Somoza Falling

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Lake, director of policy planning in the State Department during the Carter administration and coauthor of Our Own Worst Enemy , here reconstructs Washington's reaction to the Nicaraguan revolution and the U.S. role in the downfall of Anastasio Somoza. Generally taking a sympathetic view, the author nonetheless exposes State's horse-on-ice responses to the crisis from the January 10, 1978, assassination of the editor-publisher of La Prensa to the entry of the Sandinistas into Managua on July 20, 1979, tracing the development of U.S. policy at various levels at a time when policymakers had been caught unprepared for the crisis. Most of the conferences reconstructed here revolved around the central dilemma of how to extricate the U.S. from Nicaragua without sacrificing American interests in the region, which makes this study a useful casebook for students of foreign policy. The author is critical of State's emphasis on training and promoting generalists and managers at the expense of the kind of ``area experts'' that were sorely needed and absent in our dealings with Nicaragua. (Mar.)

Library Journal

The author, who was director of policy planning at the State Department during the Carter administration, has written a book about how foreign policy decisions are made. He carefully examines how our policy toward Nicaragua in 1978-79 emerged, describes the characteristics of the middle players in this decision-making process, and discusses the complexities which govern their two important groups--career officers and political appointees. The result is an insightful, objective, and clear account, based in part on frank interviews and personal experiences, that illustrates both policy-making groups' paradoxical positions and offers precise lessons to be learned from past dealings with Third World revolutions. Recommended.-- Roderic A. Camp, Central Univ., Pella, Ia.