ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the problems and contradictions that emerge when the US government does decide to act in its foreign policy according to the principles of democracy. There is a persistent thread in twentieth century US foreign policy that cannot be ignored, that of the United States as the defender of democratic values. For US policymakers dealing with Latin America, a recurring dilemma has been how to promote democracy and refrain from intervention. A manifestation of the view of US foreign policy as a means of pursuing the global cause of democratic values is the human rights campaign of the 1970s. The original push for human rights came not from Carter, but from the US Congress at least three years prior to the 1976 campaign. The unexpected impact of the Organization of American States report about Somoza's human rights abuses encouraged the organization to extend its work to other cases, and Argentina was one of those selected.
