Central American Crisis Analysis

Terry Sanford’s seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee exposed him to all of these foreign policy activities. After a trip to Nicaragua in 1987, one of his many trips to the region, Sanford wrote, “You could see poverty all around.” Continuing in his analysis, he wrote that the Sandinista-Contra conflict in Nicaragua was “all such a pathetic poverty-ridden sight that it’s too bad that we have been adding to the misery by promoting, if not insisting upon, war.” Sanford’s negative view of America’s realist strategy in Central America pushed him to find alternative solutions. Looking to the past for inspiration, he viewed the liberal structure set up during the 1940s as a source of inspiration. Specifically, he thought that a plan modeled …show more content…
One of the major reasons of this liberal inclination is that major international institutions founded on liberal principles, like the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme “offered valuable consultation and guidance” according to the Commission report. The Commission identified three major “roots” of the Central American Crisis: 1) political institutions in the region failed to advance during the economic expansion from 1950 to 1978; 2) the economic structures within the region failed to share economic growth and wealth in an equitable and sustainable way; 3) military intervention from governments outside the region complicated the already precarious situation. The last point implicitly rebuked the military-first policy advocated by the U.S. for decades, along with intervention from other countries, especially …show more content…
He voted to approve the United States-Canada free trade agreement in 1988 along with eighty-two other Senators. Nonetheless, he also co-sponsored a bill in that same year, which limited textile product imports. Although the bill did not get passed, he and a majority of Senators attempted to protect textile restrictions two years later through the Textile, Apparel, and Footwear Trade Act of 1990. A presidential veto killed the bill soon after. However, he also supported a free trade amendment to a broader trade bill in 1990 that reduced tariffs on rubber-soled shoes coming from the Caribbean Basin countries by 50 percent. Again, showing his equivocal stance on trade, he voted in 1991 for a resolution that failed the House and Senate, to not extend President Bush’s fast-track negotiating capabilities on trade with