To say, as many critics do, that US national security leaders know more, intend more, and do more than they let on is not to claim they are omnipotent or omniscient. Critics such as I argue that—although mistakes are made and unintended consequences certainly can arise— US policy is not habitually misguided and bungling. Rather, it is impressively consistent and cohesive, a deadly success for the interests it represents. Those who see the US imperium as chronically befuddled are themselves revealing their own befuddlement.
Sometimes the policymakers themselves seize upon incompetence as a cover. In 1986 it was discovered that the Reagan administration was running a covert operation to bypass Congress (and the law), using funds from secret arms sales to Iran to finance counterrevolutionary mercenaries (the “contras”) in Nicaragua and probably GOP electoral campaigns at home. President Reagan admitted full knowledge of the arms sales but claimed he had no idea what happened to the money. He was asking us to believe that these operations were being conducted by subordinates, including his own top advisors, without being cleared by him. Reagan publicly criticized himself for his slipshod managerial style and lack of administrative control over his staff. His admission of incompetence was eagerly embraced by various pundits who prefer to see their leaders as suffering from innocent ignorance rather than designing deception. Subsequent testimony by his subordinates, however, revealed that Reagan was not as dumb as he was pretending to be, and that he had played a deciding role in the entire Iran-contra affair.20
The same holds for President George W. Bush, whose tendency to flub words added to the facile conclusion that he was witless and stupid. In fact, Bush knew what he was doing and did what he wanted. Consider the following:
In sum, while promoting an appearance of innocent bungling, President Bush advanced his agenda with rather impressive success.21
US rulers pretend to an innocence they seldom attain. No less a political personage than Henry Kissinger repeatedly pleaded innocent ignorance and incompetence when confronted with the dirty role he and his cohorts played in East Timor, Indochina, Chile, Bangladesh, and elsewhere.22 He would have us believe that the people he worked for were nincompoops, not imperial operatives.
Secrecy is another phenomenon that would—by definition— suggest the existence of hidden agendas. If policymakers have nothing to hide, why do they hide so much? An estimated 21,500 US government documents are classified every workday of the year.23 Some of these materials eventually come to light decades later—and can still be quite revealing. Thus, an October 1970 cable to CIA operatives in Chile from Kissinger’s “Track Two” group (released over thirty years later) states, “It is firm and continuing policy that [the democratically elected government of Salvador] Allende be overthrown by a coup. . . . We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [United States Government] and American hand be well hidden” [italics added].24 If the public utterances of policymakers represent their real intentions, if they have no hidden agendas, then why do they find it necessary to hide their actions not only from the US public but sometimes even from their own staffs?25
Sometimes outcomes are explained away as the innocent result of organizational inertia. With this mode of analysis there is no intentional human application to speak of. Interventions are said to occur because a national security agency wants to prove its usefulness or is simply carried along on its own organizational momentum, as supposedly happened with the CIA and Pentagon intervention in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. To be sure, organizational interests do come into play, but to see them as the predominant force behind policies is like claiming that the horses are the cause of the horse race.