Session Abstract

Cold War Policing and the American Empire

                Compared to its European counterparts, the American empire, especially since World War II, is unique in its reliance on indirect mechanisms of social control and use of native proxies to promote its strategic interests. As U.S. imperial attention has shifted from one region to another, police training and financing has remained an unobserved constant, evolving with new strategies and weapons innovations but always retaining the same strategic goals and tactical elements. The programs have been valued as a cost effective and covert mechanism of suppressing radical and nationalist movements, precluding the need for military intervention which was more likely to arouse public opposition, or enabling the draw-down of troops. With remarkable continuity, the United States has trained police not just to target criminals but to develop elaborate intelligence networks oriented towards internal defense, which allowed in a wider range the suppression of dissident groups, and in a more surgical and often brutal way. The three papers in this panel will examine different country studies of American police training programs and their impact: Guatemala, Brazil and Vietnam. The panel generally hopes to shed light on a neglected dimension of American foreign policy in the Cold War and how the police programs exemplify the secret and coercive underpinnings of American power.