Author: Patrick Rice
Stephen Kinzer, a former journalist for the New York Times and the Istanbul Bureau Chief, visited Occidental Monday, March 5 to discuss his new book, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. The book details the fourteen governments in which the United States has overthrown in the past century. In addition to discussing Cuba and Iran, Kinzer clarified the unanticipated consequences of these overthrows which he says undermine the security of the United States. In addition, he addressed how the mass media is inadequate in reporting the magnitude of world events.
Kinzer breaks these fourteen overthrows into three categories. The first is the initial burst of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. was consolidating and projecting power, Kinzer said. The primary method to achieve this was through military invasion which brought regime change to regions such as Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua and Honduras.
The second phase was the post-World War II period. The U.S. used the CIA and covert action to topple Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam and Chile. Finally, there was the post-Cold War era. With no threat of Soviet retaliation, the U.S. again used its military to invade and change the government of Panama, Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan.
These regime changes have caused countless problems for the U.S. in subsequent years. “Often it is not until much later because we quickly forget when we overthrow a government and change that countries political history. They don’t,” Kinzer said. He stressed this point with several examples.
Kinzer stated that before the Spanish-American War, Cuban revolutionaries were close to gaining independence and rejected U.S. support. However, the U.S. passed a law agreeing to withdraw all troops as soon as Spain was defeated. The Cubans agreed to this and the war started and ended July 1, 1898. The U.S. military governor did not allow independence celebrations to take place and the U.S. ruled Cuba, either directly or “through puppets,” for 60 years.
When Fidel Castro came to power, Kinzer quoted him as saying, “this time it will not be like 1898.” By then most Americans barely knew of this overthrow, but it formed the basis of anti-American sentiments that persist to this day.
U.S. media is driven by daily and headline news. The problem with this reporting, Kinzer said, is that it does not show the true picture. “It is a rouse to prevent you from thinking of big things that shaped what is happening today,” he said. However, the media is not entirely to blame for this. “The government can’t dictate to journalists what to write,” Kinzer said. “But they set the themes.”
When Reagan claimed that the USSR was sending warplanes to Nicaragua, Kinzer said that as a journalist he knew this was not true. He had been reporting in the country long enough to know this was impossible. However, he couldn’t ignore the claim altogether. Kinzer wrote a piece debunking Reagan’s assertion. Unfortunately, several weeks later, people only remember the headlines. “Something about warplanes and Nicaragua and the USSR” was what people recounted, not that it was false, he said.
Kinzer concluded by stating that in today’s political climate, overthrowing governments is more dangerous than ever. During the Cold War, strong states were our enemy.
However, today it is weak states that are bad. Weak states often breed terrorism, instability and easier access to nuclear weapons. “Regimes that don’t like us are better than no regime at all,” Kinzer said.
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