Kissinger Didn't Understand South America

The Argentina Declassification Project has been getting some attention for the bits on Henry Kissinger. As anyone with a passing interest in Cold War Latin America knows, Kissinger was a big fan of the Argentine dictatorship, and the Dirty War did not bother him a whit. So the fact that he continued to praise the dictators shouldn't surprise us.

What I found more interesting about the documents is how nicely and accurately Robert Pastor skewered Kissinger. Pastor was a Latin America expert whereas Kissinger knew very little.

Pastor expands on that:

So it's not just indifferent to human rights abuses. It's a lack of understanding about how South American governments relate to each other, which then made him believe such indifference was necessary. Court authoritarian Argentina in order to avoid South American dictatorships come together? This is not a reasonable argument, for the reasons Pastor lays out.