The Reagan administration’s Latin American policy was one of the most hotly debated issues of the 1980s. Its primary goal, according to President Reagan’s explicit statements, was to promote democracy in the Americas. Reagan claimed that his policy contributed substantially to the resurgence of Latin American democracy; critics countered that it was driven by a pathological hatred of communism, and that the link to democracy was used to justify U.S. intervention. Writings and discussion on the subject during the decade were dominated by ideological stridency and exaggerations by both sides. Thomas Carothers’ book claims to steer clear of the debate, and offers an even-handed account of U. S. policy toward Latin America during the Reagan years.
The author, who served in the Agency for International Development during that time, offers an insider’s view of how policymakers “were thinking about the issues they confronted and how they conceived of the policy they adopted” (p. xi). The author was struck by the observation that promoting democracy was not just a rhetorical theme in the Reagan administration but a subject of genuine interest and concern among officials. “Contrary to the pictures that sometimes were presented on the outside, U S. officials behind closed doors did not wink and nudge each other when they spoke of promoting democracy in Latin America” (p. x).
Although he does not question the motives of these officials, Carothers does question the effectiveness of the policy. In his evaluation he goes beyond the high-visibility areas of Central America and Panama and analyzes U.S. policy throughout the Western Hemisphere. His conclusion: “the United States does not really have much influence over the political evolution of most Latin American countries. The main finding of the analysis … is that the United States had neither a significant positive role nor … a significant negative role in the political evolution of most countries in Latin America in the 1980s, despite the high level of time, energy, and resources the U.S. devoted to various parts of the region” (p. 257).
Carothers’ analysis is balanced and well reasoned, and he avoids the polemics of some of the recent literature. Moreover, he convincingly repudiates the Reagan administration’s self-congratulatory rhetoric. His conclusion that U.S. policy played only a minor role in Latin American countries’ political evolution in the 1980s, however, seems a little understated. While it is probably true for South America, it too-readily dismisses the extraordinary penetration of Central American societies by the United States during the Reagan administration. It also ignores the heavy-handed U.S. role in Central American elections, especially the 1984 Salvadoran presidential election and the 1990 Nicaraguan elections.
