We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
IMPERIAL "REACH": U.S. POLICY AND THE CIA IN CHILE.
- Authors
Morley, Morris; Smith, Steven
- Abstract
This study of the role of U.S. covert politics in Chile between 1970 and 1973 has two basic purposes. First, it seeks to locate the CIA and its activities Within the overall U.S. executive branch response to the Allende government-- differentiating between specific institutional tasks and overlapping responsibilities with other imperial state agencies. The CIA is not a policy formation agency. On the contrary, it executes and applies already thought out policies, and any autonomy or freedom of action which may accrue to the CIA does no only at this level. In the case of Allende. the larger 'destabilization' policy was devised by the White House and the National Security Council. The CIA's operational effectiveness, however. resides precisely in its capacity to coordinate its actions with those of other imperial state agencies (State, Treasury, Defense. etc.) to promote the long-tern interests of U.S. private corporate capital. Second our study shows how peripheral nations with a history of investment, commercial and financial dependence on core capitalist countries are particularly susceptible to covert politics and subversion. This is especially the case where nationalist and/or anti-capitalist movements hostile to basic U.S. political and economic interests gain political power but not total control of the peripheral state structure. A brief examination of the historical roots of Chilean economic dependence on U.S. public and private capital, and the conditioning impact of this phenomenon on the internal class structure, allows us to locate the sources of instability that plagued the Allende government throughout its tenure in office. We conclude that the Popular Unity government in Chile was vulnerable to political and economic-financial manipulation 'from the outside' in large part, because of the ease with which the CIA was able to locate economic pressure points and set up 'liaisons' inside the Chilean class structure, and state and private institutions.
- Subjects
CHILE; UNITED States. Central Intelligence Agency; FOREIGN relations of the United States, 1969-1974; CHILEAN history, 1970-1973; INTERNATIONAL relations; POLITICAL sociology
- Publication
Journal of Political & Military Sociology, 1977, Vol 5, Issue 2, p203
- ISSN
0047-2697
- Publication type
Article