In Nicaragua Must Survive, Eline van Ommen argues that the key to understanding the seemingly outsize impact of the revolution in the small Central American state of Nicaragua is the “revolutionary diplomacy” deployed by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). Such revolutionary diplomacy melded grassroots organizing among international solidarity groups with traditional foreign policy in ways that were both creative and pragmatic. Like most recent works on the Sandinista Revolution, Nicaragua Must Survive is distinctly transnational, pouring beyond Nicaragua's borders to explore the international networks that channeled political, financial, economic, and military support to opposing sides of the revolution. Van Ommen, to great success, traces these networks beyond the Americas, to western European states and citizens in the late Cold War.

The Sandinistas’ global cachet lay in the party's capacity to present and prioritize different strains of its political ideology to diverse audiences. Nicaraguan diplomats spanned the globe...

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