You are missing the extraordinary claim here. The extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence is that the CIA successfully instigated a coup. That’s a really hard thing to do. Had they done so we would expect good evidence of them planning it and being involved.
The fact that we know they tried two years prior and failed suggests that
We would probably have evidence of them trying in 1973 if they did so
We need evidence that their attempts were effective, since most encourage coup attempts fail
The Chile-driven coup explanation looks good because
A coup makes sense given the high levels of disorder in Chile at the time
Chile’s political institutions fit the coup profile
The structure of the coup is ordinary (no events which demand a CIA explanation)
The claim that the CIA had a decisive role in the coup really is silly because the evidence is weak and unnecessary to explain the outcomes.
I have already explicitly disagreed twice with that “extraordinary claim”. The much weaker claim that I am defending (again: tentatively, in the knowledge that I could turn out to be wrong because the evidence readily available to me is not conclusive) is that the US had something to do with the Pinochet coup. frontier64′s original comment here denied that, not merely the stronger (and, I agree, probably wrong) claim that the US was responsible for the coup, and that’s the only thing I’m disagreeing with frontier64 about here.
(Well, no, it’s not the only thing; we also apparently disagree about whether frontier64 did or did not cite sources in support of the statement that the US had nothing to do with the Pinochet coup. That’s a thing anyone can check just by reading the comments in this thread, though.)
The statement “The US had something to do with the Pinochet coup” is so vague that it’s obviously true. For example, the statement “The US had something to do with the Soviet launch of Sputnik” is also true, since some paper some soviet scientist read was written by an American, and they were competing with us. Or the statement “the US had something to do with Uruguay’s invention of the pacemaker”, etc.
Let us cache out some more useful statements.
Did US policy increase the probability of a coup occuring in Chile by any amount: Most likely yes. Pinochet knew that America would tolerate a coup based on US past policy. Our available evidence suggests this was a small factor in Pinochet’s calculus, relative to if the US had no signals. The failed attempt in 1971 might have actually protected Allende, we can’t know for sure.
Could a different US policy have decreased the probability of a coup occurring by any amount: Again, almost certainly yes. There are reasonable indications that changes in US policy since 1990 have decreased the rate of coups in Latin America. The effect of this counterfactual is much lower than the endogenous Chilean factors or the influence of Chile’s immediate neighbors. But would have been non-negligible.
Was the main reason for the coup Chile’s internal politics: Clearly yes. The outcome of the US’s early attempt shows that Chilean democracy was difficult to influence from outside. Meanwhile we know that the role of institutional factors in coups is very large. You can look at coup-cast’s predictions for Sudan currently. Or look at outcomes by various taxonomies of democracy.
If “The US had something to do with the coup” is so vague as to be trivial, then “This meme that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup has to stop” is so overstated as to be trivially wrong. (Obviously that’s not your fault, unless you and frontier64 happen to be the same person going by two names.)
Your more finely-tuned statements all seem reasonable to me, though I don’t know enough about the Pinochet coup to say more than that.
You are missing the extraordinary claim here. The extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence is that the CIA successfully instigated a coup. That’s a really hard thing to do. Had they done so we would expect good evidence of them planning it and being involved.
The fact that we know they tried two years prior and failed suggests that
We would probably have evidence of them trying in 1973 if they did so
We need evidence that their attempts were effective, since most encourage coup attempts fail
The Chile-driven coup explanation looks good because
A coup makes sense given the high levels of disorder in Chile at the time
Chile’s political institutions fit the coup profile
The structure of the coup is ordinary (no events which demand a CIA explanation)
The claim that the CIA had a decisive role in the coup really is silly because the evidence is weak and unnecessary to explain the outcomes.
I have already explicitly disagreed twice with that “extraordinary claim”. The much weaker claim that I am defending (again: tentatively, in the knowledge that I could turn out to be wrong because the evidence readily available to me is not conclusive) is that the US had something to do with the Pinochet coup. frontier64′s original comment here denied that, not merely the stronger (and, I agree, probably wrong) claim that the US was responsible for the coup, and that’s the only thing I’m disagreeing with frontier64 about here.
(Well, no, it’s not the only thing; we also apparently disagree about whether frontier64 did or did not cite sources in support of the statement that the US had nothing to do with the Pinochet coup. That’s a thing anyone can check just by reading the comments in this thread, though.)
The statement “The US had something to do with the Pinochet coup” is so vague that it’s obviously true. For example, the statement “The US had something to do with the Soviet launch of Sputnik” is also true, since some paper some soviet scientist read was written by an American, and they were competing with us. Or the statement “the US had something to do with Uruguay’s invention of the pacemaker”, etc.
Let us cache out some more useful statements.
Did US policy increase the probability of a coup occuring in Chile by any amount: Most likely yes. Pinochet knew that America would tolerate a coup based on US past policy. Our available evidence suggests this was a small factor in Pinochet’s calculus, relative to if the US had no signals. The failed attempt in 1971 might have actually protected Allende, we can’t know for sure.
Could a different US policy have decreased the probability of a coup occurring by any amount: Again, almost certainly yes. There are reasonable indications that changes in US policy since 1990 have decreased the rate of coups in Latin America. The effect of this counterfactual is much lower than the endogenous Chilean factors or the influence of Chile’s immediate neighbors. But would have been non-negligible.
Was the main reason for the coup Chile’s internal politics: Clearly yes. The outcome of the US’s early attempt shows that Chilean democracy was difficult to influence from outside. Meanwhile we know that the role of institutional factors in coups is very large. You can look at coup-cast’s predictions for Sudan currently. Or look at outcomes by various taxonomies of democracy.
Finally, this is all Hamilton’s fault for introducing presidentialism and checks and balances). Federalism is cool though, that was a good idea.
If “The US had something to do with the coup” is so vague as to be trivial, then “This meme that the US had anything to do with Pinochet’s coup has to stop” is so overstated as to be trivially wrong. (Obviously that’s not your fault, unless you and frontier64 happen to be the same person going by two names.)
Your more finely-tuned statements all seem reasonable to me, though I don’t know enough about the Pinochet coup to say more than that.