El Pentagonismo: Sustituto del Imerrialismo

Bosch, Juan. El Pentagonismo: Sustituto del Imerrialismo. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Santillana Ediciones Generales, 2005.

Dominican politician and writer Juan Bosch (1909-2001) produced over fifty books during his lifetime. The most influential and reprinted of his books, however, is El Pentagonismo: Sustituto del Imperialismo [Pentagonism: Substitute for Imperialism], which has been published in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, German, Norwegian, and Swedish. First published in 1967, Bosch wrote El Pentagonismo: Sustituto del lmerrialismo to explain the role that the United States played in internal affairs in the Dominican Republic during the turbulent 1960s. Following the collapse oftheTruj ilio dictatorship in 1961, Dominicans experienced U.S.-supported democratic elections in December 1962. In what U.S. politicians heralded as a showcase for democracy, Bosch won the elections with almost 60 percent of the vote and took office in February 1963. After seven months in office, however, Bosch lost the support of the U.S. government and was overthrown in a military coup. A group of military officers and civilians attempted to restore Bosch to power in April 1965. The result, however, was the intervention of 23,000 U.S. Marines in the Dominican Republic. The United States, however, did not impose colonial rule in the Dominican Republic nor did the United States stand to reap huge benefits from controlling the Dominican economy. An embittered Bosch, therefore, attempted to understand the motives behind U.S. foreign policy.

Bosch concluded that traditional American imperialism began to disappear in the aftermath of World War II. No longer did the United States send its troops into foreign lands to conquer and colonize territories. The primary goal of U.S. foreign policy was no longer acquiring overseas sources of raw materials for the U.S. industrial revolution and markets to absorb surplus manufactured goods. Using the 1965 U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic and the War in Vietnam to make his point, Bosch argued that the United States had unveiled a new policy which he dubbed "pentagonism." According to Bosch, "El imperialismo ha sido sustituido por una fuerza superior. El imperialismo ha sido sustituido por el pentagonismo" [Imperialism has been substituted by a superior force. Imperialism has been substituted by pentagonism] (p. 41). Since the possible economic benefits to be accrued by the United States in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam were insignificant when compared to the cost of U.S. military intervention, Bosch argued that there must be another motive. Hence, pentagonism. Basing his ideas on a concept highlighted in President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 17 January 1961 farewell speech, Bosch contended that a military-industrial complex in the United States benefited from U.S. military adventures overseas. Bosch's sentiments were reiterated in Seymour Melman's Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War (1970).

The book under review, however, is more than just another reprint of Bosch's seminal work. Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, Bosch's political prodigy, has provided the reader with an insightful introduction that highlights the role of pentagonism in the post-Cold War world. Using the current war on terrorism as an example, Fernandez asks the reader if American society se habia pentagonizado [has been pentagonized] (p. 19). Although Spanish journalist Juan Luis Cerrian's polemical prologue is of little value, Diomedes Nunez Polanco's essay about Bosch will provide the reader unfamiliar with Bosch valuable background information. Nunez Polanco, the director of the Dominican National Library, was assisted in this endeavor by Bosch's grandson, scholar Matias Bosch. Although the essay is vague about Bosch's 1973 split from the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD) and silent on Bosch's role in the 1996 political arrangement between Bosch's Partido de la Liberacion Dominicana (PLD) and Joaquin Balaguer's Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (PRSC), the essay is a valuable asset to the book. Students able to read Spanish will benefit immensely from this latest edition of Bosch's classic. Less fortunate are those who cannot read Spanish. They will have to continue to rely on Helen R. Lane's 1968 English translation of the book.

Michael R. Hall Armstrong Atlantic State University

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