OAS

OAS (est. 1948).The United States joined with the twenty Latin American nations to form the Organization of American States in 1948. During the 1970s, the English‐speaking Caribbean nations were added, and Canada became a member in 1990. The OAS was established to resolve regional disputes and to promote democracy, human rights, and social and economic progress. The OAS charter also codified the nonintervention pledge of Franklin D. Roosevelt's “Good Neighbor” policy of the 1930s. The charter did, however, permit collective action by a two‐thirds majority.

During the Cold War, the United States largely bypassed the OAS, because Latin Americans refused to compromise the nonintervention principle in the name of anticommunism. Acting unilaterally, the United States covertly destabilized allegedly Communist governments in Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964), and Chile (1970–73), and invaded the Dominican Republic (1965). At the time of the U.S. military involvement in the Dominican Republic, President Lyndon B. Johnson publicly repudiated the OAS charter, declaring in the Johnson Doctrine that the United States would not permit the establishment of a Communist government in the western hemisphere. During the 1980s, the Reagan administration withheld financial support from the OAS because members refused to support U.S. guerrilla warfare against the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. OAS members also condemned President George Bush's invasion of Panama (1989). To be sure, during 1960s, two‐thirds of the Latin American nations had followed the U.S. lead and supported sanctions against Fidel Castro's Cuba, because the Cuban revolutionary meddled in the affairs of his neighbors. But by the mid‐1970s, the majority of OAS members began to lift those sanctions.

In the post–Cold War era, the United States has shown renewed interest in the OAS on issues of democracy and human rights. In 1991, members developed a basis of action for when popularly elected leaders are overthrown, and the OAS subsequently imposed economic sanctions against Haiti when President Jean‐Bertrand Aristide was forcibly removed from office by the Haitian military. In 1994, the United States again acted unilaterally in restoring President Aristide to power by military means, although the OAS did not formally denounce the intervention.
[See also Caribbean and Latin America, U.S. Military Involvement in the; Cuba, U.S. Military Involvement in; Haiti, U.S. Military Involvement in; Inter‐American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance; Nicaragua, U.S. Military Involvement in; Panama, U.S. Military Involvement in.]

Bibliography

G. Pope Atkins , Latin America in the International Political System, 1977; 3rd. ed. 1995.
Gaddis Smith , The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945–1993, 1994.

Stephen G. Rabe