ABSTRACT
For four and a half decades, the Cold War offered Americans a prism through which to view the three-quarters of humanity who live in the impoverished countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The United States fought or funded wars and covert operations in dozens of these countries-including Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Iran, Korea, Nicaragua, and Vietnam-with the stated goal of preventing the spread of Sovietbacked communism. Shaped to meet this goal, U.S. economic and military policies toward the so-called Third World, or South, were relatively simple and straightforward.
