Constitutionalism Abroad and At Home: The United States Senate and the Alliance for Progress, 1961–1967

Abstract

assistant secretary of state for interAmerican affairs in John F. Kennedy's administration, Edwin Martin, testified on 3 October 1963 before a closed session of the senate's Foreign Relations Committee to defend the administration's handling of a military coup in the Dominican Republic. While the administration privately conceded the coup to be a grave setback, committee Republicans generally supported the restrained welcome given to the military regime which had replaced Juan Bosch's democratically elected government, whereas most committee Democrats were sharply critical. Wayne Morse (D-Oregon) attributed the disagreement to Kennedy's failure elsewhere in the Americas to promote 'constitutionalism' with enough vigour.1 Morse's testiness was more remarkable given that, three years earlier, both the executive and legislative branches had thought generous economic aid combined with rhetorical support for democracy the best way to wage the cold war in Latin America. But they soon parted company. Support for the Alliance for Progress waned not only because the administration rarely achieved its stated goals in Latin America; it also fell victim to ideological differences between the president and various senate factions which coloured other disputes over how much freedom of action the executive branch should be allowed in its conduct of foreign affairs. In this sense, the fate of the Alliance illustrates not only the difficulty of promoting democracy during the cold war, but also how differently the executive and legislative branches approach foreign affairs. Latin America provides some of the earliest evidence of the emergence of an empowered congressional perspective on US foreign policy, fuelled by the reaction against executive power caused by the war in Vietnam.