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United States Policy Toward Latin America: “Liberal,” “Radical,” and “Bureaucratic” Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Abraham F. Lowenthal
Abraham F. Lowenthal*
Affiliation:
Center of International Studies, Princeton University
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This essay reviews and analyzes recent north american writing on united States-Latin American relations, particularly on the Alliance for Progress. It does not attempt to summarize or evaluate the Alliance's history as such, nor does it deal with Latin American perspectives on the Alliance (or more generally on inter-American relations), though I hope to treat these subjects in future works. What this article does instead is to analyze the dwindling North American literature on the Alliance for Progress, as a means of illuminating the state of scholarship in this country on United States-Latin American relations. I shall draw on available writings to illustrate my major theme, which is that United States analysts of inter-American relations tend to adopt either of two alternative perspectives. These perspectives, which I will call “liberal” and “radical” (using both words without quote marks hereafter), differ sharply in their sets of assumptions about the nature of United States-Latin American relations and, more generally, about politics in America, North and South. Each perspective provides insights for interpreting the Alliance and for explaining other aspects of inter-American relations; neither, by itself, seems to me satisfactory. In the final section of this essay, I shall attempt to sketch out a complementary “bureaucratic politics” perspective, one that is usually missing from both liberal and radical accounts, and suggest that this third perspective may be useful for analyzing United States policy toward Latin America.

Type
Topical Review
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Fall 1973 , pp. 3 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

This article was originally prepared for the Seminar on “The Study of Political Relations between the United States and Latin America” sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies (SSRC) and held at the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima, Peru, on November 28–December 1, 1972. The proceedings of that seminar, edited by Julio Cotler and Richard Fagen, will be published in book form in English and Spanish.

†

The author expresses his appreciation to the Council on Foreign Relations and to the Center of International Studies, Princeton University, for support during the period when this essay was written, to the sponsors and organizers of the Lima seminar for the opportunity to reflect on this theme, and to the participants in the seminar and other colleagues for their critical suggestions on the first draft.

References

Notes

1. See Lincoln Gordon, A New Deal for Latin America (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 5; Jerome Levinson and Juan de Onis, The Alliance That Lost Its Way: A Critical Report on the Alliance for Progress (Chicago, 1970), 52–56.

2. According to Federico Gil, for instance, the United States was “offering to underwrite a social revolution in Latin America.” See Federico Gil, Latin American-United States Relations (N.Y., 1971), 240.

3. The three phrases quoted from Herbert K. May, Problems and Prospects of the Alliance for Progress (N.Y., 1968), 33; Levinson and De Onis, op. cit., 5; and Gil, op. cit., 227.

4. A useful listing, fairly complete through 1969, is Paquita Vivó, “A Guide to Writings on the Alliance for Progress” (Press Division, Organization of American States, Washington, D.C., Jan. 1970).

5. The quoted phrase is from Simon G. Hanson, Five Years of the Alliance for Progress: An Appraisal (Washington, D.C., 1967), 13.

6. Ibid., 121.

7. George Cabot Lodge, Engines of Change: United States Interests and Revolution in Latin America (N.Y., 1970), 345.

8. The liberal tradition is discussed extensively below. The radical approach was largely dormant during World War II and much of the Cold War but had exercised a major influence on United States scholarship during the 1920s and earlier. See for instance the various works on American imperialism published in the 1920s, such as Scott Nearing and Joseph Freeman, Dollar Diplomacy: A Study in American Imperialism (N.Y., 1925) and Melvin M. Knight, The Americans in Santo Domingo (N.Y., 1928).

9. For an excellent discussion of recent writings on American foreign policy, especially regarding Vietnam, see Robert W. Tucker, The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy (Baltimore, 1971). On the Cold War literature, see J. L. Richardson, “Cold War Revisionism: A Critique,” World Politics (July 1972), 578–612.

10. Among the writings I would classify as “liberal” are the cited works by Gordon, Gil, Levinson and De Onis, May, and Lodge. See also Adolf Berle, Jr., Latin America Diplomacy and Reality (N.Y., 1962); Harvey S. Perloff, Alliance for Progress: A Social Invention in the Making (Baltimore, Md., 1969); William D. Rogers, The Twilight Struggle: The Alliance for Progress and the Politics of Development in Latin America (N.Y., 1967); Martin C. Needier, The United States and the Latin American Revolution (Boston, 1972); J. Warren Nystrom and Nathan A. Haverstock, The Alliance for Progress: Key to Latin American Development (Princeton, 1966); and Paul Rosenstein Rodan, “Latin America in the Light of Reports on Development,” Working Paper #66 (Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dec. 1970).

11. Bryce Wood, The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy (N.Y., 1961), 167.

12. The quoted phrase is from Milton Eisenhower, The Wine is Bitter: The United States and Latin America (Garden City, N.Y., 1963), 6. Eisenhower's earnest book, based explicitly on the premise that “our welfare and the welfare of other American Republics are inextricably bound together” (p. 45) is a classic liberal statement. Another example, very influential as a text for a whole generation of North American students of United States-Latin American relations, is Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Latin American Policy of the United States: An Historical Interpretation (N. Y., 1943). Bemis' argument, which was the conventional wisdom in North American universities when the Alliance was proclaimed, suggested that North American imperialism had been a temporary aberration. “A careful and conscientious appraisal of United States imperialsm shows, I am convinced, that it was never deep-rooted in the character of the people, that it was essentially a protective imperialism, designed to protect, first the security of the Continental Republic, next the security of the entire New World, against intervention by the imperialistic powers of the Old World. It was, if you will, an imperialism against imperialism. It did not last long and it was not really bad.” Bemis, op. cit., 385–6.

13. The quoted phrase is from Edwin Lieuwen, U.S. Policy in Latin America: A Short History (N.Y., 1965), 72. Cf. Donald Dozer, Are We Good Neighbors? Three Decades of Inter-American Relations, 1930–1960 (Gainesville, Fla., 1959), 37.

14. See, for example, Prebisch's well-known article “Commercial Policy in the Underdeveloped Countries,” American Economic Review (May 1959), 251–273. See also Levinson and De Onis, op. cit., 39.

15. The Punta del Este Charter pledged the signers to pursue the goals of sustained economic growth, more equitable income distribution, economic diversification, industrialization, increased agricultural production, reformed land tenure, extended education and reduced illiteracy, improved health services, expanded housing, price stability, regional economic integration, and multilateral agreements to diminish the adverse effects on Latin America of its dependence on export commodities subject to extreme price fluctuations. It made implicit the goal of promoting democratic government in the Hemisphere.

16. See, for instance, Lincoln Gordon's argument, based on the assumptions that “economic development and social progress are ‘Siamese twins’ ” and that the United States has “a national interest which converges with that of our Latin American neighbors” in promoting social and economic progress. Gordon, op cit., 11, 112.

17. Harvey Perloff, for instance, argues that the Alliance was “a truly magnificent concept … carried out in a half-hearted way with a weak, underfinanced, and poorly designed mechanism.” See Perloff, op cit., IX. Paul Rosenstein Rodan, one of the Alliance's original “Nine Wise Men,” suggests that “while the Alliance failed, it is important to realize that it failed because of lack of implementation, not because of faulty objectives.” See Rosenstein Rodan, op. cit., 2.

18. The most detailed and persuasive exposition of the Alliance's history in these terms is the cited study by Levinson and De Onis, which draws particularly on Levinson's first hand experience (and frustrations) as an AID official in Brazil and in Washington. See also Colombia—A Case History of U.S. Aid (A study Prepared at the Request of the Subcommittee on American Republic Affairs), Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 91st Congress, 1st Session, and Abraham F. Lowenthal, “Foreign Aid as a Political Instrument: The Case of the Dominican Republic,” Public Policy (XIV, 1965), 141–160.

19. For an interesting exposition of the “consensus” and “conflict” models of Latin American politics, and an argument that the Alliance was based on the assumptions of the former, see N. Joseph Cayer, “Political Development: The Case of Latin America,” unpublished doctoral dissertation submitted at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, Massachusetts), May 1972. See also Susanne Jonas Bodenheimer, “The Ideology of Developmentalism: The American Paradigm-Surrogate for Latin American Studies” in Harry Eckstein and Ted Robert Gurr (eds.), Comparative Politics Papers (II, #15, 1971).

20. The classic formulation of this view was John J. Johnson's Political Change in Latin America: The Growth of the Middle Sectors (Stanford, 1958), a book which was very influential when the Alliance program was being formulated. See also Robert J. Alexander, Today's Latin America (Garden City, N.Y., 1962).

21. A considerable literature emerged during the 1960s on the political role of Latin American middle sectors. See, for instance, Claudio Véliz (ed.), Obstacles to Change in Latin America (N.Y., 1965); Véliz (ed.), The Politics of Conformity in Latin America (N.Y., 1967); Seymour M. Lipset and Aldo Solari (eds.), Elites in Latin America (N.Y., 1967); and Victor Alba, Alliance Without Allies: The Mythology of Progress in Latin America (N.Y., 1965).

22. (Nashville, Tenn., 1972).

23. Ibid., 175.

24. Ibid., 10.

25. Ibid., 92.

26. Ibid., especially 173–4.

27. Ibid., 177.

28. Among the writings I would term radical are the aforementioned article by Bodenheimer, and also her “Dependency and Imperialism: The Roots of Latin American Underdevelopment,” Politics and Society (I, #3, May 1971). See also André Gunder Frank, Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution (N.Y., 1969); James D. Cockcroft, André Gunder Frank, and Dale L. Johnson, Dependence and Underdevelopment: Latin America's Political Economy (Garden City, N.Y., 1972); James Petras, Politics and Social Structure in Latin America (N.Y., 1970); James Petras and Robert LaPorte, Jr., “Modernization from Above Versus Reform from Below: U.S. Policy Toward Latin American Agricultural Development,” Journal of Development Studies (April 1970), 248–266; David Horowitz, “The Alliance for Progress,” in Robert Rhodes (ed.), Imperialism and Underdevelopment: A Reader (N.Y., 1970), 45–61; and various articles in James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin (eds.), Latin America: Reform or Revolution? (Greenwich, Conn., 1968), especially J. P. Morray, “The United States and Latin America,” 99–119. See also K. T. Fann and Donald C. Hodges (eds.), Reading in U.S. Imperialism (Boston, 1971) and North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), Yanqui Dollar: The Contribution of U.S. Private Investment to Underdevelopment in Latin America (N.Y., 1971). C. Wright Mills, Listen Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba (N.Y., 1960) should also consulted for its radical perspective. More general works, relevant to Latin American policy, include: Harry Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism: The Economics of U.S. Foreign Policy (N.Y., 1969); Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (N.Y., 1969); and Gabriel Kolko, The Roots of American Foreign Policy: An Analysis of Power and Purpose (Boston, 1969).

29. This argument is developed most fully by David Green in The Containment of Latin America: A History of the Myths and Realities of the Good Neighbor Policy (Chicago, 1971). See also Alonso Aguilar, Pan Americanism from Monroe to the Present: A View From the Other Side (N.Y., 1968).

30. See Cockcroft, Frank, and Johnson, op. cit., 98, 100.

31. See, for example, Horowitz, op. cit., 56–9; Morray, op. cit., 108.

32. Much of the radical critique draws directly on the extensive Latin American literature on dependencia. For typical examples of the literature applying “dependence” concepts to the making of United States policy, see Bodenheimer, “Dependency and Imperialism,” and Frank, op. cit. For a critique of some “dependencia” literature, and specifically of Bodenheimer's article, see David Ray, “The Dependency Model of Latin American Underdevelopment: Three Basic Fallacies,” Journal of Inter-American Studies nad World Affairs (Feb. 1973), 3–21.

33. Bodenheimer, “Dependency and Imperialism,” 358.

34. See, for example, Morray, op. cit., 108, for an assertion that anti-malaria projects are “not unrelated to a veiled strategic purpose … to revive faith in the potential of the existing bourgeois order to meet the problems of the hemisphere.”

35. Petras and LaPorte, op. cit., 260, discuss “ambivalence” within the Kennedy Administration on the redistributionist-productionist issues of agricultural programs, but conclude that this ambivalence was inevitably resolved in favor of the “completely productionist point of view.”

36. Joseph Page, The Revolution That Never Was: Northeast Brazil, 1955–1964 (N.Y., 1972).

37. Ibid., 220.

38. Frank, op. cit., p. 160.

39. The following discussion draws substantially on the concepts and terminology advanced by Graham Allison, though I am using the term “bureaucratic politics perspective” (as do Halperin and Tanter) to refer generally to both Allison's Model II and Model III, i.e., “organizational process” and “governmental politics.” See Graham T. Allison, The Essence of Decision: Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston, 1971); Graham T. Allison and Morton H. Halperin, “Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications” in Raymond Tanter and Richard H. Ullman (eds.), Theory and Policy in International Relations (Princeton, 1972); and Morton Halperin and Arnold Kanter, “The Bureaucratic Perspective: A Preliminary Framework,” in Halperin and Kanter (eds.), Readings in American Foreign Policy: A Bureaucratic Perspective (Boston, 1973), 1–43. Ernest May's paper, “The ‘Bureaucratic Politics’ Approach: U.S.-Argentine Relations, 1942–1947, as an Illustrative Case,” further outlines these concepts and suggests their possible usefulness for analyzing inter-American relations. May's paper, like the original version of this article, is being published in the volume edited by Cotler and Fagen.

40. See Ernest May, op. cit.

41. Cf. Howard Becker and Irving Louis Horowitz, “Radical Politics and Sociological Research: Observations on Methodology and Ideology,” American Journal of Sociology (July 1972), 48–66.

42. See, for example, Jerome N. Slater, “Democracy Versus Stability: The Recent Latin American Policy of the United States,” Yale Review (Dec. 1965), 169–181.

43. Surprisingly few studies of United States policy toward Latin America adopt this approach. The best examples of those that do are R. Harrison Wagner, United States Policy Toward Latin America: A Study in Domestic and International Politics (Stanford, 1970) and R. Harrison Wagner, “Explaining and Judging U.S.-Latin American Policies,” unpublished paper prepared for the Second National Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington, D.C. (April 16–19, 1970). Another useful illustration is Richard J. Bloom-field, “Who Makes American Foreign Policy: Some Latin American Case Studies,” unpublished paper presented at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University (April 1972). See also Abaham F. Lowenthal, The Dominican Intervention (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), and Joseph Tulchin, “Inhibitions Affecting the Formulation and Execution of the Latin American Policy of the United States,” Ventures (Fall 1967), 68–80.

44. See Ernest May, op. cit., in the Cotler-Fagen volume.

45. Wagner, “Explaining and Judging the Alliance for Progress,” 12. An additional major influence on Latin American policy-making, the subject of remarkably little research, has been the Congress and its committees, which often provide an effective channel for the expression of various private interests.

46. The “bureaucratic politics” perspective, therefore, produces some skepticism about the capacity of the United States government to pursue in a sustained manner a coherent Latin American policy. See Christopher Mitchell's paper, “Domination and Fragmentation in U.S. Latin American Policy,” also in the Cotler-Fagen volume.

47. See Wagner, United States Policy Toward Latin America, 150–51.

48. See, for instance, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, 1965), 183.

49. The Latin American task force consisted of Berle, Moscoso, Morales Carrión, three United States professors (Lincoln Gordon, Robert Alexander, and Arthur Whitaker), and Richard Goodwin, the gifted young speechwriter who had coined the phrase, “Alianza para el Progreso,” during the 1960 election campaign. Revealingly, Goodwin's first formulation of the phrase in Spanish was grammatically incorrect (“Alianza para Progreso”). See Schlesinger, op. cit., 183; De Onis and Levinson, op. cit., 52–5.

50. According to Levinson and De Onis, Assistant Secretary of State Mann returned the draft speech to the White House without comment or criticism, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk made but one substantive suggestion. Levinson and De Onis, op. cit., 58.

51. See De Lesseps S. Morrison (with Gerold Frank), Latin American Mission: An Adventure in Hemisphere Diplomacy (N.Y., 1965), 28, 66.

52. See Morrison, op. cit., 223, Schlesinger, op. cit., 231, 696–7.

53. From calculations done by Professor Seymour Harris as reported in Schlesinger, op. cit., 199.

54. Levinson and De Onis, op. cit., 71, note, for instance, that the administration did not invite businessmen to participate in the first Punta del Este meetings until three days before the conference, and even then only as observers.

55. Schlesinger, op. cit., 231.

56. For one interesting attempt to do this kind of research, not on Latin American policy officials but on State Department and Defense Department officials generally, see Bernard Mennis, American Foreign Policy Officials: Who They Are and What They Believe Regarding International Politics (Columbus, Ohio, 1971). Another attempt, less systematic but nonetheless worthwhile, is Richard Barnet's Roots of War (N.Y., 1972).