The Grand Strategy of the United States in Latin America (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 235 records to illustrate certain points. For example, Washington's preoccupation with the measures taken by Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, such as agrarian reform , is illustrated with a quote made by a State Department analyst, in what Findling calls "the marvelous language of bureaucrats": "the ascending curve of Communist influence has not even tended to level off, but has inclined upward on an accelerated incline." As Findling moves into the recent past in U.S. -Central American relations, he seems to be writing less confidently. For instance, he calls the Terceristas— one of three factions within the Sandinista movement before the revolution — the "Third-World Tendency," adding a degree of unwarranted imagination to a bad translation. In addition, he classifies the El Salvadoran army as a "client army" of the United States, in the same category as the Contras, thereby ignoring the powerful domestic interests in El Salvador that have a stake in sustaining a powerful indigenous military. Perhaps a more useful way to articulate his point would have been to compare the Salvadoran army, dependent on U.S. aid, with the Guatemalan army, which has proved to be self-sufficient in confronting the guerrilla challenge. Despite the suggestive title that Findling chose for the book, Close Neighbors , Distant Friends contributes little original thought to the complex question of the United States' relations with five Central American countries. However, the book includes extensive notes and contains a bibliographic essay as well as two appendixes listing U.S. diplomatic representatives and Central American population growth. Overall, this book is useful as a general reference and as an overview of the major issues in relations between the United States and Central America to the present. The Grand Strategy ofthe United States in Latin America. By TomJ. Farer. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1988. 294 pp. $35.00/cloth. Reviewed by Claudia Franco Hijuelos, Ph.D. candidate, SAIS. Neither President Carter's halfhearted reorientation of policy nor President Reagan 's more traditional unilateralism and conspicuous use of force acknowledged the evolution that has taken place in international affairs since the early years of the postwar era. The underlying theme of TomJ. Farer's The Grand Strategy ofthe United States in Latin America is that the attitude and ethos of U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America has been both misguided and counterproductive . The author says that "from the beginning of the Cold War until Jimmy Carter arrived in Washington, the United States had a lucid, coherent policy toward the Third World, one that gradually dissipated U.S. influence there and poisoned American politics." The transformation to which Farer is referring underlies his conviction that regime changes in the Third World will rarely be consequential for the EastWest balance of power or for other strategic interests of the United States. He believes that the costs of maintaining a client state by proxy for either superpower 236 SAIS REVIEW are greater than the benefits accrued, except, of course, if the Soviet Union wasted national resources to such a degree that it induced the United States to waste proportionally more resources. In his lucid and bold style Farer emphasizes that this belief is one of the main differences between his views and those of conservative observers, such as AmbassadorJeane Kirkpatrick and "her acolytes." His recurrent criticism of this school of thought is so passionate that the reader might entertain the suspicion that it is an obsession. Fortunately, the various essays that constitute this volume provide abundant evidence not only to dispel this initial diagnosis but also to give a fairly complete understanding of Farer's ideas. The title of the book is somewhat misleading , since its contents do not integrate a comprehensive analysis of U.S. policy toward Latin America. The majority of essays, which have been published in the past few years, address various topics, including human rights, international law, and revolution in Central America. The common denominator is U.S. policy in Latin America and how it has dealt with these various issues. Farer's position as professor of law and former member of the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (1976-83), over which he presided from 1980 until 1982, is...