Exiting The Whirlpool

"In this second edition of Exiting the Whirlpool, Pastor explores the continuities and the changes in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America under Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Whereas many foreign policy volumes neglect the role of Congress, Pastor devotes an entire chapter to explaining how it has shaped policy. Next, he looks at the recurring challenges that have often pulled the United States into the destructive whirlpool?how the United States has tried but often failed to manage succession crises, pre-empt or undermine revolutionaries, promote or manipulate elections, and encourage or neglect the region's economic development. Pastor offers a series of far-reaching policy recommendations for exiting the whirlpool and forging a hemispheric community of democracies within a free trade area. The first edition was widely acclaimed. The second is thoroughly updated, offering analyses and recommendations for addressing the contemporary democratic and security challenges facing the hemisphere."--Provided by publisher.

In this second edition of Exiting the Whirlpool, Pastor explores the continuities and the changes in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America under Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Whereas many foreign policy volumes neglect the role of Congress, Pastor devotes an entire chapter to explaining how it has shaped policy. Next, he looks at the recurring challenges that have often pulled the United States into the destructive whirlpool?how the United States has tried but often failed to manage succession crises, pre-empt or undermine revolutionaries, promote or manipulate elections, and encourage or neglect the region's economic development. Pastor offers a series of far-reaching policy recommendations for exiting the whirlpool and forging a hemispheric community of democracies within a free trade area. The first edition was widely acclaimed. The second is thoroughly updated, offering analyses and recommendations for addressing the contemporary democratic and security challenges facing the hemisphere.

Robert Pastor maintains that the collapse of Communism is less important in permitting the United States to escape the whirlpool of Latin American politics than are the new trends of democracy and freer trade in the region.

A Cooperative Disagreement demonstrates how Canada and the United States successfully kept divergent policies on revolutionary Cuba from damaging their bilateral relationship. Covering the period from 1959 to the end of the Cold War, John Dirks investigates the efforts of Canadian and US diplomats and bureaucrats to cooperate despite their respective approaches toward Cuba. This book draws on archival documents from both countries to reveal how these two North American powers continued to adhere to the hard policy boundaries set by their own governments while establishing a mutually beneficial relationship on issues of intelligence, travel, and other areas of engagement with Cuba.

Using multinational sources, the book explores how Latin American leaders influenced US policy in the context of asymmetrical power relations.

This compelling account charts the historical emergence of vicarious warfare and its contemporary prominence. It contrasts its tactical advantages with its hidden costs and potential to cause significant strategic harm.

In the last few years, issues related to human rights, including encouraging the democratization of Muslim societies from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, have acquired great importance in shaping the character of U.S.-Muslim relations and U.S. policy toward Muslim countries. An important impetus behind this development were the tragic events of 9/11, which demonstrated the destructive potential of militant groups that use a distorted interpretation of Islam as justification for their actions. These events also led to a greater realization by the United States--and the West--that a lack of democracy and lack of respect for human rights have been contributory factors to the rise of militant Islam. Consequently, in its approach toward the Muslim world, the United States has emphasized the themes of human rights and democracy. Within the Islamic world, too, both secular and moderate Islamists have begun focusing on issues related to human rights. Although many conservative Muslims believe that Islam is incompatible with Western notions of democracy and human rights, reformist Muslim thinkers and activists maintain that a proper reading of Islamic injunctions and the ethical values underpinning those injunctions shows there is no such incompatibility. Complicating the debate is the fact that many Muslims--secular as well as conservative and reformist--doubt the seriousness of the U.S. commitment to the cause of human rights and democracy in the Muslim world, believing that the United States applies human rights' standards selectively to suit its strategic and economic interests. Irrespective of the validity of these charges, they are part of the context of the U.S.-Muslim dialogue on human rights. And it is this complex dialogue that this volume seeks to advance.

Through the fall of Anastasio Somoza, the rise of the Sandinistas, and the contra war, the United States and Nicaragua seemed destined to repeat the mistakes made by the U.S. and Cuba forty years before. The 1990 election in Nicaragua broke the pattern. Robert Pastor was a major US policymaker in the critical period leading up to and following the Sandinista Revolution of 1979. A decade later after writing the first edition of this book, he organized the International Mission led by Jimmy Carter that mediated the first free election in Nicaragua's history. From his unique vantage point, and utilizing a wealth of original material from classified government documents and from personal interviews with U.S. and Nicaraguan leaders, Pastor shows how Nicaragua and the United States were prisoners of a tragic history and how they finally escaped. This revised and updated edition covers the events of the democratic transition, and it extracts the lessons to be learned from the past.