Both authors here are interested in the Cold War and decolonization. Kwak discusses aid and advisement, while Hardy discusses coups and interventions, but both examine in how the interests of U.S. capital shaped the United States’ global engagements. Both authors are also interested in the ways that U.S. Cold War engagements were affected by local circumstances. What observations do you have about how these two pieces fit together, complement each other, or offer quite different contributions to this discussion?
Studies of the US in the World, Fall 2017
MALS 70000 Intro to Graduate Studies, Professor Karen Miller
The conflict of the Cold War is an overarching theme for all of our discussions about the US and its role in the global realm as it was and remains the main global conflict of the 20th century after the Second World War. No discussion about the US and its global policy can be understood outside of its context or without an awareness of what took place. In the Kwak piece US capital and aid is used as a tool of global improvement. Whether you view it through the lens of climate or geography in each case (in this case homebuilding) the application of US aid necessitates a full appreciation of the area in which the US is operating. For instance the author points to housing aid and development being very different cases with respect to Africa and the Middle East. Differing climates necessitate differing building materials, economic considerations and so forth. It is also important to note the extent to which US aid competes for viability with private capital and business interests. However, these competing forces are useful as the aid the US offers provides impetus for business to follow suit.
The Hardy chapters reflect the US and Soviet conflict within the context of oil and its strategic interest to both countries. Great powers all have a vested interest in the Middle East and its oil wealth. The Hardy piece shines a light on just how complex that process is on the ground by giving us just a glimpse of the countries of Egypt and Iran and how the US, Britain and Russia deal with one another on a daily basis. U.S. business interests, intelligence services, and bureaucrats all play a role and each player has its own interest at stake. Hardy does an excellent job of highlighting some of these players and illustrating why and how they function the way they do.
In her book “A World of Homeowners” Kwak studies how the US government, businessmen, and urban planners strived to export the American idea of homeownership internationally throughout the XX century. Homeownership became a central piece of American domestic policy and eventually, it developed into the key component of the state’s foreign policy. Kwak’s piece demonstrates how the American “soft power” was transported overseas not through the mainstream culture, but through the ideological and material artifacts. The idea of mass homeownership should be studied in the context of the time period in which it evolved and was further transferred overseas. The nature of American foreign policies during the state of geopolitical tension after the WWII (times of the Cold War) were largely shaped by the fear of communism. Therefore, mass homeownership offered a critical building block for a larger more widespread American model of capitalism that connected open markets to democratic institutions. Among the other things, the idea of owning a house was constructed to spread the myth that a person could own a property himself without any governmental intervention.
In the middle of 20th century, the US granted loans to a number of countries including Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Zambia, Mali and etc. in order to expand the private housing projects. All countries accepted the generous US aid except Singapore that eventually developed its own housing system. Yet, in most cases, the American idea of homeownership failed to be successfully implemented overseas. On the other hand, despite some unsuccessful results, the fact that the idea of American private housing strongly influenced governments and policies worldwide remains clear.
Unlike Kwak who explores the export of the American ideas and policies overseas, Hardy demonstrates how the European governments controlled the Middle East in the 19th-20th centuries. Although one of the chapters assigned touches upon the US role in the Iranian oil conflict, it feels like Hardy’s main fields of study are the European powers (mainly Britain and France) and how their colonial practices shaped the tumultuous countries of the Middle East. Looking back to the American foreign politics in the beginning of the 20th century, the US had little interest in Middle East oil or in imperial strategies in that region. Its overseas ambitions were rather focused on Latin America and the Caribbean as well as on the Southeast Asia and the Pacific. However, I haven’t read the whole book and therefore I might be wrong about the seemingly ambivalent nature of the US involvement in the Middle East during the WWI and WWII.
I thought these two pieces oddly complemented each other, particularly regarding how Cold War politics dominated our policy decisions in ways that often left us open to manipulation by others, who were perhaps more conscious of our motives than even we were. Regarding the Hardy sections, it was fairly easy for the British to push on the “anticommunist” button as a way of getting us to intervene on their behalf in Egypt and Iran. This vulnerability left us open in ways that seem to mimic our misguided “anti-terrorism” policies today. Either way, we often think we’re the ones in control, but over time, this becomes less clear and perhaps less true.
While I don’t think manipulation was used against the US in the Kwak sections, it was clear that many people outside the U.S. were aware that our desire to sell “tropical architecture” had ulterior motives. From our perspective, the ulterior motives were again inflected by Cold War concerns of bringing post-colonial countries under the sway of capitalism through home ownership (and the loans that would be necessary to privatize housing systems) as well as redirecting countries away from the influence of communism. While these intentions may not have been fully apparent to others, our plans were often met with resistance and skepticism. It’s interesting that the one country that seemed to follow more or less the ideas that we were selling, The Philippines, met with a good deal of failure, while the countries that added their own public twist (Puerto Rico) or abandoned our ideas altogether (Singapore) found more success.
Kwak’s piece depicts a slightly less abhorrent use of American capitalist power than does Hardy’s accounts, but both authors portray the ‘superpower’ intoxicated by the idea of transforming foreign communities into a ‘modernist, free-market’ in its own image. What was unexpected, for me, was Singapore’s rejection of the U.S. housing financing model as the ideal template for their nation-state. In Kwak’s telling, the Singaporean political leaders come across as determined in the development of their own robust capitalist economy, and although he is critical of their overall political governance, he lauds them for their equitable housing solutions.
Both narratives portray U.S. reactions to Cold War challenges with a less than favorable view of American expertise and cunning. In Kwak’s writings the U.S. acted ‘ham-handedly’ to guide, one might say instruct, their clients into adopting the most aggressive form of free-market housing development; one that had seemingly worked so well in domestic markets as well as in Puerto Rico. But these strategies would not be adopted by the East Asian ‘client-states’. The American efforts, in the end, are illustrated as less than expert (Kwak 233), and were seen, merely, as an instrument for U.S. capitalist expansionary schemes. The most successful East Asian client – Singapore – would develop a model that was more ‘public’ than U.S. housing experts could conceive of. Further, the Americans, persisted in using a patronizing term – “tropical housing” – to denote dwelling units for economically underdeveloped areas that must have been off-putting to so many people in the target locales.
Hardy’s tales also depict an American foreign policy establishment that is ‘too clever by half’ for its own good. His narratives reinforce the notion that this foreign policy apparatus was so concerned with forestalling the Soviet Union, and the Third World movement as well, that it would condone any initiative to block their thrusts no matter how inaptly thought out their rationales were, or how clumsily they were applied. The fact that the U.S. was willing to be the U.K.’s henchman in one affair – Iran and Mossadegh – and then to rebel against this ‘same special partner’ in another adventure – Egypt and the Suez Canal – is almost comical, especially since the episodes that Hardy details were caused by British obtuse imperialism to begin with.. And to make matters worse, both American attempts to control Middle Eastern resources – oil and trade routes – have instead controlled U.S. foreign policy up to now. And probably the most galling facet of these disturbances was that their genesis was an outgrowth of World War One’s League of Nations, which was the ‘brainchild’ of that supreme American ‘Nation Builder’, Woodrow Wilson. If ever there were actions by one overbearing nation to sire “The Poisoned Well”, Hardy’s stories have powerfully exposed that provenance.
It is accurate therefore, to see these two narratives as complementary literary efforts that inform the public of a difficult period in American history; it was an era that continues to be grossly misunderstood by that public.
Sheldon Teicher
18 October 2017
The two pieces reflect the specifics of very different political strategies applied by the US (respectively “the West”) within the time of the Cold War. While Kwak displays how the US used policies of “development aid” and therefore a form of soft(er) power in order to promote its interests, Hardy discusses much more direct forms of the enforcement of US and Britain (economic) interests in the Middle East.
Both pieces share the notion that the US’ efforts in different regions were driven by the desire to enforce and create political and economical circumstances beneficial to their role as a capitalist global power. Contrary to very direct interventions such as the US and Britain conducted in Iran, Kwak describes how the US’ policy of exporting the ideal and practice of mass homeownership was an attempt to enforce capitalism at a global scale. Her analyses shows that this enforcement didn’t necessarily mainly rely on violent practices, but was implemented within efforts of “aided self-help” within the context of decolonization struggles. It is interesting to see how policies, which don’t seem to be linked to the Cold War at first sight–such as the promotion of mass homeownership–can be interpreted as serving the strengthening of the US position within this global conflict.
On the other hand Hardys analyses shows how regions apart from the US/Europe and the Soviet Union became actual venues of the conflict in a more direct way. His depiction shows how concrete economical interests such as the need for oil supply were linked to direct political interventions into Iran’s national political developments. Within his analyses it becomes very clear that Britain as well as the US strongly relied on cooperation in order to pursue their interests. Additionally he shows how economical projects such as the AIOC were intertwined with struggles for political power. The developments she describes can be interpreted as an example for the notion of capitalist political-economy, which refers to the intrinsic link between the political and economical sphere within the development of capitalism.
In both readings the authors show US reactions to communism during the Cold War era and the effects of it on a global scale. Kwak explains how the push for world-wide individual home ownership by the US shaped different countries and territories, like Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Singapore. Interestingly enough, in an effort to display the positive attributes of capitalism over communism (through home ownership), long term effects of US ideology was shown to hurt economies and create unsustainable policies and assistance. The mild success in Puerto Rico was due to the heavy public housing assistance given to citizens and while the Philippines tried to adhere to US-taught practices as best as they saw fit it was overall a failure. Singapore, which abandoned US home-owner ideals in favor of a public housing system saw consistent success with the policies laid down by the HDB.
Hardy depicts US & European influence throughout the Middle East during the Cold War. While ideas of colonialism were creating more anger than favor throughout the world, Great Britain began to market their influence differently rather than leave areas they have colonized. This was due to various reasons such as trade routes and raw materials, but it was also an effort to keep communism out of the Middle East. Being an ally to Great Britain, the US kept an eye on disturbances and actions taken by Great Britain to make sure Soviet influence was kept to a minimum and hopefully eradicated. Due to nationalist uprisings against British occupation throughout the Cold War (creating fear of heavier Soviet entanglement), the US stepped into Middle Eastern politics by supporting certain leaders, overthrowing unfavorable ones and sending spies in to build rapport among political groups and report back. This created multiple periods of unrest in the Middle East throughout the 20th century. Even though communism was seen as a detriment to society (by Europe & the US) and efforts to resist colonialism were squashed, the forced occupation by Britain with the support of the United States created an epidemic of poverty and slave-like labor for the inhabitants of these areas.
Kwak in her book analyses critically how US wanted to spread the idea of mortgage-driven and state regulated private homeownership to the third world countries after the second world war. She shows US, which was the most powerful state after WWII, was not simply giving loan to build houses to developing countries but the story was more complex. US basically wanted to emphasize American capitalism and democracy to those foreign countries who showed interest to embrace the housing aid. Unlike the communist ideologist US preferred a system that ensured the state regulation to advocate private savings and homeownership. Kwak examines the role of American expert from different field starting from corporate developer, realtors and builders, government and private bank, government officials and foreign diplomats to establish the American idea which was ‘a partnership in which the people themselves, the ultimate consumers, are the beneficiaries’ to Taiwan china, Burma, South Korea, the Philippines, Peru, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Bolivia.
Hardy, on the other hand, was more interested to show how western imperialism carved the destiny of the middle-eastern countries. In chapter seven the writer has accentuated the dramas of decolonization. He, as a former employee of BBC, has beautifully presented the eventful story of Suez crisis. Hardy in his book primarily has shown that western powerful countries like France, England, Russia and US used to control the present and mold future of the third world countries for their own gain. These powerful nations were interested to rule other less powerful countries for their advantageous geographical location(like Suez canal) or the availability of colossal natural resources (like Iranian Oil).
Hardy’s “The Poisoned Well” offers insight on the direct involvement of U.S. and Britain empires throughout the Middle East in the wake of the Cold War. Hardy provides the interesting narrative of Britain and U.S. joining forces in combatting against the influence of Soviet Union forces within the Middle East, as well as protecting their valuable resource of oil within Western hands (the “fruit of their labour”). Transfer of powers in each nation’s officials, including leaders in Egypt and generations of prime ministers in Iran to name few selections, threatened U.S. and British control, with massacres occurring as a result in attempts of overthrowing U.S. and British powers, of which unknowingly sowed seeds of hostility towards the West. Through undermining the pride and nationalism of the Middle East and their resentment of foreign powers (Hardy stating instances of Colonel Nasser turning to Soviet Union and further aggravating Cold War tensions), Hardy emphasizes the persisting nationalism and pride resulting from U.S. and British action that reinforced the Middle East to protect its nation, uphold destinies, and shaped present and future ideals of anti-terrorism and control.
Kwak’s “World of Homeowners” provides a different narrative of U.S. global influence during the age of the Cold War through the bulky history of homeownership. While Kwak’s descriptions of U.S. interventions throughout other nations in comparison to Hardy’s can certainly seem less violent, it was interesting to find that despite attempts of these interventions (that were initially combatting communist influence within these nations), there were similar results of rejections and disgust of American ideals that would further shape the nations’ stance against U.S. influence. Under the guise of “self-help” as a humanitarian effort to aid these decolonized nations, the U.S. depended on the “neutral language” of development across the globe to help mobilize their ideals across. Utilizing the success of Puerto Rican housing experiments, the clouded judgment of American influence led to its failure throughout the Philippines and Singapore; perpetuating a generalization and clear racialization of “tropical architecture” that evidently was not effective for these other nations. The foolhardy presumptions of U.S. knowledge (most importantly, lack of) the environment, climate, structures, and peoples of these nations naturally led to U.S. demise.
Despite such failures, evident in both the Hardy and Kwak pieces, it is clear that American influence “for better or worse, came to have an enormous influence on the government and peoples around the world” (Kwak, 234).
In Hardy’s text the description of the “royal” heritage of the people in power led him to describe the places where they lived, as a way of arguing how policies were originated. In “Pigeons of Denshawai” chapter is interesting to notice the connections between Corporal Wallis and local communists who were sympathizers with British Army, particularly the description in his novel about the “bourgeois flat” of one of the locals.
This information works for me as a connection with Kwak’s text, in terms of how housing policies and housing imaginaries were related and usually contradictory to certain political views.
The belief that the middle class “served as a critical anchor for political stability” and actually that ownership create the idea of a middle class, is something at least to be discussed. However, it is clear, as Kwak mentions in the introduction that “housing credit and debt were not inevitable steps in the evolution of capitalism”.
I was willing to find more arguments against the idea of “tropical housing” in Kwak’s text, particularly when she quotes British architect Atkinson, who “unabashedly connected climate with cultural-racial characteristics and building types”(94), however, it does offers a historical perspective or this syntagma.
These two pieces are obviously similar in the scope of colonization yet individual in how the United States and Britain manifested colonization but also interchangeable in ways Britain and the United States crossed paths in the realm of empire.
In Kwak’s dissection of homeownership, aids and advisement in Puerto Rico, the Philippines and its attempt in Singapore, the United States created a systematic, capitalist, self-help model and experimented in Puerto Rico first before introducing it to the world.
In Hardy’s descriptions of coups and interventions, after pushing aside France, Britain is at the center of trying to control the Middle East shown in their mission to break down the political system through degradation in Iran to dominate the oil industry.
In the process of this post-Cold War foreign decolonization era, empires were scurrying and colonial collaboration seemed inevitable yet still self-interested competing back-thoughts. This is seen in both works when the British ask for America’s help to neutralize Iran and when American tries to impose a housing solution to British Singapore.
After finishing a cursory reading of The Poisoned Well, I was curious to find some material connection between Israel and the United States. Often, I think that perhaps it is simply an ideology, Neoliberalism, as a bond, that explains their relationship. Unfortunately, this may count as confirmation bias: Kwak’s introduction mentions explicitly, “American housing aid monies sent to places like Israel in the mid-1950s paid for “literally hundreds of communities and new settlements”” [Kwak, Introduction: 10]. The British and French required another proxy after losing their control over their mandates after World War II, despite continuing administrative roles in Egypt, Palestine, Egypt, and Levant, respectively. Israel seems the obvious choice, especially in this Cold War atmosphere.
America, the greatest of hucksters, of cours,e sought opportunity to sell something: modernization. American housing advisors sought a strategy to encourages homeownership hot wars within the Cold War and within “the context of crumbling empires” [Kwak, chapter three: 88]. With the example of Egypt, modernization or Western influences seemed to bring with it the Cold War and classism. The succession of Egyptian political leaders and kings, seems more like the attrition of useful political proxy for foreign powers until the coup headed by Colonel Nasser. But more pointedly, this attrition was negotiated; Western powers did not dominate altogether. Egyptian sovereignty and insurgencies are a large part of the narrative. I digressed: while the various indigenous groups agreed to modernize their nations with infrastructure and housing, the problems that came with it, like the creation of a middle class and a preference for foreign bodies and ways, denigrated local folks by shifting a disproportionate amount of labor onto them.
Not surprising there is resistance. History does seem to repeat itself. However, some of these events from the experiment in the Dominican Republic and this housing advocacy happened in succession, and they were events very close to one another. It’s hard to know if lessons can be learned when the assessments of successes and failures are so flawed and most of the same people are still running these projects.
Both pieces share a predominant theme of the US’s reaction to and the effects of the Cold War regarding homeownership and capitalism and its global influence regarding policy.
Hardy gives an explanation of colonialism previously to understand the conflicts that occur in the present that takes a historical approach. “To begin to understand the contemporary Middle East, we need to grasp it how it emerged” (Hardy, pg. 2). This type of information is invaluable to readers as it gives a chronological history of the effects of the interference of the US, Britain and France over the territories they held. He implores testimonials, and acknowledges the errors of the human mind regarding memories, but still asserts the point that these colonial “empires” had a direct impact on shaping the destinies of these countries. While colonialism is rooted in the methods it has been executed, Hardy asserts that the outcomes have been different for each country due to mitigating factors such as the political climate. Including the ambivalence to the west and the embrace of western lifestyles.
On the contrary, Kwak takes a different approach, detailing the previous connection between the rises of the American housing market, and its direct impact on foreign policy, in relation to the Cold War to the current disconnection of the “American Dream” of homeownership, the qualities of life and what a paradox renting in NYC is today. Yet the same resonance of the rejection of America’s actions resulted in international discontent from Singapore’s rejection of the US’s style of homeownership, or the disgust internationally regarding American inequality regarding housing.
This rejection of American’s systems seem to be prevalent and emerges within two different contexts between readings.