Let's try a realistic set of answers.
It is pretty well accepted that the selection of Diem was initiated by the US; I have never seen this questioned in any credible account.
Agreed. I didn;t know this was subject to doubt.
Would you say, regarding the election, that the US has the right, or the responsibility, to obstruct the electoral process of another country if we don't like the actual or probable winner of an election? Do we retain that right to this day?
Right? Define "right". Where does and should "right of self determination" begin and end? At the national boundary? At the county line? Should France and Britain have invaded Germany when Hitler invaded the Rhineland? Hitler probably would have been overthrown and WW2 and the Holocaust and the current ME mess averted. Would this have been bad?
To whom does this apply? If Italy or the Netherlands elected a Communist Government, should we go in and install somebody we like?
Should we not? If the gov't would be the ordinary sort of Communist gov't we've seen in the past, we'd be doing the people a great favor if we restored democracy. Do you think the Netherlands resents the fact that we threw out their WW2 Nazi gov't?
Or does this right of interference extend only to countries inhabited by people who aren't Europeans?
Chileans are largely Caucasian. We overthrew their Communist gov't.
At one point (in the late '60s or early '70s, as I recall), the US became seriously concerned about the Australian gov't and effectively brought it to an end. One of the concerns was that the new Australian gov't would force the CIA to abandon its listening post at Alice Springs.
If another country disapproves of the results of our electoral process, do they have the right to intervene?
If they can, want to, and can get away with it. Currently, that's rather unlikely. But you do remember that Britain and France did consider intervention in the American Civil War, right? One of the reasons they dropped it was because, on closer study, it appeared the Union army and navy could be a real problem. They then proposed a negotiated settlement which Lincoln had no interest in. |
