Overt peace, covert war?: Covert intervention and the democratic peace

Security Studies

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 266-306

  Downes, Alexander B ^a   Lilley, Mary Lauren ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77953196168     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636411003795756     Document Type: Article

References (204)

1. On these cases generally, see John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009);
2. Michael Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions: Pursuing Regime Change in the Cold War (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2008)
3. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007);
4. Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2006);
5. David F. Schmitz, The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006);
6. Sebastian Rosato, "The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory," American Political Science Review 97, no. 4 (November 2003): 590-91;
7. David F. Schmitz, Thank God They're on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999);
8. David P. Forsythe, "Democracy, War, and Covert Action," Journal of Peace Research 29, no. 4 (November 1992): 385-95. Although Eisenhower ordered Lumumba's removal, and the CIA did plot to assassinate him, Belgium and the UN played a larger role in overthrowing him. Ludo de Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba, trans. Ann Wright and Renée Fenby (London: Verso, 2001).
9. Rosato, "Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory," 590.
10. Stephen Van Evera, "The Case against Intervention," The Atlantic Monthly, July 1990, 76.
11. Patrick James and Glenn E. Mitchell II, "Targets of Covert Pressure: The Hidden Victims of the Democratic Peace," International Interactions 21, no. 1 (July 1995): 92.
12. Ibid., 91.
13. and Rosato, "Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory," 591.
14. Georg Sørensen, "Kant and Processes of Democratization: Consequences for Neorealist Thought," Journal of Peace Research 29, no. 4 (November 1992): 405.
15. Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 160.
16. David Kinsella, "No Rest for the Democratic Peace," American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (August 2005): 455.
17. For a work that mounts all three of these defenses, see Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 121-24. For others that mention at least one of them, see Forsythe, "Democracy, War, and Covert Action"
18. Kinsella, "No Rest for the Democratic Peace"
19. Michael Doyle, "Three Pillars of the Democratic Peace," American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (August 2005): 463-66;
20. Jaechun Kim, U.S. Covert Action in Indonesia in the 1960s: Assessing the Motives and Consequences, Journal of International and Area Studies 9, no. 2 (December 2002): 68;
21. Harvey Starr, "Democracy and Integration: Why Democracies Don't Fight Each Other," Journal of Peace Research 34, no. 2 (May 1997): 158.
22. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, "An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace," American Political Science Review 93, no. 4 (December 1999): 791-807;
23. Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003). The term "selectorate" refers to the part of the body politic that participates in choosing the leader.
24. Why powerful democracies like the United States or Great Britain would perceive weak democratic states as threatening is left unexplained.
25. Available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/1990 cr/s900803-ia.htm. The existing literature tends to use the term covert action; we prefer covert intervention because it specifically connotes secret interference in the affairs of another state. For convenience, we use the terms "covert action," "covert intervention," and "covert foreign regime change" interchangeably.
26. Kim, "U.S. Covert Action in Indonesia in the 1960s," 63.
27. Allan E. Goodman, ed. The Need to Know (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1992),
28. On the gamut of covert operations, see also Prados, Safe for Democracy, 19-20.
29. Forsythe, "Democracy, War, and Covert Action," 385. This is true of a growing number of American Cold War covert interventions, such as Guatemala in 1954, owing to the release of U.S. government documents.
30. We discuss these documents and where they can be found in the methodology section below. One recent book that makes extensive use of these documents is Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: New Press, 2003).
31. Howard Jones, The Bay of Pigs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 96.
32. On bombing by American pilots in Guatemala and Indonesia, see, respectively, Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, exp. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 171-209
33. John Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from World War II through the Persian Gulf (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), 140-44.
34. Kinzer, Overthrow, 148-69.
35. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 26-27.
36. Donald N. Wilber, "Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953," CIA Clandestine Service History, March 1954, available at http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB28/.
37. Richard Cottam, quoted in Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2003), 180.
38. William J. Dixon, "Democracy and the Peaceful Settlement of International Conflict," American Political Science Review 88, no. 1 (March 1994): 14-32.
39. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 33.
40. Michael W. Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 1," Philosophy and Public Affairs 12, no. 3 (Summer 1983): 230.
41. Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," International Security 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 13.
42. Doyle "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 1," 213.
43. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 31-32.
44. Kinsella, "No Rest for the Democratic Peace," 455.
45. Forsythe, "Democracy, War, and Covert Action," 393;
46. Kinsella, "No Rest for the Democratic Peace," 455;
47. Doyle, "Three Pillars of the Democratic Peace," 465.
48. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 121.
49. Doyle, "Three Pillars of the Democratic Peace," 465.
50. John M. Owen, "How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace," International Security 19, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 87-125;
51. Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).
52. Rosato, "Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory," 591.
53. Ido Oren, The Subjectivity of the 'Democratic' Peace: Changing U.S. Perceptions of Imperial Germany, International Security 20, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 147-84.
54. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 123.
55. Michael W. Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 2," Philosophy and Public Affairs 12, no. 4 (Autumn 1983): 331, 344.
56. Starr, "Democracy and Integration," 158;
57. see also Kim., "U.S. Covert Action in Indonesia in the 1960s," 68.
58. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 124. Russett refers to the Ronald Reagan administration's covert support for the contras in Nicaragua.
59. The checks and balances of democratic institutions should also restrict open attacks on fellow democracies, forcing such aggression underground. We discuss this in the next section.
60. Russett., Grasping the Democratic Peace, 38.
61. Rosato, "Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory," 587.
62. This logic is laid out most completely in Bueno de Mesquita et al., "An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace"
63. Bueno Mesquita et al., Logic of Political Survival.
64. On this argument, see also Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, chap. 2.
65. Bueno de Mesquita et al., "An Institutional Explanation for the Democratic Peace," and Logic of Political Survival. For different democratic war-fighting arguments,
66. Reiter.and Stam, Democracies at War, chap. 3;
67. David A. Lake, "Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War," American Political Science Review 86, no. 1 (March 1992): 24-37.
68. As Goodman puts it, "Because covert action is secret, deceptive, and intended as deniable, it carries an inherent risk: an administration could-without the knowledge of citizens or even Congress-bypass procedures of accountability in the conduct of foreign policies and military activities." Goodman, Need To Know, 10. This secrecy may occur quite frequently: Weiner asserts that Eisenhower ordered 170 major covert operations during his presidency, and Kennedy followed with 163 more in his three years in office. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 180.
69. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace, 124.
70. Bueno de Mesquita et al., "Institutional Explanation for the Democratic Peace," 801.
71. Some analysts contend that the avoidance of public discussion and consent characteristic of covert action is responsible for the mixed record of democratic covert interventions, in effect causing "democratic foreign policy... to converge with nondemocratic foreign policy." Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War, 162.
72. Targets of covert intervention also have major incentives to publicize failed attempts by outside powers to overthrow their regimes in the hope that exposure of the nefarious plot will force the intervener to back off.
73. Some might question whether the Bay of Pigs was a fiasco given that President Kennedy's approval ratings increased in the aftermath of the failed invasion. The president certainly viewed it as a disaster at the time. Kennedy, for example, admitted to his recently defeated rival, Richard Nixon, that the Bay of Pigs was "the worst experience of my life." He told Richard Bissell of the CIA that if the United States was a parliamentary democracy he would have had to resign, but since it was not, Bissell would have to resign. Jones H., Bay of Pigs, 131;
74. Trumbull Higgins, The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs (New York: Norton, 1987), 161. The uptick in Kennedy's approval rating, however, does contradict the selectorate model's assumption that foreign policy failures are punished by leaders' domestic audiences.
75. These revelations prompted President Kennedy to lament that Castro "doesn't need agents over here.... All he has to do is read our papers." Jones, Bay of Pigs, 43, 68.
76. The "defectors" in fact were Cuban exiles flying aircraft provided by the CIA.
77. Telegram from the Mission to the United Nations to the Department of State, 19 April 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1961-1963, vol. 10, 148. All FRUS documents cited herein are available online at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus.
78. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and George Downs, "Intervention and Democracy," International Organization 60, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 631, 632.
79. James D. Morrow, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, "Selection Institutions and War Aims," Economics of Governance 7, no. 1 (January 2006): 31-52.
80. Britain's second foray into Afghanistan in the Second Afghan War (1878-80) yielded a very similar outcome. On these two interventions, see T. A. Heathcote, The Afghan Wars, 1839-1919 (London: Osprey, 1980).
81. Bruce Farcau, The Ten Cents' War: Chile, Peru, and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific, 1879-1884 (Westport: Praeger, 2000), 168-93.
82. Bruce J. Calder, The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic During the U.S. Occupation of 1916-1924 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), 5-19.
83. U.S. Department of State Office of the Spokesman, "Chile Declassification Project: Final Release," available at http://foia.state.gov/Press/11-13-00ChilePR.asp.
84. Press Release, "Chile: 16,000 Secret U.S. Documents Declassified," National Security Archive, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20001113/.
85. Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 253. For an earlier formulation of this idea, which refers to these types of cases as "crucial cases,"
86. Harry Eckstein, "Case Study and Theory in Political Science," in Handbook of Political Science, vol. 7, Strategies of Inquiry, ed. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 116-20.
87. John Gerring, Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 115. Chile is not a most-likely case for the selectorate argument, however. Peace between states with large selectorates is most likely when they are roughly equal in power. A more appropriate research design, for example, might focus on crises between democratic great powers, like the analysis in Layne, "Kant or Cant."
88. Doyle., "Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace," 465.
89. George. and Bennett., Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences, 221.
90. See also Ronald Rogowski, "The Role of Theory and Anomaly in Social Scientific Research," American Political Science Review 89, no. 2 (June 1995), 467-70.
91. Layne, "Kant or Cant".
92. Rosato, "Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory".
93. and Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War. Also relevant is the accumulating evidence that democracies are no less likely to target-or kill large numbers of-civilians in war, which is incompatible with liberal and democratic values
94. See Alexander B. Downes, Targeting Civilians in War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008);
95. Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, and Sarah Croco, "Covenants without the Sword: International Law and the Protection of Civilians in Time of War," World Politics 58, no. 3 (April 2006): 339-77.
96. Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
97. William V. Broe, "Genesis of Project FUBELT," 16 September 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III. All documents from the CIA Chile Declassification Project are available at http://foia.state.gov/SearchColls/CIA.asp.
98. Quoted in Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 310.
99. CIA, cable from CIA Headquarters to Santiago Station, 7 October 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
100. Quoted in Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 315.
101. CIA, memorandum of conversation, 15 October 1970, in Kornbluh, Pinochet File.
102. See also Schmitz, United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 96.
103. CIA, cable from CIA Headquarters to Santiago Station, 16 October 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
104. The White House, memorandum of conversation, "NSC Meeting-Chile (NSSM 97)," 6 November 1970, in Kornbluh, Pinochet File.
105. Chief, Santiago Station cable to Chief, Western Hemisphere Division, CIA, 12 November 1971, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
106. Kornbluh., Pinochet File, 82-94.
107. Memorandum for the record, "Minutes on the Current Chilean Situation at Department of State, 1630-1830, 17 October 1972," 18 October 1972, in Kornbluh, Pinochet File.
108. Monty G. Marshall and Keith Jaggers, Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2007, available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm. Chile's Polity score remained the same under Allende as it was under Eduardo Frei, the previous president favored by the United States.
109. Tatu Vanhanen, "A New Dataset for Measuring Democracy, 1810-1998," Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 2 (March 2000): 253.
110. Tatu Vanhanen, "Polyarchy Dataset," version 2.0, available at http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/ Governance/Vanhanens-index-of-democracy. Vanhanen establishes thresholds of 30 percent for competition and 10 percent for participation to be considered a democracy. Chile first surpassed the competition threshold in the late nineteenth century, but only exceeded both starting in 1952. Chile's combined score exceeded that of the United States for the first time in 1970.
111. Quotes are from Freedom in the World, 2009, and data are from Freedom in theWorld Comparative and Historical Data, both available at http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=15.
112. Paul E. Sigmund, The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 15.
113. See also Paul E. Sigmund, The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964-1976 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), 14-22.
114. Forsythe, "Democracy, War, and Covert Action," 389.
115. Kinsella, "No Rest for the Democratic Peace," 455.
116. Schmitz, United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 95.
117. In fact, the day after the election, Tomic visited Allende and said, I have come to greet the President-elect of Chile, my grand old friend, Salvador Allende. Quoted in Sigmund, Overthrow of Allende, 110.
118. Alessandri's scheme was to persuade the Christian Democrats to vote for him; after winning, he would then resign, which would result in a new election in which Frei (constitutionally barred from succeeding himself) would be permitted to run. This U.S.-backed initiative (labeled the "Rube Goldberg" scenario by Henry Kissinger) failed largely because Frei refused to break with tradition and oppose Allende's election. Kinzer, Overthrow, 179.
119. and Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 672.
120. Quoted in Sigmund, Overthrow of Allende, 118.
121. Seven voters abstained, while thirty-five cast ballots for Alessandri. Richard Helms (CIA), briefing for the National Security Council, Chile, 6 November 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
122. Dixon "Democracy and the Peaceful Settlement of International Conflict."
123. Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division J. C. King, memorandum to Director of Central Intelligence McCone, 3 January 1964, FRUS, 1964-68, vol. 31, 245.
124. Kissinger, memorandum to President Nixon, "NSC Meeting, November 6-Chile," 5 November 1970, National Security Archive website, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB110/ index.htm.
125. These internal comments by Kissinger highlight the perils of relying on memoirs written afterthe- fact for evidence of participants' earlier views. Kissinger's acknowledgement of Allende's democratic legitimacy in these documents, for example, contradicts his later comments that Allende's rule was illegitimate because he received only a plurality of the votes in the 1970 election. Kissinger., White House Years, 654, 673.
126. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), 374-75. Chile's proportional representation system-much like similar systems in many other democracies-frequently resulted in the winning candidate receiving less than 50 percent of the popular vote, such as the election of Jorge Alessandri in 1958.
127. "Report on CIA Chilean Task Force Activities, 15 September to 3 November 1970," 16 November 1970, National Security Archive website, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ nsaebb8i.htm.
128. Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 13.
129. CIA Office of National Estimates, "Chile: Conciliation, Confrontation, or Coup?" 4 April 1972, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
130. Even Kissinger in his memoirs inadvertently attests to Chile's democratic nature. Describing the reaction to an attempted coup in Santiago in June 1973, Kissinger remarks: "So strong was the constitutional tradition in Chile that this violent shock brought disparate forces to the defense of the Allende government." Kissinger J., Years of Upheaval, 400.
131. For similar sentiments expressed by the former Director of the CIA, see Richard Helms, A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: Random House, 2003), 396.
132. Sigmund, United States and Democracy in Chile, 55. That both Nixon and Kissinger were foreign policy realists helps explain this disdain, but many U.S. presidents, realists and liberals alike, have been willing to meddle in the affairs of other democracies. Few DP theories discuss the possibility that realists might come to power in democracies.
133. For one exception, see Owen J., Liberal Peace, Liberal War.
134. Quoted in Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions, 108
135. CIA, cable from CIA Headquarters to Santiago Station, 7 October 1970; and CIA, cable from CIA Headquarters to Santiago Station, 16 October 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III
136. Quoted in Kinzer, Overthrow, 190.
137. CIA, cable from Santiago Station to CIA Headquarters, 20 September 1973, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche I.
138. See also Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 154. A few months after the coup, the CIA noted Pinochet's estimate that civilian rule would probably not return to Chile for "at least five years," and Pinochet himself later declared that there "will be no elections in Chile during my lifetime nor in the lifetime of my successor." CIA, memorandum, "Aspects of the Situation in Chile," 22 March 1974, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche I.
139. and Schmitz, United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 106. Policy makers also had evidence that a coup in 1970 would be bloody. As Santiago Station reported on 10 October, in the event of a coup, "Carnage could be considerable and prolonged, i.e. civil war." Santiago Station, cable to CIA Headquarters, 10 October 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III. In the 1973 coup 1,500 civilians died in the first four weeks of military rule, and 13,500 were detained. Santiago Station, cable to CIA Headquarters, 27 October 1973, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche I. For Kissinger, this collateral damage was acceptable: "I agree that we should not knock down stories that later prove to be true, nor should we be in the position of defending what they're doing in Santiago. But I think we should understand our policy-that however unpleasant they act, the government is better for us than Allende was."
140. Department of State, "Secretary's Staff Meeting, 1 October 1973," 4 October 1973, National Security Archive website, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB110/index.htm.
141. Department of State, cable to U.S. Embassy Santiago, "USG Attitude Toward Junta," 13 September 1973, National Security Archive website, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB212/index.htm.
142. Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 203-17.
143. CIA, memorandum, "Chile/Prospects for Political Action to Deny Salvador Allende the Presidency," 8 September 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
144. Kissinger, memorandum to Nixon, "NSC Meeting, 6 November-Chile."
145. Quoted in Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 81.
146. Briefing paper for Kissinger, quoted in Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 81.
147. CIA, memorandum, 15 October 1970, reproduced in Kornbluh., Pinochet File.
148. Quoted in Kornbluh., Pinochet File, 9. The revised version of NSSM 97 is dated 3 November 1970, but the annex was probably written for the first draft of the document in August.
149. CIA, "Options paper for NSC-Chile (NSSM 97)," 3 November 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
150. Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions, 110. The fact that Nixon was worried about the effect of the Chile situation on his prospects for re-election provides some support for the selectorate argument. Presumably Nixon was aware of the problems that an Allende regime might cause for his own tenure in office before Allende was elected. However, he failed to do anything significant to block a potential Allende victory. Nixon's inaction thus cuts against the selectorate thesis.
151. Russett., Grasping the Democratic Peace, 124.
152. Another possible explanation for acting covertly in Chile is that Nixon and Kissinger understood that public opinion in the United States was permissive in the sense that it did not closely monitor foreign policy. As long as the administration's actions were low cost and low profile, the public was willing to defer to the president's judgment. Intervening openly with U.S. troops, however, especially against an elected leader, would attract a lot of attention and would be much more costly, thereby provoking public disapproval. We did not find any evidence for this conjecture.
153. This disenchantment, particularly with the Christian Democrats, is visible in CIA, memorandum, 30 June 1973, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III. Also evident is the increasing realization that the Christian Democrats' political program was not that different from Allende's.
154. CIA, memorandum, 8 September 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III. See also "Report on CIA Chilean Task Force Activities, 15 September to 3 November 1970." 117 CIA, cable to Santiago Station, 9 September 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III. Golpe translates as "coup."
155. Cable, U.S. Embassy, Santiago, to Department of State, "Ambassador's Response to Request for Analysis of Military Option in Present Chilean Situation," 12 September 1970, reproduced in Kornbluh, Pinochet File.
156. Cable, Korry to Kissinger, 8 October 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
157. Quoted in Kornbluh., Pinochet File, 11.
158. William V. Broe, memorandum, 10 October 1970; and Santiago Station cable to CIA Headquarters, 13 October 1970, both in CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
159. For similar views expressed by other high-ranking CIA officials, see United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (New York: Norton, 1976), 233.
160. Quoted in Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 9.
161. Korry, cable to Alexis Johnson and Henry Kissinger, 25 September 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
162. Santiago Station, cable to CIA Headquarters, 10 October 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
163. Memorandum of conversation between Dr. Kissinger, Mr. Karamessines, and Gen. Haig, 15 October 1970, National Security Archive website, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB8/nsaebb8.htm.
164. Kissinger also wished to preserve the option to reactivate Viaux in the future when prospects for success brightened.
165. Quoted in Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 27.
166. Santiago Station, cable to CIA Headquarters, 19 October 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III. For the station's optimism, see CIA Headquarters cable to Santiago Station, 18 October 1970; CIA, memorandum, "Special Situation Report," 19 October 1970; CIA, memorandum, "Track II," 20 October 1970, all in CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III. Pessimism by military contacts is conveyed in Santiago Station cable to CIA Headquarters, 19 October 1970. The station also noted that the Chilean public "would overwhelmingly reject military intervention." Santiago Station, cable to CIA Headquarters, 20 October 1970. Both documents are in CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
167. CIA, memorandum, "Track II," 22 October 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
168. For evidence that Washington's support for a coup was widely known, see CIA Headquarters, cable to Santiago Station, 20 October 1970; and Santiago Station, cable to CIA Headquarters, 20 October 1970, both in CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III.
169. Options paper for NSC-Chile (NSSM 97).
170. Kissinger, "NSC Meeting, 6 November-Chile."
171. Edward M. Korry, Contingency Paper, "Fidelism Without Fidel," August 1970.
172. Quoted in Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions, 101.
173. "Options paper for NSC-Chile (NSSM 97)."
174. Vaky, NSC action memo [Non Log] to Kissinger, "Chile-40 Committee Meeting, Monday-14 September," 14 September 1970, quoted in Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 11.
175. The White House, memorandum of conversation, "NSC Meeting-Chile (NSSM 97)."
176. Kissinger quoted in Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions, 109. On U.S. policy makers' concerns for credibility, see ibid., 102-109. 138 "Options paper for NSC-Chile (NSSM 97)."
177. Rosato K,., "Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory," 591. For an explicit statement of the economic argument for U.S. intervention in Chile
178. see Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit, 1983), 270, 296.
179. Lubna Z. Qureshi, Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende: U.S. Involvement in the 1973 Coup in Chile (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2009), 88.
180. The Report of the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, The International Telephone and Telegraph Company in Chile, 1970-1971, quoted in Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 18. Former DCI John McCone happened to be on ITT's board of directors.
181. Sigmund, United States and Democracy in Chile, 83.
182. See also Qureshi, Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende., 50-51. For a reproduction of Helms's handwritten notes from the 15 September meeting
183. see Kornbluh, Pinochet File.
184. Kornbluh H., Pinochet File, 7-9. This included, among other things, the secret CIA-authored annex to NSSM 97 entitled "Extreme Option-Overthrow Allende."
185. Minutes of the Meeting of the 40 Committee, 9 September 1970, State Chile Declassification Project Tranche III; State cable to Embassy Santiago, "Meeting of 40 Committee," 14 September 1970, State Chile Declassification Project Tranche III; and CIA, memorandum, 9 September 1970, CIA Chile Declassification Project Tranche III. Documents from the State Department Chile Declassification Project may be found at http://foia.state.gov/SearchColls/CollsSearch.asp.
186. Sigmund, Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 112. The agency did counsel ITT on how to channel its money through private Chilean sources, however.
187. Kornbluh G., Pinochet File, 18.
188. Grow, U.S. Presidents and Latin American Interventions, 100. On the personal ties between Nixon and business leaders, and the coincidence of interests between them.
189. see Qureshi, Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende, 67-71.
190. Indeed, more research is needed to try to distinguish between these rival arguments. Because the observed outcome is the same, scholars must focus on the competing causal logics: whether leaders are motivated primarily by concerns of external security or retaining office at home.
191. This evidence supports those who argue against selection effects as a cause of democratic victory in war. See Michael C. Desch, Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
192. Alexander B. Downes, "How Smart and Tough Are Democracies? Reassessing Theories of Democratic Victory in War," International Security 33, no. 4 (Spring 2009): 9-51.
193. Randall L. Schweller, "Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?" World Politics 44, no. 2 (January 1992): 235-69.
194. Jack S. Levy and Joseph R. Gochal, Democracy and Preventive War: Israel and the 1956 Sinai Campaign, Security Studies 11, no. 2 (Winter 2001/02): 1-49.
195. See also Scott A. Silverstone, Preventive War and American Democracy (New York: Routledge, 2007).
196. Moreover, these interventions were undertaken despite low confidence in success, and if they had failed, more costly U.S. invasions might have resulted.
197. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 215-16.
198. Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 49.
199. and Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 8.
200. See, for example, Ambassador Peurifoy, letter to Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Cabot, 28 December 1953; and CIA, memorandum, "Weekly PBSUCCESS Meeting with DD/P," 9 March 1954, FRUS, 1952-1954, Guatemala, 79 and 113.
201. The defining moment occurred on 22 June 1954, with Carlos Castillo Armas's diminutive invasion force stalemated and most of his American-provided and piloted aircraft out of commission. CIA Director Allen Dulles went to the president and asked for authorization to provide the rebels with more planes. As Weiner recounts the episode, "Eisenhower asked what the rebellion's chances of success were at the moment. Zero, Dulles confessed. And if the CIA had more planes and bombs? Maybe 20 percent, Dulles guessed." Ike approved the request, knowing that aircraft provided a sure sign of U.S. involvement. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 102.
202. Another potential outcome to examine other than war/no war or covert intervention might be the use of coercive threats or low-level uses of force by powerful democracies against weaker ones. Norms and checks and balances theories of DP would likely prohibit such conduct, but selectorate theory would not.
203. Quotations are from Schmitz, United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 18, 12, 15 (italics in original), and 19.
204. See also Schmitz, Thank God They're on Our Side, 5, 72, 181-87.