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In May 1965, when U.S. troops landed in the Dominican Republic, President Lyndon Johnson pronounced his "Johnson Doctrine," declaring that the United States would never again permit the establishment of a Communist regime in the Western Hemisphere. Although the Dominican intervention marked the first armed, overt U.S. intervention in Latin America in over three decades, the intervention and the Johnson Doctrine did not mark a signal departure in inter-American relations. Since the late nineteenth century, the United States has maintained a sphere of influence within the Western Hemisphere, exercising predominant influence in the region and limiting the freedom of action of Latin American nations.
As over 20,000 combat-ready U.S. troops landed in the Dominican Republic in late April and early May of 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson explained in a televised broadcast that "the American nations cannot, must not, and will not permit the establishment of another Communist government in the Western Hemisphere."1 In his May 2, 1965 address to the nation, the president pronounced his Johnson Doctrine-the United States would act to block a Communist takeover of a Latin American republic. President Johnson had seemingly established a new and sweeping principle of U.S. foreign policy. The containment and defeat of the international Communist movement mattered more than adhering to the legal niceties of hemispheric affairs. Although Johnson emphasized the multilateral nature of the concern about communism in the Dominican Republic, the invasion was a unilateral action. The United States justified its decision to the Organization of American States (OAS) after military action had begun. The military intervention violated Article 15 of the charter of the OAS (1948), which prohibited any state from intervening "directly, or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state." The invasion also violated the nonintervention pledge that had been the fundamental component of the Good Neighbor policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. And the invasion undermined the hemispheric partnership envisioned in President John F. Kennedy's socioeconomic development program, the Alliance for Progress (Rabe 1985, 95).
Although the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic represented the first overt U.S. military intervention in a Latin American nation in over thirty years, neither the intervention nor the pronouncement of the Johnson Doctrine marked a signal departure...