A dangerous neutrality: Ronald Reagan, Argentina, and the south Atlantic crisis

Cold War historians traditionally portray Third World nations as trapped between two world superpowers, however, the reality is complicated and much more interesting. While the Cold War often played out in foreign theatres through foreign actors, the world was not a static chessboard and these actors were not simple proxies. On the contrary, the United States and the Soviet Union struggled to manage the regional politics of nonaligned nations and the goals of their own international agendas. In Latin America, where the Cold War was rarely cold, political and military leaders adopted strategies of accommodation or opposition to negotiate their asymmetric positions. Thus, this thesis seeks to address the Cold War myth of superpower bilateralism through a transnational analysis of the Falklands War/Guerra del Atlantico Sur. I argue that President Ronald Reagan collaborated with the Argentine military in Nicaragua and El Salvador as a means to circumvent public opinion and congressional oversight. The Argentine decision to invade the Malvinas/Falklands Islands imperiled this strategy and forced the Reagan administration into a compromised position. While Argentine leaders hoped to capitalize on their budding alliance with the Reagan administration, the British expected nothing less than complete political and military support.