So I understand the whole idea of modernization as a weapon to be employed during the Cold War. Get the Third World 'up to speed' with our aid (advice, money, 'experts'), get them to vote, and all sorts of beautiful things will happen.
Atleast, that seemed to be the way to go during the first years of the Cold War. The idea that sped up modernization could be achieved seemed to stick, though the U.S. started to support authoritarian regimes (specifically those led by military men!) to achieve this. What arguments did U.S. policy makers use to go down this path?
Can this be ascribed to a fear of the destabilizing, seductive nature of Communism (and the military as the most effective antidote to such seduction, shooting Comrade Cupid in the face, if you will)?
Were military men simply easier to control, as opposed to democratically elected leaders (who will atleast perceive a certain support from the people)?
Thanks in advance for any illuminating answers.
Michael E. Latham's The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present might argue that American support of authoritarian regimes was an unintended consequence of how some policymakers conceived of modernization. To quote from the introduction,
Combining reformist injunctions with the deployment of tremendous force, modernizers often wound up helping to create authoritarian, dictatorial regimes instead of liberal states. Because the universal assumptions of modernization promoted a disregard for the significance of local history and culture, defining them as transitory matters, modernizers also reduced crucial political problems to matters of mere administration and technical expertise. The cultural and ideological appeal of modernization, moreover, often blinded its advocates to evidence of policy failure. (p. 4)
Latham goes on to provide a concrete example in the form of the MIT political scientist Lucian Pye and Princeton's Gabriel Almond. Allow me to quote a more extensive passage of his analysis of their work.
The tendency to write off political protest and mass politics of the left or the right as the expression of “status anxiety” or the projection of psychological deviance enabled consensus thinkers to enshrine a moderate, elite-led system as the essence of American success. That perspective also resonated with the way that modernizers thought about the postcolonial world. Influenced by Lasswell’s vision of political behavior as the manifestation of inner insecurities, political scientists like Pye and Almond suggested that the survival of democratic systems required a clear consensus among leaders, the containment of radical dissent, and a minimal level of popular political participation, ideally one limited to an electoral choice of candidates from within a narrow ideological range. Less optimistic than many of their economist colleagues that economic growth and improvements in living standards would inevitably and naturally lead to liberal political systems, they favored elite theories of democracy. As Almond explained, “negative emotions and hysterias unleashed by the disruptive changes and the new nationalisms of the non-Western world” could make the United States the target of “violent moods and expressions of hate.” Skilled elites, therefore, would have to control the destabilizing transition. Concern about the dangers of dissent and the need to maintain order placed a premium on procedural instead of substantive definitions of democracy. It also led thinkers like Pye to edge toward bureaucratic authoritarian approaches, suggesting that the military forces of the “newly emergent countries” could catalyze a “rational outlook” and “champion responsible change and national development.” Although Pye did argue that the creation of modern nation-states would require “the growth of responsible and representative politicians,” the idea that a modernizing military might just as well become the core of an oppressive dictatorship did not seem to draw his attention. The fact that concepts of modernization were built on narrow conceptions of democracy helps explain the ease with which their proponents later used them to support and legitimate systems of repression.
(p. 60)
Nils Gilman, in his excellent work Mandarins of the Future, also noted that proponents of modernization theory in a Cold War context often shared these traits: elitism, general distrust of popular traditional social organization in "third world" countries, and the strong belief that the common people should replicate elite norms rather than the other way around. It is easy to see how this would have led to the U.S supporting authoritarian regimes, including those led by military men, since it would often require more than a small degree of coercion to get large segments of the population to adhere to social, economic, and cultural norms of a much smaller part of it. (pages 8-13 of Gilman's book)
Sources Cited:
Michael E. Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (Cornell University Press, 2011)
Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)