America's Battleground | The Cold War Sacrifice of Argentina
TL;DR
The "Dirty War" occurred during the height of the Cold War. In this context, Argentina was allowed to devolve into chaos because the ideals of the military dictatorship aligned with the United States' political agenda.
The Article
The first article in this series establishes that the US knew about Argentina's political environment and the inevitability of a military takeover, a coup d'état. US agents were already monitoring guerrilla activities and the steady increase in anti-leftist efforts. However, the US awareness of the upcoming coup does not explain the lack of meaningful intervention. To do so, the "Dirty War" must be considered in the broader geopolitical context of the Cold War.
What was the Cold War? Some of us remember it as our childhood, so I do not need to define it here; you lived through it. Nevertheless, I will give a brief overview for those unfamiliar. The Cold War was an indirect ideological conflict between the United States' capitalism and the Soviet Union's communism. US foreign policy during this period was less about promoting democratic and capitalist views and more about containing and eradicating communist ones 1. Why is Argentina important in this context? It is because the "Dirty War" was a metaphorical proving ground for these conflicting ideals. In addition, the US viewed political instability as a threat to capitalism, where communism could take hold. For this reason, right-wing authoritarian regimes, like the one during the "Dirty War," promised control and security against the communist ideals.
Argentina's political crisis unfolded within this framework. After the military coup in March 1976, the country came under a military dictatorship led by General Jorge Rafael Videla. To Videla, the road to restoring national unity came through repression and fear. Under Videla, forced disappearances, torture one beyond recognition, and extrajudicial murders were justified as measures against leftist subversion. These actions, blatant human rights violations, were both common and conspicuous to the public 2. Recently declassified US documents reveal that the Americans were aware of the methods employed by Videla and his regime as well as his justification for these actions. While political violence contributed to the instability of Argentina before the coup, it was later used "as a rationale for a no-holds-barred approach to counter-terrorism," resulting in "egregious violations of human rights, despite public recognition by the government that the terrorists have been largely defeated" 3. While the US officials recognized the severity of the actions that occurred under Videla, there was no action to remedy this situation. This reflected the political agenda of the US, where security against communism was more important than preserving human rights in a foreign nation. Even in the quote above, the issue is framed in terms of the counterterrorism movement against leftist sentiments.
This declassified document and the resulting analysis reveal how the US' Cold War priorities twisted the perception of Argentinian violence under Videla's dictatorship. For the "Dirty War," awareness did not lead to intervention; instead, brutality and human rights concerns were swept under the rug in favor of an ideological defense against communism. Argentina became the battleground of Cold War ideologies not because the US intervened, but because they did not. The US allowed Argentina to devolve into chaos, where terror and torture were not just permissible but commonplace, all for their own political and ideological agenda.