The US military presence in Latin America has declined significantly over the last two decades, particularly in the major countries of the region. Despite the determined efforts of the Reagan administration to reverse that trend, with few exceptions the present ability of the United States to influence the Latin American militaries is far removed from the dominant role it played in the 1950s and 1960s. Given the pressures in Washington for further cuts in military aid programs, the trend toward declining US influence and increasingly divergent US-Latin American military interests is likely to continue in the 1990s. Although the United States will continue to be a major force in the region, the primary instruments of US influence are likely to be economic, rather than military-to-military relations.

When Alberto Fujimori campaigned for president of Peru W i n 1990, he ran on a platform in which he promised to institute a moderate program of gradual economic stabilization, including the privatization of certain state-owned enterprises. These promises were instrumental in his scoring an upset victory over writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who had been the odds-on favorite to win just three months earlier — and, thus, to become Peru's third popularly elected president in his country's ten years of continuous democracy.

Nevertheless, soon after Alán García relinquished the presidential office, in July 1990, to the newly-elected president, those election promises underwent a dramatic reversal. On the grounds that he had inherited a bankrupt country which left him no alternative (no habia otra cosa que hacef), the new president moved quickly to establish a stabilization program of classic orthodoxy in August 1990 (Fujimori, 1990).

In the last issue of the Journal, this writer published an article challenging the conventional wisdom concerning the future of the Castro regime. To the question “can Castro survive?,” I answered that yes, unfortunately, the prospects for his political demise in the near future were not all that good. A golpe de estado, while possible, was not probable. Nor was it likely that the Cuban masses would rise up and overthrow the dictatorship. And, while Fidel could become the victim of assassination, suicide, or natural death (or, for that matter, could even resign, as he has hinted on more than one occasion), these kinds of endings cannot be counted upon in the short run. For a variety of reasons, Castro's “final hour” seems likely to last for several years and, perhaps, much longer (see Schulz, 1993a).

The deepening economic crisis in Cuba, the collapse of the Soviet empire, an aging leadership and revolution, and mild overtures from Fidel Castro toward the United States have, together, served to encourage those US observers who believe that the time for rapprochement with Cuba has come. In this line of reasoning, closer relations with Cuba, particularly in the economic field, will both moderate Castro's penchant for revolution and lead, eventually, to the advent of perestroika on that troubled island.

In the past, Castro has pursued a dual strategy in dealing with the United States. On the one hand, Havana has made rhetorical overtures designed to reduce tensions between the two countries.

It seems that regionalism is making a comeback nowadays (Rostow, 1990). Not so much in the real world where different types of regional arrangements never ceased to be a functional part of the workings of the international system since the 1950s, but more so in the scientific production of international relations scholars.

Those old enough to recollect the 1960s will remember how such journals as International Organization and the Journal of Common Market Studies, to name only two, were filled with articles largely dominated by theoretical and methodological considerations concerning the study of regionalism.