Book // Shadow Boxing: Washington’s Cold War Obsession with Credibility and U.S.-Latin American relations, 1945-1989

Manuel Noriega couldn’t have happened to George Bush at a worse time.

By 1989, after a petrifying 40-year deadlock between the United States and the Soviet Union, it was starting to look as if the Cold War was finally over. All the trouble, worrying, and planning of the United States’ Cold War leadership had paid off, apparently. The country finally seemed positioned to make real the Wilsonian vision of a Pax Americana. Yet at this crucial moment of global change, a military dictator in a small Central American country was making the Bush administration look foolish and not ready for prime time.

This – more than any other factor – was the primary reason why the U.S. opted to take out Noriega’s regime out in what would be the largest American overseas military intervention since the Vietnam War.

Read more: http://us-latinamerica.com/: Book // Shadow Boxing: Washington’s Cold War Obsession with Credibility and U.S.-Latin American relations, 1945-1989