The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America

by Stephen G. Rabe

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Book cover for The Most Dangerous Area in the World

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In March 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the formation of the Alliance for Progress, a program dedicated to creating prosperous, socially just, democratic societies throughout Latin America. Over the next few years, the United States spent nearly $20 billion in pursuit of the Alliance's goals, but Latin American economies barely grew, Latin American societies remained inequitable, and sixteen extraconstitutional changes of government rocked the region. In this close, critical analysis, Stephen Rabe explains why Kennedy's grand plan for Latin America proved such a signal policy failure.
Drawing on recently declassified materials, Rabe investigates the nature of Kennedy's intense anti-Communist crusade and explores the convictions that drove him to fight the Cold War throughout the Caribbean and Latin America--a region he repeatedly referred to as ""the most dangerous area in the world."" As Rabe acknowledges, Kennedy remains popular in the United States and Latin America, in part for the noble purposes behind the Alliance for Progress. But an unwavering determination to wage Cold War led Kennedy to compromise, even mutilate, those grand goals.
|Argues that JFK's Alliance for Progress failed because of his determination to fight the Cold War throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
  • ISBN13 9780807824610
  • Publish Date 22 February 1999
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 4 December 2016
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint The University of North Carolina Press
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 272
  • Language English