Worldwide Chess
Schoultz leaves us with a question of “why in the mid-1970s the United States tended to award relatively large amounts of aid to Latin American governments which repressed their citizens’ human right.” Obviously, I am no historian or political science genius, but to the best of my ability I will try to answer this question with my limited understanding. I believe that the reason why they gave aid to these horrible governments is because the US government believed the “ends justify the means.” Understandably, the justification of human rights violations with that simple statement is not only white-washing horrible international policies but it can be argued that the ends did not justify the means at all. With “los desaparecidos” in Chile and the many other groups that still hurt from the ripples of human rights violations in the 1970’s, keeping a leader in power solely because they aligned with the US politics seems short-sighted. But the US gave aid to many oppressive dictators outside of the Latin American region during the same time period.
The reason the United States believed the “ends justified the means” was because they were entrenched in a game of worldwide chess. Their opponent was the USSR. The end that justified the means was keeping these countries from falling into communism and becoming a piece for the other team. They believed the US would be safer, and the respective country would be better off in the long run, if a dictator who supported their agenda would stay in power during a crucial period in the Cold War. Outside of Latin America, the US propped up oppressive dictators like the Shah of Iran, Marcos in the Philippines, and Duvalier in Haiti. All of these leaders committed human rights violations and all of them were helped by the United States. So Latin America was not unique in this regard. The countries were merely pawns in a greater game. The US genuinely thought it was doing the world a service by trying to keep the fire of communism from spreading.
Of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty and they could not have known all of the dealings of the leaders they supported through aid nor the far reaching repercussions of the human rights violations. But, to play devils advocate, they should have seen the writing on the walls. We certainly had correspondents, both media and clandestine in the countries, alerting government officials of the human rights violations. Even so, I liked how Schoultz recognizes the difficult position the US officials were in. Schoultz said, “These data and common sense suggest that there is no simple answer to the dilemma facing aid officials who must weigh multiple criteria in reaching their decisions. Few studies of aid decision making, including this one, would wish to underestimate the difficulties these officials face.” We can look back on history and pick out all of the ways in which mankind blew it. But that solves nothing unless we use that information to keep ourselves from repeating history. We can use history as the land behind us so that we have a reference point as we head towards uncharted territory in the future. It’s easy to demonize our past, but instead let’s make the best of the future.
You do a good job of highlighting the difficult and morally suspect choice the U.S. made during the Cold War of supporting repressive regimes in exchange for security and that we as students in 2017 can critique, but not necessarily demonize the choices that were made in the stark realities of a bipolar global system. In this context it was decided that the individual rights of citizens in Latin America were not the main consideration for deciding how to allocate financial aid. The most important thing was that the repressive leaders were, to paraphrase FDR’s comments on Somoza, “our” bastards. However, I would like to raise a few questions. You say that the U.S. funded these repressive regimes in order to ensure they were aligned with them against the USSR, but what about the states that were not given as much aid? Schoultz shows that these states were oftentimes lower on the human rights violation index than the largest recipients of U.S. aid. What was the the alignment of states like Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica in the late 70s? Would you say these states were not as geopolitically important to U.S. security as Chile, Brazil, and Argentina were and that is why the U.S. gave them less financial aid, because Schoultz demonstrates that they were not better off economically than the largest recipients of U.S. aid?
You’ve made some good points regarding the morally-difficult decisions U.S. officials had to make during this time. While the United State’s purposed “goal” during the Cold War was to promote Democracy, it was really more of a defensive strategy, to stop the spread of communism. Although it may seem “anti-America” to support repressive and authoritarian regimes, they felt the obligation to keep communistic coups at bay. Having a strong authoritarian regime keeps control over the citizens (whether through repression of free speech, fear, etc.). We have to ask ourselves, what would have happened if we haven’t supported these dictatorships? Would other countries have fallen to communism as Cuba did? Would the domino effect have rang through Latin America? Although we cannot be 100% sure, we have to notice the result that every country in the region (other than Cuba) is a democracy Would that have been able to happen without our intervention? I may not agree with American tax dollars going towards non-democratic governments, but we have to appreciate how it has stopped the spread of communism and altered history. The U.S. decision makers accomplished their goal.
I believe the argument presents an accurate depiction of the events that took place during the Cold War. It is true that there was fear in the United States that the Soviets were attempting to spread communism across different parts of the world. As a result, America’s foreign policies focused on containing the latter over human rights violations. The United States considered that it had no option than to support the oppressive regimes to guarantee the future security of America and the rest of the world. During the mid-1970s, the country aided regimes that violated human rights in Latin America, Philippines, and Haiti. Those powers were genuine American allies, and the U.S. would not risk experimenting with other governments at that critical moment. Any dominance from the Soviet Union during the Cold War would have affected the security and interests of the United States.
I would also add to the discussion on why the U.S. concentrated more on Latin America than other regions. The main reason is the geographical proximity of the region. The Soviet Union’s attempts to influence Latin America were aimed at weakening the United States. It would have been difficult for the latter to have retain impact in other parts of the world had the Soviets spread communism in Latin America. Therefore, America had no option rather than focus on blocking the effect of the Soviet Union by supporting regimes that aligned with the U.S. interests. Therefore, I agree with the discussion that foreign policy decision makers at the time were in a dilemma. They believed that human rights violations would be tolerated to make the future better.