The Good Neighbor Policy—
A History to Make Us Proud
By Tom Barry, Laura Carlsen, and John Gershman | April 2005
The International Relations Center will launch its Global Good Neighbor initiative in
mid-May 2005 at events in New York City and Washington, DC.
resident Bush says we must “stay the course” in Iraq, and
he promises to continue during his second administration
the radical foreign and domestic policies laid out during his
first term. We believe it is time to change course.
P
But can the course of U.S. foreign policy ever truly be altered?
Has there ever been a model for a dramatic shift away from militarism and unilateralism toward international cooperation and
peace?
The answer to these questions is yes.
In the late 1920s, the State Department, Commerce
Department, and War Department were all weary of staying the
course. Reacting to popular protest and rising concern from
business, Washington and Wall Street began turning away from
territorial acquisition and imperialism as preferred instruments of
U.S. foreign policy. Instead of considering it the mission of a
“master race” to manage the affairs of the “weaker races,” as
Teddy Roosevelt had, leaders in politics and commerce now
spoke about the need for nations to be good neighbors.
The Good Neighbor Policy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency in the pre-World War II period marked a dramatic turn in U.S.
foreign affairs. The new policy constituted a public repudiation of
imperialism, cultural and racial stereotyping, and military interventions and occupations.
Can such a far-reaching reversal be replicated?
If history is a guide, then again the answer is yes.
U.S. foreign policy is once again at a crossroads, and its present
course could be disastrous. One way out of the current morass
is to look back to the inter-war period of history and see what
lessons it holds for us today.
Can Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy of the 1930s provide a
model for a Global Good Neighbor Policy for the 21st century?
A New Domestic and Foreign Policy
Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency by offering the electorate a sweeping new vision for both domestic and foreign policy. Under the banner of “a new deal for the American people,”
FDR won the presidency in 1932 with one of the largest margins
of victory ever seen in U.S. politics.
Roosevelt directly confronted the crises at home and abroad,
launching major overhauls of both U.S. domestic and foreign
policy. National and transnational capitalism were teetering, as
economies collapsed and the ideologies of socialism and fascism
took hold. International diplomatic and military affairs were in
turmoil, as inter-imperial conflicts intensified.
The New Deal of massive public works programs, Social
Security, arts and oral history projects, a shorter work week, and
a higher minimum wage marked a major turning point in U.S.
politics. The New Deal helped lead the country out of the Great
Depression by reining in free market forces and instituting social
safety nets that put unemployed citizens to work and provided
income guarantees for the elderly and disabled. Today, these
social democratic reforms are all under sustained attack by the
Bush administration’s privatization policies.
In the United States, FDR is remembered mostly for his peoplecommitted domestic policies and his strong leadership as a
wartime president. However, President Roosevelt’s pre-war for-
International Relations Center
w w w. i r c - o n l i n e . o r g
People-Centered Policy Alternatives Since 1979
Foreign Policy In Focus
w w w. f p i f . o r g
A Think-Tank Without Walls
Main Impacts of Good Neighbor Policy
➨ Boom in hemispheric trade and accompanying economic recovery.
➨ End to U.S. military interventions and occupations; no
more U.S. Marines dying in Haiti, the Dominican
Republic, Cuba, or Nicaragua.
➨ Hemispheric unity behind the United States and against
the Axis powers.
➨ Dramatic decline in the demeaning stereotyping of
Latinos by the U.S. government, media, and entertainment industry.
eign policy was equally outstanding and is very relevant
to today’s economic, security, and cultural conflicts.
In his March 1933 inaugural address, President
Roosevelt announced a new approach to international
relations that would become known as the Good
Neighbor Policy. “I would dedicate this nation to the
policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so,
respects the rights of others,” Roosevelt declared.
In keeping with this new vision of U.S. foreign policy,
every nation should be “the neighbor who respects his
obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements
in and with a world of neighbors.”
Building a New Bipartisan
Consensus on Foreign Policy
The seeds of FDR’s new foreign policy had already
been planted. By the early part of the 20th century it
was becoming clear that territorial conquests, military
intervention, and occupations were proving costly and
counterproductive. The Spanish-American War of 1898
had proved the new global reach of U.S. military power,
but the Yanquis quickly found that the Cubans and
Filipinos hated them as much as they hated the
Spanish.
p. 2
United States if it continued to follow the imperialist
path to progress. Twain observed that by occupying the
Philippines the United States was committing “one
grievous error, that irrevocable error,” playing the
“European game” of imperialism and colonization.
By the late 1920s, a new consensus was emerging
among Washington political leaders and Wall Street
barons. After three decades of imperial conquest, followed by Gunboat Diplomacy of military occupations
and the Dollar Diplomacy of heavy-handed financial
control of other nations, the country’s elites found
themselves agreeing with the popular wisdom of Mark
Twain.
In election year 1928, both incumbent Herbert Hoover
and Democratic Party leader Franklin D. Roosevelt
advanced a new vision of international relations in
which diplomacy and commerce would trump brute
financial and military power. In a Foreign Affairs article
in 1928, Roosevelt wrote that by seeking the “cooperation of others we shall have more order in this hemisphere and less dislike.”
Following his victory, President-elect Hoover undertook
a goodwill trip to Central America. Citing complaints
about Washington’s overbearing and interventionist
behavior, Hoover announced that a new policy was in
the offing. “We have a desire to maintain not only the
cordial relations of governments with each other,” he
said, “but also the relations of good neighbors.”
As president, however, Hoover did little to pursue a
new direction in foreign policy. Troop withdrawals did
commence in Nicaragua and Haiti. After the onset of
the Great Depression in 1929, however, Hoover only
rarely addressed foreign policy issues.
It took FDR’s vision and political smarts—and the skills
of his influential wife, Eleanor Roosevelt—to fashion a
new policy agenda. Leveraging widespread dissatisfaction with existing directions in U.S. domestic and foreign policy, Roosevelt crafted a bold policy blueprint
that addressed the crises both at home and abroad.
Being a Good Global Neighbor
“Big Stick” policies did not stabilize and democratize
intervened countries but instead incited armed popular
rebellions. As in Iraq, post-intervention attempts to suppress these insurrections and impose order cost the
United States more in lost lives and financial resources
than the initial interventions.
Roosevelt’s view of international relations was a startling
departure from the ideological frameworks that previously dominated foreign policy discourse. His perspectives on how nations should behave appealed to both
common sense and moral values.
As early as 1904, novelist and political humorist Mark
Twain warned of the moral and political hazards to the
Two months after he moved into the White House, FDR
promised to help “spell the end of the system of unilateral
The Good Neighbor Policy—A History to Make Us Proud
www.irc-online.org
action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence,
the balances of power, and all the other expedients.”
To replace this prevailing system, Roosevelt began to chart
a new system guided by international cooperation. “Common
ideals and a community of interest, together with a spirit
of cooperation, have led to the realization that the wellbeing of one nation depends in large measure upon the
well-being of its neighbors,” the new president asserted.
Being a good global neighbor for Roosevelt meant promoting peace and deglorifying war. As he put it: “I have
seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running
marked by plummeting imports and exports. By the
year FDR took the White House for the Democrats,
both parties agreed that the neo-mercantilist policies
must be shed in favor of the reciprocal trade agreements proposed by Roosevelt.
It was Roosevelt’s opinion that protective economic
blocs and the mercantilism of the great powers, including the United States, led not only to economic ruin but
also to armed clashes, as competing states sought to
protect their foreign markets. “We do not maintain that
a more liberal international trade will stop war,” said
“I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor
who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.”
—President Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 1933
from the wounded. I have seen children starving… I
have seen the agony of mothers and wives... I hate war.”
Roosevelt repeatedly alerted the nation about the rise of
fascism and the new imperial ambitions of Germany and
Japan. “We are not isolationists,” said FDR, “except so far
as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet
we must remember that so long as war exists on earth
there will be some danger that even the nation which
most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.”
At the same time, though, Roosevelt was formulating a
foreign policy doctrine of nonaggression and demilitarization that would ensure that the United States did not
precipitate wars as it had in the recent past with Spain
and Mexico. “We seek to dominate no other nation,” he
declared. “We ask no territorial expansion. We oppose
imperialism. We desire reduction in world armaments.”
President Roosevelt intended that his Good Neighbor Policy
improve U.S. relations with nations around the world.
But it was in the Western Hemisphere that FDR’s new
foreign policy framework had its most dramatic impact.
Beyond Mercantilism
The economic resurgence of the 1920s was short-lived,
and the roar of the decade diminished to a whimper by
1928, the year Republican Herbert Hoover was elected
president. Hoover’s high-tariff policies, along with those
of his Republican predecessors, Presidents Harding and
Coolidge, contributed to a trade and financial crisis
Roosevelt, “but we fear that without a more liberal international trade, war is a natural consequence.”
Being a good neighbor for Roosevelt and for Secretary
of State Cordell Hull, had economic implications as well
as security ones. Hull believed that a good neighbor
policy meant offering U.S. markets for the region’s
exports. If political relations were to improve, the United
States had to open its doors to the Latin American and
Caribbean economy, according to Hull.
For their part, Latin American and Caribbean nations
were eager to access U.S. markets for their agroexports—
such as sugar and cotton—and applauded Roosevelt’s
initiatives to lower tariffs and remove quotas. Working
collaboratively, the U.S. State and Commerce departments launched a campaign to sign reciprocal trade
agreements with all the countries of the hemisphere,
and during the 1930s intra-regional trade boomed.
“The trade agreements which we are now making are
not only finding outlets for the products of American
fields and factories,” Roosevelt declared, “but are also
pointing the way to the elimination of embargoes, quotas, and other devices which place such pressure on
nations not possessing great natural resources that to
them the price of peace seems less terrible than the
price of war.”
FDR’s commercial vision was reflected in the Reciprocal
Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) of 1934. This act fundamentally altered both the process and the content of
The Good Neighbor Policy—A History to Make Us Proud
www.irc-online.org
p. 3
started to boom during the 1930s and 1940s, their
domestic markets were expanding targets for U.S.
exports. In the 1932-41 period, U.S.-Latin America
trade tripled.
The new bilateral agreements did, however, set a troubling precedent in U.S. relations with developing countries: the political conditioning of commercial relations.
Trade and aid accords in the 1930s came with the
understanding that nations would not enter into mercantile relationships with European countries or establish diplomatic relations with the Axis powers. This represented a new type of foreign control that, as we now
know, eventually became quite intrusive. Later in the
century, conditionality increasingly expanded to include
a broadening array of requisite political and economic
reforms, as well as agreements to support U.S. foreign
policy globally.
Eleanor Roosevelt displays the UN Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in Spanish in 1949. (Photo courtesy FDR Library)
U.S. trade policy. Before the RTAA, Congress established tariffs on goods in a protectionist manner. Under
the RTAA, legislators delegated to the executive branch
the authority to reduce tariffs through foreign trade
agreements. Although the RTAA originally granted this
negotiating authority to the executive branch for only
three years, Congress periodically renewed the legislation and never again enacted a general tariff bill.
The shift away from mercantilism reflected in the Good
Neighbor policy was a positive step toward building
more equitable relations with U.S. trading partners and
with Latin American countries in particular. Washington
signed bilateral trade and diplomatic agreements with
fifteen Latin American countries in this period, and
some of the agreements included provisions for small
amounts of foreign aid.
Most of the trade agreements reflected the norm of
reciprocity. In addition to being more equitable for
developing countries, economic good neighborliness
also served changing interests within the United States,
which had little to lose from the experiment. Roosevelt
and Hull wanted greater access to Latin American
agroexports—over the objections of domestic cotton,
sugar, and tobacco growers—and also wanted an opening to the markets that Europeans had cornered in the
region. There was little in the way of industrial exports
from the region, and as Latin American economies
p. 4
In general, though, the FDR-era trade agreements were
marked by greater reciprocity and openness, and subsequent problems were caused by detouring from the
basic principles established in the period. The logical
evolution of this process would have been the creation
of the International Trade Organization, which would
have established a framework for creating trade agreements broadly supportive of development. But opposition by U.S. business groups and others in the late
1940s derailed that effort and led to a more truncated
trade policy that focused narrowly on liberalization.
From Gunboat Diplomacy to
Good Neighbors
Following a period of heavy-handedness, the refreshing
idea that U.S. foreign policy should be shaped mainly
by good neighbor principles of respect and cooperation
brightened prospects for improved U.S. relations with
Latin America and the Caribbean. For nearly four decades,
Washington’s policy toward the region had been little
more than a one-two punch of U.S.-style imperialism,
alternating between Gunboat Diplomacy and Dollar
Diplomacy, neither of which was very diplomatic.
Gunboat Diplomacy was the government’s euphemism
for the bombardment of foreign ports and military invasion, while Dollar Diplomacy was the euphemism for
the U.S. government’s occupation of foreign countries—
along with managing their banks and custom houses—
to ensure the payment of foreign debts and security of
foreign investors. Assistant Secretary of State
Huntington Wilson under President Woodrow Wilson
described [further euphemized] Dollar Diplomacy as
The Good Neighbor Policy—A History to Make Us Proud
www.irc-online.org
“intelligent teamwork,” involving U.S. Marines, creditors, diplomats, and investors.
Both Gunboat Diplomacy and Dollar Diplomacy were
concepts openly embraced by Presidents McKinley,
Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, and Harding. Howard Taft, when
serving as TR’s secretary of war, lamented that his job
included managing the “dirty so-called republics of
South America.” After succeeding Teddy Roosevelt,
then-President Taft echoed TR’s view that the United
States had the responsibility for managing Latin
Americans, claiming “the right to knock their heads
together until they should maintain peace.”
The reason that FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy was first
applied in U.S. relations with Latin America and the
presidency, the U.S. had intervened militarily 29 times
in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in Caribbean Basin
nations. Several countries, including Haiti, Cuba,
Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic, had experienced long periods of U.S. military occupation and
administrative control.
FDR’s Good Neighbor policy specifically renounced
most previous justifications for U.S. military interventions—including preemptive strikes to ensure political
stability, occupations to force payment of foreign debts,
retaliation for expropriation of U.S. investments, and the
promotion of democracy. He ordered the withdrawal of
all remaining U.S. troops in the Caribbean Basin, ending
the long and shameful history of military interventions
“No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.”
—Secretary of State Cordell Hull, December 1933
Caribbean stemmed from the root concept of good
neighbors. In 1936 Roosevelt explained: “Peace, like
charity, begins at home. That is why we have begun at
home. But peace in the Western world is not all that we
seek. It is our hope that knowledge of the practical
application of the good neighbor policy in this hemisphere will be borne home to our neighbors across the
seas.” The force of example, it was believed, would
carry the policy beyond the shared shores of the hemisphere to eventually reach a global context.
Good Neighbor Deeds
Being a good neighbor meant primarily not being a bad
neighbor, but the Good Neighbor Policy was not just
rhetorical flourish. Midway through FDR’s first term,
deeds and legislation underpinned his words in Latin
America and the Caribbean, although his policy was not
accompanied by large flows of foreign aid or demands
that countries restructure their economic and political
systems. Unlike other major foreign policy initiatives of
the last century, such as Kennedy’s Alliance for
Progress or George H.W. Bush’s Enterprise of the
Americas, FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy was more than
a repudiation of past policies.
Other presidents had rejected doctrines of territorial
conquest, but none had been as explicit or consistent
in limiting the criteria for intervention. Between the
early 1890s and the beginning of the Franklin Roosevelt
and occupations there. Speaking at a regional conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in December 1933,
Secretary of State Hull said that one of the core principles of the Good Neighbor Policy was nonintervention:
“No state has the right to intervene in the internal or
external affairs of another.”
A year later Roosevelt reassured the still-skeptical
nations of Latin America and the Caribbean by saying,
“The definite policy of the United States from now on is
one opposed to armed intervention.”
True to his word, in the first year of his presidency,
Roosevelt pulled U.S. troops out of the region, ending
the occupations of Haiti and Nicaragua. There were no
U.S. military interventions in the region during his
twelve years in the White House (1933-45).
In 1934 the Roosevelt administration also forfeited the
right of intervention granted by the Platt Amendment.
After the Spanish-American War of 1898, the U.S. government granted Cuba its independence. But the former Spanish colony was sovereign in name only.
Washington had attached an amendment to Cuba’s
constitution authorizing the United States to intervene
in the internal affairs of the island “for the preservation
of Cuban independence, and the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property,
and individual liberty.” By renouncing the Platt
Amendment, the FDR government demonstrated to
The Good Neighbor Policy—A History to Make Us Proud
www.irc-online.org
p. 5
Latin Americans that it was truly serious about initiating
a new era in U.S. relations with its southern neighbors.
Changing Culture to
Change Policies
In keeping with Hull’s declaration, the U.S. government
did not militarily intervene after Bolivia and Mexico
nationalized the holdings of U.S. oil companies.
Responding to pressure from the U.S. firms, the State
Department stated, “Our national interests as a whole
outweigh those of our petroleum companies.”
Part of Franklin Roosevelt’s legacy in Latin America was his
administration’s initiatives to end the demeaning cultural
stereotyping of Latinos. President Theodore ”Teddy”
Roosevelt’s idea of U.S. leadership was “to show those
Dagos that they will have to behave decently.” When
speaking about the proposed incorporation of Texas
into the United States, TR said that it was “out of the
question for them [Texans] to submit to the mastery of
the weaker race.” Foreshadowing the current doctrine
of preventive war, President Teddy Roosevelt asserted
in 1904 that the Anglo-American civilization in the
Western Hemisphere had the moral obligation to resort
to “the exercise of an international police power… in
flagrant cases of wrong-doing and impotence.”
With the rise of fascism and a new imperialism in
Europe and East Asia, the United States realized that it
could not assume that Latin American countries would
side with it in the event of an international conflict. Bad
neighbor policies over the past four decades had
undermined any natural solidarity based on proximity
and similar histories, and many countries were hostile
to the United States, believing that it—more than
Germany—was the bad neighbor, the aggressor, and
the imperialist. What’s more, sectors of the Latin
American and Caribbean elites, especially the military
high commands, admired European fascism and had little enthusiasm for U.S.-style democracy.
However, the Good Neighbor Policy—both in its political
and economic aspects—was directly responsible for
creating an atmosphere of mutual support that led most
of the nations of the Western Hemisphere to give their
unified support to the Allies. Commenting on Latin
American support for the United States and the Allies
going into World War II, Hull explained, “The political
line-up followed the economic line-up.”
FDR’s effort to reduce the influence of direct U.S. rule of
other countries abroad went beyond the Western Hemisphere.
In 1934, Roosevelt promoted Philippine independence
(albeit on unequal terms) by signing the TydingsMcDuffie Act that provided for Philippine independence
in 1946, after a ten-year transitional government.
The president’s Good Neighbor Policy often required a
compromise between promoting democracy and tolerating
dictatorships in Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Dominican
Republic as well as authoritarian and military governments
throughout South America. The oft-cited apocryphal
quote attributed to Roosevelt regarding Nicaragua’s
Somoza—“He’s a son of a bitch, but at least he’s our
son of a bitch”—reflected the tension between geopolitical realities and democratic values that is an intrinsic
challenge for every administration’s foreign policy.
p. 6
FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy also spoke directly to cultural
and moral values, but unlike his distant relative Teddy,
Franklin D. Roosevelt did not reinforce racist and supremacist prejudices. Instead, he sought to rid the U.S. government and society of its base prejudices and racist
assumptions about Anglo-Saxon superiority. What’s
more, the Good Neighbor Policy attempted to lay to
rest the belief that the United States had a God-given
mission to establish dominion over other societies.
In large part, it was the lack of paternalism, racism, and
cultural bias in Roosevelt’s own language that made the
Good Neighbor Policy work. The president’s rhetoric at
least seemed to reflect mutual respect and formed an
important groundwork for building his new policy.
Moreover, the administration began supporting cultural
exchange and outreach programs. And as a result of
government pressure, media and film characterization
of Latinos no longer included as many cultural and
racist stereotypes. The turnaround was striking, prompting one historian to remark that in this period
“Hollywood’s attitude toward the Latin countries suddenly bordered on reverence.”
The government proactively worked to bring about this
change. A State Department committee suggested new
approaches to Hollywood to breach the cultural divide.
A special commission even pointed to the “need to create ‘Pan Americana,’ a noble female figure bearing a
torch and cross, subtly suggesting both the Virgin Mary
and the Goddess of Liberty.”
“What they got instead was pulsating music and throbbing sensuality from the song-and-dance routines of
Brazil’s Carmen Miranda,” wrote historian Peter Smith.
The Good Neighbor Policy—A History to Make Us Proud
www.irc-online.org
As a result, he concluded, “Throughout U.S. popular
culture, Latin America came to be seen as provocative,
thrilling, cooperative—and desirable.” Walt Disney’s popular films, “Saludos Amigos” and “The Three
Caballeros,” contributed to the improved public image
of Latinos.
Over a period of several years, Roosevelt, Hull, and
other State Department officials could indeed show
measurable progress in spanning what had previously
been considered an unbridgeable cultural divide separating the United States and Latin America. By changing
the words that Washington chose to describe U.S.-Latin
America relations and the pictures that Hollywood used
to depict Latin Americans, the United States became
much better neighbors with the other countries of the
hemisphere.
However, the multiculturalism of the Good Neighbor
approach toward Latin Americans did not translate to
Asians in general, or to the Japanese in particular. With
tragic results, FDR presided over the internment of
thousands of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during
World War II. Historian Greg Robinson traces FDR’s
support for that policy to his adherence to the early
twentieth century’s racialist view of ethnic Japanese in
America as immutably “foreign” and threatening. These
prejudicial sentiments, along with his constitutional philosophy and leadership style, contributed to Roosevelt’s
approval of internment—a policy opposed and resisted
by Eleanor Roosevelt and other leading members of
FDR’s administration.
Interests and Better Instincts
Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy was a more
ethical, moral, respectful, and neighborly approach to
international relations than that of his predecessors. His
mandate that U.S. foreign policy should “give them a
share” and “show them respect” was a visionary departure from four decades of imperialism.
Yet the Good Neighbor Policy was not so idealistic that
it departed from the priorities of U.S. economic interests and national security concerns. In improving U.S.
political, economic, and cultural relations, Roosevelt
was able to demonstrate that U.S. security and economic interests also benefited.
The president’s Good Neighbor Policy represented a
refreshing realpolitik that departed both from the traditional realist balance-of-power framework of ordering
international relations, and from the racist and patriarchal ideology of the master race. Good neighborliness
Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the broadcast of one of his
fireside chats in 1935. (Photo courtesy FDR Library)
meant that nations of varying incomes, influence, and
size could and should live in the same global neighborhood with each receiving respect and each receiving a
share.
At least at home and in the Western Hemisphere,
Roosevelt succeeded in changing a political climate ridden with fear and malaise to one of hope and determination. Later, during the pre-planning for a postwar
international order, FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt were
able to bring their good neighbor agenda to work in
shaping international relations beyond the hemisphere.
They believed that good neighbor ethics should be
complemented by new collective security institutions
like the United Nations and by international treaties like
the conventions on political and economic/social rights.
Alarm in the Neighborhood
FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy came to a crashing close
with the onset of the Cold War when the promotion of
national security states trumped notions of cooperation
and respect. Instead of being neighbors, Latin American
and Caribbean countries were regarded more as pawns
in a new “great game” that pitted the United States and
its allies against communism.
After Truman became president following Roosevelt’s
death, Cold War alarmism led to a revival of U.S. intervention. The bold idea that the United States should
The Good Neighbor Policy—A History to Make Us Proud
www.irc-online.org
p. 7
conduct its foreign policy as if it were a good neighbor living in a
global neighborhood of diverse cultures and politics was never
resurrected—neither during lulls in the Cold War nor in its peacetime aftermath.
The Good Neighbor Policy of non-interventionism and respect
was replaced in 1947 by a national security strategy that led to a
sordid history of covert operations, Pentagon/CIA-engineered
coups, U.S. military invasions and occupations, and close relations between Washington and the most repressive and reactionary forces in the region.
Fortunately, the United States and the other countries of the
hemisphere are no longer raising the alarm about the purported
threat of communist subversion and revolution. However, new
terms such as “terrorism” and “radical populism” play much the
same role in a slightly updated version of the script. Far from
reviving the good neighbor policies of mutual gain and respect
that prevailed before the alarmism and militarism of the Cold
War, current leaders in Washington have indicated their intention
to retain many of the divisive attitudes that characterized the
1980s.
The time is ripe for a revival of good neighbor values and policies. A more integrated world guided by principles such as
respect and the shared benefits of trade and development would
provide both the richest and poorest nations with a firmer foundation from which to face the forces of globalization.
The U.S. government and society are still suffering from a bad
neighbor reputation. The Cold War practice of treating neighbors
as political pawns and surrogates, combined with the imposition
of neoliberal economic reforms and a globally unpopular “war
on terrorism,” has revived the “Yanqui Go Home” sentiment that
spread through the hemisphere early in the 20th century.
A bad neighbor image makes it more difficult for the United
States to help forge common strategies to address such diverse
problems and threats as international terrorism, climate change,
transborder mobster and drug trafficking syndicates, corporate
crime, and falling wage levels.
The Good Neighbor Policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt was not perfect. Nothing is. It certainly did not dissolve the vast economic
asymmetry between nations. Nor did it ensure that the first U.S.
reaction was always respectful or that Washington always
refrained from wielding its economic and military power as a big
stick.
But if the United States is ever again to exercise power with
moral authority and regain credibility as a responsible international leader, it must first be regarded as a good global neighbor.
That doesn’t necessarily require major new foreign aid, economic development, or trade programs. But it does mean putting the
values of respect, interdependence, and peace at the center of
U.S. foreign policy.
The Good Neighbor Policy demonstrated that it was possible to
alter the course of international relations and U.S. foreign policy.
As in 1932, it is time once again to change course, and the
model of the Good Neighbor policy is a good one to follow.
Sources
Highly recommended as an insightful and superbly written history of U.S. policy toward Latin America is Beneath the United
States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America, by Lars
Shoultz. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). Another
excellent history and detailed review of the Good Neighbor Policy
is Peter H. Smith’s Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S.-Latin
American Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
For FDR’s speeches, see: Addresses and Messages of Franklin
D. Roosevelt (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1942).
Other principal sources included: Greg Robinson, By Order of
the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); and Douglas A.
Irwin and Randall S. Kroszner “Interests, Institutions, and
Ideology in Securing Policy Change: The Republican Conversion
to Trade Liberalization after Smoot-Hawley,” Journal of Law and
Economics 42 (October 1999).
This policy review was written by the three senior program staff of the IRC (online at www.irc-online.org): Tom Barry, Laura
Carlsen, and John Gershman. Barry is the IRC’s policy director, Carlsen directs the IRC Americas Program, and Gershman is the
IRC codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus, a joint IRC-IPS program.
IRC P OLICY R EVIEW
APRIL 2005
PRODUCTION INFORMATION
Produced by the International Relations Center (IRC)
“People-Centered Policy Alternatives Since 1979”
Writers: Tom Barry, Laura Carlsen, John Gershman
Production & Layout: Tonya Cannariato
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS CENTER, IRC
GENERAL INFORMATION
Box 2178 · Silver City · NM 88062-2178
The IRC is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit policy studies center supported by
Email: [email protected]
members, foundations, and faith-based organizations. FPIF is a joint project of
Web location: http://www.irc-online.org/content/commentary/2005/0503ggn.php the IRC and the Institute for Policy Studies.