Salvador Allende and the International Monetary Fund, 1970–1973: TheDepoliticisationandTechnocratisationof Cold War Relations

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 717-747 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAUDIA KEDAR
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Salvador Allende ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The International Monetary Fund ◽  
The Imf

AbstractThis article unveils the continuous and productive relationship that developed between Chile and the IMF during Salvador Allende's presidency (1970–73). This counter-intuitive relationship was made possible by the systematicdepoliticisationandtechnocratisationof the ties between them. By downplaying ideological discrepancies and keeping a high degree of autonomy, the IMF and Chilean technocrats blurred rigid Cold War divides and circumvented the US-imposed embargo against Allende's regime. The examination of this relationship sheds new light on Allende's positioning in the international arena and provides a unique prism to reconsider dichotomist perceptions of the Cold War in Latin America.

scholarly journals The West’s Teeth: IMF Conditionality During the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Kessel Akerman ◽  
Leonardo Weller ◽  
Joao Paulo Pessoa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Pressure ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
The International Monetary Fund ◽  
The Imf

Was the International Monetary Fund (IMF) susceptible to political pressure from the United States and its Western allies during the Cold War? To answer this question, we construct a new database containing the number of conditions applied to over 500 IMF loans since 1970 and analyze how the distance from a borrowing country to its closet communist neighbor affected the IMF conditionality. We show that the fund imposed fewer conditions on loans to countries geographically closer to the communist bloc. Results are stronger when neighboring communist countries were not part of the Warsaw Pact. This pattern persisted during the 1990s, when the fund helped former communist countries in their transition to market economies. However, we find no strong evidence of such discretionary treatment by the IMF after 2001, when thecontainment of communism had ceased to be the West’s top priority.

Economists at Armistice

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-262
Author(s):  
Alan Bollard
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
New World ◽  
Economic Task ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

1946 brought the Armistice and a new economic task: the focus of the economists had to move from the problems of wartime rationing and finance to a new world of economic reconstruction, post-war stabilization, economic growth, and debt reduction. In addition the Cold War brought a new tactic: strategic deterrence. In this year Japan commemorated the anniversary of the death of Takashi Korekiyo, H. H. Kung gathered his wealth and prepared to flee the Chinese Communist forces, Maynard Keynes helped establish the International Monetary Fund, only to die exhausted, and Hjalmar Schacht defended himself from accusations of Nazism and regained his freedom.

The High Politics of IMF Lending

1999 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Strom C. Thacker
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Alignment Position ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Political Realignment ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Alignment ◽  
The International Monetary Fund ◽  
The Imf

Analysts have long suspected that politics affects the lending patterns of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but none have adequately specified or systematically tested competing explanations. This paper develops a political explanation of IMF lending and tests it statistically on the developing countries between 1985 and 1994. It finds that political realignment toward the United States, the largest power in the IMF, increases a country's probability of receiving an IMF loan. A country's static political alignment position has no significant impact during this period, suggesting that these processes are best modeled dynamically. An analysis of two subsamples rejects the hypothesis that the IMF has become less politicized since the end of the cold war and suggests that the influence of politics has actually increased since 1990. The behavior of multilateral organizations is still driven by the political interests of their more powerful member states.

Kissinger and Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Rabe
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
Salvador Allende ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
The World ◽  
National Security Adviser ◽  
The Cold War

This book analyzes U.S. policies toward Latin America during a critical period of the Cold War. Except for the issue of Chile under Salvador Allende, historians have largely ignored inter-American relations during the presidencies of Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. This book also offers a way of adding to and challenging the prevailing historiography on one of the most preeminent policymakers in the history of U.S. foreign relations. Scholarly studies on Henry Kissinger and his policies between 1969 and 1977 have tended to survey Kissinger's approach to the world, with an emphasis on initiatives toward the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and the struggle to extricate the United States from the Vietnam conflict. This book offers something new—analyzing U.S. policies toward a distinct region of the world during Kissinger's career as national security adviser and secretary of state. The book further challenges the notion that Henry Kissinger dismissed relations with the southern neighbors. The energetic Kissinger devoted more time and effort to Latin America than any of his predecessors—or successors—who served as the national security adviser or secretary of state during the Cold War era. He waged war against Salvador Allende and successfully destabilized a government in Bolivia. He resolved nettlesome issues with Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela. He launched critical initiatives with Panama and Cuba. Kissinger also bolstered and coddled murderous military dictators who trampled on basic human rights. South American military dictators whom Kissinger favored committed international terrorism in Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

The International Monetary Fund and the Chilean Chicago Boys, 1973–7: Cold Ties between Warm Ideological Partners

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Kedar
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Member States ◽  
Augusto Pinochet ◽  
Fruitful Cooperation ◽  
The International Monetary Fund ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
The Imf

This article unveils the hitherto overlooked tensions between Chile and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the formative years of the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (from September 1973 to late 1977). This article shows that ideological affinity between the IMF and Pinochet’s economic team of ‘Chicago Boys’ did not necessarily guarantee fruitful cooperation between the parties. The analysis of this intricate relationship sheds new light on the processes of economic neoliberalization that were conducted in Latin America, with different levels of IMF involvement, between the 1970s and the 1990s. By challenging axiomatic and simplistic approaches of IMF–Latin American relations, this article provides a unique prism to reconsider not only the IMF’s motivations and constraints, but also the proactive modus operandi of its borrowing member-states.

The Politics of Adjustment: Labor and the Venezuelan Debt Crisis

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 103-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. McCoy
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
The Us ◽  
Rich Nation ◽  
The Wall Street Journal ◽  
Oil Wealth ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

In mid-1985, the US Embassy in Caracas stated that “Venezuela appears to have successfully coped with its financial crisis” (US Embassy, 1985). In January 1986, the Wall Street Journal announced thatVenezuela will become the first country in Latin America to sign a debt-refinancing agreement without mediation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Its success stands in stark contrast to the situation in another oil-rich nation, Mexico, where the ruling political party has seemed more interested in using the oil wealth to perpetuate the party's power than to secure the country's independence from the IMF (WSJ, 1986).

Der Aufschwung des Katastrophen-Kapitalismus

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (143) ◽  
pp. 177-183
Author(s):  
Naomi Klein
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disaster ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

Fitting to its doctrine of preventiv war, the Bush Administration founded a bureau of reconstruction, designing reconstruction plans for countries which are still not destroyed. Reconstruction after war or after a “natural disaster” developed to a profitable branch of capitalist investment. Also the possibilities to change basic political and economic structures are high and they are widely used by the US-government and institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

The Unassailable Self: Freud's Image Among Post-war American Intellectuals

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
External Force ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Being ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.

Reluctant Cold Warriors

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Kontorovich
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Accurate Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The academic study of the Soviet economy in the US was created to help fight the Cold War, part of a broader mobilization of the social sciences for national security needs. The Soviet strategic challenge rested on the ability of its economy to produce large numbers of sophisticated weapons. The military sector was the dominant part of the economy, and the most successful one. However, a comprehensive survey of scholarship on the Soviet economy from 1948-1991 shows that it paid little attention to the military sector, compared to other less important parts of the economy. Soviet secrecy does not explain this pattern of neglect. Western scholars developed strained civilian interpretations for several aspects of the economy which the Soviets themselves acknowledged to have military significance. A close reading of the economic literature, combined with insights from other disciplines, suggest three complementary explanations for civilianization of the Soviet economy. Soviet studies was a peripheral field in economics, and its practitioners sought recognition by pursuing the agenda of the mainstream discipline, however ill-fitting their subject. The Soviet economy was supposed to be about socialism, and the military sector appeared to be unrelated to that. By stressing the militarization, one risked being viewed as a Cold War monger. The conflict identified in this book between the incentives of academia and the demands of policy makers (to say nothing of accurate analysis) has broad relevance for national security uses of social science.

Peaceful Change in Northeast Asia: Maintaining the “Minimal Peace”

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhubhindar Singh
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
Economic Interdependence ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
The Cold War

Northeast Asia is usually associated with conflict and war. Out of the five regional order transitions from the Sinocentric order to the present post–Cold War period, only one was peaceful, the Cold War to post–Cold War transition. In fact, the peaceful transition led to a state of minimal peace in post–Cold War Northeast Asia. As the chapter discusses, this was due to three realist-liberal factors: America’s hegemonic role, strong economic interdependence, and a stable institutional structure. These factors not only ensured development and prosperity but also mitigated the negative effects of political and strategic tensions between states. However, this minimal peace is in danger of unraveling. Since 2010, the region is arguably in the early stages of another transition fueled by the worsening Sino-US competition. While the organizing ideas of liberal internationalism—economic interdependence and institutional building—will remain resilient, whether or not minimal peace is sustainable will be determined by the outcome of the US-China competition.

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