U.S. Policies Towards Latin America Since The End Of The Cold War

Idealism and realism are two indexes of the U.S. policy to Latin America. The aim of U.S. policy is idealism and the method is realism. I analyze the history of U.S. policy with idealism and realism first and then the policy of post-cold war.After the cold war, the world shows a trend to be "one super-power and several powerful nations" . As the only super power in the world, U. S. take part in the affairs Europe, Asia, Africa and all around the world, such as promoting the expansion of NATO, settling Kosovo Crisis and Gulf Crisis, creating Afghanistan War and Iraq war. U. S. paid less attention to its backyard-Latin America, and even dismissed and treated them coldly. While maintain the leadership of U.S. in Latin America, the strategy of U. S. is to guard its peace and stability, insist in the U. S. developing model. At the same time, U. S. helps the Latin America countries to conquer financial crisis, debt crisis and drugs trafficking to less the influence to itself. The biggest achievement is the founding of NAFTA, however, it does not spread over the whole western hemisphere in 2005. In this context, three presidents of post-cold war are focusing on consolidating democracy, promoting economic cooperation and eliminating new security threat such as terrorism.After the collapse of Former Soviet Union, Latin America came into a stable development era in political domain. Neo-liberalism became popular, representative democracy were strengthened and the influence of U.S. are increased. However, after the entering into new century, Latin America are getting more self independent and self rely on, more and more Latin America countries are trying to keep distance with U.S.. Facing developing Latin America countries, U.S. try its best, by two methods: support and contain, to make sure that Latin America goes ahead in theway of democracy and liberty. So as to maintain an America of U.S..The last decade of cold war is the "lost decade" of Latin America. After the cold war, Latin America came into a low speed but stable economic improvement era. From 1997 to 2002, another 5 years disturbance is experienced by most Latin America countries. But they recovered till now.As the leader, driver and locomotive of Latin America economy, U.S. takes this chance to promote the neo-liberalism to be developed in Latin America. And U.S. contends for economic leadership with regional power. It also stimulates U.S. to pay more attention to Latin America.