Analyzes the civil war in "one of the sickest societies in Latin America", and urges a review of US aid policy objectives.
James LeMoyne has reported on El Salvador since 1982 and was The New York Times correspondent there from 1984 to 1988. He is writing a book on Central America.
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The Feb 1990 election defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, although a most welcome development for US foreign policy, has (like Noriega's removal in Panama) left a less-than-successful aftertaste. "Having lost its principal foes, both locally and in the once-grand struggle of ideologies, the United States found that it had also lost its principal anchor and guide in dealing with Latin America".
Now that the 'obsessions' of the Reagan era can be laid to rest, it is time for the USA to reformulate the premisses and goals of its Latin American policy, and to develop a 'positive agenda' which moves beyond the calculations of US domestic political interests.
Overview of events in the Middle East during 1991, and how the Gulf war outcome, along with the collapse of the USSR, affected the interests of countries in the region. Asserts that US foreign policy could have been more vigorous in restructuring the Middle East order: "it sought more to stabilize the old order than to remake the Middle East in its own preferred image".
