Foreign policy
In 1971, Chile re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba, joining Mexico and Canada in rejecting a previously established Organization of American States convention prohibiting governments in the Western Hemisphere from establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Shortly afterward, Cuban president Fidel Castro made a month-long visit to Chile. Originally, the visit was supposed to be one week; however, Castro enjoyed Chile and one week led to another. Despite his attitude of "socialist solidarity", Castro was reportedly critical of Allende's policies. Castro was quoted as saying that "Marxism is a revolution of production", whereas "Allende's was a revolution of consumption."
Allende took office in a difficult international context. Chile was aligned with the United States in 1970. Elsewhere in Latin America, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia were ruled by conservative military dictatorships (soon to be joined by Uruguay). Colombia had a liberal government and Venezuela, a democratic Christian one, both elected by the people. Many in Cuba, Peru and Mexico viewed the Chilean socialist experiment with sympathy. Under Allende's presidency, Chile joined the Non-Aligned Movement.
Chile, which until then had been fussy about ideological boundaries, diversified its diplomatic and trade relations, regardless of the internal political regime of each country. The government established diplomatic relations with Cuba, Guyana, seven African countries (Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zaire), three European countries (Albania, East Germany and Hungary) and seven Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, North Korea, China, Mongolia, South Vietnam and North Vietnam).
It tried to promote Latin American integration. At the 1971 Latin American Economic and Social Council, the Chilean representative Gonzalo Martner García formulated four major proposals, summarized by the historian Jorge Magasich: "1) to ask the United States for a moratorium on external debt for a decade in order to allocate these sums to development policies; 2) to create a Latin American central bank to "invest Latin America's reserves, 70% of which are in the United States", to receive "the region's deposits and assets" and to coordinate the operations of the central banks in order to protect the region from financial turbulence; 3) Promote the creation of a global technology fund for development, fed by compulsory contributions of licenses, industrial processes and other funds for research, so as to limit the abuses associated with technological property; 4) Create a Latin American organisation for the development of science and technology appropriate to the region."
He began negotiations with Bolivia over the historical dispute between the two countries (Bolivia had lost access to the sea since the War of the Pacific between 1879 and 1884) and welcomed Bolivia's maritime request. Nevertheless, relations became tense again following a coup d'état by Bolivian General Hugo Banzer in August 1971. At the same time, Chile granted asylum to thousands of political exiles from Latin American countries.
Salvador Allende openly rejected the influence of the Organization of American States (OAS), a body close to the United States government, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which favored the interests of more developed countries. On the other hand, he was a fervent defender of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which he considered to be more representative since it allowed economic and trade issues to be negotiated on an equal legal footing. In a speech to UNCTAD, he also warned of the policy of the United States, Japan and the European Economic Community to progressively eliminate obstacles to free trade. He said that "freeing up trade ... erases at a stroke the benefits that the Generalised System of Preferences brings to developing countries".
Allende's Popular Unity government tried to maintain normal relations with the United States. When Chile nationalized its copper industry, the United States government cut off support and increased its support to the opposition. Forced to seek alternative sources of trade and finance, Chile gained commitments from the Soviet Union to invest some $400 million in Chile in the next six years. The United States Department of State put it at $115 million from Eastern Europe and $65 million from China, while Soviet and Chilean Popular Unity sources put it at total of $620 million from socialist countries. Much of the credit was never utilized, and the Soviets were not willing to subsidize Chile the same way they did for Cuba.
Allende's government was disappointed that it received far less economic assistance from the Soviets than it hoped for. Trade between the two countries did not significantly increase and the credits were mainly linked to the purchase of Soviet equipment. Moreover, credits from the Soviet Union were much less than those provided to the People's Republic of China and countries of the Eastern Bloc. When Allende visited the Soviet Union in late 1972 in search of more aid and additional lines of credit after three years, he was turned down.
The United States opposition to Allende started several years before he was elected President of Chile. Declassified documents show that from 1962 to 1964, the CIA spent $3 million on anti-Allende propaganda "to scare voters away from Allende's FRAP coalition" and spent a total of $2.6 million to finance the presidential campaign of Eduardo Frei.
The possibility of Allende winning Chile's 1970 election was deemed a disaster by the Nixon administration that wanted to protect American geopolitical interests by preventing the spread of Communism during the Cold War. In September 1970, then United States president Richard Nixon informed the CIA that an Allende government in Chile would not be acceptable and authorized $10 million to stop Allende from coming to power or unseat him. A CIA document declared, "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup." Henry Kissinger's 40 Committee and the CIA planned to impede Allende's investiture as President of Chile with covert efforts known as "Track I" and "Track II"; Track I sought to prevent Allende from assuming power via so-called "parliamentary trickery", while under the Track II initiative, the CIA tried to convince key Chilean military officers to carry out a coup.
Some point to the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency agents that allegedly secured the missiles used to bombard La Moneda Palace. In fact, open US military aid to Chile continued during the Allende administration, and the national government was very much aware of that although there is no record that Allende himself believed that such assistance was anything but beneficial to Chile. During Richard Nixon's presidency, United States officials attempted to prevent Allende's election by financing political parties aligned with opposition candidate Jorge Alessandri and supporting strikes in the mining and transportation sectors. After the 1970 election, the Track I operation attempted to incite Chile's outgoing president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, to persuade his party (PDC) to vote in Congress for Alessandri.
Under the plan, Alessandri would resign his office immediately after assuming it and call new elections. Eduardo Frei would then be constitutionally able to run again (since the Chilean Constitution did not allow a president to hold two consecutive terms, but allowed multiple non-consecutive ones), and presumably easily defeat Allende. The Chilean Congress instead chose Allende as president, on the condition that he would sign a "Statute of Constitutional Guarantees" affirming that he would respect and obey the Chilean Constitution and that his reforms would not undermine any of its elements. Track II was aborted, as parallel initiatives already underway within the Chilean military rendered it moot. During the second term of office of Democratic President Bill Clinton, the CIA acknowledged having played a role in Chilean politics before the coup, but its degree of involvement is debated. The CIA was notified by its Chilean contacts of the impending coup two days in advance but contends it "played no direct role in" the coup.
Much of the internal opposition to Allende's policies came from the business sector, and recently released United States government documents confirm that the United States indirectly funded the truck drivers' strike, which exacerbated the already chaotic economic situation before the coup. The most prominent United States corporations in Chile before Allende's presidency were the Anaconda and Kennecott copper companies and ITT Corporation, International Telephone and Telegraph. Both copper corporations aimed to expand privatized copper production in the city of Sewell in the Chilean Andes, where the world's largest underground copper mine "El Teniente", was located.
At the end of 1968, according to United States Department of Commerce data, United States corporate holdings in Chile amounted to $964 million. Anaconda and Kennecott accounted for 28% of United States holdings, but ITT had by far the largest holding of any single corporation, with an investment of $200 million in Chile. In 1970, before Allende was elected, ITT owned 70% of Chitelco, the Chilean Telephone Company and funded El Mercurio, a Chilean right-wing newspaper. Documents released in 2000 by the CIA confirmed that before the elections of 1970, ITT gave $700,000 to Allende's conservative opponent, Jorge Alessandri, with help from the CIA on how to channel the money safely. ITT president Harold Geneen also offered $1 million to the CIA to help defeat Allende in the elections.
After General Augusto Pinochet assumed power, United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told President Nixon that the United States "didn't do it" (referring to the coup) but "we helped them... created the conditions as great as possible". Documents declassified under the Clinton administration's Chile Declassification Project show that the United States government and the CIA sought to overthrow Allende in 1970 immediately before he took office ("Project FUBELT"). Many documents regarding the United States intervention in Chile remain classified. Those that have been declassified showed that Nixon, Kissinger, and the United States government were aware of the coup and the plans to overthrow Allende's democratically elected government.
Political and moral support came mostly through the Communist Party and unions of the Soviet Union. For instance, Allende received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1972. At the same time, there were some fundamental differences between Allende and Soviet political analysts, who believed that some violence or measures that those analysts "theoretically considered to be just", should have been used. Declarations from KGB General Nikolai Leonov, former Deputy Chief of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, confirmed that the Soviet Union supported Allende's government economically, politically and militarily. Leonov stated in an interview at the Chilean Center of Public Studies (CEP) that the Soviet economic support included over $100 million in credit, three fishing ships (that distributed 17,000 tons of frozen fish to the population), factories (as help after the 1971 earthquake), 3,100 tractors, 74,000 tons of wheat and more than a million tins of condensed milk. In mid-1973, the Soviets approved the delivery of weapons (artillery and tanks) to the Chilean Army. When news of an attempt from the Army to depose Allende through a coup d'état reached Soviet officials, the shipment was redirected to another country.
Allende is mentioned in a book written by the official historian of the British Intelligence MI5, Christopher Andrew. According to SIS and Andrew, the book is based on the handwritten notes of KGB archivist defector Vasili Mitrokhin. Andrew alleged that the KGB said that Allende "was made to understand the necessity of reorganizing Chile's army and intelligence services, and of setting up a relationship between Chile's and the USSR's intelligence services." The Soviets observed closely whether the alternative form of socialism could work, and they did not interfere with the Chileans' decisions. Nikolai Leonov affirmed that whenever he tried to give advice to Latin American leaders, he was usually turned down by them, and he was told that they had their own understanding on how to conduct political business in their countries. Leonov added that the relationships of KGB agents with Latin American leaders did not involve intelligence because their intelligence target was the United States. Since many North Americans were living in the region, the Soviets were focusing in recruiting agents from the United States. Latin America was also a better region for KGB agents to get in touch with their informants from the CIA or other contacts from the United States than inside that country.
According to Vasili Mitrokhin, the Soviet Union provided financial support for the election of Salvador Allende, with whom it had had ties since the 1950s, by granting him a "personal subsidy of $500,000," which was approved by the Politburo with the aim of "strengthening confidential relations." It is also reported that $18,000 was paid to a left-wing senator to "persuade him not to run as a candidate." Once elected, the USSR provided $30,000 in October 1971 to "consolidate relations of trust" with the Allende government and another $50,000 requested in February 1973, shortly before the 1973 Chilean parliamentary election. The documents also claim that the Soviet intelligence service sought closer cooperation between Chilean intelligence agencies and the Soviet Union, including a possible reorganization of the Chilean Army and intelligence services, proposals to which Allende allegedly reacted positively. The KGB reportedly viewed the Popular Unity government's situation as increasingly difficult by 1972 and criticized Allende for not using "force" against his opponents. After the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, Soviet intelligence officials reportedly complained that Allende had given little importance to their warnings about the possibility of his overthrow.
