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There was no need for paranoia by the CIA, because Allende's foreign policy and domestic policy already publicly announced socialism and supporting policies of land confiscations and redistribution of anything over 80 hectares and similar initiatives, and he came to power in a a election on making a hard shift toward socialism and affinity toward Cuba and the USSR, not hiding it all.
The reason the CIA got involved in overthrowing Allende had nothing to do with falsely making Allende out to be an extreme socialist leader of a potentially new wave of anti-US governments in Latin America. Allende was openly exactly that kind of leader and had openly campaigned on that platform, similar to the leaders of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia today. That's why such evidence does not support an argument that US intelligence agencies do not know how to do effective counterintelligence work.
Similarly with Trump today, he actively campaigned and won an election where he argued for supporting Russia in Ukraine and Syria instead of opposing, and his affinity with Russia has been public knowledge. The only additional information intelligence agencies have brought to bear is that Russia has expended effort to influence the election, on his behalf.
Whether Trump knew this and coordinated with Russia on this or not is immaterial, as is whether Russia could extort him to control like a low-level agent or not. What we do know from all that has been publicly acknowledged so far is that the Russians helped put Trump in the White House, so that must serve their interests.
This means, getting back to the argument of Luis's post, that we cannot use historical interpretations of national interests to explain what the US is doing anymore. We must include Russian interests in that analysis, and while supporting the EU and its development has always been an explicit part of US foreign, economic, and security policy since WWII, the fact that it has always been contrary to Russian interests have much more to do with the US putting anti-EU diplomat as its envoy, not historical US interests.
The reason the CIA got involved in overthrowing Allende had nothing to do with falsely making Allende out to be an extreme socialist leader
Similarly with Trump today, the allegations are not that he has a sensible Russia policy (which he pretended to have, although of course that evaporated as soon as he left the campaign trail). The allegations are that he is a Russian agent, and that the Russian state is actively colluding with him to illegitimately intervene in US elections.
What we do know from all that has been publicly acknowledged so far is that the Russians helped put Trump in the White House,
Trump, of course, is no Allende, so it's not laughably idiotic the way the smears against Allende were. But US intelligence has enough of a history of smearing Russia that merely passing the giggle test just isn't enough. Boy who cries wolf and all that.
This means, getting back to the argument of Luis's post, that we cannot use historical interpretations of national interests to explain what the US is doing anymore. We must include Russian interests in that analysis,
Or maybe the mirrorshade brigade is as full of shit as they usually are, and using the excuse of state secrets to avoid having to cop to not having done their homework. As usually turns out to be the case on those occasions where the public gets to read long courtesy of a subpoena or a whistleblower.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
Russia sponsors some English-language outlets for dissidents, most of whom are pretty crackpot. When the US does that to other people, it's called promoting democracy and a pluralist media landscape (and lord knows the US could use both, though I'm not convinced that the Kremlin is the best place to go learn about them). Everything beyond that is conjecture and claims of the same apparent veracity as the blood libels against Allende.
Yes. That is the whole point. When the US does, in fact, fund democracy activities that benefit selected sides in political contests like elections, we know whose interests can no longer be separated from the interests of the United States. It does not matter at all whether such activities were even helpful or competent in any way. Just the fact that US made a serious effort to help one side in an election is enough to prove the connected interests of the beneficiary of US help and the US cannot be ignored.
For that reason alone, even if Russian help for Trump was ultimately amateurish, just the fact that they they sided with Trump and actively intervened in the election on his behalf, and whose isolationist policy changes across the board help Russia first and foremost, are enough evidence to conclude that Russian and US interests cannot be easily separated as long as Trump is president.
Or just generally destabilize the US, on the theory that anything that falls out of the chaos is going to be preferable to the previous trajectory. That's usually a stupid theory, but spies seem to like it. It's certainly one that the US mirrorshade brigade has subscribed to often enough.
I can't parse this. You say it doesn't matter if the US president's policies are in the interest of another country ( and every change in policy creates winners and losers so that is true of all presidents all the time ) or if the president is outright remote controlled by another government. Is that your position? So what about Reagan who won the presidency partly because Iran delayed the resolution of the hostage crisis? Does the same apply here? Can US behavior no longer be understood without including Iranian interests? What about Nixon and South Vietnam?
As best as I can tell, Allende never intended and was never in the position to usurp constitutional power by force and maintain his grip on power for life - though that was how he was portrayed and perceived by most US citizens. Chile had the oldest functioning representative democracy in South America and Allende won his election by getting the most votes. Chile's military, on the other hand, held attitudes that would have been quite appropriate in Franco's Spain. More than anything, Allende was naive, and that is what led to his death and the death of much of Chile's intellectual elite, of whom my friends had been two. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
The subsequent, 21st century success in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela of equally radical, socialist policy objectives to confiscate property, eliminate freedom of the press, and through constitutional changes cement institutions systems in place through which which ruling socialist parties retain extreme advantages in winning re-elections through control of courts, legislatures, election commissions, and even the media, were also all publicly part of Allende's vision for Chile decades earlier.
The fact that such policy objectives through non-violent, majoritarian politics were all eventually successfully implemented in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador a few decades later, explicitly following Allende's model and learning from his mistakes, shows that the threat perceived by people of moderate or higher wealth in Chile at the time was perfectly rational.
Without excusing the horrendous, criminal mistake that Pinochet turned out to be, if you were at least moderately wealthy at the time in Chile, you had a very good reason to be asking the US Embassy for help in getting rid of the mobs of goons with the power of the state who were taking away your life's savings and work, as happened to many people in Chile after Allende was elected.
Likewise, for those of us who have farms of that size in Ecuador, Bolivia, or Venezuela today, it makes perfect sense, moral or not, to want overthrow the "21st Century Socialism" governments by any means necessary as our property gets confiscated and our advocates are jailed for speaking out against government corruption and things like that. Or, for those of us living in the US today, we have an equally rational reason, regardless of morality or legitimacy, to want to overthrow Trump's fascist administration before anything worse happens. Many people in Chile felt the same back then about Allende, and with perfectly good reason.
Land reform is popular in Latin America because it is practical for the people. 80 hectares is not a tiny farm. It is about 200 acres. The problem is that a lot of people, freshly given such a plot of land, would not immediately be able to make productive use of it. That would cause a drop in agricultural productivity in the country which would hurt everyone. And there will always be economies of scale for some types of agricultural endeavors.
The problem with a gradual approach is that it would likely be overturned before it bore fruit by the large land owners who would naturally be opposed. That is a recipe for bloodshed. It would seem that an alternative should be found - one superior to a repeat of the events of '72 except with a different set of victims.
It is quite reasonable to consider land as something that is a public common good and that the right to exclusive use should be a privilege obtained at a cost. That cost, in the form of a tax, could finance a gradual approach that included education and training before being able to undertake running your own farm, which, after all, would then also be paying the same tax, perhaps phased in over five or ten years. And, with good education, many more opportunities should open for young adults in non-agricultural occupations. But such a probaram would also be opposed by the beneficiaries of the existing system.
The great sin in Chile was the slaughter of such a large portion of the intelligentsia of the country in the stadium. The chief US interest served by that action was the protection of profit flows to US corporations and to a tiny number of very wealthy individuals who profited from the existing situation. Those mid-sized land owners should be preserved and/or indemnified.
The types of regimes Allende had and that Equator, Bolivia and Venezuela have do not pose a threat to any US interest other than the economic interests of a few wealthy individuals and the maintenance of the appearance that There Is No Alternative to the current world order. That might be more justifiable were the existing world order functioning a bit more effectively and better serving the interests of all, not just those who can afford to gather in Davos or attend a Bilderberg event. But it manifestly is not. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
In the 1970's the US was weaker politically, in still in a real contest for power over the world it conquered in WWII, due to certain rebellious Communist powers armed with nuclear weapons. A wave of anti-US, democratically elected governments throughout Latin America of the kind that occurred in the mid-2000's would have been very precarious for a US that was still struggling for supremacy with the USSR at the peak of its power.
By 2005, the US was supreme again in the world by any objective measure, with its own military expenditures being more at the time then those of the entire rest of the world combined, while still being a very low percentage of total US GDP historically and compared to other countries. There was no threat from communism, so if some Latin American countries wanted to experiment with it on their own, so be it, was the US foreign policy at the time. President Obama would subsequently make statements to that effect when criticized why he wasn't more harsh with people like Hugo Chavez. But this was not the world in 1970 for a US seeing communism on a winning streak everywhere.
eliminate freedom of the press.
Because of course having five families own all the local language TV stations and newspapers is the very definition of a free press...
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