Stephanie Huezo. Review of Jarquín, Mateo. The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews

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Huezo on Jarquín, 'The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History'

Jarquín, Mateo.  The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2024. 336 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 9781469678498.

Reviewed by Stephanie Huezo (Fordham University)
Published on H-LatAm (November, 2024)
Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz (Johns Hopkins University)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=60842

The year 1979 brought intense change in Nicaragua and the broader Western Hemisphere. That year, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) successfully overthrew the US-backed Somoza family dictatorship, which had held power for more than four decades. This historic moment provided inspiration for revolutionaries throughout Central and Latin America generally but also generated concern and fear for the United States in the context of the global Cold War. What followed was a decade-long struggle to fulfill the revolution’s goals of socioeconomic and political change in the face of internal and external challenges. English-language scholarship on the rise and fall of the Sandinista Revolution has primarily been told from a US perspective. But the regional history of the revolution provides us with a more complete understanding of its successes and failures as well as its impact in the rest of Latin America.

Mateo Jarquín’s book, The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History, contributes to this regional perspective of one of the most well-known revolutions in twentieth-century Latin America. As the title suggests, Jarquín dives into the international history of the Sandinistas, emphasizing the role of Nicaraguan and Latin America leaders in defining the Sandinistas’ political project. This is his major contribution. Moving beyond the framework of US intervention in Cold War Latin America, Jarquín highlights the role of other regional actors like Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela in dictating the Sandinistas’ revolutionary trajectory.

His identity as the son of Sandinista diplomats and his personal experiences of learning about the revolution through an international lens while living outside of Nicaragua shaped his approach in focusing on the “thinking and decision making of national elites” (p. xvi) as well as Latin American diplomats. In order to center the narrative on these historical actors, Jarquín relies on archival sources from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and the United States as well as interviews with top Sandinista Front officials. While these documents provide evidence of the Sandinistas’ military, political, and diplomatic actions, the interviews with Sandinistas and Latin American political figures add another layer of complexity to understanding the changing views of the revolution. This impressive multisited research and access to interviewees due to his proximity to national elites through family connections allows Jarquín to argue that the “revolution was shaped [and reshaped] by how it fit within a global picture” (p. 6).

Taking a top-down approach to the Sandinista Revolution, Jarquín organizes his book in four parts that closely tie in with the three phases of the Sandinista period: “insurrection and state breakdown, consolidation in power, and civil war” (p. 6). Part 1, “Origins, 1933-1979,” provides the historical context that led to the success of Nicaragua’s revolution. As a left-wing guerrilla organization, in the 1970s the FSLN was weak and divided. The three tendencies (or factions) that made up the FSLN—the Guerra Popular Prolongada (GPP) tendency, the Tendencia Proletaria (TP), and the Tendencia Insurreccional (or Tercerista tendency)—had varied goals and approaches to taking power. And while Jarquín explains these differences, he privileges the Terceristas’ work as it reveals best the diplomatic choices made that led to Somoza’s defeat. After creating a revolutionary junta and outlining their revolutionary agenda, Tercerista leaders sought foreign support, first by Venezuela’s president Carlos Andrés Pérez. Cuba, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Panama would later offer support. Jarquín demonstrates that despite these leaders’ differing interests and political stance (Pérez was an anticommunist), each wanted Somoza out. They provided weapons and military expertise. Additionally, Jarquín argues that these regional leaders also isolated Somoza diplomatically while legitimizing the Sandinistas’ armed approach. In effect, Jarquín asserts that external support and political connections that helped Sandinista leaders take power.

After a detailed demonstration of the pivotal role of Nicaragua’s Latin American neighbors in Somoza’s defeat, the book moves on to discuss the challenges Sandinistas faced as they consolidated their power. The broad-based revolutionary coalition that helped bring Sandinistas to power now presented obstacles in implementing a governing style. As Sandinista leaders gained state control and carried out redistributive economic policies, the moderate and conservative members of their anti-Somoza coalition became alienated. And while internal divisions arose in the country, the FSLN government strove to create friendly diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. But their relationship with Cuba and its support to the Salvadoran guerrilla organization, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), alarmed the United States, especially under the Reagan administration, which viewed Central America as a hotbed for communism. What followed is well known among scholars of Latin America and US intervention—the Contra War—but before getting there, Jarquín reveals how countries like Venezuela and Mexico used Nicaragua’s revolution and early years of consolidating power to minimize US intervention in Latin America. Once again, the role of Latin American leaders during the Sandinista Revolution complicates the history of the Cold War in the region. Nicaragua’s revolutionary outcome and future was not based solely on US foreign policies but also on local and regional interests and desires.

It is this complexity that also animated the Contra War. In the third section, “War, 1982-1985,” Jarquín argues that the Contra War was both a war of foreign aggression and at the same time a civil war, moving away from narratives that claim one stance over the other. While the US government did heavily arm and financially support the contras to undermine FSLN power and supposedly contain communism, there were social projects like land reform that also served to push sectors of society to support the US-backed contras. Heavily relying on written personal accounts and interviews with Sandinista commanders, Jarquín demonstrates why peasant farmers joined the contras despite being a central population for the new government’s revolutionary projects. While he includes a 1991 oral history report of peasant contra commanders, this section leaves us wanting more. How exactly did rural Nicaraguans experience land reform? Did others outside of the “middle peasantry” (p. 130) support the contras as well? Of course, as in any monograph, the author must make choices, and Jarquín chose to stay within the lens of diplomacy. But the inclusion of peasant voices in a discussion about land reform would have provided a more nuanced view of this project and its connection to contra support.

The last chapter of part 3 as well as the last section of the book (part 4, “Peace, 1986-1989”) highlights once again the importance of diplomacy in the Sandinista Revolution. While the Sandinistas were fighting the US-backed contras, Latin American governments were carefully watching the potential consequences of this war. Latin American leaders worried about the United States’ view of Nicaragua as a proxy war battleground of the Cold War. If Nicaragua continued with its revolution, the United States could justify a military invasion that would affect the whole region. To quell any possible US invasion in Latin America, leaders from Venezuela, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia came up with a diplomatic solution, the Contadora process, to bring an end to the war in Nicaragua. While Contadora did not lead to any substantial change when it was created in 1983, it did eventually lead to the Central American peace process ushered in by Costa Rican president Óscar Arias. Just like the Contadora, these peace negotiations limited US foreign policy in the country. Even with these changes, the Sandinistas would not continue in power; in 1990, Nicaragua democratically elected Violetta Chamorro (former member of the Sandinista junta) to become president, delivering a heavy blow to revolutionary projects in the Latin American region. Yet, some Sandinista leaders conclude that the legacy of the revolution wasn’t lasting socioeconomic changes but democracy. Considering the aftermath of the revolution and Nicaragua’s current political situation, one must consider what definition of democracy these leaders used before accepting this legacy.

For its analysis on the diplomatic history of the Sandinista Revolution, this book is a must-read for those interested in Nicaragua, Central America, Latin American relations, and even US intervention in Latin America. Ultimately, this book calls us to see the Sandinista revolution not just as a Nicaraguan event nor a Central American one but a truly regional historical moment that defined the end of Cold War Latin America.

Citation: Stephanie Huezo. Review of Jarquín, Mateo. The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History. H-LatAm, H-Net Reviews. November, 2024.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60842

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Atkinson on Rollo, 'Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire' [Review] (H-Net Reviews)

Estamos vivenciando o fim de uma era? O fim da expansão contínua do império americano e o início da re-ascensão do Império do Meio (em sua fase política comunista), depois de dois séculos e meio de ascensão do primeiro e do declínio do segundo? 

Pode ser, mas é um processo que pode se passar pacificamente, ou envolver algum conflito bilateral, uma vez que se trata de um processo diferente do que houve durante a era anterior, quando os dois impérios estavam relativamente ou absolutamente desconectados. Desta vez, há uma grande interdependência (já foi melhor) e intensos contatos entre os dois impérios, diretamente e nas zonas de fricção (Taiwan e Rússia, para mencionar apenas duas), o que pode comandar uma convivência em bons termos ou atiçar conflitos já existentes. Este livro trata do passado e não do presente ou do futuro, mas ele oferece boas indicações sobre como abordar essa MAIS IMPORTANTE relação da atual geopolítica mundial, mais até do que o desafio da Rússia, que pode ser contido no continente europeu.

As próximas décadas já são a de uma nova corrida armamentista, nuclear e espacial, e de uma disputa de arrogâncias que pode descambar para um conflito direto. O que significa que não haverá muito espaço para a cooperação conjunta em benefício dos países mais pobres, mas uma competição sem qualquer convergência de objetivos entre os dois grandes impérios da atualidade.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 19/05/2024

Atkinson on Rollo, 'Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire' [Review]

H-Net Reviews

Rollo, Stuart.  Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023. 296 pp. $55.95 (cloth), ISBN 9781421447384.

Reviewed by David C. Atkinson (Purdue University)
Published on H-Diplo (May, 2024)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=60309

Stuart Rollo’s Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire is a richly kaleidoscopic contribution to the ever-burgeoning literature on US-China relations. Rollo situates the Sino-US relationship in terms of the rise and fall of American empire, and this is the book’s most important interpretive contribution. Focusing on the context and character of Americans’ evolving disposition toward China over the last 250 years, he begins with an overview of US continental colonization and Americans’ subsequent expansion into the Pacific Ocean. He concludes with President Joseph Biden’s attempt to resuscitate the diminished structures of the US-dominated liberal internationalist order. In between, Rollo entwines his evaluation of American engagements with China with an expertly rendered narrative of imperialism and foreign relations, blending historical and international relations perspectives throughout. It is an erudite and informative synthesis that should appeal to all H-Diplo readers, as well as our students and members of the public who seek a clear understanding of why contemporary US-Chinese relations remain so fraught in our present moment, and how we got here.

Terminus is a versatile book that can be read in multiple registers. Rollo’s narrative is especially valuable for the way he weaves four distinct narrative threads together. On one level, it is a useful survey of Sino-US relations, albeit one that emphasizes the perspectives of American rather than Chinese interlocuters in that relationship. Readers looking for the Chinese perspective, or a greater focus on traditional diplomatic relations, will find it lacking compared to Warren I. Cohen’s still essential America’s Response to China (2019), for example. But that is not Rollo’s purpose. Rather, Terminus seeks to integrate that story into the history of American empire and expansion. On that level, it offers something particularly novel. Historians of American imperialism might balk at Rollo’s emphasis on the imperial rather than colonial manifestations of Americans’ desire for economic, if not territorial, suzerainty in Aisa, but again, that is not his objective: how Americans conceived of China (Qing, Nationalist, and Communist) in relation to the rise and fall of American empire (commercial, financial, territorial, military, and ideational) is the focus. In addition to interlacing these themes, on another level Rollo pays regular attention to the ideas of those theorists and strategists who whetted American appetites when it came to China, combining historical and international relations scholarship and perspectives throughout the narrative. We hear from a large cast of both critics and boosters of American power from across the centuries, including Karl Marx, John Atkinson Hobson, Nicholas Spykman, William Appleman Williams, and Andrew Bacevich to name a few. Finally, the book can be read as a very engaging survey of US foreign relations writ large, since Rollo never confines himself to the transpacific lens, and instead constantly keeps American visions of China in the same frame as Americans’ conceptions of a broader global imperium.

Terminus is therefore best understood as an alloy, in that it derives its strength from the mixture of these four interlacing narratives and frames. The result is a concise and accessible book that offers an adept historical overview of China’s changing significance to American policymakers, theorists, and strategists from independence to the present.

The book is divided into three sections, each encompassing a distinct phase of American ambitions for China. Part 1 traces the story from the aftermath of independence to the turn of the twentieth century and focuses on the commercial and financial aspirations of American merchants, statesmen, and strategists during that century. In the first two chapters, Rollo roots his narrative in a familiar story of westward expansion characterized by violent Native dispossession and the insatiable drive for land and commercial access to Asia. In that context, China especially enraptured those seeking to exploit Asia’s potentially lucrative markets, goods, and raw materials. Rollo is attentive to the domestic and international contexts that both facilitated and inhibited the realization of these prospects—whether real or imagined—and he emphasizes the internal and external ruptures that catalyzed the Qing dynasty’s nineteenth-century decline. This part of the book culminates in the convulsion of late nineteenth-century US imperialism, and Rollo rightly focuses on the major manifestations of that paroxysm in the Asia-Pacific region. The Open-Door Notes and the Boxer Rebellion receive particular attention, and Rollo is attentive to the racial and geostrategic anxieties that suffused the most capacious cravings of those who viewed China as an outlet not only for American goods, but also American capital and civilization.

Part 2 addresses the twentieth-century phase of US economic and strategic predominance, from the emergence of American power following the First World War to the ostensive triumph of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Rollo unsurprisingly foregrounds the American and Japanese competition for East Asian predominance at the core of this section’s first chapter, orienting his analysis productively toward modern industrial warfare’s thirst for strategic raw materials. From this perspective, both contenders perceived China as a repository of essential minerals like manganese and tungsten that would consolidate their prospective regional—and in the case of the United States, global—primacy. Chapter 5 broadens its frame commensurate with the now truly global aspirations of American power. The allure of potential markets and investment opportunities in China and elsewhere now gave way to more sophisticated geostrategic conceptions of global capitalist integration and cooperation. Commercial dominance remained an important objective, but security and prosperity now required the creation and management of an intricate, internationally panoptic liberal-democratic architecture, one dominated of course by the United States. In Asia, that manifested in what Rollo provocatively calls an “American-led Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere,” anchored by Japan (pp. 120-121).

The sixth chapter addresses the emergence of the People’s Republic and the Cold War, which in Rollo’s interpretation sees China evoke a more dangerously existential threat to the broader hegemonic project fostered by the United States, not just in Asia but around the world. He sees the wars in Korea and Vietnam as exemplars of that project, but also harbingers of its demise. It is the one chapter in which Rollo’s argument might have benefited from more room to breathe, since we are hurled at breakneck speed through some of the most consequential moments in the history of Sino-US relations. This includes not only those devasting American wars in Southeast and East Asia, but also President Richard Nixon’s rapprochement, President Jimmy Carter’s fulfillment of recognition, and the profound economic transformations of the Ronald Reagan years, not to mention those of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

The third part of Terminus transitions to the post-Cold War era through the present. Here, Rollo recounts the flush of victory that encouraged American policymakers to confidently thrust the open door upon the globe. The desire to secure markets, raw materials, and investment opportunities reigned supreme, as successive US presidents and their counselors inside and outside government tried to reshape the world in America’s apparently transcendent image. For Rollo, economic access and predominance remained paramount, but contemporary presidents differed in their enthusiasm for strategic competition with China. It waned during the Bill Clinton years, during which American officials believed the gospel of globalization would convert Chinese Communist leaders to the benefits of democratization and neoliberal economics. Strategic competition nevertheless waxed under the presidency of George W. Bush, exacerbated by the events of September 11 and the global war on terror. American imperial overreach during the Bush years diminished the United States’ capacity to reshape the world in its image, and China seized the opportunity to reorient and strengthen its own economy, eventually supplanting the US as the global economic hegemon by many metrics.

Chapters 8 and 9 deal with American attempts to alternatively understand, manage, resist, or reset that reality. The final chapter is, from my perspective, the most generative and thought-provoking. Rollo proves as fluent in the lexicon of modern security studies as he is with its historical antecedents. His assessment of our contemporary options to grapple with the threat and possibilities posed by Xi Jinping’s resurgent China is clear-eyed and judicious. Rollo’s estimation of the most productive path forward reflects that most venerable analogy, favored by generations of American national security personnel: the Goldilocks principle. While President Donald Trump favored a white-hot porridge laced with quid pro quos, zero-sum transactions, and military superiority, others have mooted the cold gruel of retrenchment. Rollo not surprisingly favors the more palatable oats of “offshore balancing and mutual deterrence and denial” (p. 206). That might not set the taste buds alight, but it is much less likely to cause irreparable indigestion.

The final chapter concludes with one of the book’s most intriguing points. Here, Rollo posits our contemporary conundrum: how to ensure peace between “a rising Chinese empire and a declining American one” (p. 208). This brief recognition that China is erecting an imperial structure of its own—one that reflects its own interests and yet echoes many elements of the now deteriorating edifice constructed by the United States—is a tantalizing gesture toward the next century of US-Chinese relations. It also demands that we retrain our focus less on American intentions and possible rear-guard actions, and more on the objectives of China’s ruling class as it looks toward the next century. Others are already doing that work, of course, and Rollo’s Terminus will be a very useful text for them as they come to grips with the American half of that equation.[1] The nightly gaggle of pundits who confidently espouse the unique dangers of China’s rise would do particularly well to take cognizance of Rollo’s historicization of the United States’ attitudes toward global power across the last two centuries. They may find more resonances than dissonances between the waning American imperium they lament, and the expanding Chinese imperium they decry.

Note

[1]. See. for example, Suisheng Zhao, The Dragon Roars Back: Transformational Leaders and Dynamics of Chinese Foreign Policy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022); Susan L. Shirk, Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022); and Bates Gill, Daring to Struggle: China’s Global Ambitions under Xi Jinping (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).

David C. Atkinson is associate professor of history at Purdue University. He is the author of The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Labor Migration in the British Empire and the United States (2017), along with numerous articles and chapters on international migration, diplomacy, and empire.

Citation: David C. Atkinson. Review of Rollo, Stuart. Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. May, 2024.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=60309

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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From Amazon: 

Terminus: Westward Expansion, China, and the End of American Empire Kindle Edition

by Stuart Rollo (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition

3.0 3.0 out of 5 stars

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A sweeping narrative of America's imperial history and its long entanglement with China.

In Terminus, Stuart Rollo examines the origins and trajectory of American empire in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on its westward expansion and historic entanglement with China. American foreign and strategic policy in this region, Rollo argues, has always been shaped by broader economic and political concerns centered on China. China's current rise, and the economic and strategic systems that China is developing, represents the most serious challenge to the structure of American empire to date.

Rollo paints a sweeping historical narrative of American imperial history and its relationship with China from 1776 to the present. Grounded in archival research, official and personal correspondence, policy documents, declassified intelligence material, and congressional records, Terminus traces the development of American empire building from the pre-independence period to the eve of World War I, arguing that this new empire was primarily driven by commercial interests in China. Rollo explores shifts in global power, resource politics, and international economic structures that led the United States to transition from one of several imperial powers to the world's sole superpower by the last decade of the twentieth century. Finally, he examines the decline of American empire since its brief period of unipolarity in the 1990s, explaining the new pressures and challenges posed by the rise of China.

Rollo proposes three scenarios for how the United States might manage its inevitable imperial decline: a vain attempt to shore up and extend the empire, an exploitative hegemony, or a post-imperial foreign policy. This last option would work to repair the damaged fabric of American social and political life, providing a long-term, stable foundation for national security, prosperity, and the well-being of its citizens. All empires eventually end, but with the benefit of hindsight, Rollo urges us to consider how to engineer a softer landing.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Important, insightful, and timely, this is an extraordinary synthesis of an incredibly comprehensive subject. I could never have imagined it possible to summarize the economic, political, and cultural history of US-Chinese relations over 225 years, yet Rollo has succeeded. The research is impressive, both for its thoroughness and selectivity.
―Walter Allan McDougall, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest

The first book to develop a historical analysis of the American empire through the lens of the US-China relationship, Terminus addresses the most challenging issue in the contemporary world: the great power rivalry between the United States and China. Rollo offers a comprehensive survey of the rivalry, entanglement, and decoupling of the United States and China in global trade, investment, and production as well as the growing role of China in undermining the US empire in such areas as capital formation, technology innovation, and global production and supply chains.
―Baogang He, Deakin University, author of Contested Ideas of Regionalism in Asia

Narrating the rise and decline of the American empire through the prism of US-China relations, Stuart Rollo has written a succinct, sophisticated, and hard-hitting critique. The appearance of Terminuscould not be more timely―nor or its contents more worrisome.
―Andrew Bacevich, Chairman and Cofounder, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

 

About the Author

Stuart Rollo (SYDNEY, AUS) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

 

Product details

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023. 296 pp. $55.95 (cloth), ISBN 9781421447384

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BWSKD9VM

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Johns Hopkins University Press (October 31, 2023)

Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 31, 2023

Language ‏ : ‎ English

File size ‏ : ‎ 4171 KB