There must be some cosmic karma thing going in that Pinochet and Jean Kirkpatrick died on the same day. Pinochet is emblematic of Kirkpatrick’s notion that certain double standards in our dealings with pro-western dictators were morally justified in furtherance of US foreign policy. Pinochet did a great deal to bring progress to Chile, chiefly by defeating the Soviet-supported Allende regime and also by instituting forward-thinking economic reforms. At the same time, he did so through extra-legal means and, in some cases, through torture and political repression.
There is a paradox to Pinochet, though. If Allende were in power, Chile likely would remain impoverished and disordered. Pinochet’s free market economic reforms paved the way for Chile’s economic growth and the rise of a middle class. And that middle class ultimately rejected Latin America’s perennial political model. That middle class, though fearful of communism, also opposed his restrictions on civil society. In 1989, that middle class (with the help of US pressure) was able to demand and reestablish a liberal democratic regime in Chile. Pinochet, unusually for Latin American strong men acquiesced. Without unpopular free market reforms, none of these things likely would have happened.
Jean Kirkpatrick’s groundbreaking essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards” reminded Americans that in a situation like the Cold War, we must sometimes do business with unsavory regimes that we would not choose to live under ourselves. Why? Because the alternative would be worse for the people of these countries and, just as important, ourselves.
Certainly the scale of Pincohet’s abuses were far less than those of the Soviet Union, Castro, and even his right-wing analogues in Paraguay, Argentina, and Guatemala. But their were abuses nonetheless, not least in his restraints on the center-right Christian Democrats. In his institution of economic reforms, he followed a familiar tradition of Latin America, the reform-minded caudillo, but his reforms were unusual in that they involved the renunciation of control of a particular sphere of society by the government. More important, they actually worked!
Pincohet’s efforts created the means for Chile’s present-day success, both economically and politically. Far from being a case of “freedom on the march” through democratic elections, his was the triumph of private property, religious freedom, and the forces of order against political radicalism. The price the Chileans paid–at least for a time–was the right to participate in their political life. But can any action necessary to avoid a great evil be called wrong without qualification?
Consider, by way of comparison, the utter chaos and ongoing evil of Iraq. They are a direct consequence of crowning our efforts there with the mistaken belief that free societies must always be democratic, and that a democratic imprimatur washes away other evils, such as corruption and disorder. Sometimes a vigorous, energetic, and more authoritarian regime is necessary to reform a fractured society. And whether reformist or otherwise, sometimes we as a nation must deal with such men, particularly when the alternatives are similarly violent, who also mean our nation harm.
Subscribe To This Feed
The most succinct comment on “Dictatorships and Double Standards” comes from Francis Wheen in his book “Idiot-Proof” (pg.12): “Kirkpatrick shamelessly applied double standards of her own. Whereas right-wing tyrannies might take ‘decades, if not centuries’ to mature into democracies, she said, there was no example ever of a left-wing dictatorship making such a transformation. Hardly surprising, given that the world’s first Marxist state was only sixty-three years old at the time; had she waited a decade or so, examples galore would have refuted the argument.”
As for Chile, there was no good reason to stage the coup in the manner Pinochet did: he could have just locked up suspected Communists instead of torturing and disappearing them. And he could have established a temporary parliament composed of the existing Chamber of Deputies minus the hardcore Allende supporters, thereby continuing some semblance of military obedience to civilian authority. Instead he established a bloody junta.
And in retrospect, it’s not even clear the coup was necessary at all. Even without the coup Chile would somehow have muddled through the crisis.
As a final note, it’s not even clear that Pinochet was a true free marketeer or something closer to a crony capitalist. Spirited debate on that subject in the comments here: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/117172.html
Chris, you’re absolutely right.
Mr. Caress, “coulda shoulda blah blah blah.” Pinochet saved his nation from the fate of gulags. He was a hero for doing so. Might there have been other alternatives? There might. History always presents counter-factuals. Kissinger clearly believed that an election would follow in ’74 and that Allende would have lost that election. But what record is there of Stalinists willingly ceding power to those who beat them in elections? Are you really so sure that Pinochet, the man on the ground who saw what Allende was actually doing, was wrong in concluding that there was no chance that would happen?
As to your concerns with double-standards, given that another 20 years have passed since Pinochet stepped down, it looks pretty safe to say that it’s no longer a double-standard to compare his record to, say, Castro’s. His junta lasted 15 years. Castro’s regime is going on 50. His junta stepped down willingly. Castro’s regime has stated its intent to continue its bloody reign after the death of the founder. His junta left behind a prosperous free nation. Aren’t people still going blind from malnutrition in Cuba? 2700-ish of his total body count of 3100-ish came in the first week of (effectively) a civil war; only 400 died or disappeared over the next 15 years. How many did Castro kill (at home and abroad in his foreign adventures / sponsored civil wars across Latin America and Africa)?
By any sensible metric, Pinochet should be remembered as the lesser evil.
Where do these torture-and-murder apologists come from? Are they human? How did they get through the public school system? How do they avoid being murdered by anyone who realizes what a threat to the rest of humanity their continued existence is?
Well, thank the heavens for the blinding intellects of people like Anatole, who can safely advocate the death of people who disagree with their preconceived political notions.
Pinochet was no “hero,” but Dan is right that history will, as it should, remember him as the lesser evil when compared with Castro, the Argentinian colonels, the Sandinistas, and others of that ilk.
I like to live on the edge, anatole.
“Threat to the rest of humanity.” Wow! I’m honored.