“TIES OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY”:

The United States has historically pursued security in the Western Hemisphere with singular purpose. For more than a century, policymakers have worked to construct a sphere of influence in the region through which U.S. officials could enforce internal political stability and preempt external meddling by European powers, actions designed to advance the nation’s security interests. The United States has done so through the accumulation and projection of overwhelming economic, military, and political power—hegemony—relative to individual states in the region. To be sure, ideology, domestic politics, and the actions of Latin American governments have all influenced and shaped U.S. policies and outcomes—in certain cases decisively so. Yet the only consistently reliable guide to understanding the contours of inter-American state-to-state relations remains security. As political scientist Lars Schoultz argues: “If one wants to understand the core of United States policy toward Latin America, one studies security.”1 In this chapter, I explore the salience of that factor, focusing in particular on the Cold War and the attendant pursuit of it in Paraguay. For reasons rooted in that nation’s history, however, officials in Washington feared that the attainment of security would founder in the face of chronic political instability in Asunción. But with the rise to power of Alfredo Stroessner in 1954, those fears were quelled by the appearance of an authoritarian leader who was uniquely positioned to maintain political order and stability in Paraguay, and hence protect U.S. security interests.