Which president instituted the good neighbor policy

According to Fortune magazine, by August only a small fraction of the American public—fewer than 7 percent—believed that Hitler had no political designs on either North or South America. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor created an immediate need to re-set the U. These are some of the diplomatic maneuvers — but President Roosevelt and his team also knew that, in addition to basic state-craft, they needed to reach the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans and invite them to re-imagine negative stereotypes of Latin Americans which painted Latinos as lazy, suspicious and uncivilized.

So they set about their task using the tried and true tools of imagineering — arts and leisure. It agreed not to contract debts which it could not pay back out of ordinary income. It undertook to consent to American intervention if peace and orderly government were threatened.

And it promised to lease or sell lands to the United States for naval bases and coaling stations. At various times in the first quarter of the twentieth century Marines were dispatched to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. Latin Americans naturally resented these interventions by their rich and powerful neighbor. Even the more distant South Americans whose affairs had not been directly affected by our interventions in the Caribbean area became suspicious of us.

The Spanish-American War had stimulated a strong current of pro-Spanish sentiment. Some Europeans, who also feared the growing power and influence of the United States in Latin America, ostentatiously offered sympathy and helped to keep the resentment in Latin America alive. This campaign had its political fruits. At the Pan-American Conference, held in Havana, Cuba, a direct and determined attack on our interventionist policy was led by Argentina.

Then, as now, Argentina was eager to play a leading role on the Latin-American stage and fearful lest the United States should prevent it. No matter how grave the provocation, or how pure our motives, the policy of intervention in the affairs of our neighbors had undoubtedly made us more enemies than friends. GI Roundtable Series. Corey Prize Raymond J. Cunningham Prize John H. Klein Prize Waldo G. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads.

Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Issues U. Foreign Policy The U. Government U. Liberal Politics U. Robert Longley. History and Government Expert. Robert Longley is a U. Facebook Facebook. Updated September 13, Its primary goal was to ensure mutual friendly relations between the U. In order to maintain peace and stability in the Western Hemisphere, the Good Neighbor Policy stressed non-intervention rather than military force.

The Good Neighbor Policy and the Pan-American "war propaganda" were further abandoned when the United States ignored free trade overtures and viewed Latin America merely as a supplier of raw materials and tropical foodstuffs.

As a result, Brazil began to restrict imports and to subsidize domestic industries, while drawing foreign companies to invest in Latin America caused friction with the United States, whose control over those economies began to slip. During the Cold War , the threat of Communist infiltration into poverty-striken neighbors to the south caused the United States to once again intervene.

Examples included Guatemala, where the CIA secretly intervened in , and in Cuba, where Fidel Castro , with his rise to power in , installed a government backed by the Soviet Union. Castro allowed the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles in Cuba a year later, to defend the island against continued threats from the United States.

Those missiles were later removed, but Cuba continued to receive aid from the Soviet Union. The U. During the s, Latin America was hurt by a jump in oil prices and a subsequent decline in foreign investment in those countries. Those countries expanded their investments in their own countries by amassing huge amounts of debt from money provided by international banks.