Overthrowing Governments

This chapter details how the first crisis for the Nixon administration came with the news that leftist Salvador Allende had captured a plurality of the vote in the September 1970 presidential election. It reviews the U.S. role in destabilizing the Allende government. The historical literature tends to give scant attention to the United States and Chile after September 11, 1973. To recount the complete story about the U.S. role in Chile demands investigating not only the war against Allende but also the myriad of ways that the Nixon and Ford administrations and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger bolstered the Pinochet dictatorship. The chapter also analyzes Kissinger's lead role in encouraging the overthrow of President Juan José Torres (1970–1971), the socialist political and military leader of Bolivia.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of U.S. policies toward Latin America during Henry Kissinger's career as national security adviser and secretary of state. Henri Kissinger directed inter-American relations between 1969 and 1977. Like his predecessors, Kissinger judged relations with Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and China as strategically more important than relations with Latin America. But Kissinger launched noteworthy initiatives, such as the attempt to normalize relations with Cuba and to transfer the canal to Panama. The Kissinger years were also historically significant for Latin Americans. The 1970s represented the most violent period in the history of post-independence (1825) South America. This book provides a comprehensive investigation of the foreign policies of the Nixon and Ford administrations toward Latin America and Kissinger's central role in formulating and implementing those policies.

Mass Murder and International Assassination

This chapter examines the grotesque policies of the military commanders of Argentina and Chile. Argentina emulated its South American neighbors when the military seized power in March of 1976. Argentina's military rulers thought it would be in the nation's best interest to eliminate 50,000 Argentines. Secretary Henry Kissinger was made aware of the Argentine military's campaign of mass murder by U.S. officials in Washington and Buenos Aires. His aides further warned him that Argentina's murderers and torturers targeted Argentina's Jewish population. The chapter then looks at Secretary Kissinger's response to Operation Condor, a conspiracy of South American military dictatorships that perpetrated international assassinations and terrorism.

Failed Initiatives

This chapter assesses Henry Kissinger's two notable failures in his approach to Latin America. He failed to deliver on his promise of a new multilateral relationship with Latin America. Kissinger proved amenable to discussing reforms to the international economic order but abruptly concluded that such hemispheric discussions shifted the balance of power against the United States. He also worked on a plan to break out of the diplomatic stalemate with Fidel Castro's Cuba. He reasoned that if the United States could open a relationship with the People's Republic of China, it could also do so with communist Cuba. Kissinger believed, however, that Cuba had to accept a subordinate position in the global order. Fidel Castro declined to become subservient to the United States.

Kissinger and Friends

This chapter discusses Henry Kissinger's relationship with military dictatorships, analyzing U.S. policies toward Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay. What is evident is that the secretary of state was comfortable and loquacious in the presence of men who authorized mass murder, torture, and terrorism. His most revealing memorandums of conversations on political philosophy are with military dictators and their minions. The mayhem created by these military ideologues forced Kissinger to confront the issues of human rights and international terrorism. Kissinger's intellectual defense of military extremism, his reluctant embrace of human rights matters, and his policies toward the military dictatorships revealed fundamental tenets about his character and his concept of international relations.