ABSTRACT
In the 1980 presidential election campaign, Ronald Reagan forces accused the incumbent Jimmy Carter Democrats of having mishandled everything, from causing a catastrophic erosion of US military and economic power to dangerously undermining the nation’s strategic position in the hemisphere by helping the Sandinistas gain power in Nicaragua. Central to the Reagan campaign's foreign policy framework was the conviction that the Soviet Union was the focal source of all regional trouble spots, be it Central America or the Middle East. The Reagan administration, determined to prove President Carter wrongheaded for applying human rights sanctions against military dictators, swiftly resumed aid to military dictatorships, euphemistically renamed "friendly authoritarians." From the Latin American viewpoint, one of the Reagan administration’s most regressive features, and one that put in question the wisdom of US leadership, was a cavalier disregard for the rules guiding inter-American relations.
