Even with regard to his central concern, however, Niebuhr's book remains distant from key events and processes. Historians agree that it was President Salamanca's "jingoism," to use Niebuhr's term, that led to the Chaco War. But Niebuhr does not disentangle the toxic brew of political calculations and overconfident patriotism that led the president, and many Bolivians, to start a war with Paraguay, nor does he unearth new findings about, say, the logistics of the war. Information about the size and readiness of the Bolivian military, for example, is scattered throughout the text. If war builds or destroys states, then a history of political transformation in Bolivia requires documenting and analyzing the bureaucratic procedures and decisions that led to the nation's defeat. All too often, Niebuhr substitutes paragraphs about war-making in Europe or the United States for detailed analysis of the multiple failures of the Bolivian state.Niebuhr seems to suggest that the 1952 Revolution was inevitable after the Chaco War. As authors from Herbert Klein (1969) and James Malloy (1971) to James Kohl (2021) have emphasized, Bolivia's defeat did turn its citizens against its political establishment. Support for Salamanca's Genuine Republic Party and other parties of the pre-war period disintegrated as urban male voters cast ballots for the populist and left-wing parties that would also gain control of the street. Military officers, veterans of the war, overthrew governments in 1936, 1937 and 1939. An uprising in 1946 ended with President Gualberto Villarroel, a Chaco War veteran, hanging from a lamp post in the square in front of the presidential palace. But to imply that the 1952 Revolution was unavoidable requires the analysis of these and subsequent events to show how rural and urban rebellions exploited the opportunities of a weak and delegitimized state to liquate the old order in 1952.

This chapter focuses on the role of copper policies in the relations between the United States and Chile during the Frei administration, especially as they relate to the developmental efforts of the Christian Democratic project. During the Frei administration, the political debate on copper policies reached a climax. Since U.S. capitals were among the most significant actors in the story, the discussions around the issue of copper converged with the ideological visions of the United States and the Cold War held by the different Chilean political parties. As the Frei administration tried to introduce the most comprehensive and consistent reform around the structure of the property of the Gran Minería del Cobre, the forces in competition in the arena of Chilean politics stood by their ideological convictions, regarding both copper and the United States, in their opposition or grudging support for the policies proposed by the Christian Democratic government. Moreover, the U.S. government became deeply involved in the matter of copper in Chile, first by pressuring the Chilean government into rolling back a price increase in 1965 and then, mostly through the personal efforts of Ambassador Edward Korry, by mediating in the negotiation between the Frei administration and Anaconda on the nationalization of the U.S. company's largest mine, Chuquicamata, in 1969.

This chapter details how, despite the seemingly favorable situation for the Chilean government, in 1967 things would begin to go in a very different direction. After the first two successful years of the Frei administration, the attitude of the opposition stiffened noticeably, and even within the Christian Democratic Party some leaders began to voice their disagreement with the character and the pace of some of the reforms implemented by the government. Eduardo Frei himself was still a popular figure, a condition he would continue to enjoy for most of his tenure and beyond. In addition, his positive international standing reinforced his image in Chile. However, his own personal popularity would not translate into a continuation of the success of the first two years of his administration. The changing winds of Chilean politics and the declining fortunes of the Lyndon B. Johnson administration would get in the way, and it was, in fact, a situation connected to the close relationship between the Frei administration and the United States that marked the beginning of the end of the Revolution in Liberty.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between Eduardo Frei's Revolution in Liberty and the United States. For the United States foreign policy apparatus, the Christian Democratic Party of Chile appeared to be a model partner in the realization of the goals of the Alliance for Progress, the Latin American policy conceived by President John F. Kennedy and continued, though without the same level of enthusiasm and hope, by his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In its original conception, Kennedy's Latin American policy had ambitious economic, social, and political goals. The channeling of aid from the United States to Latin American countries in the 1960s sought to reflect the interplay between those aims, even if the implementation of the Alliance for Progress sorely lacked in consistency and constancy. In the case of Chile and Eduardo Frei's Revolution in Liberty, the exceptionally generous provision of aid by the United States went hand in hand with a deep involvement of agents of U.S. foreign policy, especially the political staff of the embassy in Santiago, in the day-to-day functioning of Chilean politics—welcomed and, in many cases, invited by local actors.

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