Free trade unionism in the Third World: The Cold War national security state and American labor in Asia, 1948--1975

This dissertation examines the relationship between organized labor and the United States' foreign policy mission in Asia between 1948 and 1975. It observes in great detail the complex and extensive association and integration between elite members of American labor and U.S. foreign missions in important geopolitical regions of Asia. It painstakingly unravels the deep relationship American labor had with U.S. foreign policy, with a diverse range of foreign policy officials, and with many different government departments and corporate enterprises. Methodologically, this means piecing together numerous biographical experiences of "labor people" pulled into the Cold War mission after World War II; some were staunch anti-Communist labor activists recruited from the American Federation of Labor (AFL), others were taken from the liberal yet equally anti-Communist ranks of the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and still others from universities and even corporations. This unusual narrative approach also permits an examination of the conflicting and corresponding personalities influencing significant policy transformations in Asia and in Washington. Labor, and issues related to labor became a distinct aspect of U.S. foreign missions, and consequently were impacted by similar historical transformations which were unfolding in both public and private circles of the American foreign policy machine. That is to that the complexity of labor's role in the U.S. foreign policy apparatus mirrored, in part, the conflicting politics of the liberalism of the New Deal and the increasing authority of Cold War anti-Communism. In the end, it bore with it all of the intrigue, wrangling and drama permeating the diplomatic core, the intelligence community, the military, and the various economic aid programs which made up the union of the United States' international body politic.; The unique narrative composition of this examination based on a multi-biographical approach, disentangles the roles of American labor and the U.S. government, offering a rational historical perspective on just how the State Department coordinated with a non-governmental organizations to circumvent regular diplomatic, and even military channels. It looks at how the non-governmental labor internationalism of the preceding one hundred years was transformed into an "animal of the state," or labor diplomacy; and how and to what extent anti-Communist "Free Trade Unionists" manipulated labor politics in Asian countries to benefit the designs of U.S. foreign policy. Some labor activists hired by the State Department were critical with United States' foreign policy decisions, many turned a blind eye, some remained ignorant, and many actively promoted them.