The American intervention in Chile. The crisis of democracy

Contents

Introduction

1. American democracy as a reason for its intervention in Chile?

2. The American image as a guarantor of democracy

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

On the 11. of September 1973, Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, was deposed by a military coup that brought the dictator Augusto Pinochet to power.¹ Allende died shortly after in what has been presumed to be suicide.² The involvement of the American government and Kissinger in particular in these events has been a topic of heated debate. To what degree did American conceptions of democracy contribute? And how was its own democratic image hurt by it?

The circumstances of this coup have been studied very thoroughly over the past fifty years. It is known that the American government, and especially Henry Kissinger and the CIA were involved, but the extend to which this took place and whether or not it played a real role in the fate of Allende's government has long been a topic of debate. Even during the last decade, questions on American involvement in the decline of Chilean democracy have not been answered conclusively, and especially when reading book reviews on this topic it becomes quite clear that these debates can become quite heated.³ As such, we should be careful not to take a single source at face value without acknowledging this debate. One of the topics that has been most argued about is the question of the way American democracy and the way it perceived this ideal influenced its actions in Chile. Specifically, how the actions of the American government, supposedly the guarantor of democracy that it had presented itself as during the era of Woodrow Wilson,⁴ directly contributed to a crisis of democracy of its own design. However, this question has to be answered by taking into account not just American actions in Chile itself, but also by considering the context of the time and the way its actions did and did not change in the years after the coup in order to protect the aforementioned image of a guarantor of democracy. The context of the Cold War is fundamental to understanding both the reason for America's involvement and the effect it had on America's image worldwide. It will function as a wider context that explains certain aspects of the coup and the actions of the American and Chilean governments.

Over the course of this text I will explore the way American conceptions of democracy influenced its actions in the Chilean coup of 1973. In order to do this, I will first discuss the debate surrounding its actions in Chile itself. Did the US intervene to protect democracy? Or was there a – to them – more important reason that took precedence over it? Secondly, I will discuss the US government's actions after the fact to bring more nuance to the discussion and ask whether its ideal of democracy had anything to do with it.

1. American democracy as a reason for its intervention in Chile?

Chile is only one of several countries in which American influence or covert use of force has been reported in the past few decades. Other examples include Nicaragua, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Brazil.⁵ Within studies of Democratic Peace Scholarship, there have been debates on the role democracy played in these wars, arguing for example that these interventions were only natural since America, as a “highly democratic state”,⁶ and countries it interfered in, described as “extremely autocratic” or “near the middle of the democratic/autocratic spectrum” would of course come into conflict with each other.⁷ In this way, scholars like Bruce Russet have justified the American interventions in these countries. However, can this really be a satisfactory explanation? Or were there other, more crucial factors?

Notable for the argument presented by Russet and his colleagues is the fact that at first, American intervention mostly took place within Chile's democracy without destabilizing it outright. Early on, the American involvement was much less direct and primarily involved the so-called “Scare Campaign”, meant to convince Chileans not to vote for Allende as he would allegedly prove disastrous for their country.⁸ Although American foreign intervention had already included force in the case of Communist takeovers or invasions, such as in Korea or Cuba,⁹ it seems as though deliberately destabilizing the democracy of another country was not on the table yet, suggesting that protecting democracy was indeed an important goal to the Americans. According to the CIA, Allende was harming the democratic process, supposedly justifying actions like the Covert Action Program, which involved support for his opponents in the military, political parties and the media especially from 1971 onwards.¹⁰ It is true that Chile faced political and fiscal problems in the years leading up to the coup and that Allende himself has been labelled “incompetent”,¹¹ and his fiscal policy has even been described as “amateurish and disastrous”.¹² Officially, the US intervened for democratic reasons.

However, these arguments are highly questionable for several reasons. First, it is unlikely that Chile's economic and fiscal problems would have gotten as disastrous without American intervention. According to Peter Kornbluh, it was Kissinger that turned around the State Departments' support for Allende's election and instead pushed for “actions we can take ourselves to intensify Allende's problems”, hoping for a coup while pretending to publicly endorse him.¹³ Secondly, contrary to what they officially claimed, the US quite clearly supported undemocratic regimes, both in and outside Chile. As Jaechun Kim put it, the argument that the CIA was trying to promote democracy “might have been more convincing had there been any record of similar concern for democratic opposition in South Korea, South Vietnam, Bolivia, or Taiwan in the early 1970s (and in post- Allende Chile for that matter)".¹⁴ Notably, America did not cease its support of Pinochet even when he began systematically killing civilians, including two US citizens.¹⁵ Without going too deeply into his human rights abuses, Pinochet took on absolute control and ousted any official he did not agree with.¹⁶ The military dictator's secret police imprisoned anyone it considered a threat to the regime,¹⁷ and newly emerging forms of poetry reflected the destroyed sense of a nation and the suffering the Chilean population had to endure.¹⁸ Even then, the CIA did not stop its support of Pinochet and even attempted to fund El Mercurio, one of the media representatives they had given credit for Allende's overthrow, hoping to strengthen Chilean popular support for the new, quite obviously undemocratic dictatorship.¹⁹ Even though the US may not have directly sent soldiers or money to support Pinochet's cause, the indirect support they had aided him with for the several years is undeniable.²⁰ The protection of democracy, while the official reason for the CIA's intervention, thus does not align with their actions in neither Chile itself nor in its other international influences.

Much more crucial was the context of the Cold War and the dichotomy between socialism and capitalism at the time. America had had its stake in the region for a long time. As Jaechun Kim has very concisely laid it out, their involvement began in 1958 due to Allende's and the Left coalition's rise of power, uncomfortably close to the elections of 1964.²¹ Kissinger and the CIA were deeply distrustful of the Chilean democracy precisely because of Allende's socialist programme, despite the fact that he openly avoided any conflict with the US.²² The area where this took place, namely a part of South America that the US considered hegemonic territories²³ and over which they had already been losing power over thanks to people like Fidel Castro, also played an important role.²⁴ In the context of the Cold War, America's long-standing projections of democracy as the highest ideal of their state was pushed into the background by its more important war against Communism. According to Margaret Power, “the US government viewed politics through the lens of anticommunism”,²⁵ and it is this anticommunism that mattered the most. Kissinger destabilized a democratically elected socialist president and in spite of any pro-democratic ideals the American government often leaned on, it should be acknowledged that these actions hurt Chile's democracy much more than they helped.²⁶

In ousting Allende, the CIA and its government took power from a democratically elected president, fully expecting and even hoping for the Chilean destruction of democracy under Pinochet. Although the US prided itself on its status as a democratic country and projected that image to the outside,²⁷ its Chilean intervention took place rather due to fear of a socialist democracy in the context of the Cold War. But if that was the case, then why did the CIA claim to act in the protection of democracy? A closer look at the American government's actions that followed the coup and the situation it found itself in can answer this question.

2. The American image as a guarantor of democracy

In some ways, it appears as though across the next few years, the American government learned from its mistakes in Chile. After Kissinger promised Pinochet his support in 1976,²⁸ the situation quickly changed. Although only years earlier, the US had destroyed Chile's democracy, they now hoped to rebuild it under a political figure that was more favourable to them than Allende had been. Its embargo against weapon sales to Chile, starting 1974 but becoming much stricter in 1976, is an example of this process.²⁹ The so-called Kennedy Amendment posited that anti-communism like the one Pinochet practised would no longer be enough to ensure American support, and further sanctions and activism by journalists, politicians, and activist groups nearly isolated Pinochet's regime.³⁰ It thus stands to reason that the US realised their mistake and attempted to repair what they had helped to break. However, in other ways the American government continued to follow the same strategies as they had in Chile, ignoring democratic ideals of sovereign states in order to follow a goal it considered to be more important, often with disastrous results for their own international image. Similarly to how he had done in Chile, during the Portuguese regime and structure change in 1975, too, Kissinger rejected the idea of a non-communist but socialist democracy and instead wanted an autocratic communist Portugal in order to “vaccinate” Europe from the impulse to form leftist democracies.³¹ And as symbolically important as the Kennedy Amendment was, and as much as it helped to isolate Pinochet's power, it did not stop him from continuing to rule over Chile until 1990,³² and only in 1998 was he arrested for his actions.³³ The question that should thus be asked is this: if it was not democracy, then what motivated the US government to act in this way? In order to answer this question, the situation America found itself in in the early 1970's is crucial.

[...]

¹ J. Kim, 'Democratic Peace and Covert War. A Case Study of the U.S. Covert War in Chile' in Journal of International and Area Studies 12, no. 1 (2005) p.32.

² Ibid.

³ L. Qureshi and K. Gustafson, 'Exchange. Debating U.S. Involvement in Chile in the 1970s' in Journal of Cold War Studies 14, no. 1 (2012) pp. 114-117; J. Petras and M. Morley, 'On the U.S. and the Overthrow of Allende. A Reply to Professor Sigmund's Criticism' in Latin American Research Review 13, no. 1 (1978) pp.205-221.

⁴ E. Manela, 'The Wilsonian Moment and the rise of Anticolonial nationalism. The case of Egypt' in Diplomacy & Statecraft 12, no. 4 (2001) p.100.

⁵ Kim, 'Democratic Peace and Covert War' p.27.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ M. Power, 'The Engendering of Anticommunism and Fear in Chile's 1964 Presidential Election' in Diplomatic History 32, no. 5 (2008) p.931.

⁹ L. A. Pérez, 'Fear and Loathing of Fidel Castro: Sources of US Policy toward Cuba' in Journal of Latin American Studies 34, no. 2 (2002) p.227; M. Young, 'Reflections on the Korean War and Its Armistice' in The Journal of Korean Studies (1979-) 18, no. 2 (2013) p.403.

¹⁰ J. Devine and P. Kornbluh, 'Showdown in Santiago. What Really Happened in Chile' in Foreign Affairs 93, no. 5 (2014) p.170.

¹¹ P. N. Rosenstein-Rodan, 'Why Allende Failed' in Challenge 17, no. 2 (1974) p.7.

¹² Qureshi and Gustafson, 'Debating U.S. Involvement in Chile' p. 115.

¹³ Devine and Kornbluh, 'Showdown in Santiago' p.169.

¹⁴ Kim, 'Democratic Peace and Covert War' p.39.

¹⁵ Devine and Kornbluh, 'Showdown in Santiago' pp.171-172.

¹⁶ A. Henderson, T. Loofbourrow, S. Bernheim, and E. H. Wu, 'Chile: Pinochet's Enduring Role' in Harvard International Review 3, no. 5 (1981) p.16.

¹⁷ S. Marambio, 'The Insolent Gaze of Chilean Poet Elvira Hernández' in World Literature Today 94, no. 4 (2020) p.44.

¹⁸ Ibid. pp.46-47.

¹⁹ Kim, 'Democratic Peace and Covert War' p.31; Devine and Kornbluh, 'Showdown in Santiago' pp.171-172.

²⁰ Ibid. p.170.

²¹ Kim, 'Democratic Peace and Covert War' p.30.

²² Ibid. p.39.

²³ Power, 'The Engendering of Anticommunism' p.931.

²⁴ Pérez, 'Fear and Loathing of Fidel Castro' p.227.

²⁵ Power, 'The Engendering of Anticommunism' p.931.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ T. R. Davis and S. M. Lynn-Jones. 'Citty upon a Hill' in Foreign Policy, no. 66 (1987) p.20; Manela, 'The Wilsonian Moment' p.100.

²⁸ T. Harmer, 'Fractious Allies. Chile, the United States, and the Cold War, 1973–76' in Diplomatic History 37, no. 1 (2013) p. 109.

²⁹ J. R. Bawden, 'Cutting Off the Dictator. The United States Arms Embargo of the Pinochet Regime, 1974–1988' in Journal of Latin American Studies 45, no.3 (2013) p.513.

³⁰ Ibid. p.514.

³¹ M. Del Pero, '‘Which Chile, Allende?’ Henry Kissinger and the Portuguese revolution' in Cold War History 11 no. 4, (2011) p.637.

³² Bawden, 'Cutting Off the Dictator' p.514.

³³ R. Lagos, H. Muñoz, and A. Slaughter, 'The Pinochet Dilemma' in Foreign Policy, no. 114 (1999) p.26; Although not the focus of this paper, it should be noted that this moment in international history was highly controversial due to its implications for the arrest of other dictatorial or otherwise oppresive political leaders, including Margaret Thatcher or George Bush.