DEFENDING "DEMOCRACY" IN GREECE AND SOUTH VIETNAM
Washington's announced “resumption of normal diplomatic contacts" gives a big boost to the military junta that seized power in Greece last year. Reports from Athens say that the government of Colonel Papadopoulas felt "enormous relief" at this "official recognition" January 23.
The Johnson administration would nave preferred to see constitutional normality restored under the monarchy which would have erected a pseudodemocrat— ic scaffolding around capitalist rule. On this account it refrained for a time from according full recognition to the dictatorship of the colonels. However, U.S. relations with the Greek government have never been severed and American officials have been regularly dealing with the regime.
After the fiasco of Constantine's countercoup, and his flight to Italy, the State Department had no further cards to play. Washington's king had been taken by Papadopoulas' ace. The State Depart-— ment diplomats decided to throw in their hand. After all, the colonels can be counted on to support NATO, uphold capitalism and suppress any popular movement which rekindles the revolutionary ardor of the early 1940's and threatens to overthrow imperialism in Greece. Even the haughtiest superpower cannot always get whatever it prefers in this imperfect world.
The U.S. move to prop up the Greek junta is one more proof of the hypocrisy of the claim that its foreign policy is designed to defend "democracy" against dictatorship." The regime of the colonels
which has filled the concentration camps,
which tortures political prisoners, and
which has destroyed the most elementary
liberties is the most reactionary and re-
pressive in Western Europe today.
When the great majority of the
Vietnamese people organized against a
ferocious military dictatorship, Wash-
ington did not hesitate to intervene in
the Vietnam civil war on the pretext of
safeguarding "freedom" there. But when
democracy was abolished in Greece by a
handful of military conspirators who
have set up a dictatorship of the same
type as General Ky's, its would-be
saviours avert their gaze. Then, as
soon as circumstances permit, they come
to the rescue of the colonels.
If the Greek freedom fighters
should rise up and launch an armed strug-
gle to regain their democratic liberties
and head toward socialism, Johnson would
find many reasons for the prompt dispatch
of his Mediterranean fleet and forces to
the scene to prevent this part of “the
free world" from being overwhelmed by
"Communism."
Just as the puppet regime in
Saigon could not last a week without
American money, materiél and men, so
the colonel's junta would collapse over-
night if Washington withdrew all its
military, financial and diplomatic sup-
port. The two dictatorships survive sole-
ly because they serve the objectives of
the American strategists who are far more
concerned with the promotion of their
global imperialist interests than the
preservation of the most minimal demo-
cratic liberties.
WEST GERMAN