After the Second World War, the power of the United States and its commitment to world politics took on unprecedented proportions. The foreign policy moves of the superpower came to be determined by Cold War considerations, and its foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere was no exception. From the Act of Chapultepec in 1945, followed by signing the Rio Pact in 1947, the forerunner of NATO, to the establishment of the regional UN body, the Organisation of American States (OAS) in 1948, wartime hemispheric solidarity was meant to be carried on into the insecure times of the early Cold War. The Good Neighbour Policy with its non-intervention pledge, launched by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, became increasingly outdated by the 1950s, amidst superpower rivalry. Fearing the potential spread of Communism to its immediate interest sphere, the US was particularly sensitive to any challenges to its national interests, and thus watched the political events and social movements unfolding in the countries of the Americas with heightened suspicion.¹

It is no coincidence, therefore, that US governments – even at the expense of espoused democratic ideals – supported authoritarian regimes that ensured the maintenance of order and stability in the Western Hemisphere.² The backing of the Duvalier regime in Haiti between 1957 and 1986 is the clearest example of this approach.³ However, countries that showed even the slightest sign of radical economic reform, social unrest, or Communist leaning could expect US economic and/or military intervention, reminiscent of the “big stick” policy or gunboat diplomacy era launched by Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s. Within the Western Hemisphere, the US paid close attention to the events in South America; however, from the point of view of national interests and national security, the Caribbean region and Central America, collectively referred to as the Caribbean Basin,⁴ located right on the doorstep of the superpower, were the most significant. Indeed, American intervention took place the most frequently in this latter region. It is important to note, however, that the magnitude of the geographical distance resulted in significant differences in the quality of interventions. Interventions in the name of democracy were characterised by the fact that the bigger the distance was, the fewer the number of open or direct military interventions were, and the larger the number of economic/financial and covert military or indirect interventions became.

INDIRECT INTERVENTION

American economic and financial subsidies or their potential withdrawal played a decisive role in preserving the stability of the Western Hemisphere. Bolivia is a good example of the stabilising effect of American tolerance and economic aid in the 1950s.⁵ The successful implementation of the reforms of the top-down Bolivian revolution of 1952 were possible thanks to the US. As President Eisenhower’s remarks made clear at the time, the failure of the social reforms launched by President Paz Estenssoro would lead to chaos and Communism. The 1953 cooperation and the launch of economic aid between the US and the Bolivian government served the purpose of anti-Communist strategy:

The people of the United States feel deep concern for the welfare of the people of the sister Republic of Bolivia. The friendly spirit of cooperation between our two nations has in the past motivated the programs of technical assistance and the Export-Import Bank loans for economic diversification […]. Our concern for the welfare of the Bolivian people motivated the recent decision to make a further purchase of Bolivian tin at a time when this country had no immediate need for additional tin. This concern is founded today not alone on the traditional friendship between our two peoples but also on the realisation that the security of the entire Free World is threatened wherever free men suffer hunger or other severe misfortunes.⁶

It was the first time the US had cooperated with a highly progressive Latin American regime that also accommodated Marxist leaders. As BBC special correspondent George Pendle pointed out, apart from Paz Estenssoro’s willingness to compromise and the restraint of left-wing radicals, geographical distance also contributed significantly to the fact that Americans tolerated the moves of the Bolivian regime to facilitate social progress, the failure of which would have clearly led to a Communist breakthrough.⁷ Although there was no left-wing threat in Argentina, it was the potential suspension of US economic and financial aid following Perón’s fall in September 1955 that deterred the military from impeding democratic processes.⁸ Economic aid was intended to ensure a pathway to a democratic transition, which in turn would contribute to strengthening the anti-Communist stance of the hemisphere, as illustrated by the report on Assistant Secretary of State Henry F. Holland’s visit to Argentina in December 1955:

Mr. Holland had the opportunity for an informal exchange of specific views with [Provisional] President Aramburu during the course of the reception at the Embassy Residence […]. During the course of this talk the Argentine President indicated that his Government would adhere at the first feasible opportunity to the anti-Communist resolution passed at the Caracas Conference over Argentine abstention, stated his belief that the sometime Argentine-espoused “Third Position” was a silly fiction, and confirmed the present Government’s consideration of a law outlawing the Communist Party, which Mr. Holland applauded. The Assistant Secretary also […] pointed out that the U.S. Government would necessarily move with deliberation on the matter of possible economic assistance to Argentina. The President stated his understanding of this last-cited fact.⁹

These cases demonstrate the beneficial effects that indirect intervention may have had, unlike in the case of Argentina’s western neighbour.

Chile provides an example of indirect, covert military intervention. In this case it was the CIA’s task to destabilise the first democratically elected Marxist government of the Americas, led by Salvador Allende (1970–1973). The Nixon administration contributed USD 8 million to the operation, and also applied economic pressure to the regime that was also strongly opposed domestically by the business and middle class sectors, as well as by an increasingly dissatisfied military.¹⁰ By 1973, the US had indirectly achieved the fall of Allende, who committed suicide during the military coup.¹¹ The ensuing brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) enjoyed the support of Washington. For example at the first staff meeting following the appointment of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, he summarised the guiding line of US policy towards the Pinochet regime as follows: “[We should not] be in the position of defending what they’re doing in Santiago. But I think we should understand our policy – that however unpleasant they act, the government [of Pinochet] is better for us than Allende was.”¹² That is, although it was true that Pinochet’s Chile was not democratic, it offered no opportunities for Communist adventurism. In Kissinger’s view, Pinochet’s system strengthened the balance of power in the hemisphere at the time of détente.¹³ Thus, strange as it may seem, the Chilean authoritarian regime became one of the bastions of democracy against the spread of Communism for the rest of the Cold War.

DIRECT INTERVENTION

Unlike the countries of South America, many of the states in the Caribbean Basin faced direct, open military intervention by the United States. The US reacted most sensitively to the possibility of Communist expansion in this particular region because of both geographical proximity and the security of the Panama Canal. Ever since the opening of the canal in 1915, the stability of the Caribbean Basin had been at the forefront of US strategic interests. Safe passage through the Panama Canal Zone and along the sea routes leading to it was vital to the US Navy. That is why it was expected that a foreign policy doctrine similar to the big stick policy would revive during the Cold War in order to justify intervention. Nor was this surprising, since as Pendle emphasises, “[i]t was by the big stick that the United States acquired the Panama Canal Zone, and the possession of the Panama Canal made the continued use of the big stick necessary”.¹⁴ Along with the decline of the Good Neighbour Policy this kind of political logic became once again dominant regarding relations with the countries of the Caribbean Basin.

Direct interventions, which manifested either in open military interventions or in military support for local or emigrant forces, were based on the following beliefs: firstly, on the conviction that radical and national revolutionary movements threatened fundamental American interests in the region; secondly, on the belief that the US needed to be on the alert and to resort to military force if necessary in order to protect its fundamental interests.¹⁵

The series of interventions began with the overthrow of the Communist-branded Árbenz administration in Guatemala in 1954, despite the fact that the intervention was not approved by either the UN or the OAS. Following the example of Bolivia and the 1953 US–Bolivian cooperation, US intolerance towards Guatemala suggests considerable inconsistency, especially in light of the fact that the internal problems of Bolivia and Guatemala were eerily similar: the need for agrarian reform, the integration of the predominantly Indian population into mainstream society, the curtailment of foreign monopolies’ rights, the termination of economic limitations posed by monocultures, the elimination of food imports, as well as the reform of infrastructure, education and healthcare featured among the goals of both countries’ progressive governments. Furthermore, both countries carried out nationalisations in economic fields of strategic significance, and Communist elements were present among the members of the leadership of both states. Yet neither Paz Estenssoro nor Árbenz wanted to lead their countries into the Soviet camp.¹⁶ So what is the reason behind the different treatment on the part of the United States?

The map of the Americas includes part of the answer: Guatemala is much closer to both the US and the Panama Canal than Bolivia. Obviously, however, geographical proximity alone would constitute a poor explanation without pointing out that spatial proximity to the US entailed a concentration of not only political but also increased economic interests. The hegemony of US economy has always been strongest in the Caribbean Basin. The robust economic presence of the United States also extended to the countries of South America to a large extent, but there, especially from the 1960s, the revival of traditional European, mainly British and (West) German economic relations and the development of Far Eastern, predominantly Japanese economic ties provided more room for manoeuvre.¹⁷ In the case of the Caribbean Basin, therefore, geographical proximity was correlated with heightened political and economic interests, in addition to the strategic significance of the Panama Canal in the region. For this very reason, in its immediate neighbourhood, the United States did not tolerate rivals or situations of uncertain outcome, and its behaviour in the region was most similar to that of a landlord. It is interesting to note that this landlord-like attitude and the Latin American dislike and sense of inferiority connected to it are well-reflected in some linguistic terms. Thus, the Caribbean region became “our doorstep” or “the gate”, and the wider Caribbean Basin was referred to as “our backyard” in the US; similarly, in Latin America, the US became known as “the colossus of the north” (el coloso del norte) and the Caribbean Sea as “the American Lake” (el lago americano).¹⁸

If the examples of Bolivia and Guatemala are compared along the lines of space and interests, it becomes clearer that the reforms of the Guatemalan Revolution initiated by left-wing political parties, including the Communist Party, in 1944, and in particular, the 1952 Agrarian Reform Law of the Árbenz administration (1951–1954) were considered by the United States not so much as the manifestation of economic nationalism, but rather as the rise of Communism. As a matter of fact, US interests were affected adversely by almost all the reforms since the largest landowner of the country was the Boston-based United Fruit Company, which also had significant interests in two important Guatemalan harbours, in the Caribbean maritime transportation business and the Guatemalan railroads. Another US syndicate provided four fifths of the country’s electricity supply. Thus, the agrarian reform and the abolition of foreign monopolies’ rights resulted in a severe conflict of interests, which, unlike in the case of Bolivia, made compromise impossible and led to the strengthening of the Left. As a National Intelligence Estimate from 1953 concluded, “[t]he current political situation in Guatemala is adverse to US interests. The Guatemalan Communists exercise a political influence far out of proportion to their small numerical strength. Their influence will probably continue to grow as long as President Árbenz remains in power.”¹⁹ This assessment of the conflict paved the way for covert US intervention through CIA-organised propaganda and CIA-assisted emigrant Guatemalan troops entering the country. The emerging right-wing military dictatorship of Castillo Armas was hailed by the Eisenhower administration for saving Guatemala from Communist imperialism.²⁰

For the United States, events in Cuba constituted the biggest blow, not only because of its successful revolution, but also because it was there that the first and only failed intervention of the colossus of the north took place in the hemisphere. The victory of the 1959 Cuban Revolution and then Castro’s turn to the Soviet camp was followed by the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion. Soviet missiles deployed to Cuba to forestall further US intervention caused the most dangerous crisis and the most paralysing war scare of the Cold War era, in October 1962. The Caribbean Crisis shocked the United States and definitively reaffirmed the conviction that further countries in the hemisphere had to be prevented at all costs from joining the Soviet camp.²¹

After 1959, fears of a recurrence of the Cuban syndrome characterised US foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere. This danger was particularly prevalent in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, where the Trujillo dictatorship (1930–1961) had created an atmosphere of utmost tension by the end of the 1950s. The United States preferred not to wait for a national revolution to end Trujillo’s heavy-handed tyranny; therefore, it imposed an economic embargo to weaken the regime, then in 1961 a group of CIA-backed conspirators assassinated the dictator. The ensuing period of turmoil led to the outbreak of a civil war on 24 April 1965, which was brought to an end by the first direct military intervention of the US in Latin America for more than thirty years, known as Operation Power Back (30 April 1965–21 September 1966). The Johnson administration feared that in the absence of intervention, left-wing forces could seize the initiative with Castro’s support and the spectre of a second Cuba outweighed all other considerations. Amidst the post-Cuban Missile Crisis mood of the times, the OAS not only sanctioned the deployment of US Marines, but also supported the operation and then peacekeeping with multinational forces under Brazilian command.²²

It was in connection with the Dominican Crisis that a new Cold War foreign policy principle was formulated, which dealt the death blow to the Good Neighbour Policy since it was intended to justify the legitimacy of US interventions against the spread of Communism, in the spirit of the big stick policy. The Johnson Doctrine declared that the United States would not tolerate a Communist government in the Western Hemisphere outside of Cuba. This doctrine justified intervention in Latin America wherever the United States considered there was a danger of Communism gaining ground.²³

The American nations cannot, must not, and will not permit the establishment of another Communist government in the Western Hemisphere. This was the unanimous view of all the American nations when, in January 1962, they declared, and I quote: “The principles of Communism are incompatible with the principles of the inter-American system.” This is what our beloved President John F. Kennedy meant when, less than a week before his death, he told us: “We in this hemisphere must also use every resource at our command to prevent the establishment of another Cuba in this hemisphere.” This is and this will be the common action and the common purpose of the democratic forces of the hemisphere. For the danger is also a common danger, and the principles are common principles. […] We believe that change comes and we are glad it does, and it should come through peaceful process. But revolution in any country is a matter for that country to deal with. It becomes a matter calling for hemispheric action only – repeat – only when the object is the establishment of a Communistic dictatorship.²⁴

The events of the 1970s and especially the 1980s provided a large number of opportunities to put the new doctrine into practice. Sometimes intervention took a covert form, as in the aforementioned case of Chile; however, the Caribbean Basin was characterised by overt interventions in the internal affairs of states.

The Johnson Doctrine would be the hallmark of Cold War US foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere until 1985 when it was supplemented with the Reagan Doctrine. In President Reagan’s view, the United States had a duty to assist those who risked everything by defying Soviet-backed aggression. The goal, then, was to achieve a global democratic revolution by applying a conflictive approach and going on the offensive.²⁵

We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that’s not innocent; nor can we be passive when freedom is under siege. […] We must stand by all our democratic allies. And we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives – on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua – to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.²⁶

As a result, in the 1980s, a series of overt and covert military interventions in the name of democracy signalled the practical application of the Reagan Doctrine in the Caribbean Basin. In Nicaragua, after the fall of the Somoza family’s dictatorship (1937–1979), the United States provided military assistance and financial support to the CIA-trained Contras based in Honduras, who fought resolutely against the Soviet- and Cuban-backed Sandinista National Liberation Front (1979–1990). Reagan pleaded with Congress as follows, after the 1984 Congressional ban on military aid to the Contras in the same 1985 State of the Union address that also laid out the Reagan Doctrine. The cornerstone of the doctrine, the “support for freedom fighters”, was tied in with assistance to the Contras:

The Sandinista dictatorship of Nicaragua, with full Cuban–Soviet bloc support, not only persecutes its people, the church, and denies a free press, but arms and provides bases for Communist terrorists attacking neighboring states. Support for freedom fighters is self-defense and totally consistent with the OAS and UN Charters. It is essential that the Congress continue all facets of our assistance to Central America. I want to work with you to support the democratic forces whose struggle is tied to our own security.²⁷

The Nicaraguan Revolution immediately escalated into the prolonged Central American Crisis through the spillover effect in the immediate neighbourhood of the Panama Canal. In the simultaneously raging Salvadoran Civil War (1980–1992), Washington provided military assistance to the government of El Salvador in order to prevent the spread of Communism in the region and to counter the influence of the Nicaraguan rebels. At the same time, the ongoing Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) also escalated during these years as government forces equipped and trained by the United States waged an anti-guerrilla war on leftist revolutionary troops that had taken up arms following the example of the Nicaraguan Revolution. The normalisation of the crisis situation started in Nicaragua with the 1988 Sapoa Ceasefire Agreement and was finally achieved in 1990, when free elections were held and the violence in the surrounding countries also began to subside.²⁸

Amidst the protracted Central American Crisis, the 1983 invasion of the former British colony, Grenada, constituted a successful interlude, where the Marxist government of Maurice Bishop (1979–1983) had established close ties with Cuba. Following Bishop’s assassination and the establishment of the Revolutionary Military Council led by the unpopular, left-wing General Hudson Austin for six days, the US intervened (25–29 October 1983).²⁹ The 1980s were finally closed by the Invasion of Panama in 1989, where it was no longer Communism but the War on Drugs that motivated direct US intervention and where the right-wing dictatorship of General Noriega had long violated democratic principles.³⁰ Towards the end of the Cold War, at a time when Communism was weakening and declining worldwide, the United States reviewed its relations with right-wing dictatorships and prioritised respect for democratic freedoms and human rights as originally proposed by President Carter in his inaugural address back in 1977 and also applied by President Reagan in his second term:

Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere. Our moral sense dictates a clearcut preference for these societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights. We do not seek to intimidate, but it is clear that a world which others can dominate with impunity would be inhospitable to decency and a threat to the well-being of all people.³¹

It took the transition to the post-Cold War world and George W. H. Bush’s administration (1989–1993) to move beyond the dangers of Communist encroachment in Latin America and repair the neglect and damage done to inter-American relations while concentrating on the fight against Communism. Bush not only gave renewed economic attention to Latin America, launched trade initiatives and took measures to ease the debt crisis that had been hindering Latin American economies throughout the 1980s, but also resorted to the truly regional and multilateral treatment of crisis situations – such as the Central American civil wars – and together with the OAS pushed for the ruling out of military coups and other attempts to disrupt democratic processes, and thereby contributed to the strengthening of democracy.³²

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As we have seen, while in South America only economic and covert intervention was used, in the Caribbean Basin the United States applied direct intervention in a number of countries to pursue its political and economic interests. The colossus of the north always justified its interventions with sufficient arguments, and the preservation of order in its own backyard as well as the protection of its rights and interests on the American Lake seemed legitimate, even natural and predestined in American government circles. This landlord-like attitude was not met with significant condemnation and resistance at the federal level. As a result, moral, ethical and international legal arguments, or disapproval by the international community and public opinion alone could not prevent interventions, which were always carried out in the name of democracy, in order to secure or protect it.

During the course of the Cold War, American foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere served two purposes. On the one hand, it had to meet and promote domestic business interests; on the other hand, it had to be acceptable for the right-wing authoritarian governments of the Caribbean Basin and South America, which served US interests and proved to be reliable allies in the fight against Communism in exchange for US economic support and political tolerance. Cooperation with these authoritarian regimes deteriorated only at the end of or after the Cold War since democracy was no longer threatened by rival ideologies at that time; the need for alliances with dictators had become outdated. The United States, again in the name of democracy, used its economic and political leverage to put pressure on dictatorships – as in the case of Pinochet’s Chile – or to withdraw their previous subsidies – as in Duvalier’s Haiti or Noriega’s Panama – in order to pave the way for the democratic transition.

The fact that the United States supported authoritarian regimes in the fight against Communism and in the interest of stability in the Western Hemisphere may have proved to be a successful diplomatic manoeuvre; however, it did not benefit the concept of democracy. Consequently, democratisation rang false in many parts of Latin America. Indeed, the biggest shortcoming of US Cold War foreign policy was that the fight against Communism significantly diverted attention from the most serious socioeconomic problems affecting the southern part of the hemisphere, such as general poverty, the steady rise in external debt, the high level of corruption, crime and violence. The end of the Cold War thus opened up the opportunity to bring meaning to the name of democracy in Latin America.

NOTES: