Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War

Abstract

Two, three, many Afghanistans? In what ways did the paramilitary Right mirror its leftist enemies to imagine and carry out its own unconventional wars? In Revolutionaries for the Right, Kyle Burke offers a compelling account of how American activists and “covert warriors” participated in the making of a vast global network of anticommunist fellow travelers who posed a radical challenge to Left internationalism. Based on a wide array of multinational archival sources, Burke links the development of an “anticommunist international,” the increasing privatization of organized anticommunist violence, and the emergence of an American subculture of paramilitarism.Burke glimpses at key segments of the global networks in which American covert warriors took part and insightfully examines these activists' ambivalent (and often-contentious) relationship with state actors. While delving at times into too many international subplots, Burke stresses a fundamental tension in the actions of these American activists: their recurrent plea for government support and their desire for greater autonomy in their endeavors abroad. As Burke recounts, by the early 1960s activists such as Marvin Liebman dealt with limited financial and political capital and with the unsurmountable difficulties of implementing a global anticommunist platform. They were pushed into “the shadow of the state,” clashing with government operatives and attaining only modest goals when collaborating with overseas allies. With South America's Operation Condor as an example, Burke rightly argues that the creation of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) in 1967 was a key turning point for the anticommunist international and the radicalization of anticommunist “political warfare.” Yet the obstacles for American covert warriors did not disappear but were rather exacerbated by the plurality of the WACL and the strong influence retained by the Taiwanese, South Korean, and Latin American chapters of the organization.The analysis then moves into the 1980s, when, driven by the “Vietnam Syndrome,” American activists (such as the sinister John K. Singlaub) capitalized on the Ronald Reagan administration's anticommunist zeal and on their links with (but mostly beyond) the WACL to insert themselves as advisers, arms smugglers, and fighters for anticommunist insurgencies, from Nicaragua to Rhodesia, El Salvador, Afghanistan, and more. Even for the most successful cases (e.g., the Nicaraguan contras), Burke's account seems to stress the frustration of these covert warriors, who embraced the methods and ethos of leftist insurgents to bring victory to the cause but often hit the walls of public scrutiny, government oversight, and unfavorable local conditions and were forced to retreat to their domestic audiences.Herein lies one of Burke's most significant contributions: the feedback effect that anticommunist guerrilla warfare had in the imagination of a seemingly disparate group of military and Central Intelligence Agency officers, veterans, and paramilitary enthusiasts. They saw the Nicaraguan contras and the Afghan mujahideen, for instance, as embodying their own aspirations to carry out revolutions to liberate nations under the yoke of Soviet imperialism. They took their experience in and perception of these conflicts as opportunities to articulate (and profit from) ideas of anticommunist solidarity, patriotism, (purportedly white) masculinity, distrust for government, and a thrill for war. The resulting American paramilitary subculture was expressed remarkably in underground mercenary publications and academies, Hollywood productions, and, later, private military firms. For Burke, this paramilitary subculture was not the creation of provincial white supremacists and conspiracy theorists (at least not exclusively) but the result of American fears of civilizational decline projected onto armed conflicts abroad and then projected back to the home front. Hence Burke makes a very strong case for his portrayal of this sector of the American Right as shaped by its own global interactions and its efforts (successful or not) to privatize, radicalize, and reinvent anticommunist internationalism.The book ultimately raises questions about the genetic flaws of “anticommunist internationalism” and the elusive notion of a “revolution for the Right” (p. 159). Democracy, free markets, and Christianity were key tenets for the activists and occupy most of Burke's analysis. But they were not enough to cement a full-fledged anticommunist revolution, as they clashed with other versions of the struggle, from the violent national liberation wars of Eastern bloc and Cuban exiles to the anti-American and antiliberal impulses of vast sectors of the Latin American Right. Throughout the book, Burke gestures at this tension but tends to downplay it, leaning instead toward fitting anticommunism back into those American parameters. Despite their internationalist appeal, perhaps his covert warriors were too deeply imbued in exceptionalist notions of American individual and corporate prowess to carry out a deeply transformative revolution for the global Right, including its more nefarious neofascist elements. All in all, this study accomplishes a rare feat: it locates this segment of the American Right in a global Cold War stage while offering Cold War historians a solid and well-researched point of reference for further studies on the past and present of the Right's internationalist projects.