ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Washington's efforts to reconstitute its institutional power in Latin America. It examines the impact of the NLL on the inter-American system, after providing background on the relationship between the United States and the OAS. Created out of aegis of the Pan-American Union following the Second World War, it is the centrepiece of the inter-American system formalised by the 1947 Rio Treaty. A report by Senator Richard Lugar highlighted the OAS's financial precariousness while arguing that it had failed to address the erosion of democratic practices. Although it had slipped from Washington's grip, Latin America's new regionalism meant a reformed OAS was essential to US objectives in the hemisphere. As the preceding analysis illustrates, US institutional power was, and is, bound up with other forms of power in the international relations of Western hemisphere. The chapter examines the impact of the NLL on the inter-American system, after providing background on relationship between the United States and the OAS.
