The Salvador Option

El Salvador's civil war between the Salvadoran government and Marxist guerrillas erupted into full force in early 1981 and endured for eleven bloody years. Unwilling to tolerate an advance of Soviet and Cuban-backed communism in its geopolitical backyard, the US provided over six billion dollars in military and economic aid to the Salvadoran government. El Salvador was a deeply controversial issue in American society and divided Congress and the public into left and right. Relying on thousands of archival documents as well as interviews with participants on both sides of the war, The Salvador Option offers a thorough and fair-minded interpretation of the available evidence. If success is defined narrowly, there is little question that the Salvador Option achieved its Cold War strategic objectives of checking communism. Much more difficult, however, is to determine what human price this 'success' entailed - a toll suffered almost entirely by Salvadorans in this brutal civil war.


About the Author
Crandall, Russell: - Russell Crandall is a Professor of American foreign policy at Davidson College. His previous books include America's Dirty Wars: Irregular Warfare from 1776 to the War on Terror (2014), The United States and Latin America after the Cold War (2008), Gunboat Democracy: US Interventions in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Panama, and Driven by Drugs: US Policy toward Colombia (2006). Interwoven with his academic career, Crandall has held foreign policy appointments within several sectors of the US government, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, and the National Security Council at the White House. He is also a writer at American Interest magazine, a member of the editorial board at America's Quarterly magazine, and a contributing editor and book reviewer at the journal Survival: Global Policy and Strategy.