U.S. Military Interventions in Latin America from 1983-2015: Towards new post-Cold War Paradigms

Résumé En

During the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations (1981-2017), the United States military intervened frequently in Latin America. Major actions included the invasions of Grenada (operation Urgent Fury, 1983) and Panama (operation Just Cause, 1989-1990), the occupation of Haiti (operation Uphold Democracy, 1994), and support for the increasingly militarized war on drugs, notably during Plan Colombia (2000-2015) and the Merida Initiative (2007-2021). The military has also been preoccupied with collaboration on border security through Joint Task Force-Six organized in 1989 (today Joint Task Force-North) and general interagency counterterrorism planning since 2001. Notably, these actions placed the region at the forefront of new military doctrines and defense policies, first in the nation’s rediscovery of the use of military force after its defeat in the Vietnam War, then in the reorganization of military command structures, again facing post-Cold War uncertainty about the role of force in the world, and finally in the context of a truly global “war on terror” as nonstate actors overlapped with militarized crimefighting. This chapter provides a brief overview of the major US military engagements in Latin America from 1983 to 2015 and discusses how these experiences shaped American military policy as it evolved from anti-communism to a more complex mix of missions after the Cold War.