A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention in the Nicaraguan Elections and American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era
Written from a pro-Sandinista perspective, this study documents, analyzes and indicts U.S. involvement in the 1990 Nicaraguan elections, in which the Sandinista revolutionary movement lost and accepted its defeat. Arguing against the conventional view that the United States and other international observers assured the fairness of the electoral process, Robinson alleges that the U.S. role--public and private, overt and covert--in fact constituted unwarranted, manipulative interference in Nicaragua's politics.
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Uses the example of Nicaragua to argue for selective containment of Soviet expansion and influence under the 'Reagan doctrine'. The Contras should be supported.
A few days after Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Lawrence Pezzullo gave a long interview in his Managua office. "It's going to be our ideological blinders that may cause us to make mistakes," Pezzullo said, as he considered Central America policy under the new President. "This is a new Administration, there are going to be tradeoffs, and you've got to feed your right-wing somewhere. Maybe you'll just let them eat up Latin America. It's cheaper than some other places like the Middle East, the Soviet Union or China, where no president is going to have much room for radical policy changes." He paused and reflected for a moment. "That's the way I tend to think things will go," he said, "just feed it to the lions."
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