The geopolitics of security in the Americas : hemispheric denial from Monroe to Clinton /

Sicker surveys the doctrine of hemispheric denial from Monroe to Clinton, through which the US has purported to exclude any extra-hemispheric power from the Americas. An overview chapter is followed by six chapters dealing with successive historical periods in which the doctrine was applied unevenly, if expansively, over time. These historically oriented chapters provide a competent, if not original, synthesis of the development of the doctrine. Four of the six chapters cover the period through WW II and two others, one on the Rio Treaty and the Organization of American States and the other on US interventions, bring the survey up to the 1990s. Chapter 8 describes continuing inter-American conflicts, and a final chapter offers some conclusions. It is not clear how the "geopolitics" suggested in the title enriches the analysis, and the concluding chapter in fact is limited to a rather routine review of the narcotics problem as well as an alleged resurgence of Russian influence in the Americas. The theme of US-Latin American security relations is of general interest, but this specialized work is particularly oriented toward graduate students and researchers. M. A. Morris Clemson University