H-Diplo: WaPo taken to task for editorial that was soft on Pinochet
1) From: David Noon, University of Alaska:
The Washington Post editorial about Pinochet -- approvingly cited by David Horowitz -- must rank among the more intellectually dishonest pieces to appear in that newspaper's pages in recent years. The bulk of the piece aims to argue one irrelevant point (that Castro is/was worse), one questionable assertion (that Jeane Kirkpatrick was "right" about right-wing dictators) and one enormous falsehood (that Pinochet deserves credit for Chile's economic success).
The latter claim is especially popular but easily refuted. The Chilean "free market reforms" -- administered by a regime that overthrew a democratically-elected government -- garroted that nation's economy for a decade. With the abolition of minimum wages, the evisceration of the state's pension and social welfare systems, the assaults on unions (itself a violation of human rights), and other "free market" gestures, unemployment and poverty surged in Chile; Santiago became one of the most polluted cities in the world; children died of common, preventable diseases that thrived in the deregulated rubble of the Pinochet economy. During the panic of 1983, Pinochet altered course and adopted traditional Keynesian remedies to avert a disaster of his own regime's creation. Meantime, the export economy in Chile has been driven in no small degree by mines nationalized by the Allende regime.
But let's reflect for a moment on what the Post decided to gloss over in its rush to celebrate the "free market." Under Pinochet, at least 3000 died and tens of thousands were imprisoned and subjected to state-sanctioned torture. Of the 3500 women arrested for political causes during the Pinochet years, nearly all reported being sexually assaulted. During the initial months after the 1973 coup that deposed Salvador Allende, the Chilean junta imprisoned so many civilians that stadiums, naval vessels and military camps were enlisted to aid the nation's overburdened penal institutions. New prison complexes were established in the most remote areas of the country. The Direccion Nacional de Inteligencia (DINA), Pinochet's secret police, orchestrated the repression and carried out several assassinations against former Allende officials. In one of their most notorious exploits, DINA agents working with anti-Castro exiles killed Orlando Letelier -- former Chilean ambassador to the US -- and a 25-year old American woman named Ronni Moffitt, both of whom worked at the Institute for Policy Studies. The 1976 car bombing, which took place in Washington, DC, blew Letelier's legs off and nearly decapitated Moffitt. American intelligence officials knew about the plans two months before they were executed; in the aftermath of the attack, those same officials -- most notably Kissinger's Latin American deputy Harry Schlaudeman -- studiously avoided asking the Pinochet regime the obvious questions about its involvement in the bombing.
In late 2004 a commission led by Sergio Valech, the former archbishop of Santiago, published its final report on Pinochet's reign of terror -- the third and most exhaustive of the three commission inquiries into the Pinochet legacy. The Valech Commission heard testimony from 35,000 victims of state repression from the period of 1973 to 1990; Archbishop Valech himself described the 1200-page report as "an experience without precedent in the world," one that presented Chileans with "an inescapable reality: political detention and torture constituted an institutional practice of the state." More than anything, the report undermined Augusto Pinochet's traditional defense that renegade officers -- a small handful at best -- were responsible for acts of cruelty that had been unjustly exaggerated by opponents of the regime. The Washington Post might have glanced at the report -- as well as other parts of the public historical record -- before turning its attention to Castro, Kirkpatrick, and the mystical influence of Milton Friedman on the Chilean economy.
2) From: Christopher L Ball, Iowa State University
The Washington Post's editorial writers need a better sense of history, both economic and intellectual.
The political right in the US is overly praiseworthy of Pinochet's economic legacy. He promoted some free market changes, but he left the nationalization of Chile's cooper industry in place, and only later allowed foreign firms to invest in new mines. The state copper company, CODELCO, remains the world's largest copper producer today. His development record is exaggerated, too. Chile's record of per capita GDP growth, a leading development indicator for neo-liberal economists, under the dictactorship (1974-1990) was not as good as its neighbors. Chile's real GDP per capita in constant 2000 US dollars was 1.17 higher in 1990 than in 1974 v. 1.35 for Colombia and 1.3 for Brazil. Chile's great economic advances come after authoritarian rule ended. Between 1990 and 2003, Chile's per capita GDP was 1.7 times greater versus 1.12 for Colombia and 1.05 for Brazil.[1] There is no doubt that Pinochet's regime initiated economic reforms, but the democratic regime continued and expanded them and its stewardship saw the stronger period of growth.
The political left is overly scornful of Jeane Kirpatrick's 1979 "Dictatorship and Double Standards" article, but not for the reasons the WP imagines.[2] Leaving aside the occasionally snarky but often incisive criticism of the Carter administration's foreign policy, she argued, drawing openly on Samuel Huntington, that rapid political, economic, and social modernization in the "Third World" would likely fail. She argued that "traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies, that they are more susceptible to liberalization, and that they are more compatible with U.S. interests" (p.44). Traditionalist dictators are not less repressive because they are morally superior to revolutionaries. For Kirpatrick, they repress less because maintaining a rotten status quo creates less opposition than radically re-making society. Incremental progress in contestation and participation are more likely in traditional regimes for no better reason than that no Third World revolutionary state had yet democratized. It is not for lack of imagination or a decade's foresight that she omits mention of Soviet and East European communist dictatorships in the context of comparing the prospects for change in traditional v. revolutionary regimes but rather that these European states were part of the modern, not the developing, world.
Her emphasis was on revolutionary change rather than political ideological per se. This was why the Islamicists in Iran and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were her main foci -- both movements sought "Great Revolutions" in politics, the society, and the economy, rather than mere seizure of the state. So it is incorrect to state, as the WP does, that she said "right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers" for two reasons. First, revolutionary autocrats, not just communist ones, was her focus. Second, Pinochet needed to repress severely in order to advance his political and economic agenda, despite being able to piggy-back on the more radical changes that Allende had made (copper nationalization, agrarian reform). Traditionalist dictators were not to be tolerated in hopes that they would make economic reforms or even political liberty. Indeed, rapid modernization efforts, like those the Shah undertook, might undermine their rule. They were less malign because they would not be aligned with the Soviet Union or opposed to the US. For Kirkpatrick, this was reason enough to support them and oppose revolutionary regimes.
[1]. Calculated from "Real GDP per capita (Constant Prices: Laspeyres)" variable provided by Alan Heston, Robert Summers and Bettina Aten, Penn World Table Version 6.2, Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania, September 2006. http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt62/pwt62_form.php
[2]. _Commentary_ (Nov. 1979)
Read entire article at H-Diplo via Eric Alterman's Blog, Altercation
The Washington Post editorial about Pinochet -- approvingly cited by David Horowitz -- must rank among the more intellectually dishonest pieces to appear in that newspaper's pages in recent years. The bulk of the piece aims to argue one irrelevant point (that Castro is/was worse), one questionable assertion (that Jeane Kirkpatrick was "right" about right-wing dictators) and one enormous falsehood (that Pinochet deserves credit for Chile's economic success).
The latter claim is especially popular but easily refuted. The Chilean "free market reforms" -- administered by a regime that overthrew a democratically-elected government -- garroted that nation's economy for a decade. With the abolition of minimum wages, the evisceration of the state's pension and social welfare systems, the assaults on unions (itself a violation of human rights), and other "free market" gestures, unemployment and poverty surged in Chile; Santiago became one of the most polluted cities in the world; children died of common, preventable diseases that thrived in the deregulated rubble of the Pinochet economy. During the panic of 1983, Pinochet altered course and adopted traditional Keynesian remedies to avert a disaster of his own regime's creation. Meantime, the export economy in Chile has been driven in no small degree by mines nationalized by the Allende regime.
But let's reflect for a moment on what the Post decided to gloss over in its rush to celebrate the "free market." Under Pinochet, at least 3000 died and tens of thousands were imprisoned and subjected to state-sanctioned torture. Of the 3500 women arrested for political causes during the Pinochet years, nearly all reported being sexually assaulted. During the initial months after the 1973 coup that deposed Salvador Allende, the Chilean junta imprisoned so many civilians that stadiums, naval vessels and military camps were enlisted to aid the nation's overburdened penal institutions. New prison complexes were established in the most remote areas of the country. The Direccion Nacional de Inteligencia (DINA), Pinochet's secret police, orchestrated the repression and carried out several assassinations against former Allende officials. In one of their most notorious exploits, DINA agents working with anti-Castro exiles killed Orlando Letelier -- former Chilean ambassador to the US -- and a 25-year old American woman named Ronni Moffitt, both of whom worked at the Institute for Policy Studies. The 1976 car bombing, which took place in Washington, DC, blew Letelier's legs off and nearly decapitated Moffitt. American intelligence officials knew about the plans two months before they were executed; in the aftermath of the attack, those same officials -- most notably Kissinger's Latin American deputy Harry Schlaudeman -- studiously avoided asking the Pinochet regime the obvious questions about its involvement in the bombing.
In late 2004 a commission led by Sergio Valech, the former archbishop of Santiago, published its final report on Pinochet's reign of terror -- the third and most exhaustive of the three commission inquiries into the Pinochet legacy. The Valech Commission heard testimony from 35,000 victims of state repression from the period of 1973 to 1990; Archbishop Valech himself described the 1200-page report as "an experience without precedent in the world," one that presented Chileans with "an inescapable reality: political detention and torture constituted an institutional practice of the state." More than anything, the report undermined Augusto Pinochet's traditional defense that renegade officers -- a small handful at best -- were responsible for acts of cruelty that had been unjustly exaggerated by opponents of the regime. The Washington Post might have glanced at the report -- as well as other parts of the public historical record -- before turning its attention to Castro, Kirkpatrick, and the mystical influence of Milton Friedman on the Chilean economy.
2) From: Christopher L Ball, Iowa State University
The Washington Post's editorial writers need a better sense of history, both economic and intellectual.
The political right in the US is overly praiseworthy of Pinochet's economic legacy. He promoted some free market changes, but he left the nationalization of Chile's cooper industry in place, and only later allowed foreign firms to invest in new mines. The state copper company, CODELCO, remains the world's largest copper producer today. His development record is exaggerated, too. Chile's record of per capita GDP growth, a leading development indicator for neo-liberal economists, under the dictactorship (1974-1990) was not as good as its neighbors. Chile's real GDP per capita in constant 2000 US dollars was 1.17 higher in 1990 than in 1974 v. 1.35 for Colombia and 1.3 for Brazil. Chile's great economic advances come after authoritarian rule ended. Between 1990 and 2003, Chile's per capita GDP was 1.7 times greater versus 1.12 for Colombia and 1.05 for Brazil.[1] There is no doubt that Pinochet's regime initiated economic reforms, but the democratic regime continued and expanded them and its stewardship saw the stronger period of growth.
The political left is overly scornful of Jeane Kirpatrick's 1979 "Dictatorship and Double Standards" article, but not for the reasons the WP imagines.[2] Leaving aside the occasionally snarky but often incisive criticism of the Carter administration's foreign policy, she argued, drawing openly on Samuel Huntington, that rapid political, economic, and social modernization in the "Third World" would likely fail. She argued that "traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies, that they are more susceptible to liberalization, and that they are more compatible with U.S. interests" (p.44). Traditionalist dictators are not less repressive because they are morally superior to revolutionaries. For Kirpatrick, they repress less because maintaining a rotten status quo creates less opposition than radically re-making society. Incremental progress in contestation and participation are more likely in traditional regimes for no better reason than that no Third World revolutionary state had yet democratized. It is not for lack of imagination or a decade's foresight that she omits mention of Soviet and East European communist dictatorships in the context of comparing the prospects for change in traditional v. revolutionary regimes but rather that these European states were part of the modern, not the developing, world.
Her emphasis was on revolutionary change rather than political ideological per se. This was why the Islamicists in Iran and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were her main foci -- both movements sought "Great Revolutions" in politics, the society, and the economy, rather than mere seizure of the state. So it is incorrect to state, as the WP does, that she said "right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers" for two reasons. First, revolutionary autocrats, not just communist ones, was her focus. Second, Pinochet needed to repress severely in order to advance his political and economic agenda, despite being able to piggy-back on the more radical changes that Allende had made (copper nationalization, agrarian reform). Traditionalist dictators were not to be tolerated in hopes that they would make economic reforms or even political liberty. Indeed, rapid modernization efforts, like those the Shah undertook, might undermine their rule. They were less malign because they would not be aligned with the Soviet Union or opposed to the US. For Kirkpatrick, this was reason enough to support them and oppose revolutionary regimes.
[1]. Calculated from "Real GDP per capita (Constant Prices: Laspeyres)" variable provided by Alan Heston, Robert Summers and Bettina Aten, Penn World Table Version 6.2, Center for International Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania, September 2006. http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt62/pwt62_form.php
[2]. _Commentary_ (Nov. 1979)