Imperialism and Intervention in the Third World: U.S. Foreign Policy and Central America

Abstract

To understand US foreign policy, and in particular its interventionist character in Central America, the Caribbean and South America, it is necessary to examine the relationship between the state and the banking, trade and investment interests that operate abroad. The central factor which has enabled the massive growth of US capital overseas has been the emergence and consolidation of the US state as an imperial state. The latter can be defined as those executive bodies or agencies charged with promoting and protecting the expansion of capital across state boundaries by the multinational corporations. The US imperial state exercises interrelated economic, coercive and ideological functions which operate to facilitate capital accumulation and reproduction on a worldwide scale. The economic apparatus includes both agencies serving particular forms of capital (e.g. Department of Agriculture) and agencies performing specific tasks that cut across the different forms of capital (e.g. Treasury and Commerce Departments) promoting investment, loans and trade. The Department of the Treasury also pursues the larger objective in the multilateral development banks (e.g. World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, international monetary Fund) through its responsibility f i r the appointment of US representatives to these 'international' institutions. The coercive apparatus includes the armed forces, the Central Intelligence Agency and other specialised intelligence bodies. The ideological apparatus serves to promote the legitimacy of imperial activities directly through the United States Information Agency and related propaganda arms of the state or through 'sub-contracted' activities related to the practices of unofficial groups.