ABSTRACT
Using the sphere-of-influence approach is worthwhile, as we have seen, to explain US policy in Latin America in the 1898-1933 era. It may also be a useful method of analyzing three cases of US intervention: Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, and the Dominican Republic in 1965. As in the Guatemalan case and the later campaign against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, US policy seems to have been activated by ideological antipathy coupled with the cold war power struggle. The Cuban situation was moving from a minor disturbance to a cold war crisis. US policy toward the Dominican Republic from 1960 to 1965 is an excellent example of the tensions between tradition and change in US foreign policy and between the demands of short-term stability and long-term solutions to political problems. The removal of Trujillo gave the Kennedy administration an opportunity to achieve stability in the Dominican Republic through democratic means.
