Cold War Paradise

Atalia Shragai examines the motivations for immigration, patterns of movement, settlements, and processes of identity-making among U.S. Americans in Costa Rica from post–World War II to the late 1970s.

In the wake of the Cold War, a diverse group of U.S. immigrants flocked to Costa Rica, distancing themselves from undesirable U.S. policies at home and abroad. Enchanted with Costa Rica's natural beauty and lured by the prospect of cheap land, these expatriates--former government employees, businessmen and privileged bourgeois, dissident Quakers and self-seeking hippies, farmers and ecologists--sought a new life in a country that was often dubbed the Switzerland of Central America. Cold War Paradise is a social and cultural history of this little-studied immigration flow. Based on extensive oral histories of these immigrants and their diverse writings, ranging from women's club cookbooks to personal letters, Atalia Shragai examines the motivations for immigration, patterns of movement, settlements, and processes of identity-making among U.S. Americans in Costa Rica from post-World War II to the late 1970s. Exploring such diverse themes as gender, nature, and material culture, this study provides a fresh perspective on inter-American relations from the point of view of ordinary U.S. emigrants and settlers. Shragai traces the formation and evolution of a wide range of identifications among U.S. expats and the varied ways they reconstructed and represented their individual and collective histories within the broader scheme of the U.S. presence in Cold War Central America.

Accounts of U.S. empire building in Latin America typically portray politically and economically powerful North Americans descending on their southerly neighbors to engage in lopsided negotiations. Dennis Merrill's comparative history of U.S. tourism in L

From Robert Kagan, a leading scholar of American foreign policy, comes an insightful analysis of the state of European and American foreign relations. At a time when relations between the United States and Europe are at their lowest ebb since World War II, this brief but cogent book is essential reading. Kagan forces both sides to see themselves through the eyes of the other. Europe, he argues, has moved beyond power into a self-contained world of laws, rules, and negotiation, while America operates in a “Hobbesian” world where rules and laws are unreliable and military force is often necessary. Tracing how this state of affairs came into being over the past fifty years and fearlessly exploring its ramifications for the future, Kagan reveals the shape of the new transatlantic relationship. The result is a book that promises to be as enduringly influential as Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

"Besty known in the USA as a former colony and exotic tourist attraction, the Republic of the Philippines has seen civil unrest, insurgencies and separatism movements since independence in 1946. ... While previous publications have discussed human rights issues, the Huk Revolt of the 1940s and 1950s, the military unrest in the 1980s, and the socio-political structure of various rebel movements in the Philippines, this is the first major work excvlusively covering the military history of the Philippines in the 70 years of independence. The insurgency of the Huks, and early Moro separatist rebels, the Moro and Marxist revolts against Marcos' dictatorship, and the counter-terrorism operations of recent times, are discussed in relation to the transformation of the military threat and the corresponding transformation of the AFP, from a conventional military, towards the deployment of elite forces and extra-judicial means to suppress a series of revolts which have threatened the integrity of the state."--Back cover.

Product Description: Book2, The Indelible Red StainDogged by poor planning, delays, dangers, food shortage and ominous fears of political violence in British Guiana's capital, and the collapse of the country itself, the team found ways to address problems cooperatively and to examine factors that promoted such action. Multiracial societies – increasing globally – must learn the ways of component cultures, not only to live and work in harmony, but to become enriched and nobler by appreciating and possibly embracing one another's core values, shedding biases, and thus emerge with a superior model.This volume describes the return journey. Sharp drops in river levels make the trip slower and more perilous, with near-death events requiring unified responses, giving added impetus to learn the values of various cultures and remove stereotypes and biases. The amazing history of India and richness of Indian culture are stunning revelations to the Africans, schooled to denigrate things Indian while learning little of their own; they agree that multicultural education was indeed essential.Back on the coast, the men learn that the team-leader's brother, a Georgetown detective, had just been murdered by Blacks as followers of Forbes Burnham attempt to oust his former ally, the country's Indian Premier Cheddi Jagan, using raging mobs; their weapons are robbery, anarchy, fire and murder. The country becomes a heated theatre in the Cold War, as CIA and other US agencies join Burnham's thugs to unseat Russian-backed Jagan.Despite insistent urgings by well-wishers who had detailed a superior route to self-reliance and true freedom without Cold War union Jagan incredibly flaunts his communism and the promises of Soviet friends, and ignored American threats. His weak and humble supporters begin to pay the price with their blood, their livelihood and their hopes, as first injuries then killings and property seizures terrorised them to flee.The author paints a vivid canvas of the civil strife and race riots that destabilise Guyana, from the unique perspective of a man on the spot; he witnessed the great 1962 fire in Georgetown from so close that his camera shutter jammed, his film bubbled curtailing his record. His friend, a Police Superintendent was killed by a rifleman in a riotous mob when he confronted them earlier that day. A year later he was facing down a similar mob, and a rifleman who begged his leader for leave to kill. The author had to join the flight and leave behind the flash of fire and blood swamping his native land, to escape the red stains that marked Britain's Empire, McCarthy's USA and the USSR and threatening to tarnish all.It is a fearsome and tear-jerking thing to see your community, your family and your beloved country ravaged by fellow citizens, global powers and thugs in the pay of local and foreign enemies. But Mohan Ragbeer tells it well, and brings a much needed perspective on Premier Jagan, one of the villains of the piece, who has long been an impostor posing on a hero's pedestal. Guiana is a proper biopsy of the world's dilemmas and struggles; its lessons have universal relevance. This text draws widely on global experiences with analogies, histories, human stories and behaviour, all with universal reach and appeal. The book's audience is by any measure global and no one stands to lose who studies the actions of those who populate the pages or call themselves leaders. Look around you; they're everywhere.This is a monumental work of the highest quality of writing and scholarship, an eyewitness account by a keen observer. It is a light on a dark corner of history, a damaging new portrait of a failed political leader, the consuming self-interest of international powers and the extent of the perfidy they would unleash however innocent the target, and a searing message for the future. Never let your country walk this way. The text is enriched with references, personal stories, photos and insightful epigraphs.

"Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus," wrote foreign policy guru Robert Kagan famously in his book Of Paradise and Power, which became an instant NewYork Times bestseller last year. Taking Kagan one step further, prominent foreign policy specialists - such as Walter Russell Mead, Timothy Garton Ash, and Francis Fukuyama - here provide multiple perspectives on the state of the transatlantic relationship after the war.

Way Out There in the Blue is a major work of history by the Pulitzer Prize­winning author of Fire in the Lake. Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan, the most puzzling president of the last half of the twentieth century. Reagan's presidency and the man himself have always been difficult to fathom. His influence was enormous, and the few powerful ideas he espoused remain with us still -- yet he seemed nothing more than a charming, simple-minded, inattentive actor. FitzGerald shows us a Reagan far more complex than the man we thought we knew. A master of the American language and of self-presentation, the greatest storyteller ever to occupy the Oval Office, Reagan created a compelling public persona that bore little relationship to himself. The real Ronald Reagan -- the Reagan who emerges from FitzGerald's book -- was a gifted politician with a deep understanding of the American national psyche and at the same time an executive almost totally disengaged from the policies of his administration and from the people who surrounded him. The idea that America should have an impregnable shield against nuclear weapons was Reagan's invention. His famous Star Wars speech, in which he promised us such a shield and called upon scientists to produce it, gave rise to the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan used his sure understanding of American mythology, history and politics to persuade the country that a perfect defense against Soviet nuclear weapons would be possible, even though the technology did not exist and was not remotely feasible. His idea turned into a multibillion-dollar research program. SDI played a central role in U.S.-Soviet relations at a crucial juncture in the Cold War, and in a different form it survives to this day. Drawing on prodigious research, including interviews with the participants, FitzGerald offers new insights into American foreign policy in the Reagan era. She gives us revealing portraits of major players in Reagan's administration, including George Shultz, Caspar Weinberger, Donald Regan and Paul Nitze, and she provides a radically new view of what happened at the Reagan-Gorbachev summits in Geneva, Reykjavik, Washington and Moscow. FitzGerald describes the fierce battles among Reagan's advisers and the frightening increase of Cold War tensions during Reagan's first term. She shows how the president who presided over the greatest peacetime military buildup came to espouse the elimination of nuclear weapons, and how the man who insisted that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire" came to embrace the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and to proclaim an end to the Cold War long before most in Washington understood that it had ended. Way Out There in the Blue is a ground-breaking history of the American side of the end of the Cold War. Both appalling and funny, it is a black comedy in which Reagan, playing the role he wrote for himself, is the hero.