Democracy by Pressure

excerpted from the book

In the Name of Democracy

U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in the Reagan Years

by Thomas Carothers

University of California Press, 1991

CHILE, PARAGUAY, PANAMA AND HAITI

CHILE

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In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration sought warm relations with Chile's military dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, as part of its larger policy in South America of replacing the Carter administration's human rights policy with "quiet diplomacy" and rebuilding relations with anticommunist military dictatorships. The early Reagan team was particularly sympathetic to Pinochet, a forceful anticommunist who had ousted the leftist President Salvador Allende in 1973. Pinochet faced a large communist opposition, including an active guerrilla movement, and appeared to the Reagan administration to be a clear example of an anticommunist leader who merited U.S. support. The administration also favored Pinochet for economic reasons. Almost alone among South American leaders, he followed free market economic policies...

The administration ... sought improved military relation with Chile. Regular visits between Chilean and U.S. military officers were reestablished and Chile was invited to take part in the annual UNITAS joint United States-Latin America naval exercises, after having not been invited in 1980. U.S. military officials solemnly but vaguely invoked the "important security interests which necessitate close military-to-military cooperation with Chile."' When Senator Jesse Helms, Pinochet's best friend in Washington, moved to repeal the 1977 ban on military assistance and sales to Chile, the administration supported the effort vigorously. Congress did remove the ban but imposed a requirement that the President must certify, among other things, an improved human rights situation in Chile before assistance and sales can be initiated.

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The administration began to shift away from a uniformly pro-Pinochet policy in 1983. In that year serious civil unrest broke out in Chile, in response to the country's first sharp economic downturn in many years and a growing frustration with the continued absence of any real political space. Pinochet harshly suppressed the unrest, responding to each wave of strikes and demonstrations with overwhelming military and police force. The administration was put on the defensive by the political violence in Chile as critics in Congress and the U.S. public pointed to Chile as an example of the failure of "quiet diplomacy." The administration distanced itself somewhat from Pinochet, issuing cautious statements of regret over the events in Chile and sending communiqués urging the Chilean leader to continue a dialogue with the opposition.

Pinochet ignored the administration's messages on human rights and maintained his hard-line approach as the political turbulence continued in 1984. To many observers in Chile and the United States, it began to look as though the constitutionally mandated process of a democratic transition was in jeopardy. Under the 1980 Constitution (approved by a plebiscite of uncertain legitimacy), Pinochet was to rule as president and commander in chief of the armed forces until 1989. A plebiscite on his continued rule was to be held before the end of his term. If Chileans voted yes he would serve until 1997; if they voted no, presidential elections would be held in 1989. This transition process was to involve the gradual restoration of civilian political life, a restoration that Pinochet seemed to be ruling out with his unrepentant approach to the civil unrest of 1983 and 1984.

The administration fumbled for a policy that would balance its continuing sympathies toward Pinochet with some kind of support for the transition process. The search for a policy was complicated by serious divisions within the administration over Pinochet's nature and the appropriate U.S. tack. At least three differing views existed, personified at the senior policy-making level by Ambassador James Theberge, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Langhorne Motley, and Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Elliott Abrams.

Theberge was strongly pro-Pinochet. He highlighted the communist threat to Chile and argued that Pinochet was doing what was necessary to keep order and that the U.S. pressure on Pinochet needlessly alienated him and the Chilean military. Motley was also sympathetic to Pinochet but became convinced in 1984 that the Chilean leader was going further than necessary in stifling political dissent and that the United States should play a role in supporting the constitutional transition process. Motley deeply disliked public criticisms of friendly governments, however, and maintained that whatever pressure the United States exerted, it must exert quietly, behind closed doors. Elliott Abrams took a very different view. In the human rights bureau he had been working to temper the early Reagan administration's friendly policies toward right-wing dictators, arguing that such policies weakened the administration's credibility as a supporter of democratic change in communist countries. He argued forcefully within the administration for a vigorous policy of pressure against Pinochet on human rights and democracy issues.

Theberge, Motley, and Abrams, and their respective supporters in different parts of the bureaucracy, argued intensely over Chile policy in 1983 and 1984. On the whole, Motley carried the day, both because he was in the more central policy position than Abrams or Theberge and because his views reflected a natural middle ground. The administration maintained a basically friendly policy toward Pinochet but began leavening it with more pointed private discussions with Chilean officials regarding U.S. human rights concerns and a somewhat less uniformly positive public line.

In early 1985, U.S. policy began evolving clearly away from its pro-Pinochet orientation. In November 1984, Pinochet imposed a state of siege, the first in Chile since the 1970s. The state of siege convinced Motley, Shultz, and even Theberge that Pinochet was headed in the wrong direction ...

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The administration took a variety of political and economic steps to generate pressure on the Chilean government...

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The effort to encourage the moderate opposition in Chile was primarily carried out by Ambassador Barnes and his staff in the U.S. embassy. Upon arriving in Chile, Barnes immediately established himself as an energetic and effective supporter of a democratic transition. He developed good relations with the major opposition parties and succeeded in convincing a very skeptical group of Chilean opposition leaders that the United States was sincerely committed to a democratic transition. He assisted the opposition parties in their negotiations with the government and in their ongoing effort to work together constructively.

Barnes also developed contacts with the other major sectors of Chilean society, notably the military and the business sector, and conveyed to them the importance the United States attached to the democratic transition. Barnes complemented his work in Chile with effective consensus building in the U.S. foreign policy community. Liberals in Congress and in the Washington policy community deeply distrusted the Reagan administration with respect to Chile. Barnes gained their trust, however, and helped convince them that the administration was sincere in its prodemocracy policy and that a bipartisan democracy policy was both possible and necessary.

The administration's support for a democratic transition in Chile was a notable departure from its earlier policy. It was nonetheless a very cautious policy, which in 1986 and 1987 came in for considerable criticism by U.S. liberals. Unlike most of the Chilean opposition and U.S. liberals, the administration did not advocate advancing or holding open elections but rather accepted the constitutional transition process. And the administration combined its support for a democratic transition with continued statements of concern about the threat of communism in Chile and Cuban support for the Chilean guerrilla movement. These frequent references to the communist threat tended to mitigate the pressure on Pinochet by strengthening his own much-used anticommunist justification for the halting transition process.

The administration's policy was not only extremely cautious, it was weakened by persistent internal divisions. Motley and Theberge were gone but numerous officials remained in the administration who opposed a policy of pressuring Pinochet. They were a scattered group that included Vernon Walters (who had become U.N. Ambassador in 1985), National Security Adviser John Poindexter, NSC staff members Jose Sorzano and Jacqueline Tillman, and a variety of officials at the Defense Department and CIA, and of course, Senator Jesse Helms. These hard-liners held fast to the position that Pinochet was set on carrying out the transition, that his repressive domestic practices were necessary to fight the communists, and that U.S. pressure, particularly the activities of Ambassador Barnes, was counterproductive. They saw the administration's new policy as warmed-over Carterism and were horrified that the Reagan administration had ended up adopting virtually the same sort of policy they had worked so hard to reverse in 1981 and 1982.

The hard-liners fought constantly with the State Department over Chile policy. Each U.N. vote and multilateral development bank vote on Chile was the subject of a furious internal tug-of-war in which decision memos with sharply contrasting options went up to the President. The hard-liners claimed to have President Reagan on their side, and they were probably right. Elliott Abrams himself acknowledges that on Chile, "the President's instincts were not good," meaning that Reagan continued to think of the Chilean leader as a loyal anticommunist friend who deserved U.S. support. In one White House meeting in late 1987 or early 1988, where Secretary of State Shultz raised a specific question about policy toward Pinochet, Reagan looked up at the mention of Pinochet's name and said, "Pinochet saved Chile from communism, we should have him here on a state visit." Everyone present was astonished at the idea; Shultz and his staff managed to bury it quietly.

Despite Reagan's views, the State Department was largely able to win out over the hard-liners on Chile. The hard-liners did win a few of the battles over votes at the U.N. or the multilateral development banks, weakening the policy somewhat. The hard-liners also fed Pinochet's hopes and led him to believe, incorrectly, that he could play off the contending factions in the U.S. government. But on the whole, the policy of pressure on Pinochet went ahead, particularly in Chile through the efforts of Ambassador Barnes .

How was it possible for the State Department to carry out a policy that the President seemed not to favor? Much of the answer lies in President Reagan's role in foreign policy. President Reagan had "instincts" on most issues, not well-developed, detailed views. The vagueness of those instincts and his lack of close involvement in policy-making resulted in his exercising little influence over many policies. When two factions within the administration clashed over policy, the victor was not always the one whose views accorded with the President's instincts but the one who had the most institutional clout. With respect to the Chile policy, the State Department outweighed the hard-liners. The State Department had the main responsibility for the day-to-day implementation of policy and Ambassador Barnes and the embassy were in direct control of much of its real substance. The hard-liners were on the margins of the policy process and, except for the very few particular issues that required specific presidential decisions, they were confined to kibitzing and fighting rearguard actions against the State Department's policy.

An additional factor was U.S. public opinion. In part because of the notorious U.S. involvement in Chilean politics in the early 1970s, General Pinochet was a well-known and much-hated figure among most Americans interested in Latin American affairs. As civil unrest rose in Chile in the 1980s and Chile policy became a headline issue again, U.S. public opinion clearly favored a policy of strong pressure.

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The United States was certainly on the side of democratic change in Chile from 1985 on. Whether or not U.S. policy had a significant effect on events in Chile, however, is another matter. The first question is whether U.S. policy had an effect on Pinochet's decision to go ahead with the plebiscite. In the mid-1980s, when it was being pressed by critics to do more to support a democratic transition in Chile, the administration repeatedly stressed the limits of U.S. influence on the Chilean government. Once events in Chile began to go the right way, however, less was heard about these limits. In fact, the administration was correct in its earlier assertions that the United States had little economic or political leverage over Pinochet short of drastic measures such as a trade embargo or military force. The U.S. economic and political pressures exerted against Pinochet were as much symbolic as substantive. Pinochet went ahead with the plebiscite primarily for domestic reasons. The plebiscite was a constitutionally mandated process. Much of the military and most of the population supported the holding of the plebiscite. Pinochet could have called it off only at great risk to his ability to maintain his support in the military and to keep peace in the country. What the U.S. government would have said or done if he called off the plebiscite was almost certainly only a peripheral concern.

A second question, however, is what effect the U.S. policy had on the conditions in which the plebiscite was held and the activity of the opposition. Pinochet was probably going to hold the plebiscite in any case. Whether he planned to hold an even minimally fair one, however, is open to doubt. The opposition parties were greatly limited in their campaign by restrictions on access to the media and on many civil liberties, such as the freedom of assembly. The U.S. government's outspoken attention to the conditions of the plebiscite probably helped the opposition win concessions from the government and strengthened the opposition's campaign. And the U.S. technical assistance to the opposition helped get more voters registered and bolstered the No Command's campaign.

It is impossible to quantify the effects of U.S. involvement in the plebiscite process. It is probably safe to say that it was important but by no means decisive with respect to the outcome. Even this obviously cautious assessment should be tempered by some broader considerations. The plebiscite was one element of a very long transition process in Chile. If Pinochet had won, many Chileans would have believed it was due to unfair election conditions or vote-counting fraud. The struggle for a democratic transition would not have ended, it would have continued just as it had for over a decade. The success of the transition was the result of a number of deeply rooted internal factors, including a decade of persistent activism by the Chilean opposition, the genuine constitutionalism held to by most sectors of the Chilean society, and the country's long tradition of democracy. The U.S. assistance in the closing months of the plebiscite campaign was a minor factor occurring at the tail end of a very long, and thoroughly Chilean, process.

HAITI

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The Fall of Baby Doc

From 1981 to 1985 Haiti was almost a non-issue in the Reagan administration's Latin America and Caribbean policy. The administration perceived few political or economic interests in the world's oldest black republic and the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. There was no active communist movement in Haiti to excite the administration's attention. The country appeared to be in the firm grip of Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as "Baby Doc," who had taken over in 1971 at the age of nineteen, after the death of his notorious father, Francois Duvalier, or "Papa Doc." U.S. relations with Haiti had deteriorated in the late 1970s over human rights issues as well as the wave of Haitian refugees arriving in the United States in 1980. The Reagan administration saw Jean-Claude Duvalier as a net positive-although he was a corrupt, repressive, and inept leader, he was firmly anticommunist and pro-United States. The administration was disposed to improve relations with him and set out to increase U.S. economic aid to Haiti and include it in the newly established Caribbean Basin Initiative.

A 1981 amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act established that U.S. aid to Haiti could be provided only if the President certified that Haiti was making progress on human rights. Limited political improvements were in fact occurring in the early 1980s as Duvalier carried out a confusing on-again, off-again set of political liberalization and economic reform measures. The administration highlighted the positive and downplayed the negative in its annual human rights certifications of Haiti. The small group of Congressmen interested in Haiti, primarily the Congressional Black Caucus, expressed skepticism at the certifications as well as frustration at the administration's superficial, positive view of Duvalier, but did not have the clout to change the policy. U.S. economic aid increased steadily from $27.1 million in 1980 to $34.6 million in 1981 up to $55.6 million in 1985.

In November 1985, a series of riots broke out in Gonaives, a provincial city in Haiti's main agricultural region, and soon exploded into nationwide protests against the government. The outbreak of violence and unrest caught the Haitian government, and the United States, by surprise. Just four months before, Duvalier had affirmed his apparently solid hold on power by holding a referendum on his rule as President-for-Life and triumphantly announcing a 99.9 percent favorable vote. After the referendum, the administration had dutifully certified Haiti's human rights progress once again to permit more U.S. aid. The outbreak of protests in November had no obvious, immediate cause; they represented the accumulation of years of political and economic discontent and the rising tension caused by the gap between Duvalier's rhetoric of political liberalization and the reality of his absolutist rule. The protests gained force very rapidly and within a month observers in Haiti were speculating that Duvalier would soon fall. In January, Duvalier's position weakened and rumors of his departure began to multiply. On February 7, Duvalier and his family fled to France, abruptly ending the twenty-eight-year-old reign of the Duvaliers.

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After the fall of Duvalier, the United States could have pronounced its hope for a democratic transition in Haiti, but then adopt a wait-and-see approach to the interim government, offering the possibility of increased aid if concrete steps toward an electoral transition were taken. Elliott Abrams says that he has no regrets about having decided to back the interim government right away, arguing that it was incumbent on the United States to avoid any sort of power vacuum in Haiti that might lead to serious political instability. But in February 1986 there was no power vacuum in Haiti-the departure of Duvalier was not a revolution that swept away an entire ruling structure. The business elite and the military remained in place and faced no significant competitors for power. The choice facing the administration was not between supporting an interim military government or risking anarchy. It was between embracing a dubious military government or taking a more cautious stance. A more cautious policy would not have had any better result with respect to Haiti's political process. It would, however, have spared the United States the costs of associating itself with an ultimately reprehensible government and of demonstrating vividly to the world the United States's inability to match its lofty stated goals with actual influence and capability.

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A NEW POLICY TOWARD "FRIENDLY TYRANTS"?

The Reagan administration's shift to a policy of pressure against the remaining right-wing dictators in Latin America and the Caribbean, together with its decisive shift away from supporting President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines in the mid-1980s, prompted some observers to posit a full-scale abandonment of the administration's initial Kirkpatrickian dogma regarding Third World dictators. Certainly the Reagan administration moderated its approach in these countries, but one must be careful about hypothesizing the emergence of a new, well-formed global policy toward "friendly tyrants" in the later Reagan years.

In the first place, the various policy shifts toward specific countries that did occur were largely reactive. In the Philippines, the administration came around to dropping Marcos only very slowly and in response to a long list of damaging events such as the murder of Benigno Aquino and the stealing of the 1985 "snap" elections. In Haiti, the administration moved against Duvalier only once the country was in revolt and his position had become untenable. In Panama, the administration tolerated years of Noriega's drug trafficking and political criminality, turning against him only after serious civil unrest broke out and his wrongdoings became widely publicized in the United States. And in Chile, the administration warmly supported Pinochet until persistent domestic unrest in Chile and Pinochet's unyielding response raised concerns of a long-term polarization of Chilean society. The Reagan administration reacted to events rather than anticipated them, scrambling to accept the inevitable and then attempting to present that acceptance as a forward-looking, coherent policy.

The policy was also selective. The Reagan administration turned against Pinochet, Marcos, Duvalier, Noriega, and Stroessner. But with dictators in other parts of the world, such as President Mobutu of Zaire and President Suharto of Indonesia, the Reagan administration was content to maintain friendly relations. As long as a conservative dictator was not losing his grip on power or was not becoming a household name for evil in the United States, the Reagan administration was generally happy to be a friend.

In the Name of Democracy

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