When the leaders of Pacific Rim countries gathered for the APEC — Asia-Pacific-Economic-Cooperation — summit in Santiago last month, it was seen first and foremost as George W. Bush’s chance to cement international alliances at the high level talks on free trade and global security. To do so he had to assuage concerns about his own administration as well as face down other world leaders. Most notably among them was Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Bush did not disappoint, asking Putin to explain in Chile, why he has taken actions widely considered to be moving away from democracy, returning toward authoritarian rule.

It was no small irony that global security issues, acute since the American 9-11 were being discussed in the nation that marked the first 9-11. September 11, 1973 is a day of infamy in Latin America, the day when democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende was murdered in the course of a bloody coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. Washington’s complicity in the putsch, the U.S. role in Pinochet’s consolidation of power as well as the State Department’s knowledge of his gross violations of human rights as well as involvement in international terrorism are no longer a state secret. In fact, Secretary of State Colin Powell conceded in February 2003, that the U.S.’s role in Chile in the 1960’s and 1970’s is “not a part of American history that we are proud of.”

That history was brought back to the front pages of newspapers last week with the announcement that a Chilean judge has declared Pinochet mentally fit to face trial. That issue had been bandied back and forth in various courts, including the one of public opinion, ever since October 1998, when Pinochet was arrested in a private English clinic and charged with crimes against humanity. Eventually stripped of immunity from prosecution, Pinochet had been interrogated and indicted. However, until Justice Juan Guzman Tapia’s ruling last week, Pinochet had been spared a trial. Chilean courts had ruled that due to age-related dementia Pinochet could not be put on trial for the abuses committed under his military dictatorship.

The Americans no doubt are concerned about the fall-out. Recently declassified documents are front and center in Peter Kornbluh’s 2003 work, “The Pinochet File.” Focussing on decisions made by Nixon, Kissinger, and the CIA, the evidence is damning — and few, if any Americans understand the full extent of what was done in their name, but without their knowledge in Chile. Lest some point fingers at Republicans and make comparisons with Iraq, it must be noted that U.S policy in Latin America had much to do with avoiding another Bay of Pigs. The desire to avoid a Marxist president in Chile was expressed before Nixon by Democrats, by both Kennedy and Johnson, having learned from underestimating that other Marxist leader, Fidel Castro. The CIA and Foggy Bottom went too far. Expecting that the Junta would be a commission of equals, with a rotating leadership, they seriously underestimated Pinochet’s penchant for power, especially as far as individual ruthlessness was concerned.

Kornbluh’s massive tome makes every attempt at putting those declassified documents into their historical context. It is a book that perhaps could only have been published in the U.S., a country that for all its flaws does not resort to the extreme censorship and secrecy found in authoritarian regimes. Although Kornbluh’s sympathies are openly with the Chileans, and he is not sparing with censure of top American officials, it is still a carefully measured, well-researched historical work. The “smoking guns” are all there.

The likelihood of any public trial of Pinochet bringing satisfaction to the families of his victims is small. Indicted in connection with Operation Condor, Pinochet is unlikely to spend any time in a jail cell for his involvement with that scheme, designed to use murder and terror to suppress political dissent. Kornbluh describes Condor as “the most sinister state-sponsored terrorist network in the Western Hemisphere, if not the world.” There are justified fears that any trial would become a show trial.

Here one is reminded of the famous 1961 show trial of Adolf Eichmann, brilliantly documented by Hannah Arendt in her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.” The issue was not of one man — Eichmann was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, which is evident in trial transcripts. Arendt transcended the crimes of one man in her analysis, dealing with a far greater problem — that of the human being within a modern totalitarian system. Fascism — whether in the National Socialist guise or in the uniform of a Chilean junta — on trial provides some Marxists with fodder for justifying their own worldview. One does not change the other, or, more famously, a wrong right does not make the left right.

Pinochet in the spotlight should not deflect attention from Vladimir Putin. Just this week Freedom House downgraded Russia from Partly Free to Not Free and issued concerns about the future of democracy there. Last week, Nicholas Kristof wound up his tour of the Baltics in search of troops for Bush and the coalition of the willing. In the New York Times of December 15th Kristof described Putin as a headless horseman, threatening independent countries. The West has been suckered by Putin — Kristof wrote that he is not a sober Yeltsin, but rather a “Russified Pinochet or Franco.” Putin has steered Russia from a dictatorship of the left to a dictatorship of the right, and Kristof feels that a fascist Russia is much better than a Communist Russia. Kristof saw Pinochet’s Chile as “ultimately laying the groundwork for democracy” — by generating economic growth and a middle class.

Should this be a pattern to be repeated? Pinochet’s victims, victims of crimes enabled by U.S. foreign policy complicity as outlined by Kornbluh would disagree. Kristof not surprisingly concurs: we must stay on the right side of history, not allow Putin to bully Ukraine, the Baltics, interfere in Georgia. For a world leader Putin is a young man who has, like Pinochet, consolidated his grip on power. Bush would be wise to ensure that the U.S. does not look the other way — as it did in Chile — while Putin takes his country deeper into right-wing Pinochet-type rule.

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