"BIG UNCLE": U.S. INTERVENTION IN LATIN AMERICA

After the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 set a US foreign policy against foreign intervention in the Western Hemisphere, the United States has not shown much reluctance to intervene in the affairs of its neighbors to the south.  This study group will examine examples of such interventions from the Mexican War to the present, including Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia and Panama.  Types of interventions in addition to expansionist wars will include covert regime change, economic and political sanctions, economic and military assistance, etc.  Rationales besides "manifest destiny" will vary from bill collection to drug interdiction, colonialism to anti-colonialism, mercantilism to anti-communism. Class participation will include debates with prepared arguments for and against the various interventions, and evaluation of their results.  Homework will consist of a review of selected chapters from the course textbook  "Beneath the United States" by Lars Schoultz and selected additional readings gathered in a special coursebook.

Class is limited to 20 members.

ARTHUR MUDGE, a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, has divided his career about equally between New Hampshire law practice and USAID foreign service, combining the two over the past twenty years as an international development consultant working mostly in rule of law.  From 1969 through 1983 he lived and worked abroad as USAID lawyer and mission director, mostly in Latin America, with subsequent extensive consultant service in that region.  He knows through first hand experience all of the countries included as case studies.  During the 1979 - 80 academic year he was a diplomat fellow at the Harvard Center for International Affairs, where he researched, wrote and lectured on U.S. response to Latin American revolutionary movements.  He has also lectured at Dartmouth, Oberlin and Wellesley, as well as leading ILEAD study groups on Selling War, Regime Change, and Israel/Palestine.