressional mandate. They sold weapons to the fundamentalist regime, and diverted the resulting funds to the Nicaraguan “contra” rebels, when Congress had prohibited such aid through the Boland Amendment. When the scheme was revealed and subsequently investigated, the operatives leading it admitted to lying to Congress, shredding documents and falsifying evidence. The operation implicated CIA officials and even Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger.

In overtaking foreign policy, and defying Congress’ control of funding for foreign policy initiatives, Armeen asserts that the executive branch defied the constitutional separation of powers. Further, if a democracy is based on elected officials’ truthfully representing the common people of the country, members of the executive branch of government “poorly represented the nation’s people though an abundance of secrecy and deception.”

This set of foreign policy actions effectively extended debilitating conflict in three countries; these actions arguably improved economic opportunities for the United States in the case of cheaper oil from Iran and Iraq, and sustained our economic and political dominance in South America, in the case of Nicaragua. Were economic goals, especially the access to inexpensive oil, the true drivers of foreign policy?

Armeen ends his examination of the use of power by several individuals within the Reagan administration with abiding questions about the legitimate use of power, constitutional checks and balances, relationship of an administration and its top operatives to the public, and the public trust. The criminal convictions by jury of both North and Poindexter were set aside because of the grant of immunity extended to them by the investigating Congressional commission. North, who lied to Congress and shredded evidence, is an unapologetic, well-known public figure with many supporters today. What does this tell us about the use or misuse of the extraordinary power of the United States? Furthermore, as he now watches the actions in the Middle East of a new administration, Armeen is left with the question of the role of oil—its intrinsic relationship with the U.S. economy—as a driving force in our use of power throughout the world.

Amelia Wilbur ‘03
Economy and Empire: U. S. Intervention in Latin America from 1901 to 1931
Trying to sort out the role of economic interests in the formation of U.S. foreign policy led Amelia to study U.S. relations with Latin America from roughly 1900–1930. Acknowledging the complexity and interdependence of economic, political and ideological influences, Amelia nevertheless contended that “most historians would agree that there are periods in the history of foreign policy of the United States that can be characterized by a chronic disregard of a foreign people for the economic benefit of the United States.” This period in U.S.-Latin American history is an example.

Ameila’s paper describes the military interventions that characterized the policy in the decades before World War I (specifically in Cuba and Nicaragua) that protected U.S. business expansion, followed by “the non-violent ‘economic intervention’ as a result of the Good Neighbor Policy and Herbert Hoover’s efforts to link the interests of American business with those of the U. S. government.” While the U.S. policy changed from military intervention in support of economic interests to “new systems of direct economic control,” in both cases the social needs and political and economic well being of the native population were discounted in favor of U.S. economic interests.

From 1901–1920, America used the Platt Amendment and the 1904 Corollary to the Munroe Doctrine to justify intervening in Cuba, and fomenting revolution in Nicaragua respectively. The 1917 U.S. military action in Cuba secured the conservative President Mario Garcia Menocal. He allowed U.S. troops to be stationed in Cuba to protect American sugar interests. American investment dollars flowed into Cuba, vastly increasing the scope and productivity of the sugar industry, but undermining other types of agricultural subsistence, forcing people off land, and impoverishing the local population. In Nicaragua, American businessmen provoked right-wing Nicaraguans into a revolution-cum-civil war and ultimately (with naval presence) secured the presidency for General Juan Estrada as well as the Dawson Agreement, guaranteeing the rights of foreigners in a new constitution.

After World War I, with the realization that peaceful relationships were more conducive to economic advances than military instability, the U.S. pursued more direct controls over governments and policies in Latin America. The Open Door Policy —stating that every nation had an equal opportunity for economic expansion —benefited the strongest economic competitor. Given the U.S.’ existing base in Latin America, the upshot of that policy was boxing Latin America out of the international economy and increasing its dependence on the United States. The Good Neighbor Policy also “signified the start of an era of severe economic imperialism on the part of the United States... which left much of Latin America is a state of complete economic subservience and dependence,” Amelia asserts.
“The economic intervention of the U.S. in the form of corrupt loans, networks of financial advisors and businessmen employed by Washington, and policies based on the close connection between government and business, had an equally disastrous effect on the people of Cuba, and Latin America as a whole, as the pre-war policy of military intervention,” writes Amelia.

Amelia was particularly interested in the fact that the prevailing ideology at that time was broad humanitarianism: the idea of protecting these countries from themselves, policing them in their own best interests. Business leaders believed that furthering the economic interests of the United States was doing a service to humanity, “extending the American dream of capitalism and democracy.” It is not uncommon, Amelia says, for diplomatic historians to split along pro- and anti-capitalistic lines in either condemning U.S. foreign policy as imperialistic of defending it as humanitarian.

Amelia concludes that “while Latin American countries suffered from economic dependence and political domination, the United States got richer and richer at their expense, and government and business interests grew progressively more entwined until...foreign policy and economic self-interest became all but indistinguishable.”