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Central Intelligence Agency (view source)
Revision as of 19:29, November 25, 2010
, 19:29, November 25, 2010→Chile 1973
: '''Nixon''': That is right. And that is the way it is going to be played.<ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/chile.htm The Kissinger Telcons: Kissinger Telcons on Chile], National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123, edited by Peter Kornbluh, posted May 26, 2004. This particular dialogue can be found at [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/Box%2022,%20File%203,%20Telcon,%209-16-73%2011,50%20Mr.%20Kissinger-The%20Pres%202.pdf TELCON: September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m. Kissinger Talking to Nixon]. Retrieved November 26, 2006.</ref>
: '''Nixon''': That is right. And that is the way it is going to be played.<ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/chile.htm The Kissinger Telcons: Kissinger Telcons on Chile], National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123, edited by Peter Kornbluh, posted May 26, 2004. This particular dialogue can be found at [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/Box%2022,%20File%203,%20Telcon,%209-16-73%2011,50%20Mr.%20Kissinger-The%20Pres%202.pdf TELCON: September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m. Kissinger Talking to Nixon]. Retrieved November 26, 2006.</ref>
Kissinger is clearly telling the President that any direct US role in such a coup would be abhorrent but that the coup itself was preferable to a Communist take-over (with both agreeing that the US did not assist the plot).
Kissinger is clearly telling the President that any direct US role in such a coup would be abhorrent but that the coup itself was preferable to a Communist take-over (with both agreeing that the US did not assist the plot).
Chilean author Joaquín Fermandois, noting the meetings with Chilean generals in which the US encouraged a potential coup, concluded that the US "wanted Allende out" and that the notion of free elections being held subsequently was not a prerequisite, but simply one possible outcome (i.e., if the Allessandri plot worked). He wrote: "What they wanted was to prevent Allende from coming to power, if necessary by the intervention of the military."<ref>www.cepchile.cl/dms/archivo_3236_1698/r92_fermandois_ing.pdf Translated from Spanish; ''Commentary'' accepts at face value the idea that an "interim junta" would have voluntarily stepped down and held new elections after a few days if the military had intervened; but Fermandois points out that "few believe this to be so" and expresses his own doubts about the thesis; Fermandois writes that the Americans did ''not'' "see all this as a way towards a new election"--but obviously, the attempts to influence the 1970 election and the aid to Chilean dissidents in its aftermath could not have served another purpose, and the attempt to buy off the Congress so that it would vote differently could not have imposed dictatorship (indeed, it would have saved Chilean democracy along with thousands of Chilean lives). However, the CIA's encouragement of a military coup, he is right to say, could not have served the purpose of holding elections, except in that it would remove Allende. But Fermandois acknowledges that despite the repeated encouragement, the US steadfastly refused any material support of its own for such a scheme. His point is far from profound: When the CIA sends messages like "it is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup," it is not referring merely to a constitutional coup. However, it does make a moral difference if the US is only encouraging such a coup as a last resort, and against a Communist dictator, and without offering the plotters material aid.</ref> However, considering the involvement of Cuba, Russia, Brazil and other powers at the same time, he discusses whether or not this support was "moral, immoral, or amoral," concluding that the CIA was unable to make a serious difference and that Chile illustrates the tragic irony of "the myth of American omnipotence." The conflict was an internal civil war, and one should not be surprised to see foreign powers involve themselves in it; the notion that "the CIA was behind everything," he says, is simply a myth. (In fact, the Soviet Union and the United States were the two powers that both refused, unlike Brazil and Cuba, to materially assist plans to establish a dictatorial regime in Chile.) While Fermandois condemns the violence perpetrated by the Allende regime, including the illegal armed regiment from Cuba, he argues that it is as mythical to assert that it justified Pinochet's excesses as it is to call Allende a typical democratic leftist.<ref>Ibid.</ref> One supposes that the ''realist'' response to all this would be that if they're planning a coup either way; we might as well intervene against our possible foes and encourage our potential friends, as long as we don't materially assist the gambit (especially if one has already tried and failed to remove the de facto dictator through democratic means).
Kissinger and Ford began viewing Pinochet's regime as a serious Cold War liability as early as 1975 and the US engaged in repeated diplomatic confrontations with it from 1977 on.<ref>www.cepchile.cl/dms/archivo_3236_1698/r92_fermandois_ing.pdf Translated from Spanish</ref> The CIA warned that "internationally, the Latin generals look like our guys;" therefore, the US had a vested interest in moderating the way they behaved.
Using its leverage over Pinochet to curtail Chilean human rights abuses, the US simultaneously pressured Chile to introduce a series of free market economic reforms, a process that escalated sharply in the eighties. This led to a period of rapid economic expansion and development without precedent in Latin America, in which growth averaged 7% annually, that came to be known as the "''miracle of Chile''" (it also included the region's greatest reductions in infant mortality<ref>Nick Eberstadt, The Poverty of Communism (Transaction Publishers, 1990), pp188,
196-206, 240-6, in which he discusses living standards in Communist Cuba versus Pinochet's Chile.</ref>). In turn, this allowed Chile to make a long-term transition to sustainable democratic rule that would likely have been otherwise inconceivable.<ref>http://www.lyd.com/noticias/violencia/what_really.html</ref>
===Iraq 1973-5===
===Iraq 1973-5===