Costa Rica in 1948: Cold War or Local War?

1996 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Olander
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Costa Rican ◽  
Panama Canal Zone ◽  
First Case ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

The years following World War Two produced a strong resurgence of U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean couched in Cold War terms. Although the U.S. intervention in Guatemala to overthrow the government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 has generally been seen as the first case of Cold War covert anti-Communist intervention in Latin America, several scholars have raised questions about U.S. involvement in a 1948 Costa Rican civil war in which Communism played a critical role. In a 1993 article in The Americas, Kyle Longley argued that “the U.S. response to the Costa Rican Revolution of 1948, not the Guatemalan affair, marked the origins of the Cold War in Latin America.” The U.S. “actively interfered,” and achieved “comparable results in Costa Rica as in Guatemala: the removal of a perceived Communist threat.” Other authors have argued, even, that the U.S. had prepared an invasion force in the Panama Canal Zone to pacify the country. The fifty years of Cold War anti-Communism entitles one to be skeptical of U.S. non-intervention in a Central American conflict involving Communism. Costa Ricans, aware of a long tradition of U.S. intervention in the region, also assumed that the U.S. would intervene. Most, if not all, were expecting intervention and one key government figure described U.S. pressure as like “the air, which is felt, even if it cannot be seen.” Yet, historians must do more than just “feel” intervention. Subsequent Cold War intervention may make it difficult to appraise the 1948 events in Costa Rica objectively. Statements like Longley's that “it is hard to believe that in early 1948 … Washington would not favor policies that ensured the removal of the [Communist Party] Vanguard,” although logical, do not coincide with the facts of the U.S. role in the conflict.

Marinera with the Yankees

2018 ◽  
pp. 91-124
Author(s):  
Iñigo García-Bryce
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
State Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Asylum ◽  
Student Leader ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter explores Haya’s changing relationship with the United States. As an exiled student leader he denounced “Yankee imperialism” and alarmed observers in the U.S. State Department. Yet once he entered Peruvian politics, Haya understood the importance of cultivating U.S.-Latin American relations. While in hiding he maintained relations with U.S. intellectuals and politicians and sought U.S. support for his embattled party. His writings increasingly embraced democracy and he maneuvered to position APRA as an ally in the U.S. fight fascism during the 1930s and 40s, and then communism during the Cold War. The five years he spent in Lima’s Colombian embassy awaiting the resolution of his political asylum case, made him into an international symbol of the democratic fight against dictatorship. He would always remain a critic of U.S. support for dictatorships in Latin America.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby C. Rider
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
White House ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
The Government ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This concluding chapter considers the scope of the U.S. Cold War propaganda efforts during the late 1950s. In many ways, the 1950s had set the stage for the remainder of the Cold War. The superpower sporting rivalry continued to elevate the political significance of athletic exchanges, track meets, and a range of other competitions and interactions between sportsmen and sportswomen from the East and the West. For the U.S. public, the Olympics were still the source of much debate as each festival arrived on its quadrennial orbit. Victory or defeat at the Olympics clearly remained important to the public and to the White House. Declassified documents also suggest that in the post-Eisenhower years the government was still deploying the Olympics in the service of psychological warfare.

Private Sources of U.S. Foreign Policy: William Pawley and the 1954 Coup d'État in Guatemala

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 36-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Holland
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The State ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
Abstract Level ◽  
The Government ◽  
Private Network ◽  
The Cold War

As a wealthy American businessman and former ambassador, William Pawley was a key actor in PBSUCCESS, the covert operation that brought down the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala in 1954.The anti-Arbenz rebels, led by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, could not have defeated the Guatemalan army on their own. The key to a successful coup was getting the army to act on their behalf, and in this regard, control of the air was vital. Pawley, owing to his knowledge of Latin America and experience in aviation, played a central role in ensuring that the rebels enjoyed air superiority during their move against the president. At a more abstract level, Pawley exempli fied the role non-governmental actors played in the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. The “state-private network,” as it has been dubbed, remains a rich vein for scholarly investigation.

China: A Challenge or Opportunity for the United States?

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-334
Author(s):  
Jianwei Wang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soft Landing ◽  
The Government ◽  
Nato Bombing ◽  
The Taiwan Strait ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Ever since the end of the Cold War, the United States—from the government to the public, from the White House to Congress, from policymakers to pundits, from China specialists to people who know little about China—has engaged itself in the seemingly endless debate on China. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, people debated whether China was still important to the United States and whether the Sino-U.S. special relationship was worth preserving. Since the early 1990s, with China's remarkable economic “soft landing” and the consequent robust and sustained economic growth, Americans seemed to have reached a consensus that China still matters to the United States for better or worse. U.S.-China relations were often referred to as one of the most important bilateral relations to the United States. But important in what way? Much debate ensued with a series of frictions between the two countries that climaxed in the dispatch of two U.S. aircraft carriers to the South China Sea during the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, the U.S.-led NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the midair collision between the two air forces in 2001. The U.S. media tirelessly asked the question: “China: friend or foe?” The pattern for U.S. China policy since the end of the Cold War is that whenever the relationship appeared to be stabilizing and a consensus was shaping, new crises emerged and destroyed the hard-won progress, triggering another round of debate on China as if people never learned anything from the previous debate; the old and familiar discourse started all over again.

Latin America

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Schoultz
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the role of Latin America in the Cold War. It explains that Latin America did not play a significant independent role in the Cold War and largely served as a symbol whereby communist adversaries could attempt to tilt the bipolar balance of power. It discusses how Latin America's military became the U.S. government's vehicle for meeting the communist challenge and highlights America's fear that Moscow-directed local communists would consolidate their strength among important social groups, especially labor unions, and eventually seize power at a propitious moment. Thus, the U.S policy focus for Latin America turned to military aid.

Philip Wayne Powell, the Cold War, and the Conquest of Northern Mexico

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Raphael B. Folsom
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Northern Mexico ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

The writings of the U.S. scholar Philip Wayne Powell have had an enduring influence on the historiography of colonial Mexico and the Spanish borderlands. But his writings have never been examined as a unified corpus, and so the deeply reactionary political ideology that lay behind them has never been well understood. By analyzing Powell’s political convictions, this article shows how contemporary scholarship on the conquest of northern Mexico can emerge from Powell’s long shadow. Los escritos del estudioso estadounidense Philip Wayne Powell han ejercido una influencia perdurable sobre la historiografía del México colonial y las zonas fronterizas españolas. Sin embargo, dichos escritos nunca han sido examinados como un corpus unificado, de manera que la ideología política profundamente reaccionaria detrás de ellos nunca ha sido bien comprendida. Al analizar las convicciones políticas de Powell, el presente artículo muestra cómo puede surgir un conocimiento contemporáneo sobre la conquista del norte de México a partir de la larga sombra de Powell.

Truth to Power

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Intelligence Support ◽  
The Cold War

This first-ever history of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) is told through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. Coeditors Robert Hutchings and Gregory Treverton add a substantial introduction placing the NIC in its historical context going all the way back to the Board of National Estimates in the 1940s, as well as a concluding chapter that highlights key themes and judgments. The historic mission of this remarkable but little-understood organization is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. It has been at the center of every critical foreign policy issue during the period covered by this volume: helping shape America’s post–Cold War strategies, confronting sectarian conflicts around the world, meeting the new challenge of international terrorism, and now assessing the radical restructuring of the global order. Each chapter places its particular period of the NIC’s history in context (the global situation, the administration, the intelligence community) and assesses the most important issues with which the NIC grappled during the period, acknowledging failures as well as claiming successes. With the creation of the director of national intelligence in 2005, the NIC’s mission mushroomed to include direct intelligence support to the main policymaking committees in the government. The mission shift took the NIC directly into the thick of the action but may have come at the expense of weakening its historic role of providing over-the horizon strategic analysis.

The Clinton Administration and Africa: Role of Congress and the Africa Subcommittees

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-16
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Volman
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Clinton Administration ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Predominant Role ◽  
Government Relations ◽  
Foreign Operations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

Studies of U.S. government relations with Africa have generally focused on the role of the executive branch, specifically by examining and analyzing the views and activities of administration officials and the members of executive branch bureaucracies. This is only natural, given the predominant role that the executive branch has historically played in the development and implementation of U.S. policy toward the continent. However, the U.S. Congress has always played an important role in determining U.S. policy toward Africa due to its constitutional authority over the appropriation and authorization of funding for all foreign operations conducted by the executive branch. Furthermore, Congress enacted legislation on several occasions during the Cold War period that directly affected U.S. policy. For example, Congress approved the Clark Amendment prohibiting U.S. intervention in Angola (although it later voted to repeal the amendment) and also passed the 1986 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which imposed sanctions on South Africa over the veto of the Reagan administration.

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