Dealing with Dictators : Dilemmas of US Diplomacy and Intelligence Analysis, 1945-1990

Analysis of the foreign policy dilemmas U.S. leaders have faced in dealings with dictatorships in China, the Congo, Iran, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Iraq before the Gulf War.

The United States continues to proclaim its support for democracy and its opposition to tyranny, but American presidents often have supported dictators who have allied themselves with the United States.

This book illustrates the chronic dilemmas inherent in U.S. dealings with dictators under conditions of uncertainty and moral ambiguity.

Dealing with Dictators offers in-depth analysis of six cases: the United States and China, 1945-1948; U.N. intervention in the Congo, 1960-1965; the overthrow of the Shah of Iran; U.S relations with the Somoza regime in Nicaragua; the fall of Marcos in the Philippines; and U.S. policy toward Iraq, 1988-1990. The authors' fascinating and revealing accounts shed new light on critical episodes in U.S. foreign policy and provide a basis for understanding the dilemmas that U.S. decision makers confronted. The chapters do not focus on whether U.S. leaders made the "right" or "wrong" decisions, but instead seek to deepen our understanding of how uncertainty permeated the processThis approach makes the book invaluable to scholars and students of government and history, and to readers interested in the general subject of how intelligence analysis interacts with policymaking.