U.S. interventions in the New World, with leader removal


I can think of a few.  I am not thinking of ongoing struggles, such as the funding of opposition to the Sandinistas, rather I wish to focus on cases where the key leaders actually were removed.  After all, we know that is the case in Venezuela today.  Maybe these efforts were rights violations, or unconstitutional, and yes that matters.  But how did they fare in utilitarian terms?

Puerto Rico: 1898, a big success.

Mexican-American War: Removed Mexican leaders from what today is the American Southwest.  Big utilitarian success, including for the many Mexicans who live there now.

Chile, and the coup against Allende: A utilitarian success, Chile is one of the wealthiest places in Latin America and a stable democracy today.

Grenada: Under Reagan, better than Marxism, not a huge success, but certainly an improvement.

Panama, under the first Bush, or for that matter much earlier to get the Canal built: Both times a big success.

Haiti, under Clinton, and also 1915-1934: Unclear what the counterfactuals should be, still this case has to be considered a terrible failure.

Cuba, 1906-1909: Unclear?  Nor do I know enough to assess the counterfactual.

Dominican Republic, 1961 and Trujillo.  A success, as today the DR is one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America.  But the positive developments took a long time.

I do not know enough about the U.S. occupation of the DR 1916-1924 to judge that instance.  But not an obvious success?

Can we count the American Revolution itself?  The Civil War?  Both I would say were successes.

We played partial but perhaps non-decisive roles in regime changes in Ecuador 1963 and Brazil 1964, in any case I consider those results to be unclear.  Maybe Nicaragua 1909-1933 counts here as well.

So the utilitarian in you, at least, should be happy about Venezuela, whether or not you should be happy on net.

You should note two things.  First, the Latin interventions on the whole have gone much better than the Middle East interventions.  Perhaps that is because the region has stronger ties to democracy, and also is closer to the United States, both geographically and culturally.  Second, looking only at the successes, often they took a long time and/or were not exactly the exact kinds of successes the intervenors may have sought.

Absher, Grier, and Grier consider CIA activism in Latin America and find poor results.  I think much of that is springing from cases where we failed to remove the actual leaders, such as Nicaragua and Cuba.  Simply funding a conflict does seem to yield poor returns.



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