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

The Fifth Freedom
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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the Western Hemisphere on Soviet actions and American influence in
Europe.” The problem was the one that concerned Stimson: how to
extend our own regional systems while dismantling all others,
particularly those of Britain and the USSR. The same problems were
arising in Europe, where the USSR observed the unilateral US and
British takeover in Italy, Belgium and elsewhere with equanimity, later
using this as a model for its brutal takeover of Eastern Europe, to much
outrage in the West—justified, but not lacking in hypocrisy. 50 In chapter
4, we return to the more general concept of postwar “national security”
in which the plans just sketched for Latin America were a small
element.
The geopolitical conception that underlies Kennan’s nutshell
presentation of US foreign policy had been elaborated during the war by
the War and Peace Studies project of the Council on Foreign Relations,
whose thoughts on the suppression of war aims and on “elbow room”
were cited earlier. These high-level sessions took place from 1939-
1945, producing extensive plans for the postwar period. Their concern
was to elaborate the requirements of the United States “in a world in
which it proposes to hold unquestioned power.” It was clear by the early
1940s that the US would emerge from the war in a position of
unparalleled dominance, initiating a period in which it would be the
“hegemonic power in a system of world order,” in the words of an elite
group 30 years later.” 51 The group developed the concept of the “Grand
Area,” understood to be a region subordinated to the needs of the US
economy. As one participant put it, the Grand Area was a region
“strategically necessary for world control.” A geopolitical analysis
concluded that the Grand Area must include the Western Hemisphere,
the Far East, and the former British empire, then being dismantled and
opened to US penetration and control—an exercise referred to as “antiimperialism”
in much of the literature.