Addicted to Failure

U.S. Security Policy in Latin America and the Andean Region

Edited by Brian Loveman

Not available to order

Publication date:

11 September 2006

Length of book:

394 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780742565890

For supplementary documentation and useful websites, click here.

This perceptive book critically explores why the United States continues to pursue failed policies in Latin America. What elements of the U.S. and Latin American political systems have allowed the Cold War, the war on drugs, and the war on terror to be conflated? Why do U.S. policies—ostensibly designed to promote the rule of law, human rights, and democracy—instead contribute to widespread corruption, erosion of government authority, human rights violations, and increasing destabilization? Why have the war on drugs and the war on terror neither reduced narcotics trafficking nor increased citizen security in Latin America? Why do Latin American governments, the European Union, and U.S. policymakers often work at cross-purposes when they all claim to be committed to "democratization" and "development" in the region?

Leading scholars answer these questions by detailing the nature of U.S. economic and security strategies in Latin America and the Andean region since 1990. They analyze the impacts and responses to these strategies by policymakers, political leaders, and social movements throughout the region, explaining how programs often generate or exacerbate the very problems they were intended to solve. Reviewing official policy and its defenders and critics alike, this indispensable book focuses on the reasons for the failure of U.S. policies and their disastrous significance for Latin America and the United States alike.


Contributions by: Adrián Bonilla, Pilar Gaitán, Monica Herz, Kenneth Lehman, Brian Loveman, Enrique Obando, Orlando J. Pérez, Eduardo Pizarro, Philipp Schönrock-Martínez, and Juan Gabriel Tokatlian
[A] scathing and devastating indictment of the ways in which security policy has failed in almost every way imaginable. . . . From an analytical but also, importantly, pedagogical point of view, one of the strengths of Addicted to Failure is its emphasis on primary documents. The chapters are well bound together, not only thematically but also methodologically, bringing official policy statements and postures to the fore.