Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Fifth Freedom
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
101
to support the right of US access to Middle East oil; the US declared an
“open door,” after all concessions were safely in US hands, under the
Wilson corollary. 41
The concept of the “open door,” as understood in practice, is well
illustrated by US petroleum policy over the years. It is explained clearly
in a State Department memorandum of 1944 entitled “Petroleum Policy
of the United States.” There must be equal access for American
companies everywhere, but no access for others in the Western
Hemisphere (the major oil producing region then and for over two
decades to come), where the US was safely in control. This policy, it
was explained, “would involve the preservation of the absolute position
presently obtaining, and therefore vigilant protection of existing
concessions in United States hands coupled with insistence upon the
Open Door principle of equal opportunity for United States companies in
new areas.” 42 The “Open Door policy,” so construed, is a corollary to the
principle of the Fifth Freedom.
Interventionism was theoretically renounced by Presidents Hoover
and Roosevelt in favor of the Good Neighbor policy, though the
renunciation was conditional on good behavior; the Roosevelt
Administration relied on the threat of force to install the dictatorship of
Fulgencio Batista in Cuba when it was feared that US commercial
interests might be threatened by the civilian government of Dr. Ramón
Grau San Martín. 43 But this was an exception. By that time, European
competition—the major concern—had been effectively contained, and
the US reigned unchallenged, capable of attaining its objectives by
political and economic power. Furthermore, domestic military forces
trained and supplied by the US could impose order and stability—that
is, could guarantee the Fifth Freedom—without the Marines.
Dictatorships, however brutal and corrupt, were acceptable to the
Hoover and Roosevelt Administrations as long as they satisfied this