Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mises]

[catman]

What does the current coup have to do with US policy in Latin America during the Cold War?

[Gopher]

Do you propose that the Truman through H.W. Bush administrations promoted the same, unchanging policy in Latin America from 1945 to 1990? If not, why no attention to nuance and individual administrations in your question?

Second, I shall play ball: enlighten me, Catman. What does this policy or these policies, whatever they may have been, have to do with actual ground conditions and historical developments in Latin America during the Cold War?

And before we begin, please disclose the last three to five books or articles treating United States-Latin American relations and/or Latin American history you have read -- and when. I trust you have acquired actual information and analysis on this somewhere and are not simply poised to defend the far left's antiAmerican master-narrative to the death here backed by little or no substantial historical knowledge...

[catman]

Are you disappointed no one here blamed the coup on the US?

[Gopher]

My point is not getting through. Let me try another course.

During J. McCarthy's investigations and hearings in the 1950s, the senator attacked a foreign service officer named John Service. Service had served in the so-called Dixie Mission to China during the war, and had liaised with and reported on Mao and his forces' politics and progress not only against the Japanese but also in the ongoing Chinese civil war.

Do you find it fair that McCarthy and his right-wing, anticommunist allies would, rather than looking at Mao and his allies and their politics on the ground in China, prefer to fault and excoriate Service and the other alleged traitorous Communist sympathizers in the Department of State and the Truman administration generally for the Chinese Revolution? Or would you find it more likely that we ought to look at Mao and Chiang Kai-shek and their politics and faults and shortcomings for our primary explanation?

Or how about faulting the Carter administration for the Iranian Revolution, for that matter?

Blaming any and all American govts, our so-called fascist imperialists in this case, for the coups that have rocked Latin America, from its independence era to the present, makes about as much sense as blaming the allegedly pro-Communist Truman administration for the Chinese revolution, then.

And this present example, the Honduran case, helps better illustrate this.

For if your interpretation and worldview are correct, then how could coups possibly occur in Latin America and the Caribbean not only without American involvement but outside of the Cold War as well?

Partisans in American politics use these events as pretexts to attack and denounce the other side. And so many historians and countless students of theirs eat it all up at face-value...

[bacasper]

[Gopher]

11 September 1973?

You and your allies usually allege "American complicity" or "involvement." An accomplice is the one who drove the car while the others held up the bank, shot the bank's employees, etc.

When you discuss the Chilean coup, however, you do not discuss the American govt, "Kissinger and pals," as you call them here, as if you were discussing the ones who merely drove the car.

I wish you would at least be honest with yourself about what it is that you wish to allege.

Then, of course, I can start calling you out on the evidence...which I doubt you ever read at all.

The National Security Archive? You must be referring to Peter Kornbluh. What about what his critics say about his allegations, Bacasper? Have you read that? Do you even know who his critics are and what they have said in response to his allegations? Why would you simply read the far leftist and stop at that if you were truly interested in apprehending this historical event, Bacasper?

Let me just ask you right now, too, to please identify the last three to five books or articles you have read on United States-Latin American relations or Latin American or Chilean history, and when did you read them. Do you know who J. Toribio Merino is without resorting to Google? Probably not. Please tell me you can cite something that does not involve hastily Googling convenient articles...

[mises]

Every year on 9/11 I get a mass email from a former (now retired) prof who demands we reflect on the "real 9/11". I can't stand this guy but gotta be diplomatic for obvious reasons. I wouldn't mind spamming those he spammed with another perspective.

So what was the American involvement in that situation?

[Gopher]

The Kennedy and Johnson administrations attempted to transform Chile into America's model in Latin America, a reformist, democratic alternative to F. Castro's revolutionary, antiAmerican, pro-Communist model. They supported the Alessandri and Frei administrations with the Alliance for Progress and sustained covert operations in several elections, presidential and congressional. They hoped to establish a Christian Democratic dynasty there, comparable to what the Truman and Eisenhower administrations had achieved with the Italian Christian Democrats between 1948 and the mid-1950s.

This failed. S. Allende, a pro-Castro Chilean Socialist, leading a leftist coalition that included the Moscow-backed Chilean Communist Party, won the election by a plurality, with approximately 36% of the vote in September 1970.

The Nixon administration had to abandon the Kennedy and Johnson administrations' plan and embrace Plan B: block Allende's inauguration through any and all means possible. They asked E. Frei to appoint a military cabinet which would in turn hold new elections that Frei could win; they considered bribing Chilean legislators so that they might refuse to recognize Allende's election; and they attempted to stimulate a unilateral military coup as a last resort.

This, too, completely failed. As you know, Allende was inaugurated later that year. The Nixon administation therefore had to embrace Plan C: maintiain "cool and correct" relations with the Allende administration, but continue to financially support the opposition -- namely, the Nationalist Party, the Christian Democrats, El Mercurio -- in the hopes that it could make a come-back in 1976. They also aimed to bring some economic pressure to bear against Allende by pressing allies not to renegotiate Chilean debts and not to loan it additional monies. This achieved some success but the Soviets and the Cubans offset most of it with their own aid programs.

Indeed, the Soviets had agreed to sell the Chileans $100 million in military sales, which would have severed Chilean relations with the American military and created a new dependency with the Soviet military, for training as well as spare parts. This was a primary point of friction between the Allende administration and the Chilean armed forces, historically very anticommunist. Allende did not heed this.

Plan C failed and the Chilean armed forces introduced Plan D: coup, their coup, and their coup for their own reasons. This certainly did not displease the Nixon administration. Indeed, it recognized the new military govt. But it had hoped it would hold power for six months or so, then hold new elections, and that this would enable a new pro-American civilian govt to, in their view, fix Chilean affairs.

This did not happen and the Nixon adminstration in turn had to except Plan E, the final plan, because it represented the only remaining viable option in that Cold War world: accept and work with the anticommunist military regime. Fix the rest later.

In any case, this, apart from the American mission's liaising with Chilean opposition groups and the armed forces, including the coup plotters, represents the extent of American involvement. If the Americans had had such decisive influence in Chile, Mises, why would the Kennedy and Johnson adminstrations' original plan and strategy fail? And why would the Nixon adminstration have to scramble to adapt to so many new plans between 1970 and 1973? Why not just push the magic button and make every Chile do as Washington wished from the start? And why let it get into the public discourse where it worked to harm the Nixon administration? Why permit all of that clutter?

As the former Soviet ambassador to Santiago told Peter Kornbluh, in an interview I doubt our friend Bacasper has ever read, Moscow understood that the Nixon administration and CIA had a lot to do with the coup. But the Americans were not the primary reason for it...In fact, the only ones who allege this, the only ones in the world, Mises, are the American, Canadian, and Western European left.

The extend of the ignorance that exists out there with respect to United States-Latin American relations and Latin American affairs generally never ceases to astound me. I am increasingly convinced that people know nothing about these events at all -- other than what this or that hyper-leftist professor told them once-upon-a-time...

________

Also, looking for an alternative perspective? Check this out...

[bacasper]

[bacasper]

[Gopher]

For one thing, Bacasper, those telephone conversations, as well as the White House tapes, reflect a lot of arrogant, grandiose talk. "Smash Allende," "make the economy scream," "we set the limits of diversity," etc., etc., etc.

But neither Kornbluh nor you nor anyone else who cites these sensational talks has ever taken a single moment to ask if they had any impact at all in the real world on the ground in Chile.

Have you tested their assertions? Have you measured them against that which actually happened on the ground?

Do you truly believe that just because someone in Washington says it is so, then it is necessarily so in country A, B, or C?

You are not going to see that which I can show you here, Bacasper. Too deeply in bed with those the Los Angeles Times article I cited, above, refers to...

[bacasper]

[Gopher]

[bacasper]