As President Carter's ambassador to Nicaragua from 1977-1979, Mauricio Solaún witnessed a critical moment in Central American history. In U.S. Intervention and Regime Change in Nicaragua, Solaún outlines the role of U.S. foreign policy during the Carter administration and explains how this policy with respect to the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979 not only failed but helped impede the institutionalization of democracy there. Late in the 1970s, the United States took issue with the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Moral suasion, economic sanctions, and other peaceful instruments from Washington led to violent revolution in Nicaragua and bolstered a new dictatorial government. A U.S.-supported counterrevolution formed, and Solaún argues that the United States attempts to this day to determine who rules Nicaragua. Solaún explores the mechanisms that kept Somoza's poorly legitimized regime in power for decades, making it the most enduring Latin American authoritarian regime of the twentieth century. Solaún argues that continual shifts in U.S. international policy have been made in response to previous policies that failed to produce U.S.- friendly international environments. His historical survey of these policy shifts provides a window on the working of U.S. diplomacy and lessons for future policy-making.

An award-winning author tells the stories of the audacious American politicians, military commanders, and business executives who took it upon themselves to depose monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers of other countries with disastrous long-term consequences.

Lyndon Johnson invaded the Dominican Republic. Richard Nixon sponsored a coup attempt in Chile. Ronald Reagan waged covert warfare in Nicaragua. Nearly a dozen times during the Cold War, American presidents turned their attention from standoffs with the Soviet Union to intervene in Latin American affairs. In each instance, it was declared that the security of the United States was at stake-but, as Michael Grow demonstrates, these actions had more to do with flexing presidential muscle than responding to imminent danger. From Eisenhower's toppling of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 to Bush's overthrow of Noriega in Panama in 1989, Grow casts a close eye on eight major cases of U.S. intervention in the Western Hemisphere, offering fresh interpretations of why they occurred and what they signified. The case studies also include the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Reagan's invasion of Grenada in 1983, and JFK's little-known 1963 intervention against the government of Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana. Grow argues that it was not threats to U.S. national security or endangered economic interests that were decisive in prompting presidents to launch these interventions. Rather, each intervention was part of a symbolic geopolitical chess match in which the White House sought to project an image of overpowering strength to audiences at home and abroad-in order to preserve both national and presidential credibility. As Grow also reveals, that impulse was routinely reinforced by local Latin American elites-such as Chilean businessmen or opposition Panamanian politicians-who actively promoted intervention in their own self-interest. LBJ's loud lament—“What can we do in Vietnam if we can't clean up the Dominican Republic?”—reflected just how preoccupied our presidents were with proving that the U.S. was no paper tiger and that they themselves were fearless and forceful leaders. Meticulously argued and provocative, Grow's bold reinterpretation of Cold War history shows that this special preoccupation with credibility was at the very core of our presidents' approach to foreign relations, especially those involving our Latin American neighbors.

A penetrating analysis of the controversial U.S. role in the 1990 Nicaraguan elections-the most closely monitored in history-this book exposes the intervention in the electoral process of a sovereign nation by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, the National Endowment for Democracy, and private U.S.-based organizations. Robins

Franklin Roosevelt's good neighbour policy, coming in the wake of decades of US intervention in Central America, and following a lengthy US military occupation of Nicaragua, marked a significant shift in US policy towards Latin America. Its basic tenets were non-intervention and non-interference. The period was exceptionally significant for Nicaragua, as it witnessed the creation and consolidation of the Somoza government - one of Latin America's most enduring authoritarian regimes, which endured from 1936 to the sandinista revolution in 1979. Addressing the political, diplomatic, military, commercial, financial, and intelligence components of US policy, Andrew Crawley analyses the background to the US military withdrawal from Nicaragua in the early 1930s. He assesses the motivations for Washington's policy of disengagement from international affairs, and the creation of the Nicaraguan National Guard, as well as debating US accountability for what the Guard became under Somoza. Crawley effectively challenges the conventional theory that Somoza's regime was a creature of Washington. It was US non-intervention, not interference, he argues, that enhanced the prospects of tyranny.

This book explores the pernicious nature of US engagement with Nicaragua from the mid-19th century to the present in pursuit of control and domination rather than in defense of democracy as it has incessantly claimed. In turn, Nicaraguans have valiantly defended their homeland, preventing the US from ever maintaining its control for long. While there were intermittent US forays into Nicaragua in the 1850s, sustained intervention in Nicaragua only began in 1911 when the US invaded Nicaragua to put a halt to a canal project connecting its Atlantic and Pacific coasts to be partnered with Japan - a project the US wanted to control for itself. The US Marines subsequently invaded Nicaragua a number of times between 1911 and 1934 to try to maintain control over it, only to be repelled by peasant guerillas led by Augusto Cesar Sandino. The Marines left for good only after the US had set up the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, who then lured Sandino to Managua on the promise of a peace deal and murdered him in cold blood. Successive generations of Somozas would rule Nicaragua with an iron hand and critical US support until finally, in 1979, the latest iteration was ousted by the Sandinistas - a movement inspired by Sandino and motivated by a unique philosophy merging Christianity and Marxism. Led by Daniel Ortega, the Sandinistas established democracy in Nicaragua with the country's first free and fair elections in 1984. Once again, the US attempted to subvert democracy by organizing Somoza's former National Guardsmen into a terrorist group known as the Contras. Directed and funded by the CIA, the Contras would terrorize Nicaragua for nearly 10 years. In 1990, the Sandinistas stood for early election and the war-weary voters selected Violeta Chamorro. The Sandinistas relinquished office peacefully stepped, ceding the government to Chamorro. For 17 long years, from 1990 to 2007, neo-liberal governments, beginning with Violetta Chamorro, governed Nicaragua. Backed by the US, these governments neglected the people, leaving almost half of the country un-electrified, without decent education or health care, and in poverty. When Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007 through elections, they immediately established free health care and education, built infrastructure throughout the country, and began to eradicate poverty. Now, almost 100% of the country is electrified; poverty and extreme poverty have been greatly diminished.t