ON GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY

Just finished reading Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat, a brilliant novel on the end of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. There is a lot to say about this book, particularly on the subject of the psychology of dictatorships: both the psychology of complicity and the relationship between power and eros. But in the interest of being fair -- since I criticized Bob Kagan's neo-imperialist view last week -- I should note that Vargas Llosa portrays the threat of an American invasion as an important bargaining chip for Balaguer in his struggles with the Trujillo family after the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in 1961. I don't know enough about these episodes to say anything profound, but according to Vargas Llosa, the lesson in DR was that American military power could be used as a cover for domestic reformers.

The issue is, of course, complicated. Despite the regime's complicity in genocide and widespread human rights abuses, Trujillo himself received American support until the 1950s, when the U.S. began subsidizing attempts to assassinate him.