Creative Destruction?: Economic Crises and Democracy in Latin America

9. Ideas: Cold War Endgame, Unipolar Moment, and Neoliberalism

Just as the rise in liquid-based wealth since the 1970s–80s has helped to lower the pressure against democracy by foreign and domestic capitalists, changes in the realm of ideas—political ideologies, and economic ideas and policy— since the Cold War ended have reduced the stakes for dominant foreign and domestic actors, at least in the Western Hemisphere. 1982 crisis: cold war endgame and rediscovery of the role of the state in chile Similar to the 1930s, the international sphere during the early 1980s affected events and trends in periphery countries, such as those in Latin America. More often than not, dominant political ideologies and economic ideas in the international sphere produced a magnifying glass effect in domestic spheres, in the sense that the main issues of the day internationally—politically, the last years andtheendgameoftheColdWar;economically,theVolckereffect,feltthrough the recessionary monetary policy of 1979–81, the debt crisis, and the turn to neoliberalism—were amplified and stoked the fire of domestic conflicts in the Southern Cone countries and, more generally, throughout Latin America. International Sphere political ideologies The 1980s were the endgame decade of the Cold War, although the leading actors did not know this at the time. To President Reagan and his top advisers, communism was still a menacing force at the gates of the free world; moreover, Ideas Cold War Endgame, Unipolar Moment, and Neoliberalism chapter nine ithadgainedafootholdintheWesternHemisphereafterthevictoryoftheSandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1979. Reagan launched a major counteroffensive , training and supplying mercenaries (the Contras) against Nicaragua’s leadership. The US government also expanded its aid and training to neighboring military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, which were fighting left-wing insurgencies. Honduras served as the US hub for arming and training the Contras. The end results were appallingly violent and destructive: civil wars that killed more than three hundred thousand and displaced more than two million people. The Reagan administration’s financial and military involvement in the Central American civil wars came under growing pressure from international and domestic public opinion. As a consequence, President Reagan’s advisers convincedhimtomodifyUSforeignpolicytowardSouthAmericain1982 .Initially, Reagan subscribed to the Kirkpatrick doctrine, where the United States would continue denouncing and condemning human rights abuses that took place in countries under totalitarian communist rule, but would refrain from doing so in the case of anti-communist, authoritarian regimes (like the bureaucraticauthoritarian military regimes in South America), who were America’s allies in the Cold War.1 Several factors explain the policy switch that happened during Reagan’s presidency, according to Kathryn Sikkink. First, both houses in the US Congress remained under Democratic majorities, and they fought against the Reagan administration’s early attempts to dismantle the robust framework of human rights policy that President Jimmy Carter had put in place as a guiding principle of US foreign policy. Second, the Argentine military junta’s decision to invade the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands) and push for war with Great Britain in April 1982 called into question some of the core beliefs of Reagan’s advisers regarding the predictability of military allies’ actions and their potential regional security implications. In the case of Chile, the issue of predictability meant that Washington was concerned about the insurgency launched by left-wing guerrillas in the mid-1980s, as well as about General Pinochet’s recalcitrance and his upping the stakes by responding in the form of violence. The Reagan administration wanted to help avoid what it saw in this trend: the potential for a spiral of violence and disruption in the run up to the October 1988 plebiscite. Third, given the direct military involvement of the United States in propping up the Contras to bring down the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and military and financial assistance to the armed forces of El Salvador to continue waging 192 l at e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y i de a s : c o l d wa r e n d g a m e a n d n e o l i b e r a l i s m 193 what by 1983–84 were horrific counterinsurgency wars, Reagan came under growing pressure domestically and internationally. Civil society organizations, the Catholic Church, and what in effect became a transnational network of governmental and nongovernmental organizations fighting for the respect of individuals ’humanrightsworldwideallcalledfortheUnitedStatestogetoutofCentral America.2 Therefore, a key change...