Freedom to Obey?

 Those last two books of Bertrand Russell's career—Unarmed Victory (about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Sino-Indian war) and War Crimes in Vietnam—both written in the tenth and final decade of Russell's life—are both oddball entries in his oeuvre that share a number of eccentricities in common. 

I won't say they are my favorite Russell books. They are missing some of the wit and wry humor that are so conspicuous and delightful in the middle phase of his career (though there are still flashes at times of both in the books). 

They are also fundamentally cranky books. Russell seems to have spent a great deal of time in his nineties writing irate letters to the editor and telegrams to world leaders. Much like many other people in their nineties before and since. But unlike most of those other people, Russell had the reputation and wherewithal to insert all of those letters into books. 

And so, both the Cuba book and the Vietnam book from his last decade are padded out in large part with correspondence with various reporters and officials.

Worst of all, sometimes the world leaders and journalists who deign to write back to Russell get the better of him in irony, in a way he does not perceive—something one expects could not have happened just a few years earlier. 

Both newspapers and world leaders are ranked and assessed in Russell's scheme based on their willingness to write back to him. Periodicals that print his letters in their pages are deemed to be wise, objective, and fair-minded. Those that ignore him must have been captured by Cold War orthodoxy. 

Likewise, world leaders who write flattering notes back to him, thanking him for his tireless advocacy for peace, are deemed to be sage and pacifically-intentioned. Those who don't are uncompromising warmongers. 

This dynamic sometimes leads Russell perilously close to playing the role of the "useful idiot." Leaders of democratic, capitalist nations tend to argue with him; whereas Communist leaders like Chou En-lai and Fidel Castro thank him and applaud his efforts to intervene in global conflicts. 

And so Russell comes away convinced that the Communist powers are more in favor of peace. 

With the benefit of hindsight, and after the opening of the Soviet archives at the end of the Cold War, Russell comes across in these two books as somewhat over-credulous with regard to the public protestations of Communist leaders. When Castro downplays his connections to the Soviets, Russell believes him. 

The same thing happens in the Vietnam book with respect to the FLN. Russell takes it on trust from left-wing propaganda that  the Viet Cong were merely an independent national liberation group that had scant ties to the Soviet Union. We now know, from post-revisionist Cold War historiography, that this was not true—Ho Chi Minh was in fact taking orders from Moscow. 

But all of that said, it doesn't mean Russell was wrong on the fundamentals. And what is most disturbing about his Cuba book, for instance, is how much history is repeating itself today. 

Russell wrote Unarmed Victory with the history of the Cuban revolution, the Bay Pigs fiasco, and the Cuban Missile Crisis all still raw history. And much of his description of U.S. policy toward Cuba at the time—the blockade, the trade embargo, the forced starvation of a country because it dared to question the Monroe Doctrine and to depart from Washington's preferences—could be written about what the Trump administration is doing to the island today as well. 

Of course, the American blockade and economic warfare in the 1960s were ostensibly conducted in the name of "democracy." But what democracy? To be sure, the Castro regime was a dictatorship. But Cuba had also been ruled by a dictator before—one whom the U.S. government was more than happy to support. 

The same could be said today. Yes, many of the Trump administration's criticisms of the Cuban regime are perfectly valid. They are a ruthless dictatorship that has maintained an iron grip on the island for decades and subjected the Cuban people to the personalistic rule of a single dynasty. 

But is there anything in the Trump administration's other policies to suggest they are seriously committed to democracy in the region? Or are they not actually just looking for another brutal strongman to swap in the current regime's place—except one more aligned with U.S. interests (on the model of the switcheroo they just pulled in Venezuela)? 

And how is starving the civilian population the answer? Supposedly, this regime change operation is for their "benefit." They are the biggest victims of the Castro regime. Yet, they are also the ones who are suffering the most from the U.S. blockade. People have even started dying in Cuban hospitals because they cannot get enough power to keep the lights on, according to the New York Times. 

It's hard not to agree with Russell's assessment: "Those who prate about the 'Free World' seem to think that throughout the Western Hemisphere the only freedom should be freedom to obey the United States." And again: "The 'freedom' which Kennedy promises is the freedom to obey the United States." 

That seems to be the only 'freedom' that Trump is offering too. And indeed, in his unguarded moments, Trump has been perfectly transparent about that. Viz. his appalling comment the other day on Cuba: "I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba. Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it."

"If the Cubans do not desert Castro, they shall starve to please Washington," Russell wrote in 1963. It is disgraceful that the same words could be said today, more than sixty years later. Death at the hands of the U.S. government still has "business in Cuba" to do, as Edna St. Vincent Millay warned in her outstanding poem "Conscientious Objector" a century ago. 

Back during the Spanish American war, William Vaughn Moody condemned the U.S. government for betraying the people of Cuba and the Philippines by declaring war on the Spanish Empire, only to then turn around and occupy their shoes. 

One can easily imagine McKinley (whom Trump often cites as a personal hero), saying—with Trump—"take them, free them; it's all the same to me. I can do what I want with them." 

Vaughn Moody warned: 

Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity!

    For save we let the island men go free,

    Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts

    Will curse us from the lamentable coasts

    Where walk the frustrate dead.