Throughout the post- World War II period, the United States has intervened in the internal affairs of various Latin American countries on numerous occasions. The general forms that such intervention has taken have been diplomatic, economic, and military in a wide variety of sequences and combinations 1 For example, in Nicaragua the United States used a combination of diplomatic and economic pressure combined with direct support for irregular Nicaraguan military forces (the Contras) to pressure the Sandinista government. In El Salvador, the Reagan and Bush administrations supplied massive amounts of economic aid, together with military arms and advisers; to a series of Salvadoran governments they supported in order to prevent Marxist guerrillas from coming to power.
In spite of the fact that U.S. intervention has been a constant of Latin American political life during the post-World War II period, the direct combat involvement of U.S. troops has been rare. While the United States has frequently used military measures to supplement its economic and diplomatic strategies, these measures have generally stopped short of the direct insertion of U.S. military forces. Since World War II, the United States has only directly committed its troops to combat in Latin America on three occasions: the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989.
Even more uncommon have been instances where the United States has inserted its military forces in a unilateral fashion without some form of support from other hemispheric nations. The Dominican intervention was supported by an Inter-American Peace Force (IAPF) that was patched together under the auspices of the Organization of American States (OAS). The Grenada operation was backed by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). Only the Panama invasion lacked even such symbolic support, thus constituting the first unilateral use of direct U.S. military force in more than sixty years.................
