Tinker Bell, Pinochet And The Fairy Tale Miracle Of Chile

[Dardedar]

Tinker Bell, Pinochet And The Fairy Tale Miracle Of Chile

by Greg Palast
Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse.

Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006
Chile’s former military dictator General Augusto Pinochet
died today at the age of 91.

Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, Tinker Bell and General Augusto Pinochet had much in common.

All three performed magical good deeds. In the case of Pinochet, he was universally credited with the Miracle of Chile, the wildly successful experiment in free markets, privatization, de-regulation and union-free economic expansion whose laissez-faire seeds spread from Valparaiso to Virginia.

But Cinderella’s pumpkin did not really turn into a coach. The Miracle of Chile, too, was just another fairy tale. The claim that General Pinochet begat an economic powerhouse was one of those utterances whose truth rested entirely on its repetition.

Chile could boast some economic success. But that was the work of Salvador Allende - who saved his nation, miraculously, a decade after his death.

In 1973, the year General Pinochet brutally seized the government, Chile’s unemployment rate was 4.3%. In 1983, after ten years of free-market modernization, unemployment reached 22%. Real wages declined by 40% under military rule.

In 1970, 20% of Chile’s population lived in poverty. By 1990, the year “President” Pinochet left office, the number of destitute had doubled to 40%. Quite a miracle.

Pinochet did not destroy Chile’s economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, a gaggle of Milton Friedman’s trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatized the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatized 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.

Freed of the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country took a giant leap forward … into bankruptcy and depression. After nine years of economics Chicago style, Chile’s industry keeled over and died. In 1982 and 1983, GDP dropped 19%. The free-market experiment was kaput, the test tubes shattered. Blood and glass littered the laboratory floor. Yet, with remarkable chutzpah, the mad scientists of Chicago declared success. In the US, President Ronald Reagan’s State Department issued a report concluding, “Chile is a casebook study in sound economic management.” Milton Friedman himself coined the phrase, “The Miracle of Chile.” Friedman’s sidekick, economist Art Laffer, preened that Pinochet’s Chile was, “a showcase of what supply-side economics can do.”

It certainly was. More exactly, Chile was a showcase of de-regulation gone berserk.

The Chicago Boys persuaded the junta that removing restrictions on the nation’s banks would free them to attract foreign capital to fund industrial expansion.

Pinochet sold off the state banks - at a 40% discount from book value - and they quickly fell into the hands of two conglomerate empires controlled by speculators Javier Vial and Manuel Cruzat. From their captive banks, Vial and Cruzat siphoned cash to buy up manufacturers - then leveraged these assets with loans from foreign investors panting to get their piece of the state giveaways.

The bank’s reserves filled with hollow securities from connected enterprises. Pinochet let the good times roll for the speculators. He was persuaded that Governments should not hinder the logic of the market.

By 1982, the pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat “Grupos” defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions were worthless, the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too hungry and desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to reverse course. He booted his beloved Chicago experimentalists. Reluctantly, the General restored the minimum wage and unions’ collective bargaining rights. Pinochet, who had previously decimated government ranks, authorized a program to create 500,000 jobs. In other words, Chile was pulled from depression by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero Reagan/Thatcher. New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the Panic of 1983, but the nation’s long-term recovery and growth since then is the result of - cover the children’s ears - a large dose of socialism.

To save the nation’s pension system, Pinochet nationalized banks and industry on a scale unimagined by Communist Allende. The General expropriated at will, offering little or no compensation. While most of these businesses were eventually re-privatized, the state retained ownership of one industry: copper.

For nearly a century, copper has meant Chile and Chile copper. University of Montana metals expert Dr. Janet Finn notes, “Its absurd to describe a nation as a miracle of free enterprise when the engine of the economy remains in government hands.” Copper has provided 30% to 70% of the nation’s export earnings. This is the hard currency which has built today’s Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973 - Allende’s posthumous gift to his nation.

Agribusiness is the second locomotive of Chile’s economic growth. This also is a legacy of the Allende years. According to Professor Arturo Vasquez of Georgetown University, Washington DC, Allende’s land reform, the break-up of feudal estates (which Pinochet could not fully reverse), created a new class of productive tiller-owners, along with corporate and cooperative operators, who now bring in a stream of export earnings to rival copper. “In order to have an economic miracle,” says Dr. Vasquez, “maybe you need a socialist government first to commit agrarian reform.”

So there we have it. Keynes and Marx, not Friedman, saved Chile.

But the myth of the free-market Miracle persists because it serves a quasi-religious function. Within the faith of the Reaganauts and Thatcherites, Chile provides the necessary genesis fable, the ersatz Eden from which laissez-faire dogma sprang successful and shining.

In 1998, the international finance Gang of Four - the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for Settlements - offered a $41.5 billion line of credit to Brazil. But before the agencies handed the drowning nation a life preserver, they demanded Brazil commit to swallow the economic medicine that nearly killed Chile. You know the list: fire-sale privatizations, flexible labor markets (i.e. union demolition) and deficit reduction through savage cuts in government services and social security.

In Sao Paulo, the public was assured these cruel measures would ultimately benefit the average Brazilian. What looked like financial colonialism was sold as the cure-all tested in Chile with miraculous results.

But that miracle was in fact a hoax, a fraud, a fairy tale in which everyone did not live happily ever after.

******

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Armed Madhouse”. Read his reports at www.GregPalast.com

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

And I really don't appreciate them doing it here, either. I wish I still belonged to a union so I could truthfully check that off on the Zogby polls I do. We came out of WWII with a managable debt, a whole slew of personal saving (part of which, of course, was the national debt - war bonds, you know) and a sound economy. Heck, we went into WWII with manageable debt and a reviving economy (the "cash and carry" plan selling arms and other stuff to "the Allies" worked wonders for the producer country not involved in the war), but with savings levels about what they are now (close to zip). The fascist/corporatist takeover of my country saddens me greatly (except when it makes me mad as hell).

[Hogeye]

Here's a libertarian piece on Pinochet and Chilean economics: Chile: Socialism, Dictatorship, and Liberalism by Ryan McMaken. As usual, libertarians disagree with both the "liberal" and the "conservative" take. A few excerpts:

American leftists hate Pinochet for all the wrong reasons, despising his role in liberating the Chilean economy and ending Allende's drive toward making Chile into another Cuba. Still convinced that Fidel Castro is Latin America's most enlightened leader, many Che Guevera devotees still chafe under Allende's ignominious defeat.

Just as disturbing is the fact that many conservatives did—and still do—look the other way on Pinochet's record on torture and suspension of basic liberties. Indeed, conservatives in the US have recently argued for the merit of torture and detention as effective means of controlling dissident populations.
...
While Chile is rarely found in the sensationalist American news, the economic realities of modern Chile are often in the international financial news. Chile, it turns out, is a great place to invest and to do business. Unlike many Latin American countries, Chile is not notable for its strongman politics (like Venezuela) or its ongoing guerilla wars (like Colombia), but is rather a place where people prefer to get on with the business of doing business.

One might even say that Chile has become a nation of shopkeepers—a phrase once derisively used by foreign observers to describe the British. Throughout the 1990's, and today, under the current administration of "socialist" Ricardo Lagos, Chile has furiously been attempting to secure free trade agreements with every country it can from New Zealand to South Korea to the United States. Free trade, low debt, low taxes, and relatively laissez-faire economics are at the heart of the ongoing economic expansion in Chile. Long a practical and trade-minded people, the Chileans are now enjoying the fastest growing economy in Latin America, and are considered an increasingly good investment choice by the world financial community. And, as some have said, it is well on its way to becoming a first-world nation.

One would think that a nation on the verge of becoming one of the richest in the world would be a good thing, but one should never underestimate the poor judgment of those clinging to the tenets of defunct economists. The Latin American left, of course, has never been one to admit that capitalism has brought prosperity to anyone anywhere in the history of mankind, so Chile remains a significant thorn in their side.
...
For decades, Chile had remained relatively resistant to Dependency Theory as trade-minded governments under Eduardo Frei and Jorge Alessandri attempted to keep their economies relatively open. Yet the zeitgeist of the time overwhelmed them, and with the ascent of Salvador Allende in 1970, international trade collapsed, private firms were confiscated and nationalized, and hyperinflation took its hold on the country.

The economic disaster all ended badly, as such things tend to do, with a military coup and the Pinochet dictatorship. The downward spiral did not end merely with the end of the Allende regime, however. As even its sympathizers will tell you, the military junta was not a big fan of free-market economics. They preferred an economy that would "obey orders." Yet, protectionism and the controlled economy had proven to be such an abject failure that something had to be done, so with few other options Pinochet turned to disciples of what was then considered the radically free-market Chicago School of Economics. A total economic meltdown was avoided. The budget was balanced, regulations were lifted, the health care system was freed, and international trade resumed. Markets, as they will always do when given the chance, moved toward providing more goods at cheaper prices, and economic growth quickly began to outpace other Latin American economies.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the relative freedom of the Chilean economy has been its resilience during these thirty years since the coup. Naturally, once the Pinochet junta found that the middle classes were prospering under its economic plans, it continued the policies in order to maintain its precious political capital. As a junta, it was able to ignore the incessant calls from the left throughout the region to raise taxes, control the economy, and cut off trade. Yet, even after the junta finally fell into undeniable disfavor, the free economy continued, and significantly, even after the election of President Ricardo Lagos, an outspoken opponent of the junta who calls himself a socialist. The economy of Chile has only become more focused on good business, sound money, and extensive trade.

Without a doubt, thirty years ago, a politician with policies like those Lagos now espouses would have been berated as a reactionary free-market extremist and a sell-out to American corporate interests. Yet, unlike the aging communists and liberation-theology types of Latin America who still dream of a great egalitarian revolution, the socialist Lagos is hardly willing to throw out the policies of the Pinochet era simply because they are perceived as "undemocratic."

The Chilean economy after all, has posted growth rates above 7% per year for many years now, and maintains a very small debt load (Chile now has a budget surplus of 2% of GDP), relatively sound currency, and a free business environment. Chileans have savings rates many times in excess of American rates. As Lagos himself now says: "It is not something of the right-wing parties nor the left-wing parties. It's simply sound economic policy."

[Doug]

American leftists hate Pinochet for all the wrong reasons, despising his role in liberating the Chilean economy and ending Allende's drive toward making Chile into another Cuba. Still convinced that Fidel Castro is Latin America's most enlightened leader, many Che Guevera devotees still chafe under Allende's ignominious defeat.

Just as disturbing is the fact that many conservatives did—and still do—look the other way on Pinochet's record on torture and suspension of basic liberties. Indeed, conservatives in the US have recently argued for the merit of torture and detention as effective means of controlling dissident populations.
...
While Chile is rarely found in the sensationalist American news, the economic realities of modern Chile are often in the international financial news. Chile, it turns out, is a great place to invest and to do business.

DOUG
I lived in Chile from 1975 to 1977, when that bastard Pinochet was at the height of his powers. I knew a number of people who had been tortured. Some who disappeared. There was a curfew: 11:00 pm Monday through Thursday, 1:00 on weekends. Anyone out of doors after that risked being shot.

The economy was pathetic.

I harbored animosity against Pinochet for the right reasons. He was a brutal dictator who had thousands killed, and the U.S. overthrew an elected government to put him in place. So much for this crap about the U.S. spreading democracy around the world.

[Hogeye]

Good! Unlike Greg Pallast (author of lead article), you hate Pinochet for the right reasons - his murders and torture and curtailment of liberty - and not for his freeing up the economy.

[Doug]

...and not for his freeing up the economy.

During the years I was in Chile, the economy was bad. Inflation was such that they had to trade in the "escudo" monetary unit for the "peso" at 1000 to 1. And they had done that before just a few years earlier.

Perhaps the economy got better later, but it was pretty bad while I was there. Of course, it helped that they completely sold out to big American interests. That's why we destroyed their democracy and put in a dictator.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Hogeye and his sources seem to have missed the information in the middle section of Pallast's article - the Chicago boys put Chile in the dump and renationalization on a scale to make Allende look like a Republican is what turned things around and put Chile back on sound economic footing.

[Dardedar]

Eternal Regret
By Pierre Haski
Liberation

Monday 11 December 2006

At the instant Augusto Pinochet disappears, a photograph immediately comes to mind: that of Salvador Allende, submachine gun in hand at the Moneda Palace in Santiago, a few moments before his death during the September 11, 1973, military coup d'etat. Dignity and honor opposing abjection and horror. It's something of an understatement to say that for four decades Pinochet has incarnated the picture postcard bastard. The memory of the Santiago stadium internees, of the disappeared, of the tortures of the Pinochet era will not disappear with him. His natural death does not make us any more forgiving, arousing only the eternal regret that this man, who never expressed the slightest regret for the crimes committed in his name, was never tried. Justice almost caught up with him during his visit to London in 1998, when Spanish Judge Balthazar Garzn unsuccessfully attempted to call him to account. And he would certainly be an ideal client for the brand new International Criminal Court if his crimes had just been committed today. It was the thought of men like Pinochet that advanced the concept of international justice in people's awareness and in texts. And we are allowed to hope that Augusto Pinochet, and what he represented, as well as the support and international encouragement from which he profited [Henry Kissinger, who played a key, but never elucidated, role in this matter, is still kicking ... ], really belong to the past. The fact that Chile is led today by Michelle Bachelet, a socialist as well as the daughter of one of Pinochet's victims, constitutes - from that point of view - an optimistic symbol and the ultimate revenge on the dictator.

link

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

As Germany is still trying to live down her Hitlerian episode, Chile will have to continue "good" behavior to live down her Pinochetian episode (and we will have to change our current behavior to even start living down our "Bushian" trip - fortunately Bush is as incompetant as a dictator as he is a "free" society's president when compared to Hitler and Pinochet, at least so far).

As to economics, nothing but trouble comes from extremists. Uncontrolled "free" market makes megabucks for a very few and impoverishes the rest - but the "average" looks good (as does averaging my income with Alice Walton's). Totally controlled markets have no drive or creativity leaving everybody impoverished (with the governmental "commissars" being less impoverished than the rest). Markets regulated to the extent of safe practices, honest advertising and reporting, and no monopolies are a win-win - the rising tide that really does raise all boats. I wish we'd get back to that.

[Tony]

Nobody is harping on the American role in bringing Pinochet to power. This is all very well documented with more every day.
My last column in the Benton County Daily Record was on our involvement. Here is a link if you are interested....

http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper= ... ryid=43487

[Doug]

Nobody is harping on the American role in bringing Pinochet to power. This is all very well documented with more every day.
My last column in the Benton County Daily Record was on our involvement. Here is a link if you are interested....

http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper= ... ryid=43487

DOUG
Good column. You write in it:

Oh, and we know that Henry Kissinger is still advising the president. Are we truly the world’s unwavering defender of democracy ? Forgive me if I remain a bit skeptical.

When I was in Chile, Kissinger visited at least once that I can recall. Probably more than once. It was a big deal. I remembered that to prepare for Kissinger's visit, the military went around in transport trucks rounding up all the beggars in Santiago. Word was that they were taken out of town and released. Perhaps...

[Tony]

Yeah we have a transcript, I think the National Security Archives at George Washinton U. Has it online, where Kissinger was talking to Pinochet about U.S. rhetoric on human rights abuses, and how Pinochet did not have anything to fear, that rhetoric was just for domestic consumption. Maggots.

If I find the GWU link I will post it.

Tred

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

My technophobe friend John Gray (recently elected mayor of Greenland) keeps trying to get me to read "Death of Hope" (I think that's the title), discussing all the infant republics we destroyed in the name of democrasy (if they don't love/worship/kiss the toes of America, they're communists). So far I've refused because I have enough problems with hope as it is. I know enough about what my country has been doing to depress me already - I don't want to know the specifics any more than I want the specifics to WHAT torture is being performed at Gitmo. The American ideals are just that - ideals - but I wish we'd start moving closer to them than continually further away.

[Tony]

Funny Barbara,
Yeah, you can trace a path of my journey from idealism to cynicism almost in direct proportion to the time it took me to get my degree in History. The list is very long, and that is just what we know about.
We overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran (see Mohammed Mossadegh) in the 1950's when they nationalized the oil industry. We reinstalled the Shah, which, if you fill in the dots of the last 30 years, goes far to explain the predicament we are in now re. Iran.
Then there was Arbenz in Guatemala, mid 1950's, United Fruit etc. Lots of fun stuff that goes with that story. Che Guevara, for intance, was there as a young idealistic medical student. When he saw how the CIA played by its own rules to overthrow democracy, he abandoned the "rules" as well. We would not like that later in Cuba.
Then of course there is Chile, which might be the most shameless example. But yes, the list is quite long.
Remember though, the world hates us because we are free. Sheesh.
Tred

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I used to teach my students that anything is possible if you have the concept and nothing is possible without it. The U.S. has done "business as usual" for empires, while hopping up and down to deny being empire. But we do have the concept - the ideal, if you will - of how "free" nations should behave. My mother used to sum it up very simply. If it's not right for them, it isn't right for us. That's the goal. We've made fits and starts in that direction for over 200 years. At the moment we seem to have slipped backwards not just 2 or 3 steps, but the whole 220 years, except 220 years ago we didn't have the power to start a nuclear WWIII. About the closest to altruistic we've ever been was the FDR years - and yes, I know there was a whole lot of not-so-nice stuff going on then as well. That's probably why the Rs spend so much time both pretending to be heirs of FDR's vision for WWII and trying to destroy his social net system. A history degree will turn anyone cynical. It shows the "dead men's bones" inside the "whited sepulchre".

[Tony]

Yeah, one of my favorite historians, Eric Hobsbawm, once said, "Historians are the professional rememberancers of things others want to forget." Indeed.
It does drive me crazy when it is taught that the United States embarked on Imperialism during the 1890's (Spanish American War). Bull! The U.S. has been violently exapansionist since day one. Its as if Indians and Mexicans simply don't count as imperial conquests.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Hobsbawm has a point. Of course, the current educational system - public and private - totally insists on the myth at the expense of reality. No wonder people don't understand why other nations are at least hesitant about us - the ones who don't downright hate us, not for our freedoms, but for our denying them theirs. Until America's people know what America stands for in the world - not the goal, dream, concept, but the reality - there will be no change. Until America's people know that we haven't walked the walk, no matter how good our talk, there will be no change. But the myth is so entrenched the "common man" will either "la, la, la, I can't hear you" - or lynch you - when you try to show them truth.

America is capable of being as close to as is humanly possible to what she claims to be - but capable is not the same thing as actual. My optimism says America doesn't have to follow the path of history - conscious decision can make a difference. My realism says America, while having had elements of both all along, is crossing over from more or less republic to absolute dicatorial empire (and yes, to a certain extent, we did that already with "sea to shining sea" manifest destiny) and, unless stopped by the combined might of the rest of the world, will follow the old path of a generation of expansion followed by a generation of holding pattern and then decline/oblivion.

[Hogeye]

It does drive me crazy when it is taught that the United States embarked on Imperialism during the 1890's (Spanish American War). Bull! The U.S. has been violently exapansionist since day one.

But expansionism is not the same as imperialism. Imperialism is generally thought of as conquest/occupation of a non-contiguous territory of people with a different culture/language. (This is the way e.g. Pat Buchanan defines it in "A Republic, Not an Empire.") By this definition, the Spanish American War, particularly the occupation of the Philippines, was the first US imperialist war. This does not deny the expansionist actions such as the War of Northern Aggression and genocide of the plains Indians. Imperialism speaks to the change in motivation. Earlier expansionist actions were motivated (however unsoundly) on protection from "barbarians" (Indians) and attacks by neighboring states (Mexico). The Spanish-American War was the first one advertised as "building democracy" for foreigners whether they liked it or not. It marked the change in US foreign policy from America being a "beacon of liberty", an example for others, to a military force imposing "liberty" at gunpoint.

No wonder people don't understand why other nations are at least hesitant about us - the ones who don't downright hate us, not for our freedoms, but for our denying them theirs.

This confuses the US State and American people. People in other countries are "hesitant" about (or more likely despise) the US State, not necessarily the people living under US rule. Many like Americans but hate the US State, which is a rational attitude. Barbara, by obscuring the distinction between the US State and American people, you are promoting statolatry and the misidentification of State and people, ruling institution and ruled.

My realism says America, while having had elements of both all along, is crossing over from more or less republic to absolute dicatorial empire ... and, unless stopped by the combined might of the rest of the world, will follow the old path of a generation of expansion followed by a generation of holding pattern and then decline/oblivion.

I agree with the part about the inevitable increase in power - this is the pattern of all States throughout history. I disagree with the "unless stopped by the combined might of the rest of the world" part, if you mean that military force will be required to end the Empire. I believe that the demise of the USEmpire will come about by hyperinflation of the dollar. It will be more like the Spanish Empire after it ran through its New World gold, or the USSR when its economic contradictions caught up with it. Any military action will be consequential and secondary.

[Tony]

Hogeye wrote:
Imperialism is generally thought of as conquest/occupation of a non-contiguous territory of people with a different culture/language. (This is the way e.g. Pat Buchanan defines it in "A Republic, Not an Empire.")

Regardless how it is commonly thought of, that is wrong. Imperialism is defined in Webster's thus:
2: the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation esp. by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic of other areas; broadly: the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence.

Hogeye wrote:
By this definition, the Spanish American War, particularly the occupation of the Philippines, was the first US imperialist war.

But by THE definition of the word, we have always been an imperial nation and still are.

Hogeye wrote:
This does not deny the expansionist actions such as the War of Northern Aggression

Please don't tell me you are referring here to the American Civil War?? Were you born in the South by chance?

Hogeye wrote:
Imperialism speaks to the change in motivation. Earlier expansionist actions were motivated (however unsoundly) on protection from "barbarians" (Indians) and attacks by neighboring states (Mexico).

Wrong! Expansion onto Indian lands were not soley motivated by defense against attacks, it was a relentless and continuous effort by Whites and the U.S. government to continually seize their land. It was imperialist.
As for the Mexican American War-it was direct policy of the United States to spread, in those heady imperialist days of Manifest Destiny, all the way to the Pacific. When the U.S. annexed Texas Mexico was, unsurprisingly, pissed. Not only did they not recognize the annexation, they insisted that the boundry of Texas was always the Nueces not the Rio Grande river. President Polk was not sqeamish about how he realized Manifest Destiny. He intentionally sent troops across the Nueces with every intention of using any clash there as an excuse to take California and New Mexico. For months nothing happened. Polk was planning asking Congress for a declaration for war anyway, when news arrived of a skirmish between US and Mexican forces. Historians still are not sure if such a skirmish was US instigated or not. Regardless, Polk now had the war he WANTED for territory. We occupied most of Mexico, and amid cries to take all of it, but overextended and still facing guerilla resistance, we settled for taking what is now the 'American' southwest-more than 50% of Mexico's territory. THAT most certainly was imperialism.

Your statement regarding non-contiguous territory is also weak. Russia has always been considered an Empire even though the vast majority of its conquests througout history were always contiguous. Same with the Ottoman Empire, Roman pre Medditeranean expeditions, Mayan, Incan, etc. etc. But here, we still erroneously insist that U.S. imperialism didnt begin until 1898. Horsesh*t!
[/b][/quote]

[Hogeye]

Tony, our "disagreement" is merely semantic. I agree with most of what you wrote, given your broad definition of imperialism. I like to distinguish between expansionism and imperialism, so prefer the narrower definition.

One place I would quibble with your take on history is your following claim.

Expansion onto Indian lands were not soley motivated by defense against attacks, it was a relentless and continuous effort by Whites and the U.S. government to continually seize their land. It was imperialist.

By erroneously identifying the white settlers and the US ruling elites - essentially assuming they have one unified brain - you miss the separate and different motivations involved. The settlers went west for personal reasons, not to enhance the power and glory of the US State. They went to improve their lives, get cheap/free land, seek adventure, or avoid wage labor back east. Now, once they were out west, they were sometimes attacked by aboriginal "barbarians," and as a result many seeked out military aid from the US State. The US rulers were quite willing to oblige, for all the usual power-seeking, plunder-enhancing reasons. All States lust for more power. In effect, most westward expansion was a quid pro quo - the settlers got military protection in return for subservience to the State. The State got more power and plunderable citizen-serfs in return for military aid. (The military establishment got a permanent standing army, ample funding, and a munitions industry to draw upon and support it politically.) Territories joined the US State for military protection against the Indians, except for Texas which joined for military protection against Mexico.

Regarding non-contiguous territory - this needs to be understood in terms of nationality (language and culture) rather than statist "turf." The Russian Empire controlled many areas not contiguous to Russia, e.g. Finland, Armenia, even Mongolian Siberia. Same for the Saracen Empire, Roman Empire, and of course the Spanish, British, and USEmpire. Note that Polk chose not to hold on to Mexico when he could have done so. That was significant and shows that the imperial mentality had not set in yet.

The point is that conquering contiguous territory for settlement is different from conquering foreign peoples for exploitation and "nation building." What you want to call the former and the latter policies is a mere semantic issue. Will you agree that the Spanish-American War was the first war by the US which took over a foreign people's territory for purposes other than settlement by Americans?