The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1965-1989
The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1965-1989

Author: David F. Schmitz

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-03-13

Total Pages: 13

ISBN-13: 1139455125

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Building on Schmitz's earlier work, Thank God They're on our Side, this is an examination of American policy toward right-wing dictatorships from the 1960s to the end of the Cold War. During the 1920s American leaders developed a policy of supporting authoritarian regimes because they were seen as stable, anti-communist, and capitalist. After 1965, however, American support for these regimes became a contested issue. The Vietnam War served to undercut the logic and rationale of supporting right-wing dictators. By systematically examining US support for right-wing dictatorships in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, and bringing together these disparate episodes, this book examines the persistence of older attitudes, the new debates brought about by the Vietnam War, and the efforts to bring about changes and an end to automatic US support for authoritarian regimes.

The United States and Fascist Italy
The United States and Fascist Italy

Author: Gian Giacomo Migone

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-05-05

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1316239675

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Originally published in Italian in 1980, Gli Stati Uniti e il fascismo: Alle origini dell'egemonia Americana in Italia is regarded today as a crucial text on the relationship between the United States and Italy during the interwar years. Aside from the addition of two new prefaces - one by the author and one by the book's translator, Molly Tambor - the original text has remained unchanged, so that Anglophone readers now have the opportunity to engage with this classic work. By analyzing the enduring relationship between the United States - especially its financial establishment - and fascist Italy up until Mussolini's conquest of Ethiopia in 1935, this book provides answers to some key questions about the interconnectedness of America's rise to hegemonic global financial power in the twentieth century and its support of Italian fascism during this time.

The Untold History of the United States
The Untold History of the United States

Author: Oliver Stone

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-10-30

Total Pages: 784

ISBN-13: 1451613512

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This companion to the documentary will unearth the truth behind historical events, using recently-discovered archives and newly declassified material.

Thank God They're on Our Side
Thank God They're on Our Side

Author: David F. Schmitz

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009-09-15

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 0807875961

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Despite its avowed commitment to liberalism and democracy internationally, the United States has frequently chosen to back repressive or authoritarian regimes in parts of the world. In this comprehensive examination of American support of right-wing dictatorships, David Schmitz challenges the contention that the democratic impulse has consistently motivated U.S. foreign policy. Compelled by a persistent concern for order and influenced by a paternalistic racism that characterized non-Western peoples as vulnerable to radical ideas, U.S. policymakers viewed authoritarian regimes as the only vehicles for maintaining political stability and encouraging economic growth in nations such as Nicaragua and Iran, Schmitz argues. Expediency overcame ideology, he says, and the United States gained useful--albeit brutal and corrupt--allies who supported American policies and provided a favorable atmosphere for U.S. trade. But such policy was not without its critics and did not remain static, Schmitz notes. Instead, its influence waxed and waned over the course of five decades, until the U.S. interventions in Vietnam marked its culmination.

The United States and Genocide
The United States and Genocide

Author: Jeffrey Bachman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-22

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 135169216X

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There exists a dominant narrative that essentially defines the US’ relationship with genocide through what the US has failed to do to stop or prevent genocide, rather than through how its actions have contributed to the commission of genocide. This narrative acts to conceal the true nature of the US’ relationship with many of the governments that have committed genocide since the Holocaust, as well as the US’ own actions. In response, this book challenges the dominant narrative through a comprehensive analysis of the US’ relationship with genocide. The analysis is situated within the broader genocide studies literature, while emphasizing the role of state responsibility for the commission of genocide and the crime’s ancillary acts. The book addresses how a culture of impunity contributes to the resiliency of the dominant narrative in the face of considerable evidence that challenges it. Bachman’s narrative presents a far darker relationship between the US and genocide, one that has developed from the start of the Genocide Convention’s negotiations and has extended all the way to present day, as can be seen in the relationships the US maintains with potentially genocidal regimes, from Saudi Arabia to Myanmar. This book will be of interest to scholars, postgraduates, and students of genocide studies, US foreign policy, and human rights. A secondary readership may be found in those who study international law and international relations.

Revolutionaries for the Right
Revolutionaries for the Right

Author: Kyle Burke

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-04-13

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 1469640740

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Freedom fighters. Guerrilla warriors. Soldiers of fortune. The many civil wars and rebellions against communist governments drew heavily from this cast of characters. Yet from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, Vietnam to Angola, Cuba to the Congo, the connections between these anticommunist groups have remained hazy and their coordination obscure. Yet as Kyle Burke reveals, these conflicts were the product of a rising movement that sought paramilitary action against communism worldwide. Tacking between the United States and many other countries, Burke offers an international history not only of the paramilitaries who started and waged small wars in the second half of the twentieth century but of conservatism in the Cold War era. From the start of the Cold War, Burke shows, leading U.S. conservatives and their allies abroad dreamed of an international anticommunist revolution. They pinned their hopes to armed men, freedom fighters who could unravel communist states from within. And so they fashioned a global network of activists and state officials, guerrillas and mercenaries, ex-spies and ex-soldiers to sponsor paramilitary campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Blurring the line between state-sanctioned and vigilante violence, this armed crusade helped radicalize right-wing groups in the United States while also generating new forms of privatized warfare abroad.

The Origins of Overthrow
The Origins of Overthrow

Author: Payam Ghalehdar

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-08-06

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0190695889

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Why has the United States repeatedly engaged in the overthrow of foreign leaders and regimes? Although most regime change interventions have neither furthered US national security nor improved the fate of targeted states, the US has turned to this foreign policy instrument in at least sixteen cases from 1906 to 2011. In The Origins of Overthrow, Payam Ghalehdar explains US-imposed regime change by focusing on its emotional underpinnings. Based on a thorough analysis of the emotional state of five US presidents, he shows how "emotional frustration"-an emotional syndrome that combines hegemonic expectations, perceptions of hatred in target state obstructions, and negative affect-has repeatedly influenced US regime change decisions. When US presidents have been gripped by this emotion, Ghalehdar argues, they have turned to the use of force and targeted perceived sources of obstruction in order to ameliorate their emotional state and discharge frustration. Examining five US regime change episodes in two world regions (Cuba 1906, Nicaragua 1909-12, and the Dominican Republic 1963-65 in the Western hemisphere, and Iran 1979-80, and Iraq 2001-03 in the Middle East), he empirically illustrates the emotional sources of US intervention decisions. A novel explanation for a puzzling phenomenon in US foreign policy, The Origins of Overthrow sheds light on how emotions play a previously overlooked role in US regime change decisions.

Chomsky's Challenge to American Power
Chomsky's Challenge to American Power

Author: Anthony F. Greco

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

Published: 2014-01-15

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0826519490

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Noam Chomsky is a pioneering scholar in the field of linguistics, but he is better known as a public intellectual: an iconoclastic, radical critic of US politics and foreign policy. Chomsky's Challenge examines most of the major subjects Chomsky has dealt with in his nearly half century of intellectual activism--the Vietnam War, America's broader international role (especially its interventions in the Third World), the structure of power in American politics, the role of the media and of intellectuals in forming public opinion, and American foreign policy in the post-Cold War world. Chomsky is as controversial as he is influential. Admirers see him as a courageous teller of unpleasant truths about political power and those who wield it in the United States. Critics view him as a propagandist and ideologue who sees only black and white where there are multiple shades of gray. While Chomsky's fans tend to view him uncritically, his critics often don't take him seriously. Unlike any previous work, this book takes Chomsky seriously while treating him critically. The author gives Chomsky credit for valuable contributions to our understanding of the contemporary political world, but spares no criticism of the serious deficiencies he sees in Chomsky's political analyses.

The Sailor
The Sailor

Author: David F. Schmitz

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-02-23

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0813180465

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In The Sailor, David F. Schmitz presents a comprehensive reassessment of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's foreign policymaking. Most historians have cast FDR as a leader who resisted an established international strategy and who was forced to react quickly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, launching the nation into World War II. Drawing on a wealth of primary documents as well as the latest secondary sources, Schmitz challenges this view, demonstrating that Roosevelt was both consistent and calculating in guiding the direction of American foreign policy throughout his presidency. Schmitz illuminates how the policies FDR pursued in response to the crises of the 1930s transformed Americans' thinking about their place in the world. He shows how the president developed an interlocking set of ideas that prompted a debate between isolationism and preparedness, guided the United States into World War II, and mobilized support for the war while establishing a sense of responsibility for the postwar world. The critical moment came in the period between Roosevelt's reelection in 1940 and the Pearl Harbor attack, when he set out his view of the US as the arsenal of democracy, proclaimed his war goals centered on protection of the four freedoms, secured passage of the Lend-Lease Act, and announced the principles of the Atlantic Charter. This long-overdue book presents a definitive new perspective on Roosevelt's diplomacy and the emergence of the United States as a world power. Schmitz's work offers an important correction to existing studies and establishes FDR as arguably the most significant and successful foreign policymaker in the nation's history.

The Dictator Dilemma
The Dictator Dilemma

Author: Kirk Tyvela

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2019-05-31

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0822986507

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The Dictator Dilemma tells the story of US bilateral relations with the Alfredo Stroessner dictatorship (1954–1989). Tyvela focuses on how and why that diplomatic relationship changed during the Cold War from cooperation, based on mutual opposition to communism, to conflict, based on clashing expectations concerning democratic reforms and human rights. The policy debates by officials in Washington and in Asunción brought out a tension that has defined US diplomacy for more than a century: how can the United States partner with tyrants while credibly proclaiming to advance a democratic mission in the world? Tyvela argues that the Stroessner regime was symbolic of a broader foreign policy struggle to perpetuate, enforce, and ultimately redefine the importance of friendly dictators to US global and hemispheric interests.