François Devoto montre l'influence de la doctrine Monroe, du concept destinée manifeste (manifest destiny) et du mythe de la frontière (frontier) sur la politique étrangère américaine, isolationniste puis interventionniste.

On l'a appelé le "Plan Colombie"... Un plan élaboré par les autorités États-uniennes en collaboration avec Bogota et destiné à éradiquer la culture des plants de cocaïers sur le territoire de la Colombie, premier producteur de cocaïne au monde.

Toward the close of the war, the American states met in the Inter-American Conference on the Problems of War and Peace at Mexico City in February 1945. Uninvited Argentina was conspicuously absent. The diplomats focused their attention upon the place that Pan-American regionalism would have in the plans for the proposed United Nations. Prodded by the United States, the Latin Americans insisted upon their right to protect themselves without having to seek the approval of the UN Security Council. Ultimately this demand was approved in the UN Charter. The conference also recommended that Argentina, after declaring war on the Axis, be permitted to participate in the San Francisco sessions that formalized the United Nations. The delegates drafted the Act of Chapultepec, which required the states to conclude a treaty of reciprocal assistance, a treaty on the settlement of disputes, and a new regional arrangement that would substitute a permanent treaty for the various informal agreements underlying the inter-American association in the past. These objectives were concluded in 1947 at a special conference in Rio de Janeiro and in 1948 at Bogota, Colombia, when the next regular International Conference of American States (the ninth) convened. Significantly, these meetings came at a time when the Truman administration was fashioning a Latin American policy that reflected its larger global strategy of containing Soviet aggression.

On April 17, 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba.

Handing control of the Panama Canal from the U.S. over to the Central American country was one of President Jimmy Carter's most controversial, and most overshadowed, foreign policy achievements.