| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores the relationship between the administration of President John F. Kennedy and the Arab Ba?th Socialist Party's first regime in Iraq from February to November 1963. It demonstrates that Kennedy administration officials had adopted a paradigm of modernization through which they believed recently decolonized countries could achieve high-consumption economies with democratic governments. Because this process appeared threatened by communist-supported insurgencies, the administration developed a doctrine of counterinsurgency, which entailed support for the repressive capacities of developing states. Administration officials regarded the Iraqi Ba?th Party as an agent of Iraq's modernization and of anticommunist counterinsurgency. They consequently cultivated supportive relationships with Ba?thist officials, police commanders, and members of the party's militia, despite the regime's wide-scale human rights violations. The American relationship with militia members began before the coup that brought the Ba?thists to power, and Ba?thist police commanders involved in the coup were trained in the United States.
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