Editor's Note

This issue begins with an article by Robert P. Hager, Jr., and Robert S. Snyder discussing why a conflict erupted between the United States and Nicaragua in the 1980s after a brief interregnum of relative calm (or at least non-conflictual relations) in the wake of the victory by far-left Sandinista guerrillas over the long-time dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. For many years, the United States had supported the Somoza regime and had helped it in its fight against Marxist-Leninist insurgents, but after the regime collapsed in July 1979 the Carter administration initially eschewed any frontal challenge to the Sandinistas. This phase in bilateral relations, lasting roughly a year, stands in marked contrast to the bitter confrontation between the United States and Nicaragua during most of the 1980s. Hager and Snyder consider two explanations that have often been proposed to explain why U.S.-Nicaraguan relations dissolved into hostility after mid-1980: (1)...