Banana Wars

The Banana Wars were a long series of United States military occupations, police actions and interventions in Central America and the Caribbean, running from the close of the Spanish-American War in 1898 until the start of the Good Neighbor policy in 1934. The United States intervened in Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, mostly using the Marine Corps, with occasional naval gunfire support and some Army deployments. The Marines drew on these campaigns to write the Small Wars Manual of 1921, an early doctrine for fighting irregular opponents. The campaigns ended when American forces withdrew from Haiti in 1934. The name was popularized in 1983 by the historian Lester D. Langley, and it frames the United States as a regional police force protecting American and commercial interests in tropical trade.