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A Perfect (Free‐Market) World?
Economics, the Eisenhower Administration, and the Soviet Economic Offensive in Latin America*

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... No dia seguinte, o mandatário norte-americano retrucou publicamente algumas acusações cubanas -especialmente de auxiliar atividades contrarrevolucionárias realizadas desde território estadunidense, particularmente de voos clandestinos efetivamente realizados desde a Flórida, que provocavam bombardeios e incêndios nas plantações da ilha, bem como a divulgação de propaganda antigovernamental nas cidades. A esse respeito, o presidente Eisenhower afirmou que mantinha estrita aderência ao princípio da não-intervenção nos assuntos internos cubanos, demandou de uma justa compensação pelas propriedades de cidadãos norte-americanos nacionalizadas pelo regime de Havana, e pronunciou sua confiança "na habilidade do povo cubano para reconhecer e derrotar as intrigas do Comunismo internacional que estão orientadas para a destruição das instituições democráticas em Cuba e a tradicional e mutuamente benéfica amizade entre os povos cubano e estadunidense." 29 Nesse contexto de altas e crescentes tensões bilaterais, em 17 de março de 1960, Eisenhower concedeu autorização aos serviços de inteligência norte-americanos para financiar uma operação encoberta destinada a derrocar a Castro e instalar em Havana um regime mais amigável aos interesses econômicos, políticos e estratégicos da principal potência de Ocidente -isto é, a assim chamada operação Zapata (SEWELL, 2008). Segundo Piero Gleijeses (1995), o presidente Eisenhower dirigiu no mínimo três encontros do Conselho de Segurança Nacional dos Estados Unidos relacionados com a operação Zapata destinada a derrocar o governo revolucionário cubano -quer dizer, o mencionado encontro de 17 de março, e também em 18 de agosto e 28 de novembro de 1960. ...
... Esses assessores e armamentos acabaram sendo absolutamente cruciais no momento de enfrentar as ameaças contrarrevolucionárias. Consequentemente, Nikita Khruschev estava realmente satisfeito de ter conseguido um novo aliado, mesmo tão longe de Moscou (SEWELL, 2008;RUP-PRECHT, 2015). ...
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O artigo examina a documentação diplomática relacionada à política do governo do presidente Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira diante da fase inicial da revolução cubana. A documentação em apreço foi consultada no Arquivo do Ministério das Relações Exteriores. Essa documentação oferece pouco conhecidas informações sobre ações, percepções e interpretações de autoridades brasileiras encarregadas da política externa em relação àquele país, bem como a outros atores com vínculos e interesses na questão cubana.
... Sewell, Bevan. "A Perfect (Free-Market) World? Economics, the Eisenhower Administration, and the Soviet Economic Offensive in Latin America." Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, Issue 5, p. 842, 2008. Web. 5 Sept. 2011. < http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com >. ...
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This paper analyzes the U.S. foreign policy of containment as it was applied to Latin and South America, from 1945 through the 1970s, which U.S. policy makers employed to prevent the spread of “communism.” The containment policy defines communism as the most significant threat to U.S. interests: a threat that directed policy theory and catalyzed policy action. That is, when a situation was deemed a “communist threat,” U.S. policy makers responded through a variety of options including, but not limited to, the use of covert intervention (such as the orchestration of military coups to unseat supposed communist leaders), of economic reprisals (such as the removal of U.S. economic aid to a given country), and even of military force. But, through my study of the containment policy, I realize that the way U.S. policy makers characterized a “communist threat” was not always consistent, for they did not always react to similar circumstances in similar ways. I contend that how U.S. policy makers viewed world events, that is, how they judged and perceived those events (for example, land reform in a given country) was not always congruent from situation to situation. In this light, the purpose of this paper, then, is to explain why this discrepancy in perception occurred, and therefore to explain the evolution of American foreign policy and action from the late 1940s through the early 1970s. First, I contend that U.S. policy perspective (a term I coined to describe how U.S. policy makers judged world events) and U.S. foreign policy evolved from 1945 through the 1970s, causing U.S. policy makers to define threats in different ways across time. In layman’s terms, U.S. policy makers were not as anti-communist by the 1970s, which caused them to be less critical, and perhaps more practical, when judging a situation to be a “communist threat.” Second, I will argue that whether or not a regime was democratic or dictatorial was significant, in that U.S. policy makers favored dictatorial regimes as the best defense against “communist threats” in the Western hemisphere. As a result, U.S. policy makers were more sensitive to “communist threats” in democratic regimes and more likely to investigate such regimes with greater scrutiny for the possibility of these threats.
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Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism has remained the only comprehensive review of policies toward Latin America during Eisenhower's complete presidency based on the vast archival sources of the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. Latin American frustration with US policies — the Guatemalan intervention, the embrace of dictators, the denial of economic assistance — became tangible during Vice President Richard M. Nixon's tour of South America in 1958. The story of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intervention in Guatemala has generated impressive scholarship by historians. Whereas the Eisenhower administration opposed the Guatemalan Revolution, it found that it could work with revolutionaries in Bolivia. The Eisenhower administration preached the virtues of free trade and investment to the 18 Latin American countries denied economic assistance during the 1950s. Demonstrating a new-found cultural sensitivity toward Latin America proved of little use in containing Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution.
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Existing views of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration’s policies in Latin America have tended to portray its approach as being either fixated upon waging the Cold War, or overly concerned with quelling outbreaks of Latin American economic nationalism. Eisenhower’s approach has been viewed as regressive and reactionary; more concerned with political stability than economic and social progress. This view, moreover, has been strengthened by the actions of Eisenhower’s successor – John F. Kennedy’s announcement of the Alliance for Progress, and the prominent role played by Modernization Theory in his administration’s approach toward the developing world, have been viewed as a stark contrast to what had come before. This article challenges that prevailing view, however, by examining the Eisenhower administration’s economic policy towards Brazil. In developmental terms, it will be argued, Eisenhower’s approach was not so very different from Kennedy’s: the methods and theoretical underpinnings between the two administrations may have differed, but what they ultimately wanted to achieve – flourishing nation states that were prosperous, pro-American, and ultimately democratic – remained a constant goal. Like Kennedy, Eisenhower’s approach was constructed on a singular belief in the best way for a nation to develop; it was a standpoint that, due to the country’s economic potential, could be most clearly identified in Brazil. In examining Eisenhower’s economic approach toward Brazil, therefore, this article suggests that there is a compelling need for us to reperiodize the era of Modernization with regard to US developmental policy in Latin America.
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For historians of Soviet foreign policy, the Third World in the Cold War has long been something of an afterthought—or, in the words of one leading practitioner, "a sideshow to the main drama of the Cold War." Indeed, the very term "Cold War" reflects a focus on Europe. First used in reference to the Nazi "phony war" (Sitzkrieg) in 1938, the term described opposing troops facing each other but not exchanging fire. That applied well enough to post-World War II Europe, where the war remained "cold" in that no direct military engagements took place. But the term hardly fit the Third World, where many if not most countries found themselves embroiled in genuine military conflict with global implications at some point during the "Cold" War. When the Third World did come to scholars' attention, it was usually during moments of crisis involving superpower showdown. In these conflicts, Third World leaders seeking help from the USSR were typically considered Soviet puppets, and Third World countries themselves functioned only as a backdrop to Soviet–American confrontation. This view of Soviet–Third World relations in the Cold War could be crudely summed up in an anecdote from June 1950. When reporters asked the State Department spokesman which individual bore responsibility for the North Korean offensive, he blamed Iosif Stalin. He posed the rhetorical question, "Can you imagine Donald Duck going on a rampage without Walt Disney knowing about it?" Third World leaders like Kim Il-Sung, in this construction, were Stalin's puppets or his creations. This view that Moscow directed all of its allies' actions in the Cold War is no longer sustainable. The declassification of archival materials in the 1990s in Moscow and across the former Soviet bloc rebalanced the "objective correlation of sources" between the superpowers. It revealed opposition to Soviet policies both within and beyond the Soviet leadership. Yet it did little to change the geographical or topical focus of the field. Even the best scholars at the leading institutions of the new Cold War history used these newly excavated sources to answer old questions with broader perspective and more sophistication. The history of superpower crises has been greatly enriched by the nuggets harvested from what Mark von Hagen termed the "archival gold rush." These materials showed how Third World clients shaped Soviet foreign-policy decisions through persistence, manipulation, and pleading. Yet scholarship on the Cold War has remained focused on wars and crises in Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam, and primarily on military aid or relationships between communist parties. Now that the gold rush is over, it is time to mine further afield, searching for new documents and new approaches to the study of the USSR in the world. In doing so, scholars can build on recent overviews of Soviet foreign policy that devote more attention to Soviet engagements in the Third World. Work on East–South relations can become part of a broader effort to study the USSR in transnational context—a trend familiar to readers of this and other journals on Soviet history. This essay will make the case for studying Soviet–Third World contacts in particular. By taking better account of the connections with the Third World—whether political, cultural, economic, or diplomatic—historians of the Soviet Union could contribute to multiple scholarly agendas, many of which already relate to their own concerns. More serious attention to East–South relations will help recast the Cold War as a fundamentally multipolar conflict, with the superpowers constantly responding not just to each other but to their allies and adversaries in the Third World. Scholars not centrally concerned with international relations could also benefit from a consideration of the full range of East–South connections; whether interested in the Academy of Sciences or in higher education, studying the physical and intellectual traces of the Third World in the USSR offers excellent insights into ostensibly "domestic" Soviet history. Such a focus on the periphery could, paradoxically, bring the study of Soviet foreign relations closer to the central concerns of the field as a whole. In pursuing the history of the Second World's Third World, scholars could learn from the major reconceptualization and expansion of the study of...
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Accompanied by intense media interest, President George W. Bush visited Latin America in March 2007. The trip, it seemed, was a rather obvious attempt to try and improve inter-American relations by demonstrating that the US did care about is neighbours to the South; to counter the seemingly endless bad press and repair some of the damage done to the American brand by Bush's policies and the influence of Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez. As this article will demonstrate, though, this was reminiscent of another era: that of the 1950s and the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Throughout his eight years in office, Eisenhower would consistently use public relations operations as a way of improving inter-American relations. However, the intense problems that this eventually brought about suggest that the present administration may have been misguided in its attempts to follow a similar path to its Republican predecessor's.
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Scholars have addressed the problem of the Dwight Eisenhower administration's opposition to Fidel Castro's nationalist insurrection (1956–59) following two main perspectives. Some authors have perceived it in terms of a response to the threat that Castro's radical programme posed to American economic interests in Cuba. Other scholars have claimed that, in the 1950s, Washington did not have a clear perception of the differences between progressive nationalism and communism. This article offers a different explanation. It argues that the intersection between the Cold War and the decolonisation process played a crucial role in changing the US's perception of Latin American nationalism. Specifically, the launch of the Peaceful Coexistence strategy by the Soviet post-Stalinist leadership increased Moscow's ability to interact with nationalism of developing areas, pushing the Republican administration into a defensive position in the Third World. During the 1950s, this context strongly influenced Washington's diplomatic strategy in the Latin American and the Cuban scenarios, driving the Eisenhower Presidency to adopt a hostile position toward nationalist governments or nationalist inspired political movements such as Castro's.
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This book examines the role of the UN in conflict resolution in Africa in the 1960s and its relation to the Cold War. Focussing on the Congo, this book shows how the preservation of the existing economic and social order in the Congo was a key element in the decolonisation process and the fighting of the Cold War. It links the international aspects of British, Belgian, Angolan and Central African Federation involvement with the roles of the US and UN in order to understand how supplies to and profits from the Congo were producing growing African problems. This large Central African country played a vital, if not fully understood role, in the Cold War and proved to be a fascinating example of complex African problems of decolonisation interacting with international forces, in ways that revealed a great deal about the problems inherent in colonialism and its end.
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Book description: This is an exploration of how Latin America developed an alternative modernity during the early twentieth century, one that challenges the key assumptions of the Western dominant model.
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Covering the volatile period from 1945 to 1962, Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov explore the personalities and motivations of the key people who directed Soviet political life and shaped Soviet foreign policy. They begin with the fearsome figure of Joseph Stalin, who was driven by the dual dream of a Communist revolution and a global empire. They reveal the scope and limits of Stalin’s ambitions by taking us into the world of his closest subordinates, the ruthless and unimaginative foreign minister Molotov and the Party’s chief propagandist, Zhdanov, a man brimming with hubris and missionary zeal. The authors expose the machinations of the much-feared secret police chief Beria and the party cadre manager Malenkov, who tried but failed to set Soviet policies on a different course after Stalin’s death. Finally, they document the motives and actions of the self-made and self-confident Nikita Khrushchev, full of Russian pride and party dogma, who overturned many of Stalin’s policies with bold strategizing on a global scale. The authors show how, despite such attempts to change Soviet diplomacy, Stalin’s legacy continued to divide Germany and Europe, and led the Soviets to the split with Maoist China and to the Cuban missile crisis. Zubok and Pleshakov’s groundbreaking work reveals how Soviet statesmen conceived and conducted their rivalry with the West within the context of their own domestic and global concerns and aspirations. The authors persuasively demonstrate that the Soviet leaders did not seek a conflict with the United States, yet failed to prevent it or bring it to conclusion. They also document why and how Kremlin policy-makers, cautious and scheming as they were, triggered the gravest crises of the Cold War in Korea, Berlin, and Cuba. Taking us into the corridors of the Kremlin and the minds of its leaders, Zubok and Pleshakov present intimate portraits of the men who made the West fear, to reveal why and how they acted as they did
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* Preface *1. Truman, Eisenhower, and the Cold War in Latin America *2. Underdevelopment, Repression, and Revolution *3. The Revolutionary Governments: Communism or Nationalism? *4. The View from the North * S. From Truman to Eisenhower: The Road to Intervention *6. Project PBSUCCESS: The Preparation *7. Project PBSUCCESS: The Coup *8. Project PBSUCCESS: The Legacy * Notes * Bibliography * Index
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This article examines Dwight Eisenhower's and John Foster Dulles's publicly declared goal to achieve the liberation of Eastern Europe, a goal that they claimed would replace the Truman administration's passive containment policy.But the evidence shows that Eisenhower and Dulles were unwilling to risk war with the Soviet Union and believed that liberation, if actually pursued, would induce the Soviet Union to react violently to perceived threats in Eastern Europe. Hence, in top-secret meetings and conversations, Eisenhower and Dulles rejected military liberation, despite their public pronouncements. Instead, they secretly pursued a tricky, risky, and long-term strategy of radio broadcasts and covert action designed to erode, rather than overthrow, Soviet power in Eastern Europe. In public, they continued to embrace liberation policy even when confronted with testimony from U.S. allies that the rhetorical diplomacy of liberation had not worked. This reliance on rhetoric failed to deter the Soviet Union from quashing rebellions in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956. If anything, the Eisenhower administration's rhetorical liberation policy may have encouraged, at least to some degree, these revolts.
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This study explores the Eisenhower administration's efforts to promote free trade and investment policies in Latin America. US officials believed that private capital investment, rather than US foreign aid, would best promote Latin American economic development and improve its abiliry to purchase American products. By eliminating the need for foreign aid, Latin American economic autarky complemented Eisenhower's zeal for fiscal conservatism. Although most scholars have focused on the primacy of anti-communism in Eisenhower's inter-American policies, this study contends that economic nationalism posed the greatest threat to Eisenhower's policies. US officials eventually responded by expanding aid to Latin America, but the additional economic aid was always intended to complement private capital, rather than replace it. This article, based upon the papers of influential administration officials and State Department records, sheds considerable light as to why the United States promoted free trade and investment policies in the developing world, as it still does today.
Eisenhower, 92; Gilderhus, The Second Century, 155. For the revisionist approach, see Siekmeier, Aid, Nationalism and Inter-American Relations, 302; LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions
  • See Rabe
See Rabe, Eisenhower, 92; Gilderhus, The Second Century, 155. For the revisionist approach, see Siekmeier, Aid, Nationalism and Inter-American Relations, 302; LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, 140-42.
The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence
  • Eisenhower Rabe
  • Richard Aldrich
Rabe, Eisenhower, 91; Richard Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London, 2001);
Soviet Foreign Policy, ch
  • Nogee
  • Donaldson
Nogee and Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy, ch.
The Second Century, 150. For further information on the administration's foreign economic policies, see: Kaufman, Trade and Aid; Siekmeier, Aid, Nationalism and Inter-American Relations; LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions; Weis, Cold Warriors and Coups
  • Eisenhower Rabe
Rabe, Eisenhower, 96; Gilderhus, The Second Century, 150. For further information on the administration's foreign economic policies, see: Kaufman, Trade and Aid; Siekmeier, Aid, Nationalism and Inter-American Relations; LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions; Weis, Cold Warriors and Coups d'État, 93-94.
The Point of No Return: The Eisenhower Administration and Indonesia
  • Robert Mcmahon
Robert McMahon, " The Point of No Return: The Eisenhower Administration and Indonesia, 1953–1961, " in Statler and Johns, eds., The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War.
An Aladdin's Lamp for Free Enterprise
  • Yankee Mcpherson
  • No
  • Loayza
McPherson, Yankee No!; Loayza, " An Aladdin's Lamp for Free Enterprise. "
Deputy Director for Intelligence on the Staff of the Joint Chiefs to the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • Edwin T Memorandum
  • Layton
Memorandum from Edwin T. Layton, Deputy Director for Intelligence on the Staff of the Joint Chiefs to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, December 7, 1955, OCB 091.4 Latin America (FILE 5) (2) December 1955, Box 73, OCB Central File Series, Eisenhower Library.
America's Half-Century; Catherine Kennedy-Pipe, Russia and the World
  • Taubman
  • Khrushchev
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The Most Important Single Aspect
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Retiring the Puppets
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6; Press Conference by Premier Khrushchev
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VI:511-18; U.S. Position on the Major Issues Expected to Be Discussed at the Economic Conference of the Organization of American States
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