'It is riveting. Ryan provides us with one of the best accounts of the Raegan-era foreign policy available, dealing with a portion of history that took place in Central America in the Eighties. For future historians of the Cold War, Ryan's book will be a necessary point of reference.' - Bernardo Sepulveda Amor US-Sandinista Diplomatic Relations examines the reasons why agreement was not reached between the United States and Nicaragua between 1979 and 1990. The traditional US hegemonic approach to the region was applied to the Sandinista revolutionary government which the Reagan administration wanted out of power. Washington's responses to the various attempts at finding a diplomatic solution were to block agreement where possible, but concurrently demonstrate support for diplomacy to encourage Congressional support for the ongoing low intensity conflict.

The product of research and investigation by a team of sixteen authors, Reagan versus the Sandinistas is the most comprehensive and current study to date of the Reagan administration's mounting campaign to reverse the Sandinista revolution. The authors thoroughly examine all major aspects of Reagan's "low-intensity war," from the U.S. government's attempts at economic destabilization to direct CIA sabotage and the sponsorship of the contras or freedom fighters. They also explore less-public tactics such as electronic penetration, behind-the-scenes manipulation of religious and ethnic tensions, and harassment of U.S. Nicaraguan specialists and "fellow travelers." The book concludes with a consideration of the impact of these activities and their implications for international law, U.S. interests, U.S. polity, and Nicaragua itself. Reagan versus the Sandinistas is designed not only for courses on Latin America, U.S. foreign policy, and international relations, but also for students, scholars, and others interested in understanding one of the most massive, complex efforts—short of direct intervention—organized by the United States to overthrow the government of another country.

This book traces the process through which Nicaraguans defeated US aggression in a highly unequal confrontation.

Franklin Roosevelt's good neighbour policy, coming in the wake of decades of US intervention in Central America, and following a lengthy US military occupation of Nicaragua, marked a significant shift in US policy towards Latin America. Its basic tenets were non-intervention and non-interference. The period was exceptionally significant for Nicaragua, as it witnessed the creation and consolidation of the Somoza government - one of Latin America's most enduring authoritarian regimes, which endured from 1936 to the sandinista revolution in 1979. Addressing the political, diplomatic, military, commercial, financial, and intelligence components of US policy, Andrew Crawley analyses the background to the US military withdrawal from Nicaragua in the early 1930s. He assesses the motivations for Washington's policy of disengagement from international affairs, and the creation of the Nicaraguan National Guard, as well as debating US accountability for what the Guard became under Somoza. Crawley effectively challenges the conventional theory that Somoza's regime was a creature of Washington. It was US non-intervention, not interference, he argues, that enhanced the prospects of tyranny.

Through the fall of Anastasio Somoza, the rise of the Sandinistas, and the contra war, the United States and Nicaragua seemed destined to repeat the mistakes made by the U.S. and Cuba forty years before. The 1990 election in Nicaragua broke the pattern. Robert Pastor was a major US policymaker in the critical period leading up to and following the Sandinista Revolution of 1979. A decade later after writing the first edition of this book, he organized the International Mission led by Jimmy Carter that mediated the first free election in Nicaragua's history. From his unique vantage point, and utilizing a wealth of original material from classified government documents and from personal interviews with U.S. and Nicaraguan leaders, Pastor shows how Nicaragua and the United States were prisoners of a tragic history and how they finally escaped. This revised and updated edition covers the events of the democratic transition, and it extracts the lessons to be learned from the past.

How was the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua able to resist the Reagan Administration's coercive efforts to rollback their revolution? Héctor Perla challenges conventional understandings of this conflict by tracing the process through which Nicaraguans, both at home and in the diaspora, defeated US aggression in a highly unequal confrontation. He argues that beyond traditional diplomatic, military, and domestic state policies a crucial element of the FSLN's defensive strategy was the mobilization of a transnational social movement to build public opposition to Reagan's policy within the United States, thus preventing further escalation of the conflict. Using a contentious politics approach, the author reveals how the extant scholarly assumptions of international relations theory have obscured some of the most consequential dynamics of the case. This is a fascinating study illustrating how supposedly powerless actors were able to constrain the policies of the most powerful nation on earth.

Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776-1891