Overview

For almost 60 years, the United States government has sent more than 230,000 of its citizens abroad to serve as Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) for two-year tours, often in very poor countries. As these Volunteers work in grassroots development, helping to build local capacity, they also serve as citizen diplomats and contribute to U.S. public diplomacy. The unique experience of the Peace Corps provides the Volunteers knowledge and a profound understanding of another country or region of the world. Volunteers continue to serve their country as they bring their experience and knowledge back to the United States. Many of them go on to serve in the State Department and in the United States Agency for International Development. Some have even risen to the top ranks of the Foreign Service. Thomas Nisley argues that the Peace Corps is an important tool of U.S. foreign policy that contributes on multiple levels. As these citizen diplomats do their work, they help to improve the popular image of the United States, contributing to U.S. “soft power.” Soft power is a co-optive power, getting others to want what you want. After a general exploration of how the Peace Corps contributes to U.S. foreign policy, the book takes a direct focus on Latin America. Dr. Nisley provides evidence, along with a theoretical explanation, that PCVs do indeed improve the popular perception of the United States in Latin America. He then examines three different periods in U.S foreign policy toward Latin America and shows how the Peace Corps made its contribution. Not all U.S. policy makers have equally recognized the role of the Peace Corps in U.S. foreign policy. Some have even dismissed it outright. This book argues that the Peace Corps plays an important role in U.S. foreign policy. Although the Peace Corps is much stronger today than it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, U.S. foreign policy would be well served if the Peace Corps were further strengthen and expanded, not only in Latin America but in the world. We should considered the wider policy benefits of the Peace Corps.

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9781498549462

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Reviews

Professor Nisley shows that international public service is an important policy tool and an antidote for the isolationist/nationalist tendencies that have emerged recently in U.S. foreign policy. Nisley's work gives a well-researched and well-documented history of the Peace Corps in Latin America. Nisley demonstrates how the Peace Corps evolves and adapts to the changes in U.S. foreign policy interests and changes in the Latin American political environment. Most importantly, Nisley shows that the Peace Corps' strength is its facilitation of person-to-person interactions that transform the lives of individuals who are served by the Peace Corps and Peace Corp volunteers themselves. -- Lee Demetrius Walker, University of North Texas In The Peace Corps and Latin America: In the Last Mile of U.S. Foreign Policy Thomas Nisley draws on statistical research as well as on his personal experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the Dominican Republic to examine this typically American institution created by the Kennedy Administration in 1961. While Kennedys policies toward Latin America are remembered more by the economic aspects of the unsuccessful Alliance for Progress , Nisley draws attention to the Peace Corps as the forgotten component of Kennedy's Cold War Latin American strategy . The argument of the book that the Peace Corps remains today as an important tool of soft power for US foreign policy must be taken seriously both by students of International Relations and policy makers alike. -- Carlos Gustavo Poggio Teixeira, Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo In this delightful book, Thomas Nisley makes an important contribution to a curiously understudied phenomenon: the Peace Corps in Latin America. Professor Nisley combines history, survey data, and government reports to offer a balanced appraisal of the Peace Corps' role in facilitating U.S. foreign policy since the early 1960s. Documenting the agency's ups-and-downs, without shying away from its failures, Nisley shows how the Corps improves host country attitudes towards their northern neighbor. His book will be of great interest to foreign policy scholars, Latin Americanists, and the more than 230,000 people who have served in the Peace Corps. -- Michael Kenney, University of Pittsburgh and RPCV Thomas Nisley has written an extremely well-researched and documented inquiry into the impact that the Peace Corps can have and has had on U.S. foreign policy, focusing intensively but not exclusively on Latin America. Dr. Nisley notes upfront that this subject has not been researched in depth prior to this book in the past, and he certainly goes far here to correct that shortcoming. The book thus contains much new information as well as numerous historical and policy-based insights that are likely to surprise many readers. Foremost amongst these is the conclusion that Peace Corps' principal contribution to American foreign policy is not found in the numerous (but often modest) contributions made to the economic and social development of host countries where Volunteers have served, but in the measurable promotion of a better understanding of America and Americans by the people of those countries. Indeed, this key objective of Peace Corps is known and stated as Goal 2 , as distinct from its Goal 1 , which is to help the people of developing countries meet their need for trained men and women. Dr. Nisley illustrates the important role of Goal 2 in the context of historic, real-world exercises of a combination of hard power and soft power by the United States, and discusses Peace Corps' contributions to our policies as part of smart power. In a somewhat academic Chapter 3, Dr. Nisley lays out the 'theory of the case', linking the proposition of the importance of Peace Corps' role to extensive quantitative data illustrating its validity, before heading on to the more historically meaty examples of the next three chapters. In Chapters 4-6, Dr. Nisley provides fascinating examples of the roles that Peace Corps Volunteers have played in our international relations with various countries in Latin America since 1961, when President Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress simultaneously with the establishment of the Peace Corps. He goes on to lay out how Peace Corps' role in foreign policy waxed and waned through Presidential Administrations from Nixon through Obama, and these chapters contain a number of surprising findings, counter to prevailing expectations . One of the most interesting is Dr. Nisley's discussion of the role played in the revival of the Agency during the Reagan Administration (after a deliberate effort to bury it during the Nixon era), thanks in great part to the energetic and effective leadership of Peace Corps Director Loret Miller Ruppe over an 8-year period. In similar fashion, the strong support of President George H.W. Bush's for an active role by Peace Corps in our foreign policy is well-illustrated. Finally, Dr. Nisley points out that while both the Clinton and Obama Administrations made early efforts to energize and expand Peace Corps overseas, political factors conspired to stymie these efforts, including the failure of the Congress to support these efforts with the funds necessary to carry out these efforts. Dr. Nisley's conclusions that with several needed reforms within the Peace Corps, and more sufficient (but still modest) budgetary increases from Congress over the coming years, Peace Corps' role in influencing the attitudes of people in Latin American countries toward the United States could be expanded and greatly benefit U.S. foreign policy in this critical region. -- Stacy Rhodes, United States Agency for International Development Both pundits and practitioners agree that soft power is typically undervalued in American foreign policy, and the Peace Corps is one of the best soft power instruments our country possesses. Tom Nisley's book gives a unique and nuanced perspective on the importance of the Peace Corps, written from the perspective of both a scholar and former Peace Corps Volunteer. With immigration policy positioned at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy in the 21st Century, Tom's focus on the Peace Corps in Latin America could not be more timely. -- Ralph G. Carter, Texas Christian University

Author Information

Thomas J. Nisley is professor of political science at Kennesaw State University

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