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CHOICE Review

For those interested in the strategic rationale behind Reagan administration policy in Central America, this book provides an effective introduction. According to Ashby (a policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation), the USSR is pursuing a global plan to undermine the US's traditional hegemony over the Caribbean Basin, using Cuba as an example and surrogate. Covert and open assistance are given Marxist-Leninist movements. Ashby argues that unless the US begins to support countermeasures (e.g., aid to the Contras in Nicaragua), the threat to American security will require military intervention on a large scale. The major weakness in Ashby's analysis is lack of historical and social context. He emphasizes Soviet intervention, but overlooks the record of consistent American interference and its legacy, nor does he connect that record with social structures characterized by profound inequities. A military strategy isolated from such realities will fail. Other points of view are given in Tom Barry's Other Side of Paradise (CH, Apr '85), Chapters 1, 2, and 4 of With Friends Like These (1985), and Continuing Crisis, ed. by Marck Falcoff and Robert Royal (CH, Sep '87). Upper-division, graduate, and general readers.-P.M. Leary, College of the Virgin Islands