US policy has tended to treat Central America as the back-yard of the US

Since US policy has tended to treat Central America as the back-yard of the US, administrations have always felt at liberty to use coercive diplomacy or even force to achieve their national interests.’ Discuss


American interventionism in the western hemisphere is not something that has appeared during the Cold War though it can be said that it was accentuated during that period.
In 1823, President Monroe stated that America (as a whole) was no longer a land for colonisation for the European powers. From that time on, the western hemisphere was to be free from the colonial empires and was to become the axis of influence for the US.
In 1898, The Spanish-American War set the expansionist policies under President William McKinley(R) as part of the Monroe Doctrine and the Manifest Destiny (superiority of American values, ‘exceptionalism’). The Philippines and Hawaii were annexed and Cuba became a protectorate (granting a 99-year lease on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base). Only at that time the US really became an economic and military power which could rule and influence the hemisphere. No power in the American continent could be in competition with the vast and powerful century-old democracy. It is often argued that since that power could not be counterbalanced, America tended to treat Central America as its back-yard.
America has employed different ways and approaches to perpetuate its influence, such as coercive diplomacy, direct intervention trough the use of military power, and undercover operation perpetrated by the CIA.
Coercive diplomacy strategy needs to be separated from deterrence as it does not involve the use of threats or shows force to dissuade, but it uses limited force and partial threats to force and adversary to stop one domestic or foreign policy. It must be said that ‘coercive diplomacy is not a military strategy at all but rather a political strategy.’[1]
Therefore, the strategies of overthrowing governments as in Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama do not belong to coercive diplomacy but to the use of force through direct intervention.
US policy in Central America can be seen by some as a way of denying Cuba and the Soviet Union bases. In fact the region ‘has few resources and is of little direct economic importance to the US- indeed only 2 percent of US Foreign investment and trade is with Central America.’[2] However it must be underlined that for strategic reasons, because the power and credibility of the US were at a stake, because it seemed vital to the administration to demonstrate that US hegemony in the region was intact, administrations felt a real concern of what was going on in the region.
‘Neither Presidents Lyndon Johnson nor Richard Nixon invoked the Monroe doctrine by name, but the thinking and rhetoric of both about Latin America were infused with Monroeism, focus now on one clear, negative objective: no more Cubas.’[3] Consequently, US interventionism, direct or indirect, can be explained by the fact that the Cold War was not only ‘a contest between superpower billiard balls’[4], but an ideological struggle between two superpowers.
Guy Poitras claims that in the 1980s three different strategies of containment could be observed in Central America: Containment of the left, where the US sought to contain and overturn the Nicaraguan regime which was seen as the source of the problem in the region; containment of the conflict, which was the approach of the major western European and Latin American countries to settle the problematic situation; and containment of counterrevolution, which was the policy the Nicaraguan government developed in order to hold and repel at bay US hegemony.

For chronological reasons we shall first focus in Guatemala. In 1951 the Guatemalan people elected Col. Jacobo Arbenz, a socialist, to the presidency. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated the first successful overthrown of a government which bright down the constitutional government of Jacobo Arbenz. Although the communist party was weak in Guatemala, America saw the evils of communism as a threat. Preoccupation on the American United Fruit Company existed, but the ideological threat was considered to be too important to negotiate a peaceful way-out as it did with Bolivia and the tin mines. Was there a real threat or did the fears of communism prevail over democracy? Harold Moulineu argues that: ‘In retrospect, the ‘threat’ seems to have been simply a result of the democratic process working its difficult way through Guatemalan politics and culture. For thirty years after the US repression of the threat in 1954, Guatemala experienced no genuine democracy.’[5]


Another direct intervention through force in American history was the Invasion of Grenada. On March 1979, a bloodless coup led by Maurice Bishop, the New Jewel movement leader established a Marxist-Leninist government which quickly aligned with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Accusation followed from the Reagan administration claiming that Grenada was transporting weapons to other Central American countries and was building an airport to assist the Soviets and the Cubans. In October 1983, ‘Operation Urgent Fury’ was launched and 7,000 American troops invaded the island and encountered 1,500 soldiers and 600 Cubans (most of them military engineers). Although the invasion was opposed by Canada and UK (because the country is part of the commonwealth), the Reagan administration decided to act unilaterally because it saw threats of communism.
After the US invasion of Grenada in October 1983 American troops captured important Grenadian documents that demonstrated the extremely limited support the Soviets were giving to the Caribbean island.


We shall treat now the Dominican Republic intervention another use of force that America perpetrated to ‘achieve foreign policy interests.’
The prevention of another Cuba (and a massive one) was the fundamental point that drove Johnson to indirect interventionism in Brazil in 1964 and pushed the administration to encourage the Brazilian military officers to overthrown the leftist democratic government of Joao Goulart. The same fears of red ideologies drove the president to the 1965 military invasion of the Dominican Republic.
From 1915 to 1934 the country was under American military government, and after the withdrawal of the American forces the country was ruled by Rafael Trujillo, a military dictator who ‘was a stench in American diplomatic nostrils, but who was vocally anti-Nazi during WWII and anti-Communist thereafter.’[6] Fidel Castro’s success against the brutal Batista, warned the Eisenhower administration that if Trujillo, half despot and brutal as Batista, remained in power he might be succeeded by another Castro, a Dominican one, and probably with Cuba’s help.
Trujillo was assassinated in May 1961 in circumstances which remain murky to this day. In early 1962, Juan Bosch, poet and lifelong opponent of Trujillo, won the first free democratic election for president. Bosch, who was unpopular with the military and the wealthy, was overthrown in September 1963. Several presidents through Latin America saw this situation as a test to American devotion to democracy, but the superpower accepted and recognised the military triumvirate in early 1964. One year later the military regime was proving itself ever less effective in governing. The US could at that point have worked negotiation to ceasefire, to call new elections or simply restore the illogically deposed elected socialist president Juan Bosch. But Johnson, haunted with fears of communism, launched ‘Operation Power Pack’ and invaded the island with 23,000 marines claiming that otherwise Castro would be soon commanding the country. An inter-American peace force led by the Brazilian regime which the US had help to reach power, took over command in an international peace-keeping force in late 1965. As Gaddis claimed this policy was coherent with US policy since America did not carry the burden of the situation once the intervention was over. ‘A persistent theme of latter-day Monroeism was that by keeping the hemisphere secure, and not having erect defences on ‘our own doorstep,’ the US could deploy forces all over the world.’[7]


With no doubt, the most significant and important issue that shaped American foreign policy through the 1980s was Nicaragua, a nation in where coercive diplomacy and economic and military coercion was used.
There was little foreign direct investment of the US in Nicaragua, and expropriations of property were principally directed to the Somoza family and its associates, not US interests.
The principal negotiation efforts on the Nicaraguan issue included the Contadora Plan (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama; and later the ‘support group’ of Argentina Brazil, Peru and Uruguay formed in July 1985). But differences between Nicaragua and the Tegucigalpa group blocked a treaty agreement. After the Contadora negotiations collapsed in January 1987, initiatives by President Arias shift Costa Rica to a more neutral position. A first draft of the Arias plan was discussed by the presidents of Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. But the Reagan administration did more to punish than to reward Costa Rican efforts in the Arias plan. The Nicaraguan government was prepared to do concession but the US administration would not accommodate the least to the situation. Reagan opposed negotiations with El Salvador to settle the internal war.[8]
A second meeting in Esquipulas, Guatemala, this time with the presence of Daniel Ortega culminated in the signing of the Esquipulas II treaty in August 1987.
‘Indeed, theses multilateral negotiations represented and unprecedented level of cooperation among the Latin American nations, and one of the most significant and concerted challenges ever posed to US hegemony in the western hemisphere.’[9]
It should be remembered that the Sandinista regime won the 1984 ‘fair democratic’ (so qualified by the 2000 international observers) elections by more than 70% of the votes and though they preferred a single-party Leninist model they allowed a domestic opposition to exist and function in contrast to the governing situation in Cuba.
American people were opposed to an invasion of the Latin American country and were not convinced of the necessity of the financial aid the contras were receiving. As a consequence it was difficult for the administration to convince Congress to obtain extra funds and the situation became even worse for Reagan when in 1987 the Congress shifted to the Democrats.
The desire to acquire more military funds to finance the contra guerrilla led the administration to unconstitutional practises of funding as the November 1986 Iran-Contra affair scandal.
Although it always rhetorically presented a ‘two- track approach’ the Reagan administration was frequently contradictory and on ad hoc bases. As a matter of fact there was no consensus with in the policymaking apparatus because inter-bureaucratic differences existed. On the one hand, administration’s hardliners in the NSC (William Clark, Oliver North), the CIA (William Casey), at the State Department (Alliot Abrams), at the UN (Jeane Kirkpatrick) and at the Defence Department (Caspar Weinberger), fundamentally aimed to eliminate the Sandinista regime by nullifying coercive diplomacy by vetoing State Department attempts to negotiate; on the other hand, ‘US officials who entered into negotiation - Enders, Quainton, Shultz, shlaudeman and Habib- did not speak for the entire Reagan administration.’[10]
Of course the hardliners’ policy prevailed as they detained all key positions. The contra army served as the principal mean of military coercion, and the trade embargo as the economic one. ‘The economic dimension of the policy has received less attention, even though it was arguably more effective.’[11] In fact, the contra war did not achieve the objective of overthrowing the government, whereas the costs of war and the 1985 full-trade embargo, which violated the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), created huge inflation in the country making the situation unsustainable what obliged the Sandinitas in the medium term to end the war and to call for new elections. At the UN, the Security Council voted 11-1 (with 3 abstentions) against the trade embargo the US decreed on the Latin American country. ‘European powers tended to believe that the Left should not be isolated or contained but integrated and moderated within the western economic and trading system.’[12]

Furthermore, the Reagan administration used other economic coercive measures to destabilise the Nicaraguan economy. It reversed the Carter administration policy on loans toward the Argentinean and Chilean harsh military regimes (which had killed an estimated 30,000 and 6,000 ‘insurgents’ in each countries) in order to obtain more votes in the ‘Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo’. Together the USA, Chile and Argentina controlled enough votes in the IBD to reject the fishing boat loan, and other loans that were essential to the agricultural and underdeveloped economy of Nicaragua. ‘But like the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank was susceptible to pressure from it principal contributor.’[13]Thus, Washington pressured on the regional and international banks was arguably more effective than other means.
The US also used direct ways of damaging the economy. Director of the CIA William Casey and his chief of operations for Latin America were responsible for the 19 attacks targeting the Nicaraguan oil storages facilities conducted by the US Special Forces between September 1983 and April 1984. Moreover, the mining of Nicaraguan three major harbours and the ‘great coffee war’ also constituted ways of damaging the weak stability of an economy highly dependent on trade. In Nicaragua, the US never could claim to any degree of international agreement. The UN Security Council condemned with several resolutions American actions especially the US mining of the Nicaraguan harbours (13-1, with 1 abstention).
A solution to the decade-long conflict did not come from the US itself. In February 1989 American capacity to obstruct an agreement was weakened as Bush had just taken office. An accord was signed by the five Central American countries calling for elections in February 1990, but the Bush administration refused to lever the military coercion of the contras and only did lever it when Violeta Chamorro won the elections against the Sandinitas.
‘The specific objective of overthrowing the Sandinistas and the more general precedent of making self determination selectively applicable only to certain types of political systems as determined unilaterally by the US were rejected by the western allies, by the countries in the region, and by the UN.’[14]Furthermore, the United States was convicted at the International Court of Justice (Nicaragua vs. US) for using unlawful means of destabilisation.
‘Political change in Managua was precipitated not by US-supported guerrillas but by an electoral process which the US government had always doubted, and by an extended, tortuous of series of regional negotiations which the US had consistently undermined.’[15] Coercive threats are best combined with inducements and cooperation, that is to say a ‘carrot-and-stick’ policy of coercive diplomacy, not the pure coercion the US practice in Nicaragua. The bullying American strategy in Central America did not aim mutual accommodation but only search to implement the policies which would allow the hardliners to obtain unilateral submission. In short, negotiations served as a useful cover for bullying tactics and to obtain concessions from Managua. Negotiations that the administration only respected rhetorically while it was working secretly to block them.
Although US coercive policies shape the process, American policy was repeatedly undermined by small Central American countries that sought and end to the contra war and the internal contradiction within the US administration.
The positive development of the conflict for American interests was also influenced by the fact that the Soviets found that another Cuba was too costly, especially in the 1980s when Soviet influence around the globe was declining as a consequence of a long suffering economy.


The final use of force that the US perpetrated in Latin America during the Cold War was the Invasion of Panama. ‘Operation Just Cause’ deposed General Manuel Noriega, who had worked for the CIA from late 1950s to the1980s, in December 1989. The Bush administration incursion into Panama deployed 27,684 troops and over 300 aircrafts. Unnecessary, between 3,000 and 4,000 civilians died. On December 22nd and 29th, the OAS and The UN passed resolutions deploring the invasion and calling for a rapid withdrawal.



The reader gains the impression that in many cases the US overreacted prematurely as there was no S.U. intervention or very marginal involvement. ‘A spectre haunted the US. It was the spectre of communism anywhere in the Americas.’[16] Administrations tended to see red everywhere in the region were socialist, not necessarily communist, movements developed.
‘For nearly two centuries the US has claimed a right to exclude certain systems’ from the America, and during the 20th century it has claimed to know which system ought to prevail throughout the hemisphere.’[17] American interventionism during the Cold War was not so different from previous periods, but America’s power was much greater. Hence, the reader infers and identifies that the claim that America has treated Central America as his back-yard in order to achieve its foreign and domestics interests is very close to reality. A country that preaches that the world should adhere to the American ‘exceptionalism’, the values of democracy and free-trade, was more concerned about capitalist trade and self interests policies (sometimes ineffective), than about the freedom of the Latin American peoples to choose their way of undertaking democracy.


















BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Jentleson, Bruce W, ‘The Reagan administration and Coercive Diplomacy: Restraining more than remaking Governments,’ Political Science Quarterly 106 (1991) 1, PP. 57-82.

Roberts, Kenneth, ‘Bullying and Bargaining- The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America’, International Security 15 (autumn 1990)2, pp. 67-102

Leogrande, William, ‘Making the Economy Scream: US economic sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua’ Third World Quarterly 17 (1996) 2, pp. 329-348

Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’

Gaddis, Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993, (1994). Chapter 6: ‘No More Cubas: The Monroe Doctrine under Johnson and Nixon.’

Poitras, Guy, The Ordeal Of Hegemony: The United States and Latin America, (1990). Chapter 5: ‘The Containment of Central America.’

Molineu, Harold, US Policy Toward Latin America: from Regionalism to Globalism. 2nd ed. 1990. Chapter 3: The Sphere of Influence in the Cold War.
[1] Jentleson, Bruce W, ‘The Reagan administration and Coercive Diplomacy: Restraining more than remaking Governments,’ Political Science Quarterly 106 (1991) 1, P.58.

[2] Poitras, Guy, The Ordeal Of Hegemony: The United States and Latin America, (1990). Chapter 5: ‘The Containment of Central America.’ p. 85.

[3] Gaddis, Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993, (1994). Chapter 6: ‘No More Cubas: The Monroe Doctrine under Johnson and Nixon.’ P. 113.

[4] Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’ P.36.

[5] Molineu, Harold, US Policy Toward Latin America: from Regionalism to Globalism. 2nd ed. 1990. Chapter 3: The Sphere of Influence in the Cold War. P. 57.

[6] Gaddis, Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993, (1994). Chapter 6: ‘No More Cubas: The Monroe Doctrine under Johnson and Nixon.’ P. 123.

[7] Gaddis, Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993, (1994). Chapter 6: ‘No More Cubas: The Monroe Doctrine under Johnson and Nixon.’ P. 129.

[8] Carothers, 1991, pp. 86-92 in: Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’ P.44.

[9] Roberts, Kenneth, ‘Bullying and Bargaining- The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America’, International Security 15 (autumn 1990)2, p. 81.

[10] Roberts, Kenneth, ‘Bullying and Bargaining- The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America’, International Security 15 (autumn 1990)2, p.98.

[11] Leogrande, William, ‘Making the Economy Scream: US economic sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua’ Third World Quarterly 17 (1996) 2, pp. 329.

[12] Poitras, Guy, The Ordeal Of Hegemony: The United States and Latin America, (1990). Chapter 5: ‘The Containment of Central America.’ p. 89.
[13] Leogrande, William, ‘Making the Economy Scream: US economic sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua’ Third World Quarterly 17 (1996) 2, pp. 335.

[14] Jentleson, Bruce W, ‘The Reagan administration and Coercive Diplomacy: Restraining more than remaking Governments,’ Political Science Quarterly 106 (1991) 1, PP. 82.

[15] Roberts, Kenneth, ‘Bullying and Bargaining- The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America’, International Security 15 (autumn 1990)2, p. 68.

[16] Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’ P.49.
[17] Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’ P.37.