Soviet Aims in Central America: The Case of Nicaragua

Using Nicaragua as a case study, this book demonstrates how Soviet foreign policy has been the instrument for projecting Moscow’s power and influence in a region that has been in the U.S. sphere of influences since 1898. Soviet Aims in Central America lays down the facts about the Soviets’ drive since the 1950s to undermine U.S. influence in Central America by fueling guerrilla wars. G. W. Sand examines key Sandinista, Castroite, and Guatemalan Communist documents and reveals how Soviet military power is being used by the Sandinistas and their Cuban allies to consolidate power, threaten Nicaragua’s neighbors, and ultimately revolutionize all of Central America. This, Sand claims, threatens the future of the United States itself.

The foreword by former ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis A. Tambs, chillingly describes the unprecedented threat to U.S. security by Soviet satellization of Central American countries. Sand begins the book with a detailed review of Soviet aims and strategies in the Americas. The book offers a history of the Sandinista movement as well as Soviet foreign policy toward Nicaragua. Further chapters explore the Sandinistas’ record with regard to human rights and the current civil war in Nicaragua. Sand’s detailed reading of Central American Communist documents reveals Soviet aims for the region. Finally, the book offers a possible strategy for averting Moscow’s incursion into the United States’ sphere of influence. Students of political science and scholars of Central America, or anyone interested in this volatile region, will find Soviet Aims in Central America provocative reading.

GREGORY WILLIAM SAND is Adjunct Professor of International Relations in the Master of the Arts Program in International Relations at Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri. In addition to researching a companion volume to Soviet Aims in Central America, on the crisis in U.S. foreign policy in the Caribbean and Central America, Dr. Sand is the recipient of a Research Grant from the Harry S. Truman Library Institute to complete research for a book on Truman’s post-Presidential years, 1953-1972.