The Passing of Pax Americana

Abstract

The Reagan Administration seems now to be presiding — probably unwittingly and certainly unwillingly — like Great Britain’s Churchill some while back — over the liquidation of an empire. The vehicles of access, leverage and control that served for a decade or so to bend even the more distant and more developed Latin American countries to the will of the United States are no longer available or adequate for that purpose. Trends within and outside Latin America have converged to produce this result.