Chile: The Aussie Connection: An Interview with Clinton Fernandes
by John Kendall Hawkins
Clinton Fernandes is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales. He has published on the relationship between science, diplomacy and international law, intelligence operations in foreign policy, the political and regulatory implications of new technology and Australia's external relations more generally. His research in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW analyzes the operational environment, and the threats, risks and opportunities that military forces will face, in the 2030-50 timeframe.
He is the author of Peace with Justice: Noam Chomsky in Australia (2012), What Uncle Sam Wants: U.S. Foreign Policy Objectives in Australia and Beyond (2019), and his latest book, Subimperial Power: Australia in the International Arena (2022). In 2009, Fernandes acted as the historical consultant for the film Balibo based on the 1975 events surrounding the murders of the Balibo Five and Roger East.
Recently, we exchanged email communiques.
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JH: The 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup in Chile that toppled the Allende government is fast upon us. With half a century of hindsight, what essential lessons can we draw from this event -- often referred to as Chile's 9/11?
CF: It is also the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine and the 70th anniversary of the 1953 coup against the conservative Mossadegh government in Iran, then a British client state. Mossadegh tried to nationalise his country's oil - a sign that he, like Allende in Chile, didn't understand how the "rules-based international order" worked, namely that a country's resources must be made available to Western corporations in the manner desired by them. In Chile, two U.S. companies, Kennecott and Anaconda, controlled the main export-based sector, which was copper. Another company, IT&T, controlled the telecommunications sector. The majority of Chileans wanted to benefit from their own resources. They wanted agrarian reform and an end to the huge economic inequalities in their society. But Chilean oligarchs relied for their own privileged position on their country's subordination to the U.S. They urged Nixon and Kissinger to help, and took action at home to undermine Allende.
One obvious lesson is that the rules-based international order is a euphemism for an imperial system in which investor rights take precedence over state sovereignty. An empire is a formal or informal relationship in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of others. Control can be achieved without conquering colonies or directly ruling foreign lands. It can be established through economic, social or cultural dependence, political collaboration between both countries' elites, the threat or use of military force, coups d'e'tat, intelligence operations, trade agreements and investment treaties.
Today the United States sits at the apex of a hierarchically structured imperial system. Its "democracy-promotion" agenda is in reality an investor-rights promotion agenda. As Thomas Carothers, formerly of the Reagan administration says (in his Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion), the United States promotes democracy when it fits in with U.S. security and economic interests. Where it clashes with other significant interests, democracy is downplayed or ignored. When the People's Republic of China subordinates its business elites to the interests of its national sovereignty, it acts against the "rules-based international order" - one reason why it's disliked in certain sectors.
JH: Henry Kissinger is said to have uttered the presumptuous and obnoxious lines about dealing with Chile after Allende's election in 1970,
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.
He seems to be equating communism with socialism. In what way is this sentiment revealed to be the driving force of American foreign policy?
CF: It shows that "security" is an elastic term. It expands to accommodate what a nation or group thinks it should have - other countries' resources, yes, but more fundamentally, the principle that investor rights must take precedence over state sovereignty. It also shows that the real threat to this imperial foreign policy is independent economic nationalism - the unacceptable idea that the people of a country should derive the greatest benefit from their resources.
We know from the declassified record that Kissinger and Nixon's main concern wasn't specifically Kennecott and Anaconda, the two U.S. copper giants that dominated the Chilean economy. As the exemplary scholar Peter Kornbluh has shown, they had an imperial conception of U.S. foreign policy. They understood what they called the "Dimensions of the Problem," namely what happens in Chile had ramifications far beyond just U.S.-Chilean relations. Kissinger and Nixon recognised that Allende's success would "have an effect on what happens in the rest of Latin America and the developing world" and would "even affect our own conception of what our role in the world is." His success would surely have "precedent value for other parts of the world, especially in Italy." That's because Italy still had an active labour movement even after four decades of CIA subversion. Chile's experiment with social democracy would signal to Italian voters that they could - and should - revive their own independent labour tradition.
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