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Does the United States Push Revolutions to Cuba? The Case of Grenada*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Robert A. Pastor*
Affiliation:
Emory University and Caribbean Program of the Carter Center at Emory

Extract

One of the most difficult and frustrating challenges to US foreign policy in the post-World War II period has been coping with third world revolutions, particularly those in the Caribbean Basin. Whether the revolution has been in Cuba, Nicaragua, or Grenada, relations with the US have always deteriorated, and the revolutionary governments have moved closer to the Soviet bloc and toward a Communist political model. Both the deteriorating relationship and the increasingly belligerent posture of the US have conformed to a regular pattern; so too have the interpretations of the causes and consequences of the confrontation.

US government officials and a few policy analysts tend to view the hostile attitudes and policies of the revolutionary governments as the cause of the problem.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1986

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Footnotes

*

An earlier draft of this paper was presented at a conference on “The Lessons of Grenada,” held in October 1985 and sponsored by the Caribbean Institute and Study Center for Latin America (CISCLA), at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico (San Germán). The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful comments of Jorge Heine, Laurence Whitehead, and Anita Isaacs, which facilitated the revision of this paper, as well as those of W Anthony Lake and his colleagues at El Colegio de México for their comments.

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