Central America: The key to OAS Inter-American peacekeeping, 1965-1967

"Central America: The Key to OAS Inter-American Peacekeeping 1965-1967", is an historical study illustrating how the isthmian states, whose diplomats carried the OAS resolution (6 May 1965) to create an Inter-American Peace Force (IAPF) for the Dominican crisis, managed to avoid and/or limit support of the IAPF, and then abandoned the whole idea, thereby killing a US plan for a permanent regional peacekeeping force in 1967. This study of US relations with Central America in the 1960s illustrates the perspectives of policymakers in the five isthmian states (OAS diplomats and governmental leaders) in response to US policy changes after the Cuban missile crisis, the military's rise to political power throughout Latin America, the changing objectives of the Alliance for Progress, and the ongoing regional integration in Central America--economic (Common Market) and mutual defense (CONDECA). Instead of acting as US policy "foils" for the OAS multilateral intervention, the isthmian emissaries shrewdly used diplomacy to increase their nations' autonomy by providing viable political options that satisfied cultural obligations for economic assistance and pressures for IAPF support, insured the continuance of US economic and military assistance and fulfilled OAS duties while maintaining national credibility in the Latin American community. The diplomats exploited the limits of US power to enable their governments to defy, act independently of, and even act contrary to Washington's pressures. In the aftermath of the 1965 Dominican crisis the Central American diplomats were instrumental in preventing the establishment of a permanent IAPF in 1967, and in rebalancing the OAS, restoring to primacy the Latin American states' major interest, economic development, instead of US mutual security concerns.