After the departure of President George W. Bush and the disappearance of the “neoconservatives,” rhetoric opposing regime change increased in Washington, as its voice grew louder in Democratic and Republican circles, and large numbers in both parties began to criticize the high costs of American interventions in exchange for the expected returns from them, citing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Democracy is not always the goal. Often, Washington puts its principles in the back seat
Long history of regime change. But the observed aversion to wars and coups is not as prevalent in American history as the many attempts to overthrow governments hostile to American politics.
In Latin America
From 1898 to 1994, the United States launched at least 41 successful regime change attempts in Latin America, an average of one country every 28 months Direct intervention in 17 of these cases, using military force, intelligence agents, or local civilians who they work for the US government.
Middle East
During the Cold War between 1947 and 1989, the United States attempted to change the governments of 72 other countries.
In the Middle East, Washington has deployed both its military and covert powers to overthrow regimes opposed to its interests and policies, such as the US intelligence-engineered coup against the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after the 2003 war, which still has repercussions throughout the Middle East.
A consistent theme and a reverse approach
The many American attempts to overthrow governments raise questions such as: Is regime change built into the DNA of American foreign policy, or is it something that happens whenever the White House is forced to protect its interests?
The regime change approach has always been a “fixed feature” of American foreign policy and applies to almost all countries in the region with the exception of Israel, adding that the United States has sometimes backed agents and financed loyalists against countries that oppose the policy. them in the area.
The effectiveness of this approach has diminished over time and will gradually weaken as access to information and details of American businesses has become public knowledge in recent years with the increase in information and ease of access through social media. networking, noting that following the rise of whistleblower rhetoric, regime change efforts are being exposed and strongly resented.
American history is littered with many attempted coups, some of which were exposed later after they happened, and the American intelligence services admitted to being involved in them. In this analysis, we look at some of these successful and failed efforts and the lessons that can be learned from them.
- The overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh
In 1951, Mohammad Mossadegh was elected Prime Minister of Iran and initiated a series of political and economic reforms, the most important of which was the nationalization of the country’s oil industry, which in 1913 was aided by Britain.
The nationalization of the oil industry was welcomed in Iranian circles and Mossadegh’s popularity increased, but it had a negative impact on his relationship with the United States and Britain, who feared that their influence in Iran would be reduced and their oil interests would suffer .
Fears led to the intervention of the American and British secret services in 1953, to overthrow Mossadegh’s government and strengthen the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for more than 25 years.
The coup against Mossadegh shows the concern of the United States for its own interests to the point of intervening to overthrow a government that came to power through elections.
The US intervention also reflects the importance Washington attached to oil at the time, and the extent to which it would defend its energy-based strategic interests.
While the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry in the 1950s was enough to prompt America to change the government responsible for the decision, the United States today eschews the Iranian regime change policy, despite accusing it of targeting American soldiers. , bases and interests directly and indirectly. All this did not prompt Washington to launch something similar in effort and size to “Operation Ajax”, which overthrew the Mossadegh government.
Operation Ajax began when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in March 1953, ordered the CIA, led by his younger brother Allen Dulles, to develop a plan to overthrow the Iranian prime minister. On April 4, the American intelligence service quickly allocated a million dollars for this purpose, and its station in Tehran began to launch a propaganda campaign against Mossadegh.
In June, American and British intelligence officials met in Beirut to put the final touches on the Iranian regime change strategy, and led from Tehran by the head of the CIA’s Near East and Africa division, Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of U.S. . President Theodore Roosevelt.
Operation Ajax focused on persuading Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to issue a decree removing Mossadegh from power, as he had attempted a few months earlier, but the Shah was afraid to take such a “dangerous and unpopular” step at the time. After American and British efforts and pressure, the Shah changed his mind.
Intelligence officer Donald Wilbur, who participated in the operation, said that in early August, CIA agents in Iran impersonated socialists and nationalists and threatened religious leaders with brutal punishment if they opposed Mossadegh, giving the impression that the latter was suppressing dissent.
Declassified documents released by the CIA in 2017 revealed that after the Shah fled to Italy, the agency considered the coup to have failed. After the initial failed coup by General Fazlullah Zahedi who served as Interior Minister in Mossadegh’s government, the CIA sent Roosevelt a cable on August 18, 1953 asking him to leave Iran immediately, but Roosevelt ignored it and began working on the second coup . False narrative that Mossadegh tried to seize the throne and bribe Iranian agents.
The CIA plan involved paying protesters, tricking Mossadegh into urging his supporters to stay home, and bribing and mobilizing officers against him, leading to a military standoff outside Mossadegh’s home in a coup that was side-by-side with anti-monarchy protesters and in favor of the monarchy as they had received money from the US.
The protests grew increasingly violent, resulting in the deaths of nearly 300 people, and General Zahedi ended up announcing over the radio an order for Mossadegh’s arrest, only for him to be transferred to a military prison.
The CIA coup paved the way for Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who expanded his powers and consolidated the foundations of his more than 25-year rule, characterized by friendly relations with the United States.
Tehran struck a deal with foreign oil companies to return Iranian oil to world markets in large quantities, giving the United States and Britain the lion’s share of the recovered British wealth.
- Overthrow of Salvador Allende
Again in 1973, the United States abandoned the principle of supporting democracies and conspired against the elected government of Chile led by Salvador Allende because of his socialist leanings.
Washington funded and armed the forces opposing him, paving the way for the installation of a military regime by General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled until 1990.
Observers believe that US intervention killed the democratic experiment in Chile, given the role the CIA played in creating the conditions for the coup and subsequent US support for the new regime.
This has created a general perception inside and outside Latin America that, despite Washington’s claims to support democracy, “friendly” authoritarian regimes prefer the prospect of facing unaligned or leftist democratically elected governments to seizing power in areas they consider are in their sphere of influence.
According to a secret briefing given by Henry Kissinger to Richard Nixon, the US president feared that his country’s role would be revealed and told him: “Our fingerprints don’t show, do they?”, to which Kissinger replied: “We did, don’t do that.”
Peter Kornbluh, author of “The Pinochet Files,” recalled in an earlier interview that Kissinger ignored the fact that US agents were driving tanks, providing intelligence and flying the planes that bombed Moneda’s presidential palace.
Briefing the president, Kissinger added, “I mean we helped them,” meaning the best conditions were created, an accurate description, according to Kornbluh, of the U.S. role in the Chilean coup, which included supporting propaganda campaigns. . against Allende and financing the channel “El Mercurio”, located in Chile, which then served as “Fox News” to encourage the coup.
Kornbluh explained that the United States had no direct role on the ground in the Chilean coup and that the Chilean military was not a puppet in the hands of the United States, but that Washington helped create conditions that would increase social pressure on the military to act, thing that happened.
- Overthrow of Saddam Hussein
Washington renewed its adventures in the Middle East by invading Iraq in 2003 after it and its allies claimed that Iraq posed a threat to international security by possessing weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological weapons.
While the United States succeeded in removing Saddam Hussein and ushering in the democratic experiment, the effects of the war, including the penetration of Iranian influence into Iraq, the formation of armed militias, the spread of terrorism, extremism and sectarianism, in addition to the obstacles faced by democratic institutions, serve as evidence of the problematic American intervention to change the regime by military force.
- Coup in Guatemala
In the 1950s, the arrival of Guatemalan Prime Minister Jacobo Arbenz through elections did not help him with Washington, which, three years after he came to power, quickly overthrew his government over fears of communist influence in the region.
The CIA carried out an operation codenamed PBSUCCESS to overthrow the Árbenz government, supporting and arming a group of Guatemalan exiles led by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who eventually overthrew Árbenz in June 1954.
While the intervention in Guatemala is seen as part of the United States’ Cold War strategy to contain the spread of communism in Latin America, American corporate interests also played a role.
After his election in 1951, Árbenz launched a series of progressive reforms known as the “Guatemala Spring”, which included agrarian reform to redistribute land from large landowners to peasants, which threatened the interests of United Fruit, an American company who owned vast tracts of land in Guatemala.
The consequences of regime change in Guatemala reflect the immeasurable consequences of American support for Armas and Washington’s indifference to the form of government that might emerge after the coup was activated, even if it was a military dictatorship that sank the country into a cycle of political and economic instability, social unrest and armed conflict, and it happened.
