The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America / Edition 1

by Stephen G. Rabe

Overview

In March 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the formation of the Alliance for Progress, a program dedicated to creating prosperous, socially just, democratic societies throughout Latin America. Over the next few years, the United States spent nearly $20 billion in pursuit of the Alliance's goals, but Latin American economies barely grew, Latin American societies remained inequitable, and sixteen extraconstitutional changes of government rocked the region. In this close, critical analysis, Stephen Rabe explains why Kennedy's grand plan for Latin America proved such a signal policy failure.
Drawing on recently declassified materials, Rabe investigates the nature of Kennedy's intense anti-Communist crusade and explores the convictions that drove him to fight the Cold War throughout the Caribbean and Latin America—a region he repeatedly referred to as "the most dangerous area in the world." As Rabe acknowledges, Kennedy remains popular in the United States and Latin America, in part for the noble purposes behind the Alliance for Progress. But an unwavering determination to wage Cold War led Kennedy to compromise, even mutilate, those grand goals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807847640
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/22/1999
Series:	Mestizo Spaces
Edition description:	1
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

Stephen G. Rabe, professor of history at the University of Texas at Dallas, is author of the prize-winning Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Origins
2. Gunboat Diplomacy
3. Destabilization Policies
4. The Kennedy Doctrine
5. Constitutional Defenses
6. Counterinsurgency Doctrines
7. Alliance for Progress
8. Aftermath
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Walter LaFeber

The best detailed, overall account we have of the much-discussed Kennedy policies toward Latin America....[Rabe's argument that] Kennedy's obsession with the Cold War 'mutilated' his good intentions toward the southern hemisphere should help shape the ongoing, often intense, debate over Kennedy and the pivotal U.S. policies in the 1960's.

From the Publisher

This is the best detailed, overall account we have of the much-discussed Kennedy policies toward Latin America. Well-written, based on exhaustive use of U.S. sources, this account makes an argument—Kennedy's obsession with the Cold War 'mutilated' his good intentions toward the southern hemisphere—that should help shape the ongoing, often intense, debate over Kennedy and the pivotal U.S. policies in the 1960s.—Walter LaFeber, Cornell University

Editorial Reviews

[This book] should help shape the ongoing, often intense, debate over Kennedy and the pivotal U.S. policies in the 1960s.

Walter LaFeber, Cornell University

ÝThis book¨ should help shape the ongoing, often intense, debate over Kennedy and the pivotal U.S. policies in the 1960s.

Walter LaFeber, Cornell University

"[This book] should help shape the ongoing, often intense, debate over Kennedy and the pivotal U.S. policies in the 1960s.

Walter LaFeber, Cornell University"

From the Publisher