A common trope in some academic and political circles is that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ‘caused’ the 1973 military coup in Chile. Sometimes, the argument is that the CIA did so alone, as the primary instigator, with Chileans largely as pawns in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Other times the argument is that the CIA did so in partnership with local agents in the Chilean bourgeoisie and armed forces. But even in these more nuanced portrayals, Chileans are at best eager local partners who could not have carried out the coup without CIA assistance. In either case, the necessary condition for the coup is support by the US government through its powerful and secretive CIA.

James Lockhart's meticulously researched book provides a long-overdue and much-needed corrective to these views. It argues, first, that ‘Chileans made their own history during the Cold War’ (albeit under less-than-favourable conditions); second, that they were avowed ‘internationalists’ on both sides of the Cold War; and third, that while foreign and domestic intelligence operations were pervasive in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America throughout the Cold War, the ‘foreign elements of these operations […] did not decide this history’ (pp. 6–7, emphasis added).

The book challenges historical accounts that have relied overwhelmingly on US sources, including declassified documents obtained over the years through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. While those accounts themselves shed important light on previously secret aspects of US foreign policy and involvement in the region, their narrow focus misses Latin Americans’ own agency in the Cold War. Lockhart relies on similar US sources but complements these with primary sources from Chilean archives and with secondary literature based on Soviet archives showing the other side of the Cold War. The picture that emerges is that Chileans were not minor pawns in this larger geopolitical struggle but active and significant participants in it. Chilean communism and anticommunism have deep historical roots in the 1920s and 30s, long predating the Cold War. Lockhart shows that Chilean leaders on both sides of the conflict built and used international connections and alliances as part of their domestic battles.

Lockhart's book is especially strong when shining a light on this previously under-examined history. But at the heart of the book there is also a question of causality that is not fully answered. To properly understand the causal impact of the CIA in Chile or elsewhere in the region, it is necessary to pose the counterfactual: what would have happened without CIA involvement? While historians are often hesitant to engage directly in such counterfactual reasoning, Lockhart nevertheless does so in places. For example, the CIA invested heavily in helping elect Eduardo Frei of the Christian Democratic Party in the 1964 presidential elections. Then-Director of Central Intelligence John McCone claimed that ‘without the large-scale covert support provided for the campaign, Frei would have gained, at most, a bare plurality’ instead of the overwhelming majority that brought him to power (quoted on p. 157). Lockhart responds to McCone's counterfactual by documenting key local electoral dynamics, especially a by-election in the run-up to the presidential campaign. A strong leftist victory in the town of Curicó scared the conservative establishment into supporting the centrist Frei campaign instead of risking a victory by the Marxist Left under the leadership of Socialist Senator Salvador Allende. ‘This turn of events’, argues Lockhart, ‘was clearly much more valuable to Christian Democrats than any Agency covert operation, no matter how well planned, lavishly funded, or meticulously implemented’ (p. 157).

Lockhart uses similarly persuasive counterfactual reasoning in analysing Allende's victory in 1970, despite CIA efforts to prevent it. While the conservative Right rallied around centrist Frei in 1964, it ran against his successor Radomiro Tomic in 1970. Had the Centre and the Right run a united campaign in 1970, ‘the CIA might have been able to support them’. But instead, ‘no covert operation, no matter how angry or determined [US President Richard] Nixon was, and no matter how well funded, could have got around these [Chilean domestic] obstacles’ (p. 207).

But apart from these episodes, it is disappointing that Lockhart fails to address the counterfactual question at the heart of the book, namely whether or to what extent the CIA caused the 1973 coup. In Chapter 9 he examines foreign intervention in Chile in the years leading up to the coup (not only by the United States and the Soviet Union, but also by Brazil and Cuba), arguing that ‘these services did not […] act as the architects, engineers, or directors of [Chilean] history’ (p. 235). That claim would be stronger if it were better supported by a more direct and systematic counterfactual analysis. The only way to know if foreign intervention by the CIA in 1973 was not causally decisive would be to ask what might reasonably have happened without such intervention. Would the coup have occurred? It is not enough to know that the CIA was not the only foreign actor involved in Chile, or that Chilean communism and anticommunism have deep historical roots that predate the Cold War, or that Chileans themselves sought international assistance to advance their domestic conflicts. CIA support was clearly not sufficient by itself to cause the coup, but it may nevertheless have been a necessary causal factor, without which there would have been no coup. That kind of counterfactual analysis of the coup remains to be written.

This limitation aside, Lockhart's book is an important corrective to how we understand US foreign policy and intervention in Chile, especially regarding the decisive events of 1973. Not only were other powers also involved but Chileans themselves played key roles. They made and continue to make their own history, albeit often under less-than-favourable circumstances.