Ch. 17

This chapter made me reflect on a book I had read titled "Empires Workshop. Some of this chapter deals with Latin America, and Empire's Workshop talks about the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America. It talks a lot about "gunboat diplomacy". This meant that at times the U.S. would threaten or even attack countries in Latin America when they acted contrary to U.S. interests. A prime example of this would be Commodore Perry's trip to Japan, in which a display of U.S. naval power opened up Japanese markets to American goods. Other examples include the Barbary Wars, the Colombian-Panama spilt, or the U.S. occupation of Veracruz, Mexico. Some more recent examples include the invasion of Grenada and Panama. The book concludes that a lot of the tactics the U.S. uses today in the Middle East originated in U.S. expeditions into Latin America. Here's a link to the book, now aviable for free online via google. http://books.google.com/books?id=t5itdZ7oycUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false