Alfred Stepan

As the 1980s begin, U.S. interests in Latin America are greater than ever while traditional instruments of American government power in the area are far less effective than they have been in preceding decades. Moreover, the domestic component of U.S. policy toward Latin America is getting very explosive, while at the same time new foreign policy power centers in Latin America are emerging. With the end of the bipolar simplicity of a generation ago, and the diminishing international financial, technological and military power of the United States, the relationship between the United States and Latin America has changed profoundly. The great diversification of global power relations is not only reflected in the emergence of the European Community, OPEC, the Nonaligned Nations Movement, and the conflict and competition among communist countries, but also by the growing participation in world trade of the newly industrialized nations such as South Korea, India, Mexico and Brazil. In this less orderly world of assertive nation-states and the transnational forces and organizations they contend with, there are special problems for U.S.-Latin American relations.