Promoting a ‘Pinochetazo’: The Chilean Dictatorship's Foreign Policy in El Salvador during the Carter Years, 1977–81

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-784
Author(s):  
Molly Avery
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Central America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
International System ◽  
American Military ◽  
Operation Condor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Pinochet Dictatorship

AbstractThis article takes existing histories of Chilean transnational anti-communist activity in the 1970s beyond Operation Condor (the Latin American military states’ covert transnational anti-communist intelligence and operations system) by asking how the Pinochet dictatorship responded to two key changes in the international system towards the end of that decade: the Carter presidency and introduction of the human rights policy, and the shift of the epicentre of the Cold War in Latin America to Central America. It shows how both Salvadoreans and Chileans understood the Pinochet dictatorship as a distinct model of anti-communist governance, applicable far beyond Chile's own borders. This study of Chilean foreign policy in El Salvador contributes to new histories of the Latin American Extreme Right and to new understandings of the inter-American system and the international history of the conflicts in Central America in the late 1970s and the 1980s.

Connecting Central America to the Southern Cone: The Chilean and Argentine Response to the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-579
Author(s):  
Molly Avery
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Central America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Southern Cone ◽  
Regional Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Nicaraguan Revolution ◽  
Violent Conflicts

AbstractThe history of the Cold War in Latin America in the 1970s is commonly split into two episodes: the establishment of anticommunist dictatorships and the ensuing repression across the Southern Cone in the early and middle decade, and the Nicaraguan Revolution and the eruption of violent conflicts across Central America at its close. By exploring the Chilean and Argentine response to the Nicaraguan Revolution, this article brings these two episodes together, demonstrating how they were understood to belong to one and the same ideological conflict. In doing so, it highlights the importance of the revolution in the Chilean and Argentine perception of the Cold War and explores how the Sandinista triumph directly shaped Southern Cone ideas about US power and the communist threat, also prompting reflection on their own ‘models’ for anticommunist governance. Both regimes responded by increasing their support for anticommunist forces in Guatemala and El Salvador, often conducting this aid through a wider transnational and clandestine network. This article contributes to new understandings of the nature of Latin American anticommunism in this period, challenges traditional understandings of external involvement in Central America, and demonstrates the need to understand events in Latin America in this period in their full regional context.

Finding Faith in Foreign Policy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregorio Bettiza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sacred Landscapes ◽  
Muslim Politics ◽  
The Cold War

Since the end of the Cold War, religion has been systematically brought to the fore of American foreign policy. US foreign policymakers have been increasingly tasked with promoting religious freedom globally, delivering humanitarian and development aid abroad through faith-based channels, pacifying Muslim politics and reforming Islamic theologies in the context of fighting terrorism, and engaging religious actors to solve multiple conflicts and crises around the world. Across a range of different domains, religion has progressively become an explicit and organized subject and object of US foreign policy in ways that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. If God was supposed to be vanquished by the forces of modernity and secularization, why has the United States increasingly sought to understand and manage religion abroad? In what ways have the boundaries between faith and state been redefined as religion has become operationalized in American foreign policy? What kind of world order is emerging in the twenty-first century as the most powerful state in the international system has come to intervene in sustained and systematic ways in sacred landscapes around the globe? This book addresses these questions by developing an original theoretical framework and drawing upon extensive empirical research and interviews. It argues that American foreign policy and religious forces have become ever more inextricably entangled in an age witnessing a global resurgence of religion and the emergence of a postsecular world society.

Freedom Tide? Ideology, Politics, and the Origins of Democracy Promotion in U.S. Central America Policy, 1980–1984

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 60-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Central America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Dramatic Shift

The Reagan administration came to power in 1981 seeking to downplay Jimmy Carter's emphasis on human rights in U.S. policy toward Latin America. Yet, by 1985 the administration had come to justify its policies towards Central America in the very same terms. This article examines the dramatic shift that occurred in policymaking toward Central America during Ronald Reagan's first term. Synthesizing existing accounts while drawing on new and recently declassified material, the article looks beyond rhetoric to the political, intellectual, and bureaucratic dynamics that conditioned the emergence of a Reaganite human rights policy. The article shows that events in El Salvador suggested to administration officials—and to Reagan himself—that support for free elections could serve as a means of shoring up legitimacy for embattled allies abroad, while defending the administration against vociferous human rights criticism at home. In the case of Nicaragua, democracy promotion helped to eschew hard decisions between foreign policy objectives. The history of the Reagan Doctrine's contentious roots provides a complex lens through which to evaluate subsequent U.S. attempts to foster democracy overseas.

1. Theories of US foreign policy

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Offensive Realism ◽  
Defensive Realism ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines some of the competing theories that have been advanced to explain U.S. foreign policy. In trying to explain the foreign policy of the United States, a number of competing theories have been developed by International Relations scholars. Some theories focus on the role of the international system in shaping American foreign policy while others argue that various domestic factors are the driving force. The chapter first considers some of the obstacles to constructing a theory of foreign policy before discussing some of the competing theories of American foreign policy, including defensive realism, offensive realism, liberalism, Marxism, neoclassical realism, and constructivism. The chapter proceeds by reviewing the theoretical debate over the origins of the Cold War and the debate over the most appropriate grand strategy that the United States should follow in the post-Cold War era.

5. The Developing World in International Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Hobden
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Developing World ◽  
International System ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the role of developing countries in international politics. International relations, as a discipline, has traditionally overlooked the significance of the developing world in global politics. The chapter begins by discussing the reasons for this and why such an oversight is lamentable. It then considers the position of the developing world throughout the large structural changes that have occurred in the international system since 1945: North–South relations during and after the Cold War and the emerging multipolar world, in which China is anticipated to return to the centre of international politics. The chapter also explores topics such as the United Nations’s involvement in development issues and its role in decolonization, U.S. foreign policy under the two Obama administrations, and nuclear proliferation.

16. US foreign policy in Latin America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Dunkerley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Central America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Monroe Doctrine ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines US foreign policy in Latin America and the historical evolution of US relations with the region. It first considers the Monroe Doctrine and manifest destiny, which sought to contain European expansion and to justify that of the United States under an ethos of hemispherism, before discussing the projection of US power beyond its frontiers in the early twentieth century. It then explores the United States’ adoption of a less unilateral approach during the depression of the 1930s and an aggressively ideological approach in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. It also analyzes US policy towards the left in Central America, where armed conflict prevailed in the 1980s, and in South America, where the Washington Consensus brought an end to the anti-European aspects of the Monroe Doctrine by promoting globalization. Finally, it looks at the impact of the Cold War on US policy towards Latin America.

Mexico, Gilberto Bosques and the Refugees

2000 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich Katz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Military ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
North Americans ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

In the eyes of many North Americans, Mexico is above all a country of immigration from which hundreds of thousands hope to pass across the border to find the promised land in the United States. What these North Americans do not realize is that for thousands of Latin Americans and for many U.S. intellectuals, Mexico after the revolution of 1910-1920 constituted the promised land. People persecuted for their political or religious beliefs—radicals, revolutionaries but liberals as well—could find refuge in Mexico when repressive regimes took over their country.In the 1920s such radical leaders as Víctor Raúl Haya De La Torre, César Augusto Sandino and Julio Antonio Mella found refuge in Mexico. This policy continued for many years even after the Mexican government turned to the right. Thousands of refugees from Latin American military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay fled to Mexico. The history of that policy of the Mexican government has not yet been written.

Reviews: La Politique de la Solitude: Essai Sur la Philosophie Politique de J.-J. Rousseau, Rousseau and Nationalism, The Concept of Justice, Staat Und Souveränität, Band 1: Die Grundlagen, Representation, Equality, Governing without Consensus; An Irish Perspective, Ulster; A Case Study in Conflict Theory, Parliament and Congress, Administrative Theory and Public Administration, Management in Government, Studies in The Growth of Nineteenth-Century Government, The Price of Amenity: Five Studies in Conservation and Government, State Enterprise: Business or Politics?, Politics, Finance and the Role of Economics: An Essay on the Control of Public Enterprise, Bureaucracy and Representative Government, Le Pouvoir Et Les Groupes de Pression: Etude de la Structure Politique Du Capitalisme, Comparative Communist Politics, Studies in Opposition, Latin American Legislatures: Their Role and Influence, Israel's Parliament: The Law of the Knesset, The Nigerian Army, The Nigerian Military, Ibo Politics. The Role of Ethnic Unions in Eastern Nigeria, Nigeria: Crisis and Beyond, The Road to Aba, The Structure of Canadian Government, The Government of Canada, Four African Political Systems, The German Dictatorship, A Social History of the Third Reich, A History of the People's Democracies, Eastern Europe since Stalin, The Czechoslovak Reform Movement, Das Regierungssystem Der Schweiz, Reapportionment in the 1970s, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, National Liberation: Revolution in the Third World, Theory and Practice of Modern Guerrilla Warfare, Robert Owen: Prophet of the Poor. Essays in Honour of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of His Birth, Gandhi, Selected Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, The Age of Lloyd George, The Case of Walter Bagehot, The Long Retreat: A Short History of British Defence Policy 1945–1970, Foreign Policy and the Political Process, toward a Politics of the Planet Earth, The Foreign Policy System of Israel, The Conduct of Soviet Foreign Policy, the Administration of American Foreign Policy, Making Peace, the Search for Peace, Alliance in International Politics, International Co-Operation Today

1972 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-381
Author(s):  
David R. Cameron ◽  
M. H. Lessnoff ◽  
D. F. S. Scott ◽  
Dennis Kavanagh ◽  
Basil Chubb ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Conflict Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Public Enterprise ◽  
State Enterprise ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of

Brazilian Foreign Policy and the Dominican Crisis: The Impact of History and Events

1972 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-77
Author(s):  
Ralph G. Santos
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Dominican Republic ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Santo Domingo ◽  
American Military ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Nation

On May 24, 1965, nearly a month after the first U. S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo, an inter-American military force under the command of a Brazilian general took over peacekeeping activities in the Dominican Republic. Although the first Brazilian contingent to arrive comprised only 300 troops, it later reached a total of 1,250, the largest contribution by a single Latin American nation. While Brazil's participation in the Dominican crisis was a clear indication that the independent foreign policy of Quadros and Goulart had been discarded in favor of a realignment once again with the United States, it also signified an abrupt departure from one of the basic tenets of Brazilian foreign policy—nonintervention. The case study of Brazil's role in the Dominican Republic in 1965 which follows provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of traditional forces and contemporary events on Brazilian foreign policy at a critical juncture in that nation's history.

Jose Cecilio del Valle's Dream of a Latin-American Federation

1963 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
Louis E. Bumgartner
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
New World ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Single Moment ◽  
History Of

In 1824, José Cecilio del Valle presented to the Constituent Assembly of Central America a portrait of “Jorge Washington.” One of a number of such gestures, the presentation has no special significance. History would be no poorer if the record of the act had been lost forever. But if Valle could have chosen from his distinguished career a single moment to convey the image he wished to cast in the pages of history, he well might have selected the instant when the likeness of Washington passed from his hands to the waiting ones of the president of the Assembly. The scene would have been impressive on canvas. Stripped of flesh, his features showing signs of scholarship's discipline, Valle bends slightly from the waist, arms outstretched, offering the gift — his promise to dedicate himself to the success of the nation that Central Americans were trying to build.But Valle had his own notions as to how Central America could succeed. Steeped in the history of the New World as well as of the Old, he thought the success of the Federation of Central America depended a great deal on the success of all new American nations. This is not to say, however, that he doubted that Central Americans could build a nation from their own resources.

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