Air University Review, July-August 1986
Dr. Howard J. Wiarda
Latin America has long been of peripheral interest in terms of a global U.S. foreign policy. Historically, our concerns have been centered chiefly on the European countries, the European military and strategic theater, and—since World War II—particularly the Soviet Union. In terms of priorities as well as temporally, we have not paid Latin America much attention: the area ranks behind Soviet relations, Western Europe and NATO, the Middle East, Japan and China, and the broader Pacific Basin in the rank-ordering of our foreign policy concerns. However, as we have become aware of the impact of the crisis in Central America and in the broader circum-Caribbean (that is, "close to home," "right in our own backyard," to use the familiar metaphors), plus the fact that we ourselves are becoming something of a Caribbean nation, our historic disinterest has begun to change. Latin America and our Latin American policy are now being taken seriously really for the first time; the area is coming under increased scrutiny from scholars, the think tanks, strategic analysts, and policymakers.1
In confronting the current and future facets of Latin America, our problem is not simply that we may have devoted insufficient attention to the region but that the fundamental assumptions of the policy we have followed may themselves be flawed. Personally, I am a firm believer in a strong defense and have been generally supportive of U.S. policy in Central America. At the same time, in a series of research projects and reports carried out at the American Enterprise Institute, we have been reexamining the bases of U.S. policy toward Latin America in the political, economic, and foreign assistance areas.2 It is perhaps time now also, within the context of support for the overall goals of U.S. foreign policy, to reexamine some of the strategic assumptions as well. The question we need to address is whether the historic assumptions and fundamentals of U.S. policy in the Caribbean Basin are still relevant and appropriate in the altered circumstances of today. The United States and the nations of Latin America have changed significantly during the last twenty years, as has the nature of the relations among us. These changes prompt us to ask, hence, whether U.S. policy must be adjusted to these new realities.
Historic U.S. Policy
in Latin America
Historic U.S. policy in Latin America, together with the strategic thinking and assumptions undergirding it, has not changed greatly since Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (and, with him, Teddy Roosevelt) first articulated a coherent and integrated policy for the region almost exactly 100 years ago.3 In fact, strategic policy has not changed much since the days of President James Monroe and the famous Monroe Doctrine. Moreover, the fundamentals of the policy have been remarkably consistent and continuous over this long history, regardless of the party or administration in power in Washington. Only the means judged best to achieve these agreed-on goals have varied.4
The basic bedrocks of U.S. policy in the Caribbean Basin, the historical record shows, include the following:
From these "basic bedrocks" of U.S. policy in Latin America, which is, in fact, a long-term and historic strategy of exclusion and containment, a number of corollaries follow:
Our basic policy in Latin America, therefore, has been one of hegemony, containment, and balance of power. The question is whether these historic bases of policy, which still undergird a great deal of policy thinking today, continue to be useful and relevant under the changed conditions in which we and the Latin Americans now find ourselves.
New Realities
Three areas of change need to be analyzed: changes in the United States, changes in Latin America, and changes in the inter-American system.6 All three impact strongly on the question of the continuity, relevance, and utility of U.S. containment policy vis-ŕ-vis Latin America.
Among many basic changes in the United States during the last twenty years, the following may be of special importance in the context of this discussion.
In Latin America, also, some important changes have occurred:
In the realm of the inter-American system, the United States must adjust to new realities also. The structure of the inter-American relationship has been badly damaged through neglect, inattention, and failures to live up to its obligations––as in Central America, the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War, and numerous other cases. In addition, by comparison with twenty years ago, the larger or more militarily powerful Latin American states (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, and Cuba) are far stronger and are pursuing more independent foreign policies at the level of middle-ranking powers. In recent years, furthermore, Latin America has greatly diversified its international ties, opening up new relations with Eastern Europe, China, and the Soviet Union, among others. Finally, a number of new outside powers––West Germany, France, Spain, Japan, and others––have begun to play a much larger role in the area. Thus, the United States no longer has the monopoly in the area that it once had.
Simultaneously, the United States has become more dependent on Latin America for manufactured as well as primary goods, rendering our relationship one of far more complex interdependence than in the past. Also, new issues––drugs, debt, human rights, democracy, protectionism, trade, and migration––have begun to replace the historic strategic ones. Latin American priorities in these matters are often quite different from U.S. priorities.
All these trends must be factored into the new equations of inter-American relations and into our assessment of the adequacy of traditional U.S. containment policy. To these must be added the rising presence of the Soviet Union and of its proxy Cuba throughout the area.
The Soviet Presence
in Latin America
Containment policy was aimed at excluding the Soviet Union from the Western Hemisphere, and, up until the late 1950s, the policy worked quite well. There were small Communist parties in most countries of the hemisphere, but they lacked popular support or a strong organizational base, and the notion of Stalinist troops disembarking on Latin America's shores was as it deserved to be––dismissed as ludicrous. In 1954, the United States intervened in Guatemala to help oust a populist-leftist government in which some Communists held key posts; but the walls that excluded the Soviets from Latin America remainedessentially unbreachable through most of the 1950s.8
The Cuban revolution of 1959, Fidel Castro's declaration of Marxism-Leninism, and the incorporation of Cuba into the Soviet camp changed all that. From this point on, the Soviets would have a base in the Western Hemisphere for political as well as military operations. During the 1960s, the Cubans tried, with Soviet assistance, to export their revolution to quite a number of other Latin American countries. The United States responded with what came to be called the "no second Cuba" doctrine: vigorous steps to prevent what happened in Cuba from happening in other countries.
In 1962, with the installation of offensive Soviet missiles in Cuba pointed at the United States, a new element was added to the equation. In a tense confrontation, the United States forced the Soviet Union to remove the missiles from Cuba, while itself agreeing tacitly not to continue seeking the overthrow of the Castro regime. With this showdown, the "no second Cuba" doctrine acquired a double meaning for the United States: the prevention of Castro-like revolutions throughout the hemisphere and the insistence that no Latin American country be used as a base for the implantation of sophisticated Soviet military hardware with an offensive capability that might threaten the United States. (It remained unclear where precisely the lines would be drawn, but certainly the United States has shown itself unwilling to accept the presence of MiG fighter planes in Nicaragua in recent years.)
The response from the United States to the Cuban revolution was massive. For the first time, we began paying serious attention to Latin America. We quarantined Cuba, broke relations, and imposed a trade embargo on the island. We launched the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress, as well as a host of other development-related programs, as a way of heading off the growth of revolutionary sentiment. We initiated training programs in civic action and counterinsurgency for the Latin American militaries, and we assisted several countries in defeating their Cuba-inspired and assisted guerrilla movements. The United States itself, when these other measures failed, intervened militarily in the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent what it thought was a Cuba-like revolution from succeeding.
These efforts were remarkably successful in medium-range terms. The embargo on Cuba kept that country isolated and economically unsuccessful, which meant that Cuba never became an attractive model for the other Latin American countries. By the late 1960s, especially with the death of Che' Guevara in Bolivia, the Cuba-like guerrilla movements had been all but eliminated in most countries. Even though all its assumptions were wrong concerning the Latin American middle class and the capacity of the United States to bring democracy to Latin America, the Alliance for Progress bought us some time (not a glorious basis for policy, but for the United States a useful and pragmatic one) and helped enable the United States to avoid more Cubas.9 By the end of the 1960s, the threat seemed sufficiently minimal and Latin America sufficiently "safe" that the United States reverted to its traditional policy of "benign neglect."
The inattention devoted to Latin America in the early-to-mid-1970s was understandable but ultimately mistaken in long-range terms. Preoccupied by Vietnam and Watergate, we virtually ignored Latin America for most of the decade. We thus missed the opportunities in the early 1970s to influence the course of events in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua that would have prevented those countries from becoming such problem cases later on. Our foreign assistance went way down. The number of U.S. personnel and programs in Latin America was greatly reduced. In not paying attention to the area, we sacrificed most of the levers of influence that we had once had. Meanwhile, those "new realities" discussed earlier became accomplished facts, rendering obsolete quite a number of our traditional security doctrines. Hence, when Latin America blew up again in the late 1970s (particularly in Nicaragua, Grenada, and El Salvador), we were quite unprepared for the situation.10
In the meantime, some new ingredients, some other "new realities," had been added. Principally, these involved the rising Soviet presence in Latin America. During the 1970s, the Soviet Union had become a major actor in Latin America. Its normal state-to-state relations with almost all the countries of the area increased enormously. The Soviet Union, using Cuba as its "aircraft carrier," became a significant military presence in the Caribbean and remains so today. Soviet trade and commercial relations have grown enormously; the Soviet Union is, for example, Argentina's largest export customer. In Peru, the Soviets have military equipment, military training programs, and a significant presence. As Soviet cultural and diplomatic activities have increased, so have Soviet political and subversion efforts. The Soviet Union is by no means an equal of the United States in Latin America, but its influence and presence are clearly on the rise.
Not only is the Soviet Union an increasing presence, but its tactics and strategies have become far more sophisticated. It is less heavy-handed and more subtle. It is playing for the long term while not ignoring possibilities for the short term. It ingratiates itself with the democratic regimes while simultaneously seeking to push them toward nonalignment (and, in some cases, continues to aid their opposition forces). It uses aid, scholarships, military programs, and trade all rather deftly. It has a different strategy for different kinds of countries, following a flexible course rather than some rigid ideological formula. Simultaneously, it has imposed order, coherence, and unity of direction on otherwise disparate guerrilla groups. It cleverly uses Cuba and now Nicaragua as its proxies while also directing and overseeing a sophisticated division of labor among its fellow Communist-bloc countries. In addition, the Soviets have become increasingly adept at manipulating opinion in Western Europe and the United States.12
Quite finite limits also exist on the Soviet role in Latin America. The Soviets still do not function especially well in that context, and Latin America is not particularly sympathetic to a Communist system. Where the Soviets have been successful, however, is in attaching themselves to popular revolutionary movements ostensibly designed to promote national independence and social justice throughout Latin America and in playing upon and taking advantage of Latin America's rising nationalism and anti-Americanism. The Soviets do not wish to challenge the United States unnecessarily in a part of the world where the United States enjoys overwhelming local advantage and which is only of peripheral importance to the Soviet Union. Within these limits, nonetheless, the Soviet gains in the last fifteen years have been impressive.13
The U.S. response to the new Soviet initiatives has been a resurrection of the older containment policy. We have "rolled back" the revolution in Grenada through military intervention, and we have put immense pressures––military, political, economic, and diplomatic––on the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, though our exact goals there remain ambiguous. We threatened to "go to the source" by, presumably, eliminating Cuba as a root cause of the troubles in Latin America. We proclaimed, at least in the early months of the Reagan administration, that the conflict in El Salvador was an East-West struggle; and there were some hints, almost certainly exaggerated, that the cold war might be decided or turned around there. Our military/strategic buildup in the region has been immense.14
A strong case can be made that this military buildup was necessary, and it is certainly to be preferred to the hand-wringing, piety, blame-it-on-ourselves afterthoughts, and do-nothingness of the previous administration. The question that needs answering, however, is whether the kind of traditional containment policy we have followed is any longer adequate in the changed circumstances, in the "new realities," of today. The answer is that it is not; that it badly needs updating and greater sophistication; that we need to go, as in the title of one of the better books on the subject, Beyond Containment; 15 and that the U.S. administration recognizes this fact and has begun to move in the new directions that are absolutely necessary if our policies in Latin America are to be successful.
"Economy of Force": Containment
Policy in Latin America
An important part of U.S. strategic policy in Latin America is based on the notion of what strategic planners call "economy of force." The strategy assumes, of course, that the Soviet Union is the country with whom the United States is most likely to be engaged in any future conflict. It further assumes that such a conflict, were it to break out, would most likely occur in Central Europe or perhaps the Middle East. In such an eventuality, the United States would want to rush all its resources to the locus of the conflict as soon as possible. It would not want to have its forces tied down, paralyzed, or bottled up in some peripheral arena of conflict by some "third-rate" power––e.g., Cuba. That is how the circum-Caribbean is viewed: as an area in which the United States would not want to have its forces preoccupied with some local skirmish or tied up by a local adversary when the more vital needs strategically lay elsewhere. Hence if the circum-Caribbean could be kept free of Communist regimes and revolutions, if only a minimal force need be used to pacify that area, then U.S. resources could be concentrated where the real conflict was occurring, presumably on the plains of Central Europe.16
The economy-of-force strategy has been fairly successful in the past. We have managed to isolate Cuba to a considerable extent and keep the Cubans from meddling in the internal affairs of other nations. We limited Cuba's capacity to export its revolution to other countries. On a small island, Grenada, a "quick and easy" intervention got rid of the local Marxist-Leninist regime and replaced it with one that would not muck around in sowing revolutions in the other small islands. In Nicaragua, through our support of and assistance to the resistance forces (the so-called contras), we have tied down the Nicaraguan armed forces that had been enormously built up since the revolution, put pressure on the Sandinista regime and stymied its greater consolidation, kept Nicaragua from spreading its revolution to its neighbors, and employed a mercenary army as a way of avoiding any commitment of U.S. ground forces.
But the economy-of-force strategy has a number of problems and conceptual flaws. For one thing, it continues to treat Latin America as a side show, peripheral to the main action. Many analysts, however, are convinced that continuing to ignore Latin America or treating it as if it were of only peripheral importance is precisely what helps give rise to revolutions and anti-Americanism in Latin America and that this attitude is at the root of our policy difficulties there. Second, it underestimates the political difficulties of sustaining a long-term proxy war in Central America or of carrying out a coherent policy over time, given the play of domestic interest groups and opposition forces; and it overestimates the capacity of the United States to intervene with military force where necessary.17 Third, it assumes that Europe will be the main theater and that the type of war to be fought will be rather like the last one there, involving tank and ground forces, plus perhaps some limited tactical nuclear weapons, in the heartland of the continent. (One hates to resurrect that old saw about generals always fighting the last great war, but in this instance that seems again to be the case.) However, a strong argument can be made that such a high-technology but conventional war in the European center is the least likely kind of war that we will be called on to fight. Far more likely are murky guerrilla struggles of the kind that we are now witnessing in Central America or that we have seen previously in Cuba, Vietnam, Angola, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, it is these more irregular wars that the United States, even with all its verbal commitments to counterinsurgency training and preparation over the last twenty years, is the least well equipped and trained to deal with.18
The Evolution of
Administration Policy
The administration of President Reagan got off to a rather shaky start in dealing with Latin America, in part because of its efforts to resurrect the rather unrefined containment policy of the past. For example, the administration saw Cuba and the Soviet Union as the prime causes of the insurrection in Central America, pictured conflict in the region in exclusively East-West terms, and tended to view the problem and its solution in a purely military way. One recalls not only the early and sometimes unfortunate statements of administration spokesmen to this effect but also their denigrating remarks about other related aspects of the problem. President Duarte of El Salvador, for example, was once told by a National Security Council official that the United States was not very interested in agrarian reform in El Salvador and in fact thought of it as damaging to the economy. And the administration's first nominee to the post of assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs suggested that, if confirmed, he intended to abolish the job and office for which he was being considered. Those are not prudent and politically viable ways to conduct a successful foreign policy in this country.
Since those early weeks, the administration has come a long distance and fashioned a much more sophisticated and multifaceted approach. To some extent, the changes are due to opposition to the administration's earlier policies from the Congress, the media, our allies, and public opinion which have forced the administration to compromise and temper its policies. In part, the changes are due to bureaucratic politics and rivalries within the government and to the reassertion over time of State Department and foreign policy professionals of their expertise and more moderate views. And, at least to some extent, the alterations are due to a learning process that has occurred within the administration itself, stimulated by the polls as well as by the more middle-of-the-road views and expertise found in the think tanks and other bodies that have generally been supportive of the administration. These and other influences have led the administration in more moderate and prudent directions toward a more mainstream foreign policy position.19
The administration has now evolved to a position where it sees Central America as both an East-West and a North-South issue. It understands the indigenous roots of revolution in the area, as well as the capacity of the Cubans and Soviets to fan the flames of revolution, to exacerbate a crisis that already exists, and to take maximum advantage of the situation to embarrass the United States in its own backyard and score gains for themselves. U.S. policies are now multifaceted rather than unidimensional. These new tacks are both more tempered and moderate and more refined than the older, sometimes heavy-handed orientation, which led to too many policy gaffes and was thereby often self-defeating of the purposes it sought to accomplish.
The administration's response has similarly been increasingly pragmatic. It now understands the need to balance its military/strategic emphasis with a clear concern for democracy and human rights. It sees the requirement of pouring in social and economic assistance as well as military aid. It supports agrarian reform and other programs of change as a way of securing long-term stability in the area and diminishing the appeals of communism. It has learned to work indirectly, behind the scenes, and through third parties rather than by means of the either-or confrontational strategies of the past. It has built up the U.S. military presence in the area but also recognizes the dire need of these countries for economic recovery. It has put enormous political, economic, and military pressures on the Sandinista regime; but it has also kept open the possibilities for diplomatic negotiations. The policy now is far more sophisticated and nuanced than in the administration's early days.
The concrete manifestation of these more sophisticated strategies may be found in the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) and in the Kissinger Commission recommendations. The CBI is a forward-looking assistance program combining public foreign aid with the encouragement of private investment that is not very much different from Kennedy's Alliance for Progress. The Kissinger Commission recommendations contain similar recommendations for a judicious blend of public and private assistance, economic and military aid, and strategic and democratic/human rights concerns. It is a complex, multifaceted package that reflects the new, more moderate, and sophisticated stance of the administration, and the commission itself was an instrument in forging a more tempered and balanced strategy. The Kissinger Commission Report is, in fact, now administration policy in Central America even though not all of its recommendations have been formally enacted into law by Congress.10
Toward an Updated
Containment Strategy
The containment strategy and its companion economy-of-force doctrine would seem in the present, more complex circumstances to be woefully outdated––at least as they were practiced in their traditional forms.21 The containment strategy was based on an earlier conception of the global conflict as exclusively bipolar, grounded on mutual "spheres of influence" understandings, derived from the idea that both superpowers could and would police their own backyards, organized exclusively around an East-West axis, and based on the principle that whatever disruptions occurred in the first power's own backyard must be due to the machinations of the other power. There are considerable elements of truth yet in all of these assertions, but as a complete and sufficient explanation for the recent upheavals in Central America, these assumptions are quite inadequate.
In Central America, the problems have proved to be far more complex, deep-rooted, and intractable than the administration first thought. It is clear that quite a number of these cannot be resolved as easily, quickly, or cheaply as originally envisaged. The fundamental problem, however, in dealing with Central America, I believe, is conceptual.22 We are still relying on policies and strategies having to do with great power tactics, containment, geopolitical position, spheres of influence, balance of power, etc., which, in regard to Latin America, need to be rethought and updated. Some of these strategies are anachronistic, while others need to be reconceived. The fact is that they were designed for an earlier and simpler era; they no longer have the same relevance in today's Latin America. For the new conditions in Latin America, the "new realities"––a changed and generally weaker U.S. role, a new assertiveness and independence on the part of the Latin American nations, a desperate desire on the part of their peoples for development and social justice, the presence of other outside actors in the area, the changed inter-American system, and so on––all imply the need for a fundamental reevaluation of policy.
I cannot provide here a complete analysis of the policy package that ought to be pursued, but I can offer at least some guidelines.23 To begin, we need to be engaged in Latin America with empathy and understanding, not just view it as a side show. We need to normalize and regularize our relations with the region and put them on a mature basis, not simply pay Latin America fleeting attention in times of crisis. We need a sophisticated and multifaceted program for the area, such as that proposed by the Kissinger Commission (which has been only partially implemented to date). We need a policy that incorporates expanded cultural and student exchanges, economic and debt aid, a vigorous human rights program, investment and trade programs, assistance for social modernization, support for democratization, and greater contacts between U.S. and Latin American groups––as well as attention to the strategic and military aspects. We need to be flexible in meeting the challenges of the area, including far more capability and training in responding to guerrilla war. And we require a reassessment of strategic thinking and tactics in the area to reflect the changed conditions and new realities of the region and our position there. On this basis, a prudent, realistic, and more sophisticated policy can be developed for the area.
In terms of specific recommendations, we need to do the following: we need far more training in limited and irregular war capacity and counterinsurgency, in both rural and urban settings. We need to examine and understand thoroughly the changed conditions of Latin America outlined here and their implications for foreign policy. We need to develop our capacities to understand Latin America in its own terms and context rather than through our own biased and often ethnocentric lenses.24 We certainly need better language and area studies programs in our foreign policymaking agencies, not just in Spanish and Portuguese but also in such native Indian languages as Quechua and Aymará. We need to understand and come to grips realistically with the increasing Soviet/Cuban presence in the area and the new, more sophisticated tactics that the Soviets and Cubans are employing. And we need to develop programs, such as the med-vac ones, to deal with Latin America’s problems on the ground, close to the people, in terms that the Latin Americans will both know and appreciate. In these ways we need to update and modernize our containment strategy, which is still a viable policy for the United States in Latin America but is badly in need of a new formulation.
Author’s Note: This article is adapted from a speech delivered at the Conference on Containment and the Future at the National Defense University, Washington, D.C., on 7-8 November 1985. I acknowledge the assistance of Janine Perfit, Frank Vega, and Ięda Siqueira Wiarda in the preparation of this article.
Notes
1. These themes are elaborated in Howard J. Wiarda, In Search of Policy: The United States and Latin America (Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1984).
2. Howard J. Wiarda, editor, Rift and Revolution: The Central American Imbroglio (1984), The Crisis in Latin America: Strategic, Economic and Political Dimensions (1984), The Alternative Futures of Latin America (1985), Human Rights and U.S. Human Rights Policy (1982), and The Crisis in Central America (1982), all published by the American Enterprise Institute. See, also, Wiarda, "At the Root of the Problem: Conceptual Failures in U.S.-Central American Relations," in Central America: Anatomy of Conflict, edited by Robert Leiken (New York: Pergamon Press, 1984), pp. 259-78.
3. See especially Alfred T. Mahan, The Interest of American Sea Power, Present and Future (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1898).
4. J. Lloyd Mechan, A Survey of United States-Latin American Relations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965).
5. From Howard J. Wiarda, "The United States and Latin America: Change and Continuity," in Confrontation in the Caribbean Basin, edited by Alan Adelman and Reid Reading (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Center for International Studies of the University of Pittsburgh, 1984), pp. 211-26.
6. A more complete discussion is found in Howard J. Wiarda, Latin America at the Crossroads: Debt and Development Strategies for the 1990s (Washington: A Report Prepared for the Inter-American Development Bank, 1985), chapter 5.
7. I have treated this subject in more detail in "The Paralysis of Policy: Current Dilemmas of U.S. Foreign Policy-Making" (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, Occasional Paper, 1985).
8. Cole Blasier, The Giant’s Rival: The USSR and Latin America (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983).
9. We need a reassessment of both the successes and the failures of the alliance in this light.
10. See the discussion in Rift and Revolution, especially the Introduction, op. cit.
11. Jiri Valenta and Virginia Valenta, "Soviet Policies and Strategies in the Caribbean Basin," in Rift and Revolution. An updated version is forthcoming in Mark Falcoff and Howard J. Wiarda, The Communist Challenge in Latin America (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1986).
12. Ernest Evans, "Revolutionary Movements in Central America: The Development of a New Strategy," in Rift and Revolution and, in revised form, in The Communist Challenge.
13. Howard J. Wiarda, "Soviet Policy in the Caribbean and Central America: Opportunities and Constraints," in The Communist Challenge, op. cit.
14. For an assessment, see Howard J. Wiarda, "Aftermath of Grenada: The Impact of the U.S. Action on Revolution Prospects in Central America," in Grenada and Soviet/Cuban Policy, Internal Crisis and U.S. Intervention, edited by Herbert Ellison and Jiri Valenta (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1985).
15. Aaron Wildavsky, editor, Beyond Containment: Alternative American Policies toward the Soviet Union (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1983).
16. Robert Kennedy and Gabriel Marcella, "U.S. Security on the Southern Flank: Interests, Challenges, Responses," in Western Interests and U.S. Policy Options in the Caribbean Basin, edited by James R. Greene and Brent Scowcroft (Boston: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Hain, for the Atlantic Council, 1984) pp. 187-242.
17. For a full discussion, see "The Paralysis of Policy," op. cit.
18. See the discussion of the former American commander in El Salvador, Colonel John Waghelstein, in "Post Vietnam Counterinsurgency Doctrine," Military Review, May 1985.
19. These changes are analyzed in my forthcoming book, tentatively titled Finding Our Way? Toward Maturity in U.S.-Latin American Relations (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1986).
20. See the Report of the President’s National Bipartisan Commission on Central America (New York: Macmillan, 1984), as well as Howard J. Wiarda, editor, "U.S. Policy in Central America: Consultant Papers for the Kissinger Commission," Special issue of the AEI Foreign Policy and Defense Review, vol. V, no. 1, 1984.
21. For discussion, see George F. Kennan ("X"), "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Foreign Affairs, July 1947, pp. 566-82; John Lewis Gaddis, "Containment: A Reassessment," Foreign Affairs, January 1978, pp. 430-40; Charles R. Wolf, Jr., "Beyond Containment: Redesigning American Policies," Washington Quarterly, Winter 1982, pp. 107-17; Louisa S. Hulett, "Containment Revisited: U.S.-Soviet Relations in the 1980s," Parameters, Autumn 1984, pp. 51-63; Barry R. Poser and Stephen Van Evera, "Defense Policy and the Reagan Administration: Departure from Containment,"International Security, Summer 1983, pp. 3-45; Robert W. Tucker, "In Defense of Containment,"Journal of Contemporary Studies, Spring 1983, pp. 29-49; and K.N. Lewis, Reorganizing U.S. Defense Planning to Deal with New Contingencies: U.S.-Soviet Conflict in the Third World (Santa Monica, California: Rand, 1982).
22. The analysis in this paragraph follows closely the similar conclusion of G. Pope Atkins, "U.S. Policy in Central America: International Conditions and Conceptual Limitations," paper presented at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 8 March 1985.
23. Further details on what I have termed a "prudence model" of U.S. policy in Latin America are presented in In Search of Policy, chapter 8. For an analytic discussion that places this strategy in the context of other alternative views, see Harold Molineu, "Latin American Politics and the U.S. Connection," Polity, Fall 1985, pp. 167-75.
24. For a full discussion, see Howard J. Wiarda, Ethnocentrism in Foreign Policy: Can We Understand the Third World? (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1985).
Howard J. Wiarda
is a Resident Scholar and the Director of the Center for Hemispheric Studies at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C., and a Research Associate of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard, a Visiting Professor at MIT, editor of Polity, and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Wiarda has published extensively on Latin America and U.S. foreign policy.Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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