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Kwame Nkrumah was the first African Prime Minister, and later President, of Ghana. Under Nkrumah, Ghana played a leading role in African international relations during the decolonization period, funding national industrial and energy projects, developing an effective national education system and promoting a pan-Africanist culture.

 For issue #88 of The Internationalist, we draw from 'The Mechanisms of Neo-colonialism' where he explains how neo-colonialists exploit sovereignty through military bases, advisers, and economic concessions, masking dominance under 'aid.'

Some of the methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard must now be examined. The first is retention by the departing colonialists of various kinds of privileges which infringe on our sovereignty: that of setting up military bases or stationing troops in former colonies and the supplying of ‘advisers’ of one sort or another. Sometimes a number of ‘rights’ are demanded: land concessions, prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ‘right’ to collect customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be exempt from customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; and, above all, the ‘right’ to provide ‘aid.’ Also demanded and granted are privileges in the cultural field; that Western information services be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries be excluded.

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the federal agent – in a word, the CIA-type spy – is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological underbelly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments. 

While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news.’ Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the USA is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over international capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists’! 

Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a veritable riptide of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them American. Typical of these are Jehovah’s Witnesses who recently created trouble in certain developing countries by busily teaching their citizens not to salute the new national flags. ‘Religion’ was too thin to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a temporary lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow. 

Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger tree. Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a huge ideological plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilising all its facilities from press and radio to the Peace Corps. 

During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end were held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in Costa Rica, and Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the Pentagon, the International Development Agency, the Peace Corps, and others. Programmes were drawn up which included the systematic use of USA citizens abroad in virtual intelligence activities and propaganda work. Methods of recruiting political agents and of forcing ‘alliances’ with the USA, were worked out. At the centre of its programmes lay the demand for an absolute US monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting any independent efforts by developing states in the realm of information. 

The US sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, to co-ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda activities of all Western countries. In October 1961, a conference of NATO countries was held in Rome to discuss problems of psychological warfare. It appealed for the organisation of combined ideological operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants. 

In May and June 1962, a seminar was convened by the USA in Vienna on ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a propaganda offensive against the developing countries along lines laid down by the USA. It was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, in practice if not in the public eye, keep in close contact with US embassies in their respective countries. 

Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered the intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the USA’s ‘Invisible Government.’ But most significant among them all are Moral Re-Armament (MRA), the Peace Corps and the USIA. 

MRA is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American, Frank Buchman. In the last days before WWII, it advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling [Heinrich] Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not without significance that Moïse Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book One Thousand Americans, characterised MRA as a fascist organisation ‘subsidised by … Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over …’ This description is supported by the active participation in MRA of people like General [Gervais] Carpentier, former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western world, have claimed that MRA is actually subsidised by the CIA. 

When MRA’s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the American Peace Corps in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, with Sargent Shriver, Jr., his brother-in-law, in charge.

Shriver, a millionaire who made his pile in land speculation in Chicago, was also known as the friend, confidant, and co-worker of the former head of the CIA, Allen Dulles. These two had worked together in both the Office of Strategic Services, USA wartime intelligence agency, and in the CIA. Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps.’ So does the fact that, although the Peace Corps is advertised as a voluntary organisation, all its members are carefully screened by the USA Federal Bureau of Investigation. Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries for acts of subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the Philippines, and even pro-West countries like Turkey and Iran, have complained of its activities. 

However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is the USIA. Even for the wealthiest nation on earth, the USA lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials, and money on this vehicle for its neo-colonial aims. 

The USIA is staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than $130 million a year. It has more than 70 editorial staffers working on publications abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 60 are outside the USA. Programmes are broadcast for Africa by American stations in Morocco, Eritrea, Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as from offshore stations on American ships. In Africa alone, the USIA transmits about 30 territorial and national radio programmes whose content glorifies the USA while attempting to discredit countries with an independent foreign policy. The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries. 

This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name of the president, planning and co-ordinating its activities in close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces intelligence centres. In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of national media of information so as itself to capture the marketplace of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about 60 newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 

The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the USA include a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their plan.

Unbiassed studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of Princeton University, retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former intelligence agents Murril Dayer, Wilson Dizard, and others, have all called attention to the close ties between this agency and US Intelligence. For example. Deputy Director Donald M. Wilson was a political intelligence agent in the US Army. Assistant Director for Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several Eastern European countries. 

Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the US imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse the situation in each country, making recommendations to its embassy, thereby to its government, about changes that can tip the local balance in US favour. Secondly, it organises networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone. conversations, while recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute US propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion. 

One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the suggested establishment of a businessmen corps which will, like the Peace Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ‘U.S. Intelligence and the Monopolies’ in International Affairs (Moscow, January 1965), V. Chernyavsky writes: ‘There can hardly be any doubt that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence organisation created on the initiative of the American monopolies to use Big Business for espionage.’ 

It is by no means unusual for US Intelligence to set up its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage centres. For example, according to Chernyavsky, the CIA. has set up a firm in Taiwan known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it sends spies and saboteurs to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, a CIA firm in India, has also helped to camouflage US intelligence agents operating in South-east Asia.

Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism’s activities and methods in our time. Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that they must give up in despair before such an array of apparent power and seemingly inexhaustible resources. Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of its own major laws: that the budding future is always stronger than the withering past. This has been amply demonstrated during every major revolution throughout history. 

The American Revolution of 1776 struggled through to victory over a tangle of inefficiency, mismanagement, corruption, outright subversion, and counter-revolution the like of which has been repeated to some degree in every subsequent revolution to date. 

The Russian Revolution during the period of [Allied] Intervention, 1917 to 1922, appeared to be dying on its feet. The Chinese Revolution at one time was forced to pull out of its existing bases, lock, stock and barrel, and make the unprecedented Long March; yet it triumphed. Imperialist white mercenaries who dropped so confidently out of the skies on Stanleyville after a plane trip from Ascension Island thought that their job would be ‘duck soup.’ Yet, till now, the nationalist forces of Congo (Leopoldville) continue to fight their way forward. They do not talk of if they will win, but only of when. 

Asia provides a further example of the strength of a people’s will to determine their own future. In South Vietnam ‘special warfare’ is being fought to hold back the tide of revolutionary change. ‘Special warfare’ is a concept of General Maxwell Taylor and a military extension of the creed of John Foster Dulles: let Asians fight Asians. Briefly, the technique is for the foreign power to supply the money, aircraft, military equipment of all kinds, and the strategic and tactical command from general staff down to officer ‘advisers’, while the troops of the puppet government bear the brunt of the fighting. Yet in spite of bombing raids and the immense build-up of foreign strength in the area, the people of both North and South Vietnam are proving to be unconquerable. 

In other parts of Asia, in Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, and now the Philippines, Thailand and Burma, the peoples of ex-colonial countries have stood firm and are winning battles against the allegedly superior imperialist enemy. In Latin America, despite ‘final’ punitive expeditions, the growing armed insurrections in Colombia, Venezuela, and other countries continue to consolidate gains. 

In Africa, we in Ghana have withstood all efforts by imperialism and its agents; Tanzania has nipped subversive plots in the bud, as have Brazzaville, Uganda, and Kenya. The struggle rages back and forth. The surging popular forces may still be hampered by colonialist legacies, but nonetheless they advance inexorably. 

All these examples prove beyond doubt that neo-colonialism is not a sign of imperialism’s strength but rather of its last hideous gasp. It testifies to its inability to rule any longer by old methods. Independence is a luxury it can no longer afford to permit its subject peoples, so that even what it claims to have ‘given’ it now seeks to take away.

This means that neo-colonialism can and will be defeated. How can this be done? 

Thus far, all the methods of neo-colonialists have pointed in one direction, the ancient, accepted one of all minority ruling classes throughout history – divide and rule. 

Quite obviously, therefore, unity is the first requisite for destroying neo-colonialism. Primary and basic is the need for an all-union government on the much-divided continent of Africa. Along with that, a strengthening of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Organisation and the spirit of Bandung is already under way. To it, we must seek the adherence on an increasingly formal basis of our Latin American brothers. Furthermore, all these liberatory forces have, on all major issues and at every possible instance, the support of the growing socialist sector of the world. 

Finally, we must encourage and utilise to the full those still all too few yet growing instances of support for liberation and anti-colonialism inside the imperialist world itself. 

To carry out such a political programme, we must all back it with national plans designed to strengthen ourselves as independent nations. An external condition for such independent development is neutrality or political non-alignment. This has been expressed in two conferences of Non-Aligned Nations during the recent past, the last of which, in Cairo in 1964, clearly and inevitably showed itself at one with the rising forces of liberation and human dignity. 

And the preconditions for all this, to which lip service is often paid but activity seldom directed, is to develop ideological clarity among the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, pro-liberation masses of our continents. They, and they alone, make, maintain or break revolutions.

With the utmost speed, neo-colonialism must be analysed in clear and simple terms for the full mass understanding by the surging organisations of the African peoples. The AATUF has already made a start in this direction, while the Pan-African Youth Movement, the women, journalists, farmers, and others are not far behind. Bolstered with ideological clarity, these organisations, closely linked with the ruling parties where liberatory forces are in power, will prove that neo-colonialism is the symptom of imperialism’s weakness and that it is defeatable. For, when all is said and done, it is the so-called little man, the bent-backed, exploited, malnourished, blood-covered fighter for independence who decides. And he invariably decides for freedom.

Excerpted from The Revolutionary Thoughts of Kwame Nkrumah edited by Efemia Chela and Vijay Prashad. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

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