Brenda Broussard
Capitalism and Globalization
Dr. Buzzanco F09
October 6, 2009
Review of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and The Rise of The
New Imperialism by Greg Grandin
Author, Greg Grandin, sets the ominous tone of this provocative study by leading
with a passage from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The connection Grandin formulates
between Frankenstein’s laboratory and Latin America’s relationship with the United
States is one of diabolical, ungodly, and deliberate evil. Grandin’s main argument is that
the United States used Latin American countries as a testing ground for their foreign
policy. More precisely, Latin American was the United States’ workshop (laboratory) for
empire.
Grandin leads his reader through a frenzy of events that span the United States’
existence and geographically cover the globe in an attempt to argue that Latin America
was important to the consolidation of a new, revolutionary imperialism (7). Grandin’s
logic is difficult to follow at times since his argument frequently discusses so many other
regions of the world. Instead of convincing the reader of the importance of foreign
relations with Latin America, Grandin appears to be arguing that America’s bumbling of
Vietnam is the true impetus to contemporary events in the Middle East and that
interventions in Latin America were just a sideshow. An ardent anti-war protestor,
Grandin reveals his personal biases against the American military system on nearly every
page. Like Shelley’s Frankenstein, Grandin seeks to shock the reader with the most
profound and gruesome details of Latin American atrocities that the United States
directly or indirectly sanctioned.
This is not a book for the weak at heart or for those not familiar with general U.S.
foreign policy history. Therefore, since the book is not intended for a reader who is new
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to the subject of U.S. interventionism, Grandin attempts to posit that his study introduces
to the foreign policy discourse the novelty of connecting Latin American involvement to
U.S. imperialism. Most readers should not find this a novel conception either, but
Grandin insists that previous studies always connect U.S. imperialism to ancient empires
and post WWII European policy. While this may not be the most accurate premise to
base a study on, Grandin’s text is not without merit. Rather than introducing anything
new, Empire’s Workshop serves as a synthesis of the methodological approaches that
historians have taken toward U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. The author discusses
the missionary and civilizing encroachment into the southern hemisphere. Capitalism gets
ample attention, especially when discussing how Washington supported and protected
American business interests abroad in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Cold
War rhetoric, gunboat diplomacy, and dollar diplomacy all have a part in the dialogue.
Grandin elucidates the theory that domestic policy is the driving force behind foreign
policy and even devotes a chapter on how the government manipulated the media in order
to sell American aggressive foreign policy to the public. Finally, terrorism and
counterterrorism (especially in during the Reagan administration) play the largest roles in
the argument with Grandin insisting that for the United States, counterterrorism is
synonymous with death squads.
Grandin’s chapter on the resurgence of a left in Latin America stands out as a
precursor of future studies. Grandin juxtaposes the new imperial right’s responses to
twenty-first century resistance from the democratically elected leftist leaders of Latin
America. The author’s brief treatment of this anti-globalization topic comes closer to
supporting his thesis than the rest of his chapters. The author demonstrates that the
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United States is at an impasse with foreign leaders that refuse to accept internationalism
on American terms and refuse to buckle under non-militaristic attempts by Washington to
persuade them to play by American rules. This in turn is prompting a return to military
and mercenary tactics funded by the United States. This is turn can easily be transferred
to understanding the increases in interventionism in the Middle East. Grandin,
unfortunately, holds this connection until the last chapter of his study and instead focuses
too much on the implementation of foreign policy during the eras of liberation theology
and the War on Drugs.
Overall, there is a vast amount of information in Grandin’s text that would serve
best as a springboard into more in-depth study. Grandin’s plethora of events and inability
to organize chronologically or spatially distracts from his argument. He may have
supported his thesis, but the reader has to sift through too much personal bias hubris and
draw too many conclusions throughout the text to remember just what the author set out
prove. This is one instance where intentions started out good, but the execution failed.