This represents but a fraction of the examples that could be provided.
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état (18–27 June 1954) was a covert operation carried out by the United States Central Intelligence Agency that deposed President Jacobo Árbenz and installed a military regime in his place. The coup was codenamed "Operation PBSUCCESS."
Guatemala had been ruled since 1930 by the dictator General Jorge Ubico, supported by the United States government. His regime was one of the most brutally repressive military juntas in the history of Central America.
In return for U.S. support he gave hundreds of thousands of hectares of highly fertile land to the American United Fruit Company (UFCO), as well as allowing the U.S. military to establish bases in Guatemala.[1][2][3][4][5] In 1944, Ubico's repressive policies resulted in a large popular revolt against him, led by students, intellectuals, and a progressive faction of the military. In what was later called the "October Revolution", Ubico was overthrown, resulting in Guatemala's first democratic election.[6]
Prior to the Russian Revolution, support for dictators was often based on furthering American economic and political priorities, such as opening foreign markets to American manufacturers.
1954 Guatemalan coup d'état - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The United States has been involved in and assisted in the overthrow of foreign governments (more recently termed "regime change") without the overt use of U.S. military force. Often, such operations are tasked to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Regime change has been attempted through direct involvement of U.S. operatives, the funding and training of insurgency groups within these countries, anti-regime propaganda campaigns, coups d'état, and other activities usually conducted as operations by the CIA. The United States has also accomplished regime change by direct military action, such as following the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 and the U.S.-led military invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Some argue that non-transparent United States government agencies working in secret sometimes mislead or do not fully implement the decisions of elected civilian leaders and that this has been an important component of many such operations,[1] see plausible deniability. Some contend that the U.S. has supported more coups against democracies that it perceived as communist, becoming communist, or pro-communist.[1]
The U.S. has also covertly supported opposition groups in various countries without necessarily attempting to overthrow the government. For example, the CIA funded anti-communist political parties in countries such as Italy and Chile; it also armed Kurdish rebels fighting the Ba'athist government of Iraq in the Second Kurdish-Iraqi War prior to the Algiers Agreement.
Covert United States foreign regime change actions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
