Book Review

Canada and the United States

Ever since the debate during the administration of President Thomas Jefferson as to whether the United States should recognize the movements for independence in Latin America, the region has represented something of a paradox in U.S. foreign policy. Among Jefferson's advisers, as among the advisers of President George W. Bush today, it was asserted that Americans are tied to the other nations in the hemisphere through propinquity, a shared sense of separation from the nations of Europe, and shared values and attitudes toward freedom and democracy. And yet, from that first debate in the Jefferson administration nearly two hundred years ago to the present, the region never has received the same attention as Europe or, on occasion, Asia. As a consequence, U.S. diplomatic relations with the nations of Latin America have been characterized by a profound sense on the part of Latin Americans that they are either being taken for granted or given short shrift.

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That is the message conveyed implicitly in this solid book by Stephen G. Rabe. Explicitly, his argument is that the Cold War tempered the efforts by President John F. Kennedy and his more liberal advisors to support democratic government in the region and to facilitate the modernization and development of Latin American societies. This is not a new argument, but it is here made in convincing fashion. The strengths of this volume, which serves as a companion to Rabe's earlier, splendid study of the Latin American policy of the Eisenhower administration, are its exhaustive empirical research and its commendable comprehensiveness.

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