Book Review: Overthrow : America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

Overthrow : America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer has been getting a lot of notice.

The New York Times has a review by By ANATOL LIEVEN this week. The Washington Post has a review this week by Julia E. Sweig.

The United States government has encouraged the overthrow of many foreign governments over the past century. There is a historical attitude of "American Exceptionalism" which is largely accepted by the U.S. public. It assumes that because of this nation's democratic heritage, the United States is a force for democracy and freedom in the world. Since Americans know too little history, they are not aware of the long string of interventions made under the guidance of "realists" in the Department of State, and are consequently surprised by the distrust of U.S. foreign policy in foreign capitals.

Lieven writes:

I must confess that I put down this fine book with a feeling of deep disheartenment. For what, after all, is the point of such meticulously reported studies if the American public is repeatedly going to wipe such episodes from its collective consciousness, and the American establishment is going to make similar mistakes over and over again, first in the cold war and now in the "war on terror" — each time covering its actions with the same rhetoric of spreading "freedom" and combating "evil"?

There are clearly some very bad governments around. It is not at all clear that the U.S. has targetted the worst, rather than those which most threaten U.S. economic interests. Still, a foreign policy focused on regime change would not seem so problematic were one sure that the regime changes would be followed by enhanced social, economic and political progress.

The regime changes in World War II, followed by the Marshall Plan, seems to be a clear example of successful regime change. Chile seems to be socially and economically very progressive today, decades after the overthrow of the Allende regime. In both cases, lest we forget, there were long periods after the regime change when the people of those nations expereinced major social and economic problems. On the other hand, there seem to many examples of countries in which U.S. intervention did not produce social and economic progress.

Perhaps the social scientists know why some regime changes are successful and others are not, but I don't. I suspect a part of the issue is that the U.S. political system is seldom able or willing to sustain the assistance for nation building that is required to rebuild the societies whose regimes have fallen. But again, it is not clear to me why that should be so. Why is this nation occassionally willing to allow its government to work to overthrow some foreign regimes, but not always willing to pay the price to adequately support nation building required when State has succeeded in toppling a regime? Or is it that we simply don't know how to do nation building well?