Welcome to my modest attempt at a timeline, it’s not perfect and I would welcome some constructive criticism on it, but I figured that without feedback I was just spinning my wheels. This is a TL which springs from my desire to see more middle powers, and for South America to be globally relevant. So without further delay, welcome to the TL.
Whilst the first American continental war is often regarded as having started in 1978, the direct cause of the conflict goes back ten years earlier to 1969 when the Argentinean Junta used the ARA Veinticinco de Mayo’s working up period to put pressure on Chile over the Beagle Isles. Pointing out in a brutal manner that countries naval weakness. Given the long standing rivalry in the region, and the area in question (It was an area that was a long running point of contention between Chile and Argentina.) Chile’s response was always going to be a search for an equalizer.
Of course to really understand the conflict you need to know just why the Argentinian navy felt the need to deploy both of their carriers to the area. Two years earlier the Chilean navy had attempted to move one of their patrol boats (the Quidora) into an Argentine harbour. Of course the officer in charge of the boat was broken from the service by President Eduardo Nicanor Frei Montalva order. That had annoyed the Chilean navy and they proceeded to repeat the incident in ’68 with a pair of patrol vessels. When the Argentines didn’t fire (The Argentines were well aware that their previous antics in the area had rendered their international image in the area as trigger happy maniacs and in an effort to control that declined to fire.) on them they left, satisfied that they had proved their point. Over the course of the next year various Chilean ships preceded to treat Argentinian waters around Terra Del Fuego as a private preserve violating Argentinian Sovereignty as they pleased. This severely irritated the Argentinians, and they resolved to hit back hard.
The response came in 1969 when both the ARA Veinticino de Mayo and the ARA Independicia were both moved towards the Beagle islands. Faced with two carriers the Chileans backed down, but not before they exacted a price from the Argentines. One of the P-2 Neptune’s that the Argentinians had deployed went more than a hundred miles over the border. Documents declassified in the ought’s show that this was meant to be a show of force along the lines of the Chileans provocations. The Chileans of course were not in the mood to accept Argentinian push back, after all their own aggressive actions had been meant to remind the Argentines that they were not to be messed with. As such the unfortunately P-2 became a fireball as soon as the Chilean air force could get a jet after it.
The Argentinian response was predictable. Both of the carriers launched their fighters. The Chilean navy seeing this, and knowing that they didn’t stand a chance against the enraged argentines hauled ass out of the area. Essentially their surface combatants made for either port or away at their best speed leaving the Argentine navy in control of the area. Naturally this flight was brought up at the negotiating table much to the displeasure of the Chileans. Despite getting their licks in at the negotiating table the Argentinian establishment felt that it had gotten the upper hand in the game of brinksmanship, and that in backing down the Chileans had weekend their position to such a degree that the Argentinian position would carry the day.
The ham handed attempt to force Chile to back down had a major effect on the Chilean presidential election, leading to the election of Jorge Alessandri who had run a strong campaign on security issues. Some analyses insist that the assassination of General Rene Schneider by left wing radicals in the middle of the campaign was the more decisive factor, of course in the early nineties it came out that the CIA was responsible for the assassination, causing a major diplomatic row. Alessandri’s candidacy was further helped by General Carlos Prats infamous loss of temper with reporters when he gave his first press conference.
The weeks leading up to the fateful press conference had been filled with news stories and leaks from the investigation. The government had ordered a clamp down on information coming out of the investigation as it looked more and more likely that the Soviet Union was at least in part responsible. The pressure on the army and the police force to remain neutral, or at least to not talk about the assassination until the election was over hurt the government and lead to a massive amount of discontent in the armed forces. Prats had been known in political circles as an even tempered constitutionalist but even he was annoyed with the government, and what seemed to be a policy of sweeping the assassination under the rug. Prats was walking a tight rope even as he sought to do his job, the Chilean military tradition of constitutionalism was coming directly into conflict with the facts of the case. From what he was being told this assassination was political with a capital P, and if the military let it go then they would be dragged into politics anyways as their long held neutrality would be considered little more than a defensive fig leaf.
Under enormous pressure from both sides it is no surprise that when he gave the press conference, even after receiving instructions not to, and he began ranting about the ‘murderous left’ impeding the investigation. Given that he blamed the politicians publically for hamstringing not only the armies own investigative branch, but the policia as well, the press conference lead to the impression that the army saw a break down in law and order occurring with the consent of the left leaning politicians. The army’s clear annoyance, coupled with the implication that left wing parties had been a part of the assassination plot made for an ugly political situation. The situation was exacerbated as the left hemmed and hawed whilst scrambling to cover themselves in case their associates were part of the plot publically. All of this lead many in the electorate to swing hard right. This trend was accelerated when Alessandri began to hawk the law and order credentials he had accumulated during his last term in office.
By the time the elections were over and done with Alessandri came into power facing a major crisis of confidence in the government. Additionally while the economy was doing well on paper, inflation was a serious problem and it refused to go away. There was a real split between the Companista class and the land owning class due to the expropriation issue causing a festering social divide. Although very good for Chilean literature and filmography the social issues would continue to plague the country to this day.
On the international front things didn’t look any better. The Argentineans successful looking use of the threat of force (Chile had been forced to ask for international mediation instead of maintaining its position that the beagle islands were and always had been Chilean.) had emboldened both the Peruvians and the Bolivians. Both of those countries were purchasing an alarming number of weapons. Peru had even gone so far as to invite Cuban advisors into the country openly, and several of their officers were publishing in soviet military journals about the tactics of assaulting mountain infantry. Considering that the bulk of the Chilean army was made up of mountain infantry it was a worrying bit of intelligence. Chile looked weak and Alessandri couldn’t seem to find a way out of the bind that his predecessor had led them into.
Domestically Alessandri enacted his tax reform plan. It didn’t sound like much but was probably the most revolutionary piece of legislation that he would enact in his presidency. In it he created a massive tax incentive for major land owners to divest themselves of their lands, and use the profits from their divestment to invest in industry. Government backed loans to the rural companista population meant that they were able to buy the land they had been living on. It was a program which had more then a few ups and downs but in general it was successful. The press aided in the success as the left leaning press sold it as a victory for the left. Obviously the president had recognized the need for land reform and had simply changed the form of it, rather then the substance. The press on the right sold a different narrative, to them it was a return to traditional Chilean values. The President was trying to encourage the companista to pull themselves up through hard work rather then handing them the land. All in all it was a successful program and it would be continued under the next three administrations.
The secondary benefits from this program wouldn’t be apparent until the eighties, but during this time Chiles light industry expanded massively, and would continue to expand until the late eighties, bringing jobs to the urban poor. Large land owners did lose a fair bit of their political pull, but as business owners they retained and gained financial power. What they did with that power was essential to the continued economic growth of Chile. All of this helped on the domestic front, but the international front remained rocky.
Help came from an unusual source; Vicealmirante Jose Toribio Merino. The Naval Director of Weapons, came to the newly sworn in president with an interesting proposal. The Chilean navy needed a new flagship, and reports where that the United Kingdom was looking to divest themselves of the HMS Eagle. Marino’s arguments were thorough and very compelling. He acknowledged that a carrier didn’t look like it was needed, but he pointed out that it was a both a prestige project and it was supremely useful given Chile’s limited strategic depth.
Alessandri wasn’t convinced of the Vicealmirante’s argument but he did keep it in mind. After a week of deep thought Alessandri directed Merino to bring him a plan of action and the appropriate austerity measures to ensure that it was financially feasible to do so. What he had been expecting was a minor couple of tweaks, perhaps letting go of a vessel or two. What he got was completely different. Jose Toribio Merino was an aggressive commander who had served with the US navy during the second world war on a cruiser and then gone on to specialize in logistics. As such he was painfully aware of the way that Chiles scatter shot buying pattern in major military hardware was costing them in terms of maintenance and in terms of needing to buy from multiple supply chains.
Merino recommended a complete rationalization of the navy. Under his plan all nine destroyers would be put on the block along with everything heavier than a destroyer. Being different makes and seven of the nine destroyers being from world war two along with the other heavy ships, Merino had grave doubts about their ability to do more then take up Chilean funds and absorb enemy fire in such a way as to get good Chilean sailors killed for no return. He recommended that the planned purchase of Condell class frigates from the United Kingdom be expanded from three to seven. Both of the Chilean submarines were axed, to be replaced by between four and eight new built 209’s from Germany along with a submarine tender. If he could have Merino would have cancelled the purchase of the two Oberon’s from the United Kingdom but it was too late for that. Finally four type 42 destroyers were to be purchased from the United Kingdom to escort the Eagle which would require a refit before it could be bought into service. All Cruisers and more then a few of the Landing ships would be let go without replacement. While the purchasing sounded excessive the more that Alessandri read the more it made sense. Marino was modernizing the navy and at the same time was downsizing it, at least in terms of sailors at sea that was.
In the end Alessandri brought the plan to his cabinet, after extensive talks with both the army and the air force, and began to implement it. Of course there were compromises to be made. Air craft procurement was pushed through the office of the air force, it was felt that an appropriate carrier plane would be able to benefit the air force as well as the navy. Mostly this stipulation was ignored, as the air force and navy had differing philosophy’s and desires, but in some cases it would prove to be a success for both services.
The army felt left out and so was allowed to purchase 350 ex Israeli AMX-13 Light tanks that had suddenly become available when Singapore cancelled the deal to replace its small M24 Chaffee fleet. It was the beginning of a cooperative relationship with Israel that would last years and extend beyond military cooperation. Of course the army wanted main battle tanks but the decision was put off in light of the already heavy military expenditures under way. A strong secondary factor in the president and cabinet’s reluctance to purchase all up main battle tanks was that they were not common in South America. Argentina, the bogyman for the Chileans, was still using M-4 Sherman’s so the pressure to upgrade was less than the pressure on both the air force and the navy. Despite this the Army played its cards very well, in getting a commiserate increase in funding they had set a precedent that would live on and mean a steady increase in lethality. The army might not have gotten the press, but they did get the dollars, and that meant that by the time anyone took notice they were already ready for action.
Whilst the first American continental war is often regarded as having started in 1978, the direct cause of the conflict goes back ten years earlier to 1969 when the Argentinean Junta used the ARA Veinticinco de Mayo’s working up period to put pressure on Chile over the Beagle Isles. Pointing out in a brutal manner that countries naval weakness. Given the long standing rivalry in the region, and the area in question (It was an area that was a long running point of contention between Chile and Argentina.) Chile’s response was always going to be a search for an equalizer.
Of course to really understand the conflict you need to know just why the Argentinian navy felt the need to deploy both of their carriers to the area. Two years earlier the Chilean navy had attempted to move one of their patrol boats (the Quidora) into an Argentine harbour. Of course the officer in charge of the boat was broken from the service by President Eduardo Nicanor Frei Montalva order. That had annoyed the Chilean navy and they proceeded to repeat the incident in ’68 with a pair of patrol vessels. When the Argentines didn’t fire (The Argentines were well aware that their previous antics in the area had rendered their international image in the area as trigger happy maniacs and in an effort to control that declined to fire.) on them they left, satisfied that they had proved their point. Over the course of the next year various Chilean ships preceded to treat Argentinian waters around Terra Del Fuego as a private preserve violating Argentinian Sovereignty as they pleased. This severely irritated the Argentinians, and they resolved to hit back hard.
The response came in 1969 when both the ARA Veinticino de Mayo and the ARA Independicia were both moved towards the Beagle islands. Faced with two carriers the Chileans backed down, but not before they exacted a price from the Argentines. One of the P-2 Neptune’s that the Argentinians had deployed went more than a hundred miles over the border. Documents declassified in the ought’s show that this was meant to be a show of force along the lines of the Chileans provocations. The Chileans of course were not in the mood to accept Argentinian push back, after all their own aggressive actions had been meant to remind the Argentines that they were not to be messed with. As such the unfortunately P-2 became a fireball as soon as the Chilean air force could get a jet after it.
The Argentinian response was predictable. Both of the carriers launched their fighters. The Chilean navy seeing this, and knowing that they didn’t stand a chance against the enraged argentines hauled ass out of the area. Essentially their surface combatants made for either port or away at their best speed leaving the Argentine navy in control of the area. Naturally this flight was brought up at the negotiating table much to the displeasure of the Chileans. Despite getting their licks in at the negotiating table the Argentinian establishment felt that it had gotten the upper hand in the game of brinksmanship, and that in backing down the Chileans had weekend their position to such a degree that the Argentinian position would carry the day.
The ham handed attempt to force Chile to back down had a major effect on the Chilean presidential election, leading to the election of Jorge Alessandri who had run a strong campaign on security issues. Some analyses insist that the assassination of General Rene Schneider by left wing radicals in the middle of the campaign was the more decisive factor, of course in the early nineties it came out that the CIA was responsible for the assassination, causing a major diplomatic row. Alessandri’s candidacy was further helped by General Carlos Prats infamous loss of temper with reporters when he gave his first press conference.
The weeks leading up to the fateful press conference had been filled with news stories and leaks from the investigation. The government had ordered a clamp down on information coming out of the investigation as it looked more and more likely that the Soviet Union was at least in part responsible. The pressure on the army and the police force to remain neutral, or at least to not talk about the assassination until the election was over hurt the government and lead to a massive amount of discontent in the armed forces. Prats had been known in political circles as an even tempered constitutionalist but even he was annoyed with the government, and what seemed to be a policy of sweeping the assassination under the rug. Prats was walking a tight rope even as he sought to do his job, the Chilean military tradition of constitutionalism was coming directly into conflict with the facts of the case. From what he was being told this assassination was political with a capital P, and if the military let it go then they would be dragged into politics anyways as their long held neutrality would be considered little more than a defensive fig leaf.
Under enormous pressure from both sides it is no surprise that when he gave the press conference, even after receiving instructions not to, and he began ranting about the ‘murderous left’ impeding the investigation. Given that he blamed the politicians publically for hamstringing not only the armies own investigative branch, but the policia as well, the press conference lead to the impression that the army saw a break down in law and order occurring with the consent of the left leaning politicians. The army’s clear annoyance, coupled with the implication that left wing parties had been a part of the assassination plot made for an ugly political situation. The situation was exacerbated as the left hemmed and hawed whilst scrambling to cover themselves in case their associates were part of the plot publically. All of this lead many in the electorate to swing hard right. This trend was accelerated when Alessandri began to hawk the law and order credentials he had accumulated during his last term in office.
By the time the elections were over and done with Alessandri came into power facing a major crisis of confidence in the government. Additionally while the economy was doing well on paper, inflation was a serious problem and it refused to go away. There was a real split between the Companista class and the land owning class due to the expropriation issue causing a festering social divide. Although very good for Chilean literature and filmography the social issues would continue to plague the country to this day.
On the international front things didn’t look any better. The Argentineans successful looking use of the threat of force (Chile had been forced to ask for international mediation instead of maintaining its position that the beagle islands were and always had been Chilean.) had emboldened both the Peruvians and the Bolivians. Both of those countries were purchasing an alarming number of weapons. Peru had even gone so far as to invite Cuban advisors into the country openly, and several of their officers were publishing in soviet military journals about the tactics of assaulting mountain infantry. Considering that the bulk of the Chilean army was made up of mountain infantry it was a worrying bit of intelligence. Chile looked weak and Alessandri couldn’t seem to find a way out of the bind that his predecessor had led them into.
Domestically Alessandri enacted his tax reform plan. It didn’t sound like much but was probably the most revolutionary piece of legislation that he would enact in his presidency. In it he created a massive tax incentive for major land owners to divest themselves of their lands, and use the profits from their divestment to invest in industry. Government backed loans to the rural companista population meant that they were able to buy the land they had been living on. It was a program which had more then a few ups and downs but in general it was successful. The press aided in the success as the left leaning press sold it as a victory for the left. Obviously the president had recognized the need for land reform and had simply changed the form of it, rather then the substance. The press on the right sold a different narrative, to them it was a return to traditional Chilean values. The President was trying to encourage the companista to pull themselves up through hard work rather then handing them the land. All in all it was a successful program and it would be continued under the next three administrations.
The secondary benefits from this program wouldn’t be apparent until the eighties, but during this time Chiles light industry expanded massively, and would continue to expand until the late eighties, bringing jobs to the urban poor. Large land owners did lose a fair bit of their political pull, but as business owners they retained and gained financial power. What they did with that power was essential to the continued economic growth of Chile. All of this helped on the domestic front, but the international front remained rocky.
Help came from an unusual source; Vicealmirante Jose Toribio Merino. The Naval Director of Weapons, came to the newly sworn in president with an interesting proposal. The Chilean navy needed a new flagship, and reports where that the United Kingdom was looking to divest themselves of the HMS Eagle. Marino’s arguments were thorough and very compelling. He acknowledged that a carrier didn’t look like it was needed, but he pointed out that it was a both a prestige project and it was supremely useful given Chile’s limited strategic depth.
Alessandri wasn’t convinced of the Vicealmirante’s argument but he did keep it in mind. After a week of deep thought Alessandri directed Merino to bring him a plan of action and the appropriate austerity measures to ensure that it was financially feasible to do so. What he had been expecting was a minor couple of tweaks, perhaps letting go of a vessel or two. What he got was completely different. Jose Toribio Merino was an aggressive commander who had served with the US navy during the second world war on a cruiser and then gone on to specialize in logistics. As such he was painfully aware of the way that Chiles scatter shot buying pattern in major military hardware was costing them in terms of maintenance and in terms of needing to buy from multiple supply chains.
Merino recommended a complete rationalization of the navy. Under his plan all nine destroyers would be put on the block along with everything heavier than a destroyer. Being different makes and seven of the nine destroyers being from world war two along with the other heavy ships, Merino had grave doubts about their ability to do more then take up Chilean funds and absorb enemy fire in such a way as to get good Chilean sailors killed for no return. He recommended that the planned purchase of Condell class frigates from the United Kingdom be expanded from three to seven. Both of the Chilean submarines were axed, to be replaced by between four and eight new built 209’s from Germany along with a submarine tender. If he could have Merino would have cancelled the purchase of the two Oberon’s from the United Kingdom but it was too late for that. Finally four type 42 destroyers were to be purchased from the United Kingdom to escort the Eagle which would require a refit before it could be bought into service. All Cruisers and more then a few of the Landing ships would be let go without replacement. While the purchasing sounded excessive the more that Alessandri read the more it made sense. Marino was modernizing the navy and at the same time was downsizing it, at least in terms of sailors at sea that was.
In the end Alessandri brought the plan to his cabinet, after extensive talks with both the army and the air force, and began to implement it. Of course there were compromises to be made. Air craft procurement was pushed through the office of the air force, it was felt that an appropriate carrier plane would be able to benefit the air force as well as the navy. Mostly this stipulation was ignored, as the air force and navy had differing philosophy’s and desires, but in some cases it would prove to be a success for both services.
The army felt left out and so was allowed to purchase 350 ex Israeli AMX-13 Light tanks that had suddenly become available when Singapore cancelled the deal to replace its small M24 Chaffee fleet. It was the beginning of a cooperative relationship with Israel that would last years and extend beyond military cooperation. Of course the army wanted main battle tanks but the decision was put off in light of the already heavy military expenditures under way. A strong secondary factor in the president and cabinet’s reluctance to purchase all up main battle tanks was that they were not common in South America. Argentina, the bogyman for the Chileans, was still using M-4 Sherman’s so the pressure to upgrade was less than the pressure on both the air force and the navy. Despite this the Army played its cards very well, in getting a commiserate increase in funding they had set a precedent that would live on and mean a steady increase in lethality. The army might not have gotten the press, but they did get the dollars, and that meant that by the time anyone took notice they were already ready for action.