The Foreign Policy of State Terrorism: West Germany, the Military Juntas in Chile and Argentina and the Latin American Refugee Crisis of the 1970s

Abstract

This article analyses West German foreign policy towards state terrorism in Chile and Argentina and towards political refugees fleeing these regimes. Pressured by grassroots activists, Willy Brandt's government took a hard stance against the Chilean military junta and established an asylum programme for refugees from Chile. Under Helmut Schmidt, however, the official attitude towards state terrorism changed. West Germany welcomed the military coup in Buenos Aires, accepted the Argentinean junta's position that repressive measures were necessary to fight ‘subversion’, flatly refused to accept any Argentinean political prisoners and approved billions of Deutschmarks worth of weapons sales to the junta. This article argues that Bonn's ambivalence towards state terrorism and uneven interest in human rights was due to the different attitudes of both Social Democratic Chancellors towards economic strategising, grassroots activism and, most importantly, the threat of left-wing terrorism.