The Containment of U.S. Military Aid to Latin America, 1944?49

Abstract

Concern over Soviet expansionism in the late 1940s undercut longstanding plans of the administration of Harry S Truman to arm Latin America. This apparently contradictory development illustrates the complex effect of the Cold War on U.S. policy toward Latin America between 1945 and 1949. Cold War confrontations in Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Far East quickened fears in Washington of a Communist threat to the Americas and contributed to new measures of hemispheric collaboration such as the Rio Treaty, which was aimed at tying Latin America more closely to the United States.1 Yet the emergence of the containment policy in 1946 and 1947 also brought a new awareness of the limits on American resources and a clarification of global priorities. As a detailed examination of the abortive Western Hemisphere Defense Program reveals, the hardening of Cold War attitudes actually helped limit U.S. military assistance to Latin America during...