At the start of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy and other American liberals expressed boundless optimism about the ability of the United States to promote democracy and development in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

With US power, resources, and expertise, almost anything seemed possible in the countries of the Cold War’s “Third World”— developing, postcolonial nations unaligned with the US or Soviet Union.

Yet by the end of the decade, this vision lay in ruins.