This paper focused on the role played by violence in the Chilean military regime’s Foreign policy. The purpose is to analyze the paradox this matter implied for its international position, in particular referring to its relations with those western world countries’ governments that manifested a good disposition toward the dictatorship. We analyze two different phases.The first corresponds to the Condor plan years, when the use of terror exercised abroad related to a strategy of “active resistance” by which Chile showed the capacity and audacity typical of a hegemonic state, but which also led to strong tensions with Washington. The second corresponds to the eighties, in which Pinochet’s conviction in his capacity for “passive resistance” to international pressures led to the option of not giving in to the pressures exerted by “friendly” governments, such as Reagan’s in the US and Thatcher’s in the United Kingdom.The paper is based mainly on secondary sources -which include previous works by its authors-, combined with the use of archival sources from the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US Department of State and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights of Santiago de Chile.