Any dictatorship you can think of is always accompanied with visions or murder, huge militaries, and fear. Pinochet’s dictatorship was no exception to that rule. Yet, the entire premise of the dictatorship goes against the word of God in the old testament. Throughout the old testament the Israelites asked God for a king and time and time again God told them that it was a bad idea and that He is their king. Yet, the Israelites did not listen and ended up with a string of Kings. While some were good, many were bad and condemned the people of Israel. In the same way the idea of a single ruler represents that same dilemma. People are corrupt and idolize power and money. In the same way so do all the dictators known to man.

That is not saying that democracy is perfect, but in democracy people are able to worship God or whatever they believe in as they see fit. Additionally, power is not centralized in one person minimizing corruption. All of God’s people are represented. They are able to exercise their human rights. Most importantly it is a governmental system created out of respect for thy neighbor and the ability to recognize every man and woman under God. No system is perfect except for when we recognize God as our king and abide by His rules, but that is not something we are privy to as a governmental system. Instead we must settle with a system that derives it rights and beliefs in the Bible and other enlightened ways of thinking. The founding fathers were protestant men and created a system in which those beliefs shone through.

One of Reagan’s biggest mistakes during the Cold War and in relation specifically to Pinochet’s regime in Chile was turning a blind eye to the violence and abuses made by the junta. Just as you can be punished for being an accessory to murder here, the US was an accessory to mass murder globally. They funded Pinochet’s regime for some time, trained his soldiers, and turned a blind eye to the murder and human rights abuses all in the name of anticommunist action. As long as Pinochet vowed to take out the communists then Reagan wouldn’t move against him. All matters of policy were wishy washy and what US policy makers called quiet diplomacy was in reality the failure to take action against the obvious wrongs that are supposed to be at the heart of our own constitution. When I think of the foreign policy towards Chile for so many years I think of Pontius Pilate washing his hands of the murder of Jesus. Even though he knew it was wrong, he didn’t care as long as he maintained his power. As Christians it is our job to not only abstain from human rights violations, but to act against them when possible. Even the Pope acknowledged the problem in Chile and mitigated to fix it. The US just practiced “soft diplomacy” which meant that they would dangle economic sanctions but not actually do anything. In the end the plebiscite gave the US a way to come out as good guys who finally stopped Pinochet.

This paragraph speaks on how Chile took away human rights of the people including press and political activity. Additionally how the US encouraged this behavior as long as it was in the name of anticommunist action. Initially Pinochet and the junta were supposed to squash communist activity in Chile and then swiftly return to democracy. Obviously that is not how it went down. During this time in order to prevent the spread of communist propaganda, Pinochet shut down all open media and political opposition including the democrats pushing for democracy and civilian rule. Pinochet became corrupt with power. As the church was one of the major political activist for democracy in Chile, it was suppressed too. That is why the Pope intervened. Now obviously the Bible speaks less directly on freedom of speech and press but the implications are there. The pharisees tried to hush Jesus and shut down His teachings but he persevered. With that the entire idea that people were not allowed to openly speak about politics, even if they were questionable, goes against what Jesus practiced.

I think it is important to note that the US was also guilty of this and promoted it not only in Chile but in countries all across Latin America as well. In the US came the red scare and the communist witch hunt. The CIA searched, interrogated, and imprisoned communists in the US during this time. The CIA also trained other military dictatorships in the wave the consumed Latin America. The amount of torture, murder, and other human rights abuses amounted to hundreds and hundreds of thousands across the continent. While the policy on this has changed greatly as can be seen by socialist campaigns allowed openly by people like Bernie, this measure has been turned to counter-terrorism action both domestic and foreign. According to the Geneva convention, there are tactics like waterboarding and such no longer allowed, but other methods are used. While we have come a long way since the Cold War, caution is still advised in the methods we use to prevent terrorism or communism.

Pinochet’s regime was famous for one major thing, the torture, murder, and disappearing of people. If anyone thought the communist hunt performed in the US was scary, the communist hunt in Chile was way worse. Not only were thousands of people “interrogated” but they were killed and either dumped into the oceans or buried in mass graves under buildings. Bodies to this day are still being discovered in construction sites all of Chile. The worst part is, many of these people were not communist but people who opposed Pinochet’s brutal regime. So many people were scared for their lives. You could be walking down the street, a van would pull up beside you, grab you, and take you off to be interrogated and tortured. Now, murder and torture are obvious moral/ethical issues in the Bible. On of God’s first commandments stated “thou shall not kill.” Additionally it was accepted this meant do not torture people either. Let us also look at the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Bottom line is killing people and torturing people is bad. in John Locke’s Second Treatise he states, “because we are all equal and independent, no-one ought to harm anyone else in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Here he is speaking on human rights. Additionally, the UN Declaration of Human Rights article three states, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Here I would like to emphasize the word life. People have the right to life. This especially means the government cannot decide to torture and kill you because you oppose them. That is not how human rights works.

Now I do not think I have to argue more as to why murder is bad but I would like to discuss the governments role in murder. If a country is at war with another country and defending themselves or another country, I personally believe that the military killing of others is justified. Now the US is known to be the police of the globe as we are the supreme power in a unipolar international system. That means that whenever anything seems to go wrong, we are there to support the victims as long as they support democracy. Additionally, we hold the majority of nuclear weapons in the world and have the ability to destroy just about every other country’s nuclear weapons before they could push the red button. With all of that said, sometimes the US over-interferes in the affairs of others militarily. US foreign policy is a tricky thing when it comes to military killing but it is something we must be careful about. One wrong move and we become the international bad guys with the biggest guns.

Chapter six is called “Toward Endgame”. This chapter begins by explaining the concern that there was no good alternative for government. First they worked with the United Nations General Assembly to draft a human rights resolution. Their next step was to work on ways to make sure the upcoming plebiscite would be as fair as possible and that Pinochet would not be able to fix the vote. Additionally, the US devised a plan to postpone loans for Chile in order to send a message that they were firmly against Pinochet at this point. With a conditioned postponement, they would be able to leverage Chile and keep the White House and Congress united in the stance against Pinochet. Secretary Schultz convinced Reagan to issue a joint statement on democracy in Chile and how it the human rights situation will be monitored up to the vote to ensure legitimacy. The US also moved to suspend Chile’s trade benefits costing Pinochet several million dollars and affirming Washington’s stance. Even so, the State Department was working on a way to interact with the plebiscite more directly to ensure fair vote. The US also approved a 1 million dollar grant to the National Endowment for Democracy to ensure watchers at the polls, registration drives, public opinion polling, and other measures to ensure fair participation to all. The US urged the opposition to present a credible replacement for the military rule in the event of democratic victory. Meanwhile in Chile, sixteen opposition parties joined together to form the National Command of the No which urged people to vote no against the continuation of the junta. The US directly threatened Pinochet that if they tainted the vote in any way the US would go public and blow the whistle. The results of the plebiscite showed that Pinochet lost by 56 percent. Yet, this plebiscite only meant that there would be a presidential election. The threat of Pinochet’s reelection remained and Chile was not out of the woods yet. Chapter 7 named “Return to the Fold” begins with the new presidency of George W Bush beginning in 1989. With this came the end of the Cold War and the threat of communism. Even so the situation with Chile was still fragile. Pinochet was reluctant to relinquish power and in retaliation to the US policy towards Chile, two crates of grapes imported to the US were laced with cyanide. After this incident the US spent many resources monitoring the Chile situation to ensure a presidential and congressional election would take place fairly in December of 1989. Additionally, the search for presidential candidates that would keep the junta’s open economy system was underway. Finally, Patricio Aylwin was presented and approved by Washington. The day of election came and Aylwin won over Pinochet’s candidate Buchi. Aylwin urged Pinochet not to interfere, but Pinochet did and refused to give up his post as army commander. While the transition was a little rocky at first, democracy had returned to Chile. In conclusion, Reagan was mostly into anticommunist action. It was not him personally but his cabinet that worked against Pinochet and his human rights violations. At the end of the day, Pinochet’s own constitution defeated him and the US made sure that the plebiscite and presidential election was fair. It also made sure that the new democracy didn’t fall into the hands of communism and maintained an open economy.

Chapter 4 is titled “Changing Tack” and focuses on new policy. The policy had shifted to a more active role to get the ruling generals to improve the human rights situation and accelerate the transition to democracy. Despite the national accord, Pinochet refused to make any steps forward. The biggest problem with pushing Chile was that despite earlier hopes, there was no real replacement for Pinochet and the future after the regime was unclear. The biggest goal was to keep the leftist out of power and Chile out of the communists’ hands. Because of this, many issues were not raised to Reagan and he was not forced to make decisions giving clear policy guidance. The rise of the Civic Assembly in Chile which was a formation of over two hundred social organizations that opposed the junta posed the biggest threat to Pinochet. He responded by dispatching the police and the army on a hunt for political agitators. With nobody prepared to replace Pinochet, the US had to settle on removing him from his support to make him cooperate with human rights requests and bring democracy center while weakening and dividing the communists. They planned to threaten Pinochet through economic sanctions and voting against loans. Things began to unravel for Pinochet as there were army officials questioning his leadership in the midst of the political turmoil. The military agreed that in order to back transition they would need their rights protected and the communists held at bay. Yet, they too would hold back support until someone was found to replace Pinochet. The US pushed the democratic opposition to cut ties with the communist left. This gave US officials hope of a democratic candidate for the future. Chapter 5 is titled, “Abandoning Pinochet” and speaks on the move away from Pinochet support. While many still questioned Pinochet politically, he was in a wave of power entering 1987. Due to this he made “concessions” regarding curfews and the legalization of non-Marxist parties. Senator Kennedy and other officials stated publicly that US policy on Chile had gone soft. Many congress and State members stated that they would not approve aid or their new policy until it was certified that there were improvements in human and labor rights. With no changes being made, Pope John Paul II took a trip to Chile to meet with Pinochet in hopes to spur transition. After the Pope’s visit came preparing for the plebiscite which Chileans hope would end Pinochet’s rule. The US held meetings with democratic opposition in an attempt to help them gain popular support in Chile. During this time, the US also kept ties with Chile military to promote transition support. The biggest goal the US had was to legitimize the plebiscite and prevent fraud on Pinochet’s part. All that being said US officials were still quarreling between themselves as they did not want to support Pinochet, but could not move away from anti-communist actions.

The second chapter of the book is called “Turning the Tide” and pertains to creating a timetable for transitioning Chile back to democracy. The chapter begins with the struggles of convincing Pinochet to commit to democracy. The trick was to use language that would appeal to Pinochet to respond. Many US agencies were at conflict because while Chile had a horrific human rights violations record, they were still the main anticommunist proponents in the south and the Security council wanted to maintain relationships. During this time Pinochet was reacting to US efforts and expanded an anti-terrorism law. The problem the US found was trying to push democracy while keeping the radical leftist away. To deal with this, the US used what they call quiet diplomacy in fear that pushing the regime too hard they would isolate themselves and leave them as fair game to the left. There was a split in the regime over transitioning to democracy as Pinochet wanted to remain in power while other were looking towards a democratic future. As things began to unravel, it was obvious that Pinochet’s regime was going to have to flexible or the leftist armed protest were going to succeed. With this fear, Reagan pushed for high level diplomacy and gave warning to the regime. Additionally the church under the leadership of Cardinal Silva criticized the government over the human rights abuses. With the development of moderate democratic groups in Chile, a new attitude by Reagan that directly criticized Chile and made public that new policy would be underway. Chapter three is titled “Dead End in Chile Policy.” Despite civil unrest in the years 1983 and 1984, Pinochet was no more inclined to change his policy or reduce the number of human rights violation in compromise. One US official stated that Pinochet “simply hasn’t a democratic bone in his body.” Not much progress was made and the US abstained a second loan by Chile. The growing frustration was found with a growing opposition that the communists could control. State Department representative met with the opposition leaders in an attempt to have them accept the 1980 constitution and adhere with democratic institutions. Meetings and accords went on and a new policy was proposed. This new policy would be based on economic openness. When Pinochet tried to eradicate the constitutional plebiscite, the rest of the junta rejected this as to do so would undermine the constitution which was their source of authority. This meant that Pinochet did not have the impunity he wished and that there was a proposed plebiscite in 1988. Most importantly the junta decided that Pinochet was not to be a candidate for the plebiscite with his waning popularity.

The book I will be reviewing this spring is called “Reagan and Pinochet: The Struggle Over U.S. Policy Toward Chile” and was written by Morris Morley and Chris McGillion. Here is the link to the book on Amazon if you would like to follow along with me: https://www.amazon.com/Reagan-Pinochet-Struggle-Policy-toward/dp/1107458099. It is divided into a lengthy and important introduction and seven chapters so I will be taking this two at a time. This book begins with a twenty-five page introduction to United States policy towards the Pinochet dictatorship of Chile. It describes the events leading up to the coup starting with the legal democratic election of socialist, Salvador Allende in September of 1970. Keep in mind this was during the Cold War and the red scare and everyone was super anti-communist. Since the United States was the hegemonic super power and Nixon was a paranoid control freak he said hey lets just use the CIA to train their military so they can have a little insurgency and take over the country to kick out communism in 1973. While officially the cabinet did not plan for Pinochet to become a dictator and stay in power for that long, he did and they did nothing about it. In fact they funded his regime under the table and defended it to congress when they brought up the countless crimes against humanity committed under Pinochet. Time passes, Nixon gets in trouble, and President Gerald Ford takes office in 1974. One of the first things to come across his desk is the threat by congress to control the junta and make them stop killing people. To be honest Ford was kind of a puppet and his main man Kissinger rejected that, “human rights per se outweighed other US interests and objectives in Chile,” (6). Honestly their only objective was to stop the spread of communism I am pretty sure that torturing and murdering a bunch of people probably is not the best idea, but hey it made them fear a strong state. Time moves on, Ford does nothing, and Jimmy Carter takes office in 1977. Now Carter has a little more of a conscious attacked Chile with sanctions, pulling back funding, and publicly critiquing their human rights violations. Finally we get to the main player of the book, President Ronald Reagan who began his presidency in 1981. This brings us to chapter 1: In from the Cold. This chapter describes the first actions of Reagan’s foreign policy with Chile. His mission when he first entered office was to return things back to a super anticommunist policy and patch up relations with Pinochet. It then goes on to describe the economic crisis of 1982 and the help enlisted by economics from the Chicago school. While the administration continued to ignore the human rights violations, things began to shift in Washington. They refused to continue to help solve Chile’s economic problems until it took their concerns on human rights seriously. While the book spells all of this out in much deeper detail, it is a lot of information to summarize. Just know that the main point was that while his presidency started with extreme support of the junta it turned into one that held human rights concerns higher than anticommunist concerns.