Desideri e realtà: l'Amministrazione Carter e la Junta Militar di Videla, 1977-1980

This work aims to analyse the promotion and protection of human rights in the relations between Argentina and the United States of America over the period 1977-80. The relationship between the General Jorge Rafael Videla’s military Junta and the Jimmy Carter’s administration will be analysed evaluating them in the wider scenario of the Cold War. The main objective is to understand, through the Argentine case, how President Carter’s good purposes have produced concrete results in placing the protection of human rights at the centre of international relations. The reflections developed here, start from the analysis of original documents coming mostly from the Foreign Relations of the United States series, the archive of Cancillería of Buenos Aires and from the National Archives and Records Administration. Overall, the sources show that Carter’s goals have found repeated confirmation in government addresses. Nevertheless, the concrete dimension of politics conditioned the actual unfolding of ideals. Therefore, the attempt to inaugurate an innovative foreign policy based on human rights was reduced by the Argentine context’s specificity and the international framework’s complications, with particular reference to developments, not always predictable, in the Cold War