Good Neighbor Security: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Origins of U.S. National Security

Abstract

From 1937 to 1945 the United States enacted an extensive array of national security policies under the façade of the Good Neighbor Policy. The National Security Act in 1947 is typically represented as the initiation of the modern U.S. national security concept, neglecting FDR’s implementation of national security through the Good Neighbor Policy before World War Two. However, both multilaterally and unilaterally, U.S. policymakers used the Policy to achieve strategic goals that did not always benefit hemispheric security or Pan-Americanism. Often unilateral measures were instituted that bypassed hemispheric or bilateral cooperation, sometimes feigning agreements to ensure U.S. national security and core values remained safeguarded. Multilaterally, the U.S. dominated leadership within Pan-American institutions and proscribed a United States-security agenda that was followed by the other republics. It was in Latin America during the 1930s that the United States’ modern national security doctrine was established.