List of 69 U.S. Coups During 1947-1989

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

This is a list of 69 U.S. coups during the Cold War. It’s the list presented in the highly regarded (though of irregular quality) 2018 academic book COVERT REGIME CHANGE, by Lindsey O’Rourke. The book unfortunately provides no information regarding many of the coups that it lists, but is nonetheless highly regarded by scholars because its author allegedly had access to more extensive research sources than prior (non-academic) listers of the CIA’s coups had. Her book ignores the many U.S.-imposed coups since 1989 and fails to explain why (or even mention that) the U.S. regime has continued couping Governments even after its excuse for doing so ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union and its communism ended. The most-useful part of her book is its one-page list of coups, but even that is chaotic, not presented in chronological order. One of the reasons for my doing the present article is to present that list in chronological order.

She says on page 9 of the book that 39% of the “Covert Regime Changes” succeeded at Government-overthrow (they overthrew many democratically elected Governments and installed fascist dictatorships in their place, such as in Iran and Guatemala, “compared to a 66 ­percent success rate for their overt counterparts.” She fails to give an overall success-rate for these U.S. coups (which her book instead titles and throughout refers to as having been only “Covert Regime Change,” not any “overt” ones, and so her making in her book this distinction and discussing overt regime-changes without clarifying what they are in this book about “Covert Regime Change,” raises the question of what her book is actually about), and that 61% (of the “covert” ones) did not succeed. However, her list of the coups indicates that 28 out of the 69 coups, or 41%, succeeded, and 59% of them failed. Her list fails to indicate which ones were “covert” and which ones weren’t. Its heading is “U.S.-backed regime change attempts during the Cold War (1947-1989).” But, in any case, it (that table, which is more informative than the entire rest of the book, including the methodology, which is vague at best) shows that many countries were repeatedly couped by the U.S. regime. All of the Soviet-and-allied countries were couped by the U.S. regime during 1949-56, but none successfully. Many U.S.-allied countries were also couped by the U.S. regime. Perhaps the U.S. Government is hostile toward all other countries except Israel (which is likewise — but more famously — hostile to every other country).

Is it really constructive to call U.S. coups U.S. “Regime Changes”; and, if so, then what could possibly be meant by referring to some of them as having been “overt”? But, supposedly, this book is the best public study available about America’s foreign coups.

This list is taken from that book’s “Table 1.1: U.S.-backed regime change attempts during the Cold War (1947-1989)” on the book’s page 5. I am presenting this list in chronological order so that a reader can see the temporal sequence of the U.S. regime’s aggressions that were of the coup type, instead of the invasion type. Thus, in this list, one can readily see that whereas the U.S. regime started its coups in 1947 mainly against communist countries, it quickly switched after that to couping mainly democratic non-communist countries, which the U.S. regime (when successful, which was on 26 of America’s 52 planned coups during 1952 through 1989) promptly turned into dictatorial capitalist, or as Mussolini alternatively called “fascist” and “corporationist,” countries. Some countries it couped as many as 4 times during 1947 through 1989. Here is the list:

* Boldfaced entries denote that the US-backed forces assumed power — the coup succeeded. All of the other coups failed.

† denotes that the intervention was aborted before implementation.

First, here is the list that was published in that table of the book (except that none of it was boldfaced — I have added the boldfaces):

Albania (1949–56), North Korea (1950), France (1947–52)*, Lebanon (1957-8)*, Guatemala (1952–54)*, Dominican Republic(1965)*, Belarusian SSR (1949–56), Libya (1986), Italy (1947–68)*, Cuba (1960–61), Grenada (1983)*, Bulgaria (1949–56), Iran (1952–53)*, Dominican Republic (1960–61)*, Panama (1989)*, China (1949–68), Japan (1952–68)*, British Guiana/Guyana (1961–71)*, Czechoslovakia (1949–56), Indonesia (1954–58), Dominican Republic (1961–62)*, East Germany (1949–56), Syria (1955–57)†, Chile (1962–73)*, Estonian SSR (1949–56), Lebanon (1957–58)*, Haiti (1963), Hungary (1949–56), Laos (1959–73), Bolivia (1963–66)*, Latvian SSR (1949–56), Congo (1960)*, Brazil (1964)*, Lithuanian SSR (1949–56), South Vietnam (1963)*, Dominican Republic (1965–68)*, Poland (1949–56), Angola (1964–72), Haiti (1965–69), Romania (1949–56), Mozambique (1964–68), Bolivia (1971)*, Soviet Union/Russian SSR (1949–59), Somalia (1964–67), Grenada (1979)†, Ukrainian SSR (1949–56), Thailand (1965–69), Nicaragua (1979–80), North Korea (1950–53), South Vietnam (1967–71)*, Suriname (1982–85), Tibet (1958–68), Iraq (1972–75), Chile (1984–89)*, North Vietnam (1961–64), Italy (1972–73)*, Haiti (1986–88), Cuba (1961–68), Portugal (1974–75)*, Panama (1987–89), Afghanistan (1979–89)*, Angola (1975–76), Nicaragua (1980–89)*, South Yemen (1979–80), Poland (1981–89)*, Chad (1981–82)*, Cambodia (1982–89), Ethiopia (1981–83), Libya (1982–89), Liberia (1983–88), Philippines (1984–86)*, Angola (1985–88)  

Here is that list now in chronological order:

France 1947-52*

Italy 1947-68*

Albania 1949-56

Belarus 1949-56

Bulgaria 1949-56

Czechoslovakia 1949-56

East Germany 1949-56

Estonia 1949-56

Latvia 1949-56

Lithuania 1949-56

Poland 1949-56

Romania 1949-56

Hungary 1949-56

Russia (SOVIET UNION) 1949-59

Ukraine 1949-56

China 1949-68

North Korea 1950

Guatemala 1952-54*

Iran 1952-53*

Japan 1952-68*

Indonesia 1954-58

Syria 1955-57†

Lebanon 1957-58*

Tibet 1958-68

Laos 1959-73

Cuba 1960-1

Dominican Republic 1960-1*

Congo 1960*

Guyana 1961-71*

Dominican Republic 1961-2*

North Vietnam 1961

Cuba 1961-8

Chile 1962-73*

Haiti 1963

Bolivia 1963-66*

South Vietnam 1963*

Angola 1964-72

Mozambique 1964-8

Somalia 1964-7

Brazil 1964*

Dominican Republic 1965*

Dominican Republic 1965-8*

Haiti 1965-9

Thailand 1965-9

South Vietnam 1967-71*

Bolivia 1971*

Iraq 1972-5

Italy 1972-3*

Portugal 1974-5*

Angola 1975-6

Afghanistan 1979-89*

South Yemen 1979-80

Grenada 1979†

Nicaragua 1979-80

Nicaragua 1980-9*

Chad 1981-2*

Ethiopia 1981-3

Poland 1981-9*

Cambodia 1982-9

Surinam 1982

Libya 1982-9

Liberia 1983-8

Grenada 1983*

Philippines 1984-6*

Chile 1984-89*

Panama 1985-8

Angola 1985-8

Haiti 1986-8

Panama 1989*

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28 out of the 69 — 41% — succeeded. All others failed or were aborted.

That list of U.S. coups, even during just its time-period of 1945-1989, is incomplete. For two examples: it omits Thailand 1948, when the CIA under Truman couped the Government in order to cut itself in on the profits from the international opium trade, and Indonesia 1965, when President Johnson helped organize the extermination of at least 500,000 land-reform proponents there and helped to install General Suharto (who then embezzled $15-35 billion from the country). Including just those two additional cases, they total to 71 U.S. coups during those 42 years 1947-1989. Also not included are coups that the author felt were only supported by the U.S. Government but not planned by the U.S. Government, such as allegedly “the 1967 Greek coup or the 1976 Argentine coup.” The author recognized that there might have been coups she didn’t know about. Furthermore, she was explicit that her study was aimed at supporting “a theory regarding the security motives driving America’s Cold War interventions.” That is clearly a false theory (and supportive of the U.S. regime’s propaganda, that America’s foreign coups were done in order to protect U.S. national security — which was virtually never the actual case). Two examples showing it to be false were the two I mentioned that she had excluded: the 1948 CIA Thai coup to install a regime that would cut the CIA in for off-the-books funding of the CIA from the drug underworld (kickbacks, basically protection-money paid to the CIA), and the 1965 Indonesian coup to benefit U.S. owners of rubber plantations there. Routinely, scholars are willing to start with false assumptions in order to support an unrealistically favorable view of their Government. It’s myth-preserving scholarship, not science; and it is common; it’s routine in the social ‘sciences’. It is fake.

A realistic presumption would be that ever since Truman became President in 1945 and started (in 1947, the year he started the CIA) America’s coups outside the Western hemisphere (O’Rourke also mentions that there had been U.S. coups in “Nicaragua (1909, 1910, and 1926), Honduras (1911, the Dominican Republic (1912, 1914, and 1916), Mexico (1914), Haiti (1915), and Costa Rica (1919)”), there have been around 90 of them since Truman came into office in 1945. During that same period, there have been at least 130 U.S. military invasions, plus countless illegal (unauthorized by the U.N.) sanctions, in order to conquer countries the u.S. regime covets adding to its empire. After WW2, the vast majority of the world’s international aggressions — coups, invasions, subversions, and sanctions — have come from, or been initiated by, the U.S. Government. Rather than policing the world to maintain peace such as it claims, it has been the world’s biggest organized-criminal operation and source of wars, with no close second. And it has the nerve to condemn as ‘autocracies’ the Governments that it aims to acquire as additional colonies.

Her book studiously ignores that the post-1944 U.S. Government has been mega-imperialistic and is driven by greed for evermore power and wealth by America’s billionaires, who benefit from these coups, wars, etc., which expand their mega-corporate empire. The fact that it was published with all of its vagueries and obfuscations, indicates that it is found acceptable by America’s billionaires, who control the country.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.