"Our little region over here that has never bothered anyone..."

- Henry Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War

Increasing numbers of illegal migrants from the Dominican Republic cross the Mona Passage each year to Puerto Rico to find work

President Wilson strongly advocated the notion of a nation's right to self-determination. However, he also believed that although "all people might want freedom…whether they could gain and preserve it depended on race." This racist view undoubtedly extended to Latin America resulting in Wilson's "moralistic concern for teaching Latin Americans how to govern themselves."

Walter LeFebre calls the "Wilson Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine: "only American oil interests receive concessions. President Wilson intervened in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, leaving both countries in ruins.

General Trujillo

"Trujillo is an SOB, but at least he's our SOB." - President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Generally speaking, the quality of life improved for the average Dominican under Trujillo. Poverty persisted, but the economy expanded, the foreign debt disappeared, the currency remained stable, and the middle class expanded. Public works projects enhanced the road system and improved port facilities; airports and public buildings were constructed, the public education system grew, and illiteracy declined. These advances might well have been achieved in even greater measure under a responsive democratic government, but to Dominicans, who had no experience with such a government, the results under Trujillo were impressive. Although he never tested his personal popularity in a free election, some observers feel that Trujillo could have won a majority of the popular vote up until the final years of his dictatorship.

His attitude toward communism tended toward peaceful coexistence until 1947, when the Cold War winds from Washington persuaded him to crack down and to outlaw the Dominican Communist Party (Partido Comunista Dominicano--PCD). As always, self-interest and the need to maintain his personal power guided Trujillo's actions.

In October 1937, Trujillo ordered the massacre of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic in retaliation for the discovery and execution by the Haitian government of his most valued covert agents in that country. The Dominican army slaughtered as many as 20,000 largely unarmed men, women, and children, mostly in border areas, but also in the western Cibao. News of the atrocity filtered out of the country slowly; when it reached the previously supportive administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States, Secretary of State Cordell Hull demanded internationally mediated negotiations for a settlement and indemnity. Trujillo finally agreed. The negotiations, however, fixed a ludicrously low indemnity of US$750,000, which was later reduced to US$525,000 by agreement between the two governments. Although the affair damaged Trujillo's international image, it did not result in any direct efforts by the United States or by other countries to force him from power.

Trujillo developed an obsessive personal hatred of Betancourt and supported numerous plots of Venezuelan exiles to overthrow him. This pattern of intervention led the Venezuelan government to take its case against Trujillo to the Organization of American States (OAS). This development infuriated Trujillo, who ordered his foreign agents to assassinate Betancourt. The attempt, on June 24, 1960, injured, but did not kill, the Venezuelan president. The incident inflamed world opinion against Trujillo. The members of the OAS, expressing this outrage, voted unanimously to sever diplomatic relations and to impose economic sanctions on the Dominican Republic.

The firestorm surrounding the Betancourt incident provoked a review of United States policy toward the Dominican Republic by the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The United States had long tolerated Trujillo as a bulwark of stability in the Caribbean; some in Washington still saw him as a desirable counterforce to the Castro regime. Others, however, saw in Trujillo another Fulgencio Batista--the dictator Castro deposed in 1959--ripe for overthrow by radical, potentially communist, forces. Public opinion in the United States also began to run strongly against the Dominican dictatorship. In August 1960, the United States embassy in Santo Domingo was downgraded to consular level. According to journalist Bernard Diederich, Eisenhower also asked the National Security Council's Special Group (the organization responsible for approving covert operations) to consider the initiation of operations aimed at Trujillo's ouster. On May 30, 1961, Trujillo was assassinated. According to Diederich, the United States Central Intelligence Agency supplied the weapons used by the assassins.

Trujillo left a power vacuum, which eventually was filled with a poet.

President Johnson ordered U.S. troops into the Dominican Republic under the pretext of protecting American lives. Limited events in Santo Domingo offered credence to this premise of protection. "Rebel paramilitary groups entered the grounds of the Hotel Embajador and harassed U.S. Citizens gathering there in anticipation of being evacuated."
However, there is no doubt that the real reason for the invasion was prevent another Cuba. "Having seen Eisenhower criticized for 'losing' Cuba and Kennedy humiliated by the Bay of Pigs failure, Johnson was determined that no similar disaster would befall him: there would be no 'second Cuba.'" Johnson also confronted managing the growing U.S. intervention in Vietnam, another battleground of the Cold War. Johnson realized that American credibility was on the line. If he could not demonstrate U.S. resolve to curtail Communist expansion of "the American Lake," how would be the result in Vietnam?
President Johnson was convinced that Fidel Castro was behind this revolt in the Dominican Republic. Johnson once stated "'Castro had his eye on the Dominican Republic' and in Cuba, was training Dominican Leftist in guerrilla warfare and sabotage." Embassy officials in Santo Domingo exploited Johnson's fear of another Cuba. One of the many telegrams sent from the Embassy illustrates this point. The telegram stated the need for "'unlimited and immediate military assistance' from the United States to keep the Dominican Republic from becoming another Cuba."
President Johnson's assertions about Cuba however were incorrect. Although there were Communist involved in the revolt, it is important to note that they were only one faction in a large group of organizations determined to reinstate Jaun Bosch. It is also important to recognize that of the three Communist groups in the Dominican Republic only the 14 June (1J4) movement was Castro oriented.

U.S. policymakers were so determined to substantiate their interpretation of events that they failed to recognize other possibilities. It appears that culprits other than Communist were not taken into account. "The leaders and most of the participants in the Dominican Revolt were anti-Communist or non-Communist. The Johnson Administration never proved that Communists actually took control, and the extent to which they posed a threat of doing so is a matter of judgment."

Fortunately, not all was lost. The OAS managed to establish its credentials and participate in securing democracy for the Dominican Republic. Most importantly, the people of the Dominican Republic had once again the opportunity to participate in the democratic process. Perhaps just as important this was the U.S.' last intervention in the Dominican Republic to date.

It is important to recognize that at this point in history, U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere was unquestionable. "The dominant position the United States had built up in the Caribbean region enabled the president to eschew gunboat diplomacy and inaugurate the Good Neighbor Policy." U.S. decision-makers could now afford to explore non-military means of sustaining security in the Caribbean.

However, security for whom is subjective -- while the US is good at blowing things up, it is less skilled at providing basic resources to nurture long-term democracy. It's as if we only have weed killer, and expect prize tomatoes to grow without care and feeding.

On 28 April 1965, U.S. military forces found themselves in the Dominican Republic protecting U.S. interests for the fourth time in 58 years. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy and the actions of three U.S. administrations (Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson respectively) resulted in the eruption of hostilities in the Dominican Republic in April 1965.

From 1930 to 1945, the U.S. shifted from Dollar Diplomacy and intervention to the Good Neighbor Policy. Rather than seeing the Good Neighbor Policy as a totally new departure from our previous policies since 1823, Smith sees the Good Neighbor Policy as the culmination of these previous trends. He sees it as the culmination and triumph of imperial conquest. The same goals persisted: protection of U.S. geostrategic and economic interests. The goals of economic penetration, security, and hegemony continued but what changed were the means used to achieve those goals.

There were costs incurred in the policy of dollar diplomacy. The U.S. had troops stationed in Nicaragua and fought a guerrilla war there. U.S. interventions in Cuba were also costly. Troops were stationed in the Domincan Republic and in Haiti. Latin Americans saw U.S. intervention as imperialism and stated so at Pan American Conferences such as those in Havana in 1928 and Montevideo in 1933. The Latins favored the juridical equality of states, opposed U.S. intervention, rejected the idea of protecting corporations through military means, and rejected the unilateralism of U.S. policy (where the U.S. did whatever it wanted without consultation with Latin American countries)

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What made the good neighbor policy possible was the changes in the international system. In the aftermath of World War I, Europe was devastated and European countries were not in a position to challenge the U.S. in the western hemisphere. The United states had become dominant economically as direct and portfolio capital investment increased rapidly from 1919 to 1929. U.S. security interests were not as tthreatened. Also, WWI had taught a lessons to the U.S. about the possible perils of having hostile neighbors to the south while fighting in Europe or elsewhere in the world (e.g., the Zimmerman note to Mexico just prior to WWI). Better to emphasize cooperation, multilateralism, trade, non-intervention. As the 1929 depression hit and as war loomed in the horizon in the 1930's, Latin American cooperation became even more critical in sustaining U.S. economic and geostrategic interests.

Smith points out that the good neighbor policy was applied unevenly and that the U.S. used economic leverage to achieve its policy objectives. For example, in Cuba we opposed a democratic revolution in 1933, declaring it communist and supporting a military regime by Batista. This Batista was the same dictator Fidel Castro would remove from power in 1959. In the countries where we applied Dollar Diplomacy (Nic., D. Rep., Haiti), we worked hand in hand with dictatorships which we left in place after U.S. troops departed (the Somozas in Nicaragua, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic). We used loans to protect $5 billion in investments in Latin America. We created the Export-Import Bank whereby we made loans to Latin American countries for the purchase of U.S. goods (really a subsidy to American producers). The Reciprocal Trade Acts were used to create inducements and to tie Latin countries to U.S. objectives such as military preparedness, coordinating security against domestic Nazi groups, providing U.S. military bases once the Second World War began (e.g., Brazil), etc. The sugar quota with Cuba and coffee agreements with Brazil and Colombia gave the U.S. great leverage with those countries whose economies depended on those agreements with the U.S.

In short, Smith argues the Good Neighbor Policy reflected changes in the international system that allowed the United States to shift to economic means to achieve its policy objectives rather than naked and direct military intervention and control. In that sense, there is a parallel between the Good Neighbor Policy and the policy of the U.S. towards Latin america in the post-Cold War era of the 1990's.

Besides this overall understanding of Smith's argument, you need to know the specifics of U.S. policy during the Good Neighbor era. Focus on knowing the means used to achieve U.S. ends between 1930 and 1945. There is no substitute for a close reading of the Smith text Talons of the Eagle.