Cold Warriors & Coups D'etat

Résumé du livre

At the end of World War II, Brazil was one of the closest allies of the United States. Yet less than twenty years later, in 1964, American policy-makers actively supported a coup that ousted the constitutional president of Brazil and ushered in a military dictatorship. By drawing on archival sources in both countries, this study carefully unravels why relations deteriorated and assesses the consequences of the rift for each country. Weis situates his study amid American foreign policy in the cold war era. For its part, the United States came to judge all regimes by their degree of anticommunist rhetoric and their unqualified support for U.S. policy. Economic development, however, overshadowed the cold war for Brazil's leaders. Continually frustrated in their desire for American economic assistance, Brazil eventually sought to establish an independent position that aligned with the emerging Third World countries, a stance that particularly alarmed U.S. policymakers once Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959. Weis shows how Brazil's independent foreign policy doomed its alliance with the United States without changing its dependency on U.S. Capital.