In Their Own Best Interest: A History of the U.S. Effort to Improve Latin Americans by Lars Schoultz (review)

In this masterful work, Lars Schoultz provides a companion and follow-up to his classic Beneath the United States. He continues to examine the roots of US policy toward Latin America, this time asking why US leaders have devoted so much time and money to attempting to lift up Latin Americans. Schoultz argues that US policymakers across the political spectrum have agreed for centuries that the United States should improve Latin American politics and economics. That shared goal has translated into different policies in different eras, however, because a continuum of beliefs, with altruistic convictions on one end and selfish (or “realist”) interests on the other, has shaped US policymakers’ views on how and why they need to improve Latin Americans.

Schoultz traces the uneven growth and transformation of an uplifting culture over the course of two centuries, beginning in the early nineteenth century and ending with predictions for the future. He focuses on two key periods in which US policymakers were particularly devoted to their neighbors’ development: the Progressive Era and the Cold War era. According to Schoultz, Progressives like Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who were on the altruistic side of the continuum of uplifting beliefs, were the ones to cement in US policy-making culture the idea that the United States should help less developed nations. These Progressive altruists lacked the soft power tools available to later generations, however, and as a result they resorted to hard power, or military intervention and occupation, in their dedication to helping Latin Americans elect good men.

During the Great Depression and World War II, US policymakers like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt transitioned from trying to democratize Latin American politics to a new focus on the region’s economic development. This Good Neighbor policy shared the old uplifting spirit but foreswore direct military involvement and instead turned to innovative methods and tools such as trade and aid. The shift did much to encourage inter-American economic integration and diplomatic cooperation for the war effort, but it undermined earlier efforts to instill democratic governance in Latin America and instead strengthened many unsavory dictatorships.

As the Cold War set in, US policymakers such as President John F. Kennedy continued to try to improve Latin American economies and societies, now motivated by realist national security concerns and fear of losing more discontented countries like Cuba to the communist bloc. The Cold Warriors followed and accelerated the FDR-era policy of institutionalizing the uplifting effort and in so doing created a powerful uplifting industry. To the Eximbank (created in 1934) and Nelson Rockefeller’s Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics (1940) were added the Inter-American Development Bank (1960), the Agency for International Development (1961), and the National Endowment for Democracy (1983).

After the Cold War and continuing into the present era, US policymakers shifted their focus back to Latin America’s politics, this time pursuing not only democratic transitions, but also the never-ending goal of improving democracy itself. Schoultz concludes that the uplifting industry, full of governmental and non-governmental institutions, and the increased number and scope of goals that the uplifters pursue are the culmination of the realist takeover of the altruist quest to improve Latin America.

This book is a necessary and rewarding read for scholars and students of US foreign policy and inter-American relations. Although Schoultz focuses primarily on US policy and policymakers, he is quick to acknowledge the influence of Latin American actions and arguments. His prose is witty and engaging, and his knack for finding juicy quotes is unrivaled. Schoultz provides a compelling analysis of one of the most unique, durable, perhaps admirable, and almost certainly destructive aspects of US foreign policy—the centuries-long quest to improve Latin Americans.