[A-List] US imperialism: Chile & the pre-emption precedent

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Kissinger: The founding father of preemption
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, February 6 2004

WASHINGTON - While critics and supporters of the Bush administration's
preemption doctrine have described it as unprecedented in United States
diplomacy, the release of a 34-year-old memo advocating "regime change" in
Chile shows that the policy has been around for quite some time.

The eight-page document by then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger to
former president Richard Nixon also suggests that Washington's
destabilization of Chilean president Salvador Allende Gossens was not
largely motivated by any direct military or subversive threat the Allende
government then posed or might pose in the future to the US.

Kissinger, who couched his arguments carefully for maximum effect,
suggests - just two days after Allende was inaugurated - that his main
concern with the new president was the fear that, were he to successfully
consolidate power, his government could serve as a "model" for left-wing
movements in other countries, including Western Europe.

"The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would
surely have an impact on - and even precedent value for - other parts of the
world, especially in Italy," the memorandum warns Nixon just hours before a
critical National Security Council meeting in which Kissinger urged his boss
to reject the modus vivendi or passive approach recommended by the State
Department. "The imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in
turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it,"
according to Kissinger, who became secretary of state two years later.

To Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on
Atrocity and Accountability, a new book on US-Chilean relations from the
1960s through the 1980s, the newly declassified document makes clear
precisely what arguments lay behind the Nixon administration's
destabilization policy.

"This document is the Rosetta Stone for deciphering the motivations of
Kissinger and Nixon in undermining Chilean democracy," Kornbluh, who
obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act, told IPS. "It
also reinforces the judgement of history on Kissinger's role as the primary
advocate of overthrowing the Allende government," added Kornbluh, who has
directed the Chile Documentation Project of the independent National
Security Archive for more than a decade.

In his memoirs, Kissinger has denied the US deliberately attempted to
destabilize Allende, consistent with his 1974 testimony before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee that it was the role of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) to try and prevent Allende from taking office after his Unidad
Popular coalition won a plurality of votes in the 1970 national elections,
and to subsequently finance efforts to destabilize his government.

Allende was eventually overthrown - and committed suicide - in a bloody
military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973,
ushering in a repressive 17-year dictatorship.

"The intent of the United States was not to destabilize or subvert Allende,"
Kissinger said at the time, "But to keep ... in being those political
parties that had traditionally contested the elections, and our concern was
with the election in 1976 and not at all with the coup in 1973, about which
we knew nothing and [with] which we had nothing to do."

Apologists for US actions in Chile have long argued Allende posed a serious
threat to the country's democratic institutions. In his book, which scholars
have widely hailed as the most authoritative on the subject, Kornbluh
concludes there is no concrete evidence of a CIA role in the coup itself,
although the accumulated evidence of a US role in preparing the ground for
an overthrow and in providing Pinochet with support after the coup is
overwhelming.

The memo, dated November 5 and classified "secret-sensitive", was apparently
written on the eve of a meeting of the National Security Council in which
Chile policy was to be decided. It is divided into parts: a lengthy
introduction that describes the "Dimensions of the Problem", a short
statement of "The Basic Issue", on whether to adopt the State Department's
recommended modus vivendi approach or a policy of hostility; and a third
section on the pros and cons of "Our Choices". In a concluding section
called "Assessments", Kissinger states his view that "the dangers of doing
nothing [to prevent Allende from consolidating his position] are greater
than the risks we run in trying to do something".

In the "Dimensions" section, Kissinger, who had "reassuringly" told Chilean
foreign minister Gabriel Valdes in 1969 that Washington regarded Chile as a
"dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica", writes that the stakes could
not be higher. "The election of Allende as president of Chile poses for us
one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere," he began.
"Your decision as to what to do about it may be the most historic and
difficult foreign affairs decision you will have to make this year."

The ramifications, continued Kissinger, "will have an effect on what happens
in the rest of Latin America and the developing world; on what our future
position will be in the hemisphere; and on the larger world picture,
including our relations with the USSR. They will even affect our own
conception of what our role in the world is."

In addition to serving as a model, Chile would "probably become a leader of
opposition to us in the inter-American system, a source of disruption in the
rest of Latin America ... and might constitute a support base and entry
point for expansion of Soviet and Cuban presence and activity in the
region," Kissinger added.

Washington's failure to act against Allende "risks being perceived in Latin
America and in Europe as indifference or impotence", argues Kissinger. The
section describes Allende as a "tough, dedicated Marxist ... with a profound
anti-US bias", but also notes he was "elected legally" and has "legitimacy
in the eyes of Chileans and most of the world".

US analysts, according to Kissinger, agreed moreover that "Allende and the
forces that have come to power with him do have the skill, the means and the
capacity to maintain and consolidate themselves in power". Kissinger goes
out of his way to attack the State Department's recommendation for working
out a modus vivendi as too optimistic and reactive.

"There are no apparent reasons to justify a benign or optimistic view of an
Allende regime over the long term," Kissinger argues, adding in a
particularly revealing passage, "an 'independent' rational socialist state
linked to Cuba and the USSR can be even more dangerous for our long-term
interests than a radical regime".

At another point, Kissinger argues that a "Titoist government [a reference
to the staunchly neutralist Tito government in Yugoslavia] in Latin America
would be far more dangerous to us than it is in Europe, precisely because it
can move against our policies and interests more easily and ambiguously, and
because its 'model' effect can be insidious".

Arguing against the modus vivendi position, Kissinger argues for a policy of
covert hostility rather than overt hostility, suggesting the former was less
likely to fuel Chilean nationalism and Latin American and international
sympathy for Allende. The actual policies to be pursued would be no
different from an "overt hostility" strategy, he writes, but Washington
"would use them quietly and covertly; on the surface our posture would be
correct, but cold".

"I recommend, therefore, that you make a decision that we will oppose
Allende as strongly as we can and do all we can to keep him from
consolidating power, taking care to package those efforts in a style that
gives us the appearance of reacting to his moves."