United States Policy in Central America

Quoted in Walter LaFeber . Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983). p. 31.

Quoted in Richard Millett , Guardians of the Dynasty: A History of the US Created Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua and the Somoza Family ( Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977 ), p. 52.

Quoted in LaFeber, op. cit., p. 99.

Taylor Report, 13 June 1961. Memorandum No. 4, p. 8. Released under the Freedom of Information Act, 2 June 1977. The review committee appointed by President Kennedy was chaired by Maxwell D. Taylor and consisted of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Admiral Arleigh Burke, and CIA Director Allen Dulles.

For a good discussion of national security ideology and US policies toward Latin America in the post-war period, sec Margaret E. Crahan (ed.). Human Rights and Basic Needs in the Americas (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1982), particularly Chapters 3 and 9. For the period until 1970, F. Parkinson, Latin America, the Cold War. and the World Powers: 1945-1971 (London: Sage Publications, 1974), is useful.

Walter LaFeber, op. cit., p. 245.

President Jimmy Carter, Speech to the Permanent Council of the Organisation of American States, Washington, DC, 14 April 1977.

In the 1980s, spurred by the rapid development of events and by US involvement in the region, there has been a rash of books on Central America. Among the more useful (published in the United States), are Cynthia Amson , El Salvador: A Revolution Confronts the United States (Washington, DC : Institute for Policy Studies, 1982); John A. Booth , The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 1982): Martin Diskin (ed.), Trouble in our Backyard: Central America and the United States in the Eighties (New York: Pantheon, 1983); Jonathan L. Fried , et. al. (eds.), Guatemala in Rebellion: Unfinished History (New York: Grove Press, 1983); Richard R. Fagen and Olga Pellicer (eds.), The Future of Central America: Policy Choices for the US and Mexico (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1983 ); Marvin E. Gettleman , et. al (eds.), El Salvador: Central America in the New Cold War (New York ; Grove Press. 1981): Tommie Sue Montgomery , Revolution in El Salvador: Origins and Evolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982); SCAAN, Revolution in Central America (Boulder, CO; Westview Press. 1983). Also extremely useful are the periodical publications from the North American Congress on Latin America. The most recent in the Central American series is El Salvador [984. NACLA Report on the Americas (Vol. 18, No, 2, March/April 1984).

Typical publications are Jeane Kirkpatrick , 'The Hobbes Problem; Order, Authority, and Legitimacy in Central America', AEI Public Policy Papers, Washington, DC, December 1980, and The Committee of Sante Fe , A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties (Washington, DC: Council for Inter-American Security. 1980), authored by L. Francis Bouchey , Roger Fontaine, David C. Jordan, Lt. General Gordon Sumner, and Lewis Tambs.

Newsweek. 8 November 1982.

New York Times. 12 September 1983.

Substantial irony is involved in these training facilities, given traditional Salvadoran-Honduran enmity and the 1969 warbetween the two countries.

More detail on the first years of the Reagan Administration and Central America can be found in James Chace , 'The Endless War', New York Review of Books, 8 December 1993, and Christopher Dickey , 'Central America: From Quagmire to Cauldron?', Foreign Affairs (Vol. 62, No. 3, January 1984 ). See also the special issue on Central America, The Nation. 28 January 1984.

The Kissinger Report is available as The Report of the President's National Bipartisan Commission on Central America (New York: Macmillan, 1984). For a cogent critique of the Report, see William M. LeoGrande , 'Through the Looking Glass: The Kissinger Report on Central America', World Policy (Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 1984). A number of alternative analyses of the Central American situation and possible US policies toward the region have recently appeared. See, for example, Robert S. Leiken (ed.), Central America: Anatomy of Conflict ( New York: Pergamon Press, 1984), and PACCA (Policy Alternatives for the Caribbean and Central America) , Changing Course: Blueprint for Peace in Central America and the Caribbean (Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 1984).

On 9 April 1984, for example, conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater wrote a letter about the mining to William Casey, the Director of the CIA, in which he said, 'This is an act violating international law. It is an act of war ... I don't like this. I don't like it one bit from the President or from you'. New York Times, I I April 1984. On 10 April. a non-binding resolution opposing the use of federal funds to mine Nicaraguan waters passed the Senate by a vote of 84 to 12. A similar resolution passed the House of Representatives by a large majority shortly thereafter. In a national poll conducted at the end of April 1984, only 13 per cent of the respondents supported the mining of Nicaraguan harbours. Only 30 per cent approved of US policy in Central America. See the New York Times, 29 April 1984.

'The Pentagon is now in a position to assume a combat role in Central America should President Reagan give the order, in the view of military specialists and members of Congress. They say the Defense Department has achieved this state of readiness over the past year through the coordinated buildup of US forces in the region and construction of new military installations'. From a report in the New York Times, 23 April 1984.

For one attempt to construct and promulgate an alternative vision, see PACCA. op. cit. Among the contributors to the PACCA report are Robert Armstrong, Richard Barnet, Robert Borosage, Richard R. Fagen, and Saul Landau.