A People's History of the Cold War: A Review of Vincent Bevins's The Jakarta Method

Abstract

Throughout his book, Bevins identifies different programs through which the United States would train military officials from throughout the Third World or supply them with anticommunist strategies.10 After sowing political discord, these Washington-backed officials would assume power, claiming to pacify and reroute their countries in a better direction, according to Bevins. In Iran, Bevins writes that, for the United States, anticommunism and the availability of petroleum were interlocked16;in Chile, University of Chicago-trained economists established the first neoliberal economy—a model that has corrupted and underdeveloped Latin America17;and, in Argentina, Ford Motor Company and Citibank collaborated with disappearances.18 Washington did not only pursue mass murder to quell communism;it was also a tool to advance extractive and exploitative American corporate interests. Urged by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the face of American corporate philanthropy, Oxford sold the vaccine rights to British-Swedish pharmaceutical company Astra-Zeneca.20 A vaccine that could have provided relief to strugglingdeveloping nations was lost to the neoliberal privatization Washington's violent anticommunism upholds. According to him, a civil war in which the military killed several thousands more, even those deemed innocent, was necessary.23 Perhaps this is why Bolsonaro joked about warnings of a deadly second wave of coronavirus infections.