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Reviews
| Ecuador and the United States: Useful Strangers, by Ronn Pineo. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2007. 260 pages. $24.95, paper.
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| According to classical realism, disparity in power among nations is a natural part of how the international system is configured. From the time of Thucydides to the ongoing Iraq War, the ability of hegemons to utilize that power differential to their advantage is an essential, recurring feature of history. Yet until recently, scholars have devoted scant attention to the ability of small states to exercise that difference to their advantage. To what degree do those on the periphery of power, this new scholarship asks, possess "agency" in resisting those who wield hegemony? Think here of the story of David versus Goliath, or even the satirical The Mouse That Roared. |
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By highlighting "the ways in which the less powerful are not powerless" (p. 4), historian Ronn Pineo adds to this important scholarly trend with an authoritative and richly textured analysis of U.S.-Ecuadorian relations. Ecuador and the United States, published as part of "The United States and the Americas" series, shares all of the attributes of its predecessors: a clear and accessible study of bilateral relations firmly grounded in a thematic framework. Each of the seven major chapters is organized around clusters of specific themes, events, and chronological periods. This user-friendly organization recommends itself especially for teachers and students alike in need of quick familiarity with the main contours of U.S. policy and Ecuadorian history. |
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Cacao and bananas (and, beginning in the 1970s, petroleum) were crucial linkages between the two nations in the twentieth century. In order to facilitate its monocultural exports, Ecuadorian political leaders invited U.S. investment in underwriting the modernization of the nation's infrastructure at the turn of the century through construction of a rail line. However, a byzantine debt payment structure, an outbreak of the bubonic plague, and engineering failures beset the operation of the railway from the start. Pineo expertly unravels this complicated story, which "ended badly" (p. 62) for both nations, and his analysis of this pivotal period stands out as a model for those studying the impact of the United States in state formation and economic development. |
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A new commodity, even more prized than these earlier exports, was the focus of intense diplomatic negotiation in the Cold War: anticommunism. In chapter five, Pineo focuses on the successful efforts by U.S. officials to forge an anticommunist consensus within Latin America. These policymakers found a receptive audience in the capital of Quito. Despite the fact that "few Ecuadorian leaders shared the anti-Soviet fixation of the United States," Pineo argues, "they saw advantage in appearing to. Ecuador learned its lines in the cold war script well" (p. 168). By doing so, they reaped handsome dividends: nearly $50 million in economic and military grants and aid, and over $660 million in loans from the Export-Import Bank (pp. 151, 153). Yet despite these material gains—or perhaps because of them—Ecuadorian officials sowed the seeds of chronic political instability beginning in the early 1960s as power changed hands intermittently between a military junta and the erratic populist president José María Velasco Ibarra. Thereafter, soaring poverty rates, a series of failed social reforms, and a massive debt crisis in the 1980s which prompted U.S. officials to impose neoliberal economic strictures all deepened Ecuador's woes. |
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Although the thematic focus on Ecuadorian agency is a singular strength of this book, a conceptual difficulty looms. To push the author's metaphor of a "cold war script" a bit further: if, as Pineo claims, "Ecuador grew more dependent on the United States" during the Cold War (p. 170), then just how successful was Ecuador in delivering its lines? Other peripheral Latin American regimes, such as Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, were rather more adept at manipulating U.S. fears of communist encroachment in order to serve their own ends. Are readers to infer that intentions are consistent with capabilities when small powers assert agency? It is difficult, moreover, to sustain the novelty of the author's "contribution to theory construction" (p. 4) in the absence of any citation to the scholarship of political scientist Tony Smith, whose path-breaking work on this subject is widely known among diplomatic historians. |
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None of these caveats should detract, however, from the exceptional value of this book. It will easily serve as the starting point for any serious student of inter-American relations. The book's accessibility, up-to-date epilogue, and bibliographic essay make it suitable for an upper-division course on the subject, while its sophisticated analytical framework makes it essential for graduate students and teachers devoted to same. |
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| Sinclair Community College, Dayton, Ohio |
Kirk Tyvela |
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