Expert Bio

Michelle Paranzino is an assistant professor in the Strategy & Policy department at the US Naval War College. She has published as Reeves and Getchell and is @aucontrarian on Twitter and Spotify. She is the author of The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War: A Short History with Documents and is currently working on a book about the War on Drugs and Ronald Reagan.

Wilson Center Project

"The Soviet Union in Cold War Latin America"

Project Summary

This book examines US-Soviet-Latin American relations from the early 1950s through the collapse of the Soviet Union, with a particular focus on Guatemala under Árbenz, Fidel Castro's Cuba, Chile under Salvador Allende, and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The main argument of the book is that during the Cold War, Soviet policy was to encourage Latin American leaders to adopt non-aligned and independent foreign policies and to use the Soviet seat on the UN Security Council to demonstrate solidarity with Latin America and to provide a counterweight to US dominance of the Organization of American States.