Author: Mauricio Sola£n Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 0803243162 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 406
Book Description
As President Carter?s ambassador to Nicaragua from 1977?1979, Mauricio Sola£n witnessed a critical moment in Central American history. In U.S. Intervention and Regime Change in Nicaragua, Sola£n outlines the role of U.S. foreign policy during the Carter administration and explains how this policy with respect to the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979 not only failed but helped impede the institutionalization of democracy there. Late in the 1970s, the United States took issue with the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Moral suasion, economic sanctions, and other peaceful instruments from Washington led to violent revolution in Nicaragua and bolstered a new dictatorial government. A U.S.-supported counterrevolution formed, and Sola£n argues that the United States attempts to this day to determine who rules Nicaragua. Sola£n explores the mechanisms that kept Somoza?s poorly legitimized regime in power for decades, making it the most enduring Latin American authoritarian regime of the twentieth century. Sola£n argues that continual shifts in U.S. international policy have been made in response to previous policies that failed to produce U.S.- friendly international environments. His historical survey of these policy shifts provides a window on the working of U.S. diplomacy and lessons for future policy-making.
Author: Mauricio Solaun Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 149621160X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 585
Book Description
As President Carter's ambassador to Nicaragua from 1977-1979, Mauricio Solaún witnessed a critical moment in Central American history. In U.S. Intervention and Regime Change in Nicaragua, Solaún outlines the role of U.S. foreign policy during the Carter administration and explains how this policy with respect to the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979 not only failed but helped impede the institutionalization of democracy there. Late in the 1970s, the United States took issue with the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Moral suasion, economic sanctions, and other peaceful instruments from Washington led to violent revolution in Nicaragua and bolstered a new dictatorial government. A U.S.-supported counterrevolution formed, and Solaún argues that the United States attempts to this day to determine who rules Nicaragua. Solaún explores the mechanisms that kept Somoza's poorly legitimized regime in power for decades, making it the most enduring Latin American authoritarian regime of the twentieth century. Solaún argues that continual shifts in U.S. international policy have been made in response to previous policies that failed to produce U.S.- friendly international environments. His historical survey of these policy shifts provides a window on the working of U.S. diplomacy and lessons for future policy-making.
Author: Stephen Kinzer Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 0805082409 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 415
Book Description
An award-winning author tells the stories of the audacious American politicians, military commanders, and business executives who took it upon themselves to depose monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers of other countries with disastrous long-term consequences.
Author: Michael Grow Publisher: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 0700618880 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
Lyndon Johnson invaded the Dominican Republic. Richard Nixon sponsored a coup attempt in Chile. Ronald Reagan waged covert warfare in Nicaragua. Nearly a dozen times during the Cold War, American presidents turned their attention from standoffs with the Soviet Union to intervene in Latin American affairs. In each instance, it was declared that the security of the United States was at stake-but, as Michael Grow demonstrates, these actions had more to do with flexing presidential muscle than responding to imminent danger. From Eisenhower's toppling of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 to Bush's overthrow of Noriega in Panama in 1989, Grow casts a close eye on eight major cases of U.S. intervention in the Western Hemisphere, offering fresh interpretations of why they occurred and what they signified. The case studies also include the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Reagan's invasion of Grenada in 1983, and JFK's little-known 1963 intervention against the government of Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana. Grow argues that it was not threats to U.S. national security or endangered economic interests that were decisive in prompting presidents to launch these interventions. Rather, each intervention was part of a symbolic geopolitical chess match in which the White House sought to project an image of overpowering strength to audiences at home and abroad-in order to preserve both national and presidential credibility. As Grow also reveals, that impulse was routinely reinforced by local Latin American elites-such as Chilean businessmen or opposition Panamanian politicians-who actively promoted intervention in their own self-interest. LBJ's loud lament—“What can we do in Vietnam if we can't clean up the Dominican Republic?”—reflected just how preoccupied our presidents were with proving that the U.S. was no paper tiger and that they themselves were fearless and forceful leaders. Meticulously argued and provocative, Grow's bold reinterpretation of Cold War history shows that this special preoccupation with credibility was at the very core of our presidents' approach to foreign relations, especially those involving our Latin American neighbors.
Author: William I Robinson Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429722605 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
A penetrating analysis of the controversial U.S. role in the 1990 Nicaraguan elections-the most closely monitored in history-this book exposes the intervention in the electoral process of a sovereign nation by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, the National Endowment for Democracy, and private U.S.-based organizations. Robins
Author: Lindsey A. O'Rourke Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501730681 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 329
Book Description
O'Rourke's book offers a onestop shop for understanding foreignimposed regime change. Covert Regime Change is an impressive book and required reading for anyone interested in understanding hidden power in world politics.― Political Science Quarterly States seldom resort to war to overthrow their adversaries. They are more likely to attempt to covertly change the opposing regime, by assassinating a foreign leader, sponsoring a coup d'état, meddling in a democratic election, or secretly aiding foreign dissident groups. In Covert Regime Change, Lindsey A. O'Rourke shows us how states really act when trying to overthrow another state. She argues that conventional focus on overt cases misses the basic causes of regime change. O'Rourke provides substantive evidence of types of security interests that drive states to intervene. Offensive operations aim to overthrow a current military rival or break up a rival alliance. Preventive operations seek to stop a state from taking certain actions, such as joining a rival alliance, that may make them a future security threat. Hegemonic operations try to maintain a hierarchical relationship between the intervening state and the target government. Despite the prevalence of covert attempts at regime change, most operations fail to remain covert and spark blowback in unanticipated ways. Covert Regime Change assembles an original dataset of all American regime change operations during the Cold War. This fund of information shows the United States was ten times more likely to try covert rather than overt regime change during the Cold War. Her dataset allows O'Rourke to address three foundational questions: What motivates states to attempt foreign regime change? Why do states prefer to conduct these operations covertly rather than overtly? How successful are such missions in achieving their foreign policy goals?
Author: Payam Ghalehdar Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190695889 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
Why has the United States repeatedly engaged in the overthrow of foreign leaders and regimes? Although most regime change interventions have neither furthered US national security nor improved the fate of targeted states, the US has turned to this foreign policy instrument in at least sixteen cases from 1906 to 2011. In The Origins of Overthrow, Payam Ghalehdar explains US-imposed regime change by focusing on its emotional underpinnings. Based on a thorough analysis of the emotional state of five US presidents, he shows how "emotional frustration"-an emotional syndrome that combines hegemonic expectations, perceptions of hatred in target state obstructions, and negative affect-has repeatedly influenced US regime change decisions. When US presidents have been gripped by this emotion, Ghalehdar argues, they have turned to the use of force and targeted perceived sources of obstruction in order to ameliorate their emotional state and discharge frustration. Examining five US regime change episodes in two world regions (Cuba 1906, Nicaragua 1909-12, and the Dominican Republic 1963-65 in the Western hemisphere, and Iran 1979-80, and Iraq 2001-03 in the Middle East), he empirically illustrates the emotional sources of US intervention decisions. A novel explanation for a puzzling phenomenon in US foreign policy, The Origins of Overthrow sheds light on how emotions play a previously overlooked role in US regime change decisions.
Author: Melissa Willard-Foster Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812251040 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
In 2011, the United States launched its third regime-change attempt in a decade. Like earlier targets, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi had little hope of defeating the forces stacked against him. He seemed to recognize this when calling for a cease-fire just after the intervention began. But by then, the United States had determined it was better to oust him than negotiate and thus backed his opposition. The history of foreign-imposed regime change is replete with leaders like Qaddafi, overthrown after wars they seemed unlikely to win. From the British ouster of Afghanistan's Sher Ali in 1878 to the Soviet overthrow of Hungary's Imre Nagy in 1956, regime change has been imposed on the weak and the friendless. In Toppling Foreign Governments, Melissa Willard-Foster explores the question of why stronger nations overthrow governments when they could attain their aims at the bargaining table. She identifies a central cause—the targeted leader's domestic political vulnerability—that not only gives the leader motive to resist a stronger nation's demands, making a bargain more difficult to attain, but also gives the stronger nation reason to believe that regime change will be comparatively cheap. As long as the targeted leader's domestic opposition is willing to collaborate with the foreign power, the latter is likely to conclude that ousting the leader is more cost effective than negotiating. Willard-Foster analyzes 133 instances of regime change, ranging from covert operations to major military invasions, and spanning over two hundred years. She also conducts three in-depth case studies that support her contention that domestically and militarily weak leaders appear more costly to coerce than overthrow and, as long as they remain ubiquitous, foreign-imposed regime change is likely to endure.
Author: Mauricio Sola£n
Author: Mauricio Solaun
Author: Stephen Kinzer
Author: Michael Grow
Author: William I Robinson
Author: Lindsey A. O'Rourke
Author: Dianna Melrose
Author: Payam Ghalehdar
Author: Melissa Willard-Foster
Author: Héctor Perla (Jr.)