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

Patterns of Intervention
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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industry. “Angered by a 1983 IDB agreement with Nicaragua for a
$30.4 million financing of its fishing industry, Secretary of State George
Shultz initiated a private campaign to torpedo another such loan of more
than $100 million to the private agricultural sector, the very activity that
the United States has said it hoped to preserve against an alleged
Marxist takeover,” Mary King reports. Documents leaked from the British
Foreign Office indicate that these efforts have been closely coordinated
with US sabotage operations. Senior British government officials secretly
condemn US actions to destabilize Nicaragua as “bully boy tactics”
combined with “economic sabotage.” The British representative to the
Inter-American Development Bank, Kenneth O’Sullivan, reports that the
US, while “financing the sabotage of the economic infrastructure of
Nicaragua,” is trying to make Nicaragua default on its debts by blocking
new loans: “Nicaragua . . . is making efforts to clear arrears with the
IBRD [World Bank] and the IMF . . . against a background of externallyfinanced
sabotage,” he informed London. In one case, the US Chair of
the IADB executive board insisted that a loan for rehabilitation of
fisheries (accepted after considerable US-created delay) include a clause
requiring Nicaragua to provide adequate fuel for fishing boats. This
“mystified” the board, but they soon came to understand this curious
demand: “The following week saboteurs blew up the fuel depot in the
port of Corinto, their single most effective blow to the Nicaraguan
economy,” O’Sullivan reported to the Foreign Office.” 135
US subversion, sabotage and aggression are carefully-plotted
operations, as one would expect in the case of a terrorist state with
unmatched power and only limited domestic constraints.
The commitment to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, though
ritually denied, is barely concealed by Administration spokesmen, who
also speak openly about the “invasion option” if all else fails. Lengthy
front-page articles in the New York Times expound the Reagan