ABSTRACT
The prospects of a ‘new world order’ have been analysed extensively during the 1990s, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. However, the initial optimism evaporated quickly when the old world order proved to be too entrenched to show any significant change. The discussion about the post-Cold War world contemplated the role of peripheral states and the possibilities they had to change their position in the world system. There were some minor changes in the 1990s, like the signing of some free-trade agreements between developed and peripheral countries that promised to bring prosperity to some of the poor areas of the world. However, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, complicated everything in a substantial way. The emergence of terrorism as a serious threat affected in a negative way the process of globalization that was accelerated by the end of socialism, and put some shadows on the possibility of a prominent role of Third World countries in the world. As a result of the US war on terrorism, anti-American feelings spread all over the Third World (as well as in some other regions like Europe), which made a collaboration between the United States and the rest of the world much more difficult. In this context, one inevitable doubt was about the role of Latin American countries in the postSeptember 11 world. Latin America had played an important, though subordinate, role during the Cold War. Geographical proximity to the United States and the possibility that communism could ‘infect’ some countries of the Western hemisphere made the region an important piece for a game of ‘world chess’. Some countries, like Cuba, perfectly understood the nature of the game at that time and took advantage of it, by blackmailing the US with a military alliance with the Soviet Union. Some others received huge amounts of money for domestic reforms to prevent the spread of the communist ‘virus’. Certainly there was no room for revolutions in the continent (Cuba was the only exception) and those who defied US hegemony suffered the consequences. However, Latin America was important because the region was perceived by the US as its backyard. That is why American diplomacy put a great emphasis on the development of a collective security mechanism in the hemisphere, the Rio Pact. Of course there was no country on the continent that defied the military hegemony of the United States and those who attempted to develop nuclear capabilities were dissuaded from doing so. But the region mattered to the US, not because of its
direct ability to threaten American interests but because of its geographical proximity in a zero-sum game between the United States and the Soviet Union.
