The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine

In a cogent study [Smith] explains how the U.S. molded the U.N. Charter to bar the U.N. from political involvement in the West. - Publishers WeeklyWhen President Monroe issued his 1823 doctrine on U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere it quickly became as sacred to Americans as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But in the years after World War II - notably in Guatemala in 1954 in Brazil in 1963 in Chile in 1973 and in El Salvador in the 1980s - our government''s policy of supporting repressive regimes in Central and South America hastened the death of the very doctrine that had been invoked to protect us in the Cold War by associating its application with torture squads murder and the denial of the very democratic ideals the Monroe Doctrine was intended to protect. Gaddis Smith''s measured but devastating account The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine is essential reading for all those who care how the United States behaves in the world arena.