The pragmatic face of the covert idealist: the role of Allen Dulles in US policy discussions on Latin America, 1953–61

Assessments of the CIA’s role in Latin America during the 1950s have tended to focus predominantly on the twin case-studies of Guatemala and Cuba. Consequently, the Agency’s role – and, more broadly, that of its head Allen Dulles – has come to be seen as one obsessed with covert action and relatively unimportant in terms of policy discussions. Dulles, in fact, has been portrayed as an unwilling and disinterested participant in policy discussions. The present article will challenge those assertions by suggesting that, by examining Dulles’s role in the Eisenhower administration’s discussions on Latin America, a different picture emerges – one that paints Dulles as an active and rational participant, and which raises important questions for our understanding of the CIA’s role during the Eisenhower era

The political perils of Cold War foreign relations: Adlai Stevenson’s democrats and foreign policy in the 1956 presidential election

This article uses the case of the 1956 presidential election between Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower to highlight the ways that an obsession with foreign relations could, in fact, prove problematic to a campaign. Focusing primarily on Stevenson’s advisors, it argues that long-standing problems in the Democrats’ strategy on foreign relations, coupled with the emotional attachments that several key advisors had toward the issue, combined to ensure that the Democrats failed to develop an effective foreign policy platform for the 1956 election (particularly when running against a president who was believed to be so successful in that arena). Ultimately, it argues that the Stevenson campaign’s failure to forge an effective position highlights the problematic relationship between domestic policies and foreign relations

REVIEW: “The shadows of the Cold War over Latin America: the US reaction to Fidel Castro’s Nationalism, 1956-1959”

For scholars of US policies in the Cold War, the question of where to situate Latin America in any overarching narrative is a complex one. Neither wholly unimportant nor at the forefront of overt Cold War concerns, the region often existed in a state of flux – caught somewhere between the wider constructs of the Cold War and, equally important, a wider pattern of the region’s constituent nations seeking to forge their own paths through the maelstrom of the second half of the twentieth century. At times, the Cold War seemed to be at the fore in the Americas. At other times, though, the presence of east-west tensions was much less manifest. Some scholars, in fact, have even gone as far as to question whether or not the Cold War ever really came to the region. Contextualising and determining the reasons behind US policy, then, has remained difficult with respect to Latin America, especially in the period between 1945 and 1962. Attempts to explain the US approach towards the region, nevertheless, have tended to focus on three explanatory frameworks: first, the imposition of dominant Cold War considerations onto the region by myopic US officials; second, the overwhelming desire of the US to secure its hegemonic position in the area that has its roots in the much longer history of inter-American relations; and third, the impact that the role and actions of the Latin American nations themselves had on the course of intra-hemispheric relations

A global policy in a regional setting : the Eisenhower administration, Latin America & Brazil, 1953-1961

This thesis re-examines the Eisenhower administration's policies in Latin America, focusing specifically on the case study of Brazil (1953-1961). In doing so it moves beyond the existing historiography, which has divided the field in to two distinct camps. The Traditional school, led by scholars like Stephen Rabe and Mark Gilderhus, has argued that US policy during this time was informed by national security concerns and the fighting of the Cold War. However, the Revisionist school, led by scholars such as Walter LaFeber and James Siekmeier, has argued that US policy was more concerned with fighting Latin economic nationalism and extending the American economic system throughout the region. It is the contention here that there were, in fact, two separate objectives underpinning US policy at this time - economic preponderance and the need to be seen to be "winning" the Cold War - and that it was the relationship between these two aims that was the defining characteristic of US policy during this period. This division arose out of the way that US foreign policy evolved in the post-World War Two era and, therefore, was not a deliberate construct by US officials. As a result, there was an inherent tension within US policy between those aims in the strategic sphere and those in the economic sphere. Establishing a link between these two distinct areas of policy is the major theme of this thesis: as is demonstrated throughout, the lack of a defining Grand Strategy within US policy would prove to be enormously problematic for the Eisenhower administration as they struggled to reconcile the tensions between the differing aspects of their Latin American policy. Whilst this trend will be highly prominent in this analysis of US-Latin American relations, it is with respect to Brazil that the full impact of this tension between economic idealism and strategic pragmatism becomes most evident. By adopting an analytical framework that incorporates both strategic and economic aspects of US policy, this thesis expands upon the existing historiography relating to the field and offers up a new appraisal of the US approach in the Cold War period

“We need not be ashamed of our own economic profit motive”: Britain, Latin America, and the Alliance for Progress, 1959-63

This article traces British policy discussions over their position in Latin America between 1959 and 1963. In particular, it looks at the way British officials interacted with the John F. Kennedy administration's flagship Alliance for Progress and examines the reasons behind the gradual support for a more engaged UK policy toward the area. This decision, it argues, came about due to a complex set of reasons that challenge the idea that the Anglo-American relationship determined British policy during the cold war. Both the cold war and Anglo-American relations were important in shaping British thinking, but so, too, were calculations over British economic interests. Indeed, as the article demonstrates, it was the interplay of these three elements that shaped British deliberations

John Foster Dulles, illness, masculinity and U.S. foreign relations, 1953-1961

In the last two decades, scholars have increasingly looked to understand the way that socially constructed norms and values have influenced the course of international diplomacy. Yet while much work has been produced on areas such as gender, far less has been written on the way that perceptions of illness affected the way that leading policymakers saw themselves, their allies, and their respective roles in the world. This article, by focusing on former US secretary of state John Foster Dulles, looks at the influence that perceptions of illness had on US foreign relations during the 1950s. First, it argues that US perceptions of British and French weakness – as typified by the ill-health being suffered by those nations’ respective leaders – shaped American responses to the diplomatic crisis that erupted over the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Second, it highlights the substantial changes that took place in US policy when first President Eisenhower, and then subsequently Secretary Dulles, were stricken down by severe illness. In doing so it demonstrates how a better understanding of the relationship between illness, emotions and masculinity can help historians to better understand the course of Cold War foreign relations

Pragmatism, religion, and John Foster Dulles’s embrace of Christian internationalism in the 1930s

This article focuses on John Foster Dulles's engagement with religion and the role it played in his worldview. In doing so, it argues that his embrace of Christian internationalism should be seen as a part of an intellectual progression shaped by Pragmatist working methods rather than a spiritual reawakening

Early modernization theory?: the Eisenhower administration and the foreign policy of development in Brazil

Existing views of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration’s policies in Latin America have tended to portray its approach as being either fixated upon waging the Cold War, or overly concerned with quelling outbreaks of Latin American economic nationalism. Eisenhower’s approach has been viewed as regressive and reactionary; more concerned with political stability than economic and social progress. This view, moreover, has been strengthened by the actions of Eisenhower’s successor – John F. Kennedy’s announcement of the Alliance for Progress, and the prominent role played by Modernization Theory in his administration’s approach toward the developing world, have been viewed as a stark contrast to what had come before. This article challenges that prevailing view, however, by examining the Eisenhower administration’s economic policy towards Brazil. In developmental terms, it will be argued, Eisenhower’s approach was not so very different from Kennedy’s: the methods and theoretical underpinnings between the two administrations may have differed, but what they ultimately wanted to achieve – flourishing nation states that were prosperous, pro-American, and ultimately democratic – remained a constant goal. Like Kennedy, Eisenhower’s approach was constructed on a singular belief in the best way for a nation to develop; it was a standpoint that, due to the country’s economic potential, could be most clearly identified in Brazil. In examining Eisenhower’s economic approach toward Brazil, therefore, this article suggests that there is a compelling need for us to reperiodize the era of Modernization with regard to US developmental policy in Latin America