On the one hand, political leaders can sometimes be sidetracked by pursuing courses of action which are beneficial to their personal careers, but not beneficial to the community as a whole. On the other hand, professional bureaucrats are, in some cases, participants in subversive conspiracies and act to deliberately weaken the nation.
Such was the case, in certain instances, during the Cold War, roughly from 1946 to 1990. Delving into a report on U.S. foreign assistance, issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development, dated March 21,1962, historian John Stormer explains that
Almost unnoticed by most Americans, Congress while appropriating billions for defense against communism, has at the same time given over $6-billion in direct military and economic aid to the communists.
So at a time when the government’s highest budgetary priority and its highest military priority were protecting the nation from the international communist conspiracy and from the Soviet military threat, taxpayer dollars were also ending up in the hands of the Warsaw Pact.
When the Soviet Socialist military was oppressing some countries, and seeking to invade still other countries and remove their liberty, the U.S. was actually selling military aircraft at deep discounts to communist states, as reported by the Dallas Morning News on October 13, 1961:
Radar-equipped F-86 jet fighter planes worth over $300,000 each have been sold to the communist dictator of Yugoslavia for $10,000. This “sale” to Tito has been defended because both the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations approved it. The planes were said to be “obsolete.” Yet, during the Berlin crisis, reactivated U.S. Air National Guard units flew to possible battle against communists in Europe in even more obsolete F-84 jets.
What was happening? How did the political decision makers so lose sight of their priorities? When the political process becomes entangled in “deal-making” to the extent that every action becomes negotiable, such results are possible.
The danger in such processes is that a nation can seem to lose its will to survive. Faced with a major global danger, the government must focus clearly on protecting the lives and liberties of its citizens, and working to eliminate that threat.
This principle applies not only to Cold War situations, but also to parallel situations facing the United States fifty years later in the era of the “Global War on Islamic Terror.”
Another parallel situation occurred in the 1930s, when the United States continued to sell industrial supplies to Japan, even after the Japanese attacked and sank a U.S. Navy ship in 1937. These supplies were building the Japanese military which would eventually attack Pearl Harbor.
Vigilance is required: a nation must review its own internal political workings to ensure that the safety of the nation’s citizens is never compromised in the interests of “making a deal.”
