Chile and the Korean war. An episode of the chilean foreign politics

Abstract

The Korean War was in the eye of the hurricane during the Cold War. It was a stage of tension that included Latin America during its first years, and posed a problem to the Chilean position. Would had it been wise for Chile to effectively participate by means of its Armed Forces in the earliest years of the Korean War as part of a diplomatic strategy of anti-communist alignment? The Chilean diplomacy was tempted to take part in the conflict as a sort of international political positioning stairway, one that was not exclusively linked to Washington. The object of this study is to analyze this meaningful military conflict in the context of the Cold War, where Chile planned and calculated its participation as a Latin American nation in the East-West confrontation. The results evidence a strategy with multiple variables, most of them economically and diplomatically oriented. Nevertheless, the main strategy was still the consideration of a transversal ideology of contention – proper to the Cold War –; one that therefore was immediately subjected to the strategic logic of alliances for Hemispheric Security. In order to carry out the research, a methodology based on documentary analysis of unreleased files, diplomatic sources, and other secondary means was used.