The attempt by a judge in Spain to extradite Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet from London and try him in Madrid, while it seems to have surprised many newspaper readers, fits two developing patterns. The broader of the two is the effort, no doubt spurred by the century's imminent end, to revisit some of its lowest points. The desire to straighten things out—whether to compensate victims, to see the guilty punished, or only to get the truth out in the interest of history and justice—is widespread. The Japanese are asked to apologize for their conduct in China in the 1930s and 1940s, the Swiss are asked to compensate Jews, the Vatican wonders about Catholic anti-Semitism, the United States government apologizes for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and Latin Americans revisit the periods in which generals ruled and people "disappeared." "Truth commissions" in Guatemala, El Salvador, and South Africa have tried to pry facts out of reluctant witnesses and inadequate records, and to reveal secrets that lie buried beneath layers of lies.

At the same time, there is a second effort: to assert "universal jurisdiction" over serious human-rights violations, so that judges anywhere can seize, try, and punish officials and former officials wherever they may be found. Thus when General Pinochet, now 83 and out of power for a decade, went to London in 1998 for medical treatment, a single judge in Spain got the British to detain him and now seeks to have him delivered to Spain for trial. On March 24,1999, England's highest court ruled that Pinochet does not have immunity for actions taken when he was president of Chile if and when those actions are held to be violations of international law. Pinochet is now vulnerable to extradition to Spain. Human-rights activists around the world have applauded this action, as they applauded the establishment last year of an International Criminal Court (whose jurisdiction the United States has thus far refused to accept). The two efforts—to reveal the secrets, and to punish guilty officials—are linked: those promoting both argue that the horrors of the past can be avoided in the future if only we make it easier to punish those who were responsible. Universal criminal jurisdiction is, in this view, the best deterrent to tomorrow's official crimes.

Reality is, alas, more complex. The Nuremberg trials, held at mid-century, did not after all prevent genocide during its second half. And the dangers that arise when we decide that any judge, anywhere, may try any former official are not trivial. In truth, the desire to "straighten things out" soon confronts the fact that truth, justice, reconciliation, and democracy are sometimes incompatible. In those hard cases, what must be done? And who will decide?

The Pinochet case is exemplary. In 1973, Chile was bitterly divided between partisans of President Salvador Allende, a leftist elected by a minority of Chile's voters in a three-way race and accused of attempting to impose Marxism, and the large body of Chileans unhappy with the direction his government was taking. The Chilean army staged a coup d'etat that had widespread popular support, and then proceeded to rule for sixteen years. During those years the military, under General (soon President) Pinochet undertook excellent economic reforms and at all times maintained a decent degree of public support. (At the end, when a plebiscite asked Chileans whether Pinochet should continue to rule, 43 per cent voted for him.) But that period was also marked by gross human-rights violations ranging from press censorship to murder and torture of the regime's opponents.

When President Pinochet lost the 1988 plebiscite, and then lost the election that followed it, a democratic government came to office and faced the unenviable task of dealing with the crimes of the previous period. In this it was not alone: nations such as Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay had also had military dictatorships and also faced the problem of dealing with those regimes' human-rights abuses. Broadly speaking, they all came out in the same place—which is also where Spain came out after its decades under Generalissimo Franco, where South Africa came out when its democratic government faced the apartheid years, and where the democratic governments of the old Soviet-bloc nations have come out in dealing with the crimes of the Communist era. None of these nations held mass trials. In El Salvador and South Africa, a "truth commission" was understood to be a substitute for such trials. The commission would find out what happened—who had been killed and tortured, who had ordered it—for the sake of history and for the sake of the victims. A few— very few—former officials were tried and jailed, but the "security forces," the former police and military officers, were mostly left alone. Often there were actual amnesties, so that the decision not to prosecute was a matter of law. In Uruguay, such an amnesty was put to a referendum and passed. In Chile, the amnesty was agreed upon between the exiting army and the incoming democrats. In Argentina, it was negotiated between the first elected government and the military high command, and only a handful of high officers were prosecuted. And when Spain emerged from forty years of dictatorship under Francisco Franco, there was no accounting—not even a "truth commission"— and there were no trials.