Hemispheric Relations in the Twenty-First Century

At the end of the Cold War, U.S.–Latin American relations retained several historic characteristics. Wide asymmetries in economic and military power, for example, still separated the two Americas, and regional resentment lingered over the United States’ Cold War interventions, Central American policy, and relatively hands-off posture toward international debt negotiations. Moreover, while global bipolarity had ended, the Western Hemisphere’s unipolarity had not. If anything, unipolarity had been enhanced by the Soviet Union’s disappearance and America’s new status as the world’s only superpower.