Kissinger and Latin America: Intervention, Human Rights, and Diplomacy

With his 2020 book Kissinger and Latin America: Intervention, Human Rights, and Diplomacy, the experienced and productive historian Stephen Rabe provides a tremendous contribution to “Kissingerology.” Although copious publications deal with Henry Kissinger's international priorities as secretary of state, Rabe unveils a rather neglected aspect of his controversial diplomatic career by focusing on US policies toward Latin America during his 1969–77 tenure. Inter-American relations is one of the most disregarded topics of Cold War historiography. But by partially disclaiming the common assumption that Kissinger dismissed the region and by looking beyond the United States' notorious intervention in Salvador Allende's Chile, Rabe offers a much-needed transnational account of the continent's contemporary political history. Indeed, Kissinger's outcomes in Latin America were not limited to the successful destabilization of the “Chilean path to socialism” (1970–73), which has absorbed the bulk of scholarly attention. Instead, one of Rabe's most significant and persuasive findings...