Right Wing Dictatorship Summary

The author intends to challenge the conclusion that the United States served itself well by supporting right-wing dictatorships. "The central concern is how American officials understood the problem in terms of an overall policy and in relation to specific countries, and how that shaped their decision making"
(p. 5). A significant part of his thesis is that the
Vietnam War unsettled the consensus about foreign policy and, particularly in the guise of the investigative work of the Ghurch Gommittee, led to a more probing examination of
U.S. foreign policy and the moral reasoning, or lack thereof, that undergirded it (p. 146).
The book is a chronological account of successive presidencies and how each dealt with right-wing dictatorships under
48).
The author also has a tendency to quote key actors from secondary sources without indicating the original sources (see, for example, pp. 25 and 26). His thesis is also pressed in chapter 6 regarding the Ronald Reagan administration.
Much is made of the impact that the neoconservatives and fellow travelers had on policy, but there is no indication that most of them had left the administration by 1983, and there is little or no explanation of Reagan's diplomatic engagement with the Soviets.
Those omitted facts suggest that the situation was more complex and contested in the Reagan administration than the author claims.
This book presents interesting and often compelling evidence of the shortcomings of
U.S. policy toward right-wing dictatorships. It exposes many of the unfortunate and