A Matter of Course

IF YOU WERE IN New York exactly one week ago, you might have noticed a profoundly depressing item on the front page of The New York Times. More likely, you did not. The neighbor's dog may have spirited away the morning paper, and the single column article did not even make the out of town editions.

However, the news story reported an event whose light coverage was disproportionate to its significance: it was a matter-of-fact account of a thwarted CIA plot to overthrow Surinam's government. Convinced that the South American country's leader Lt. Col. Desi Bouterse might be soft on Communism. America's favorite foreign policy arm hatched a scheme to oust his regime, which seized power in a military coup in 1980. According to The Times' report, the CIA plan called for a paramilitary force composed primarily of Surinamese exiles to infiltrate the capital city and take over the government Maybe a few American advisors would go along for the ride.

But the plan derailed when it hit Congress--the law requires such foreign policy endeavors to get the nod from House and Senate intelligence subcommittees. According to sources cited in The Times, the Congressional committees rejected the CIA plan not because they housed any philosophical objection to overthrowing a foreign regime that the U.S. finds distasteful, but rather because they considered such action unwarranted in the case of Bouterse's government. Committee members were not convinced that the Surinam government posed a threat to U.S. security interests; hence, they viewed the proposed overthrow as unduly extreme.

Ostensibly governmental checks and balances work to guard against the zealous efforts of paranoid cold warriors--however, in this case the system worked only by accident. Shared authority in government is rooted in the premise that the judgment of one branch of government--or balance--the views of another; such control is worthless if a given lunacy pervades all government organs.

And the tacit acceptance of CIA-induced counterrevolution as an acceptable means of foreign policy points to a tragic and misguided immorality. It also represents a glaring inattention to history, by echoing the sentiments of the many Americans who believe that the only problem with the Bay of Pigs incident in 1961 was that it didn't work.

Needless to say, past American attempts to write the history of other nations has proved disastrous. From Cuba to El Salvador to Iran, the public record shows that Washington's ability to gauge the "popular will" of its sister nations is less than prophetic. Even if accuracy were not an issue, under what circumstances can the United States claim the right to plot against a national government? The answer can only by none. To argue otherwise is to make tangential U.S. security interests superior to the direct concerns of a country's inhabitants. While the United States may conceivably be justified in backing a bona fide popular insurgency, there is no excuse for advancing American concerns abroad in the name of a small group of disgruntled expatriates--and certainly none for the U.S. itself masterminding such coups.

Furthermore, American "security interests" become dangerously elastic when Cold War dominoes are involved. The U.S. plotted to overthrow the Cuban dictatorship to keep Cuba from becoming a Soviet foothold; the CIA's Surinam caper, in turn, was intended to guard against the projected dangers of a Soviet or Cuban base in that country. The next logical step must be an overthrow on the basis of suspect pro-Surinam sympathies. And when it happens, it probably won't even make the papers.