Trump has killed Iran's supreme leader and is demanding 'unconditional surrender.' But history tells us that US-led regime change efforts abroad almost never bring positive results.
This history reveals the core pattern: US regime change doesn’t fail from bad execution …it fails because removing authority accelerates entropy, not order.
Destroy a regime without building replacement institutions and you don’t get democracy, you get competing factions fighting over the vacuum, systems fragmenting toward maximum disorder.
Chile got 17-year torture state, Congo got genocidal war, Libya got permanent militia rule. Iran 1953 is the tell…overthrew Mossadegh, installed Shah, created conditions for 1979 Revolution.
Now trying again on same country, zero learning. Trump demanding “unconditional surrender” and picking Iran’s next leader proves the point: thinks authority flows from declaration rather than structural reality.
Can kill Khamenei from 30,000 feet, can’t reverse entropy or install functioning governance. History doesn’t teach lessons to people optimizing for spectacle over outcomes.
This is so true, and there have been so many more. I especially hold Henry Kissinger, that war criminal, responsible for the enormous pain inflicted on Chile.
He's responsible for so much more than that. As Anthony Bourdain very aptly put it -
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia — the fruits of his genius for statesmanship — and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milosevic."
100% agree. I lived in Chile while Allende was still alive, just before the coup: most Chileans had no understanding of what Nixon and Kissinger were doing to their economy to destabilize their government (which was democratically elected.) Many years later in college, I started putting together the perfidy of US meddling and got a clearer picture of how the CIA and Kissinger were major actors who were never held to account.
Americans can’t remember a past they were never taught about. This country is suffering from a lowering of education standards and plenty of political meddling with the truth. I know about the events you outlined here because I lived through them. History repeats itself. I remember.
This is so true. Most people simply do not know the damage we have done in just the past 50 years... even those of us who lived through it have learned much by books and commentaries after the fact.
We don't really teach "history" in K-12. We're served a boring, dates-to-memorize, sanitized, uber-patriotic fairy tale designed to produce happy idiots who know nothing practical about the past. This enables the same shell-game and cons to be successfully run on them again and again.
Was it Gore Vidal that called us the United States of Amnesia? We do not learn from our history. Worse, we do not even try. The law of unintended consequences will overwhelm Trump and Hegseth, and their ally, Bibi Netanyahu.
I think that Americans are naive politically. Whether lack of civics classes, intellectual laziness in regard to understanding basic facts... Too many people make decisions in voting for our leadership basic on shallow criteria... physical attractiveness and popularity of candidates. And it hasn't gotten better considering that Americans apparently voted for trump twice. Certainly the average American has no clue in regard to politics of other countries.
Thanks for this great historical perspective over the 60y of US hegemony post WWII The hubris of US foreign policy has been so disastrous for the world, individual countries as you point out, but in the end disastrous for the US which is currently set to economically implode due to its fiat currency system We will look back at this part of the nation's history as extremely destructive because greed and power drove its debility
Thanks for the primer on the unique awfulness of American foreign policy. Should be taught in every American history course, but of course this is just the sort of stuff that gets expunged, because--patriotism!
The U.S. wars of regime change in country after country, year after year have destroyed lives, livelihoods, cultures, economies and for the record have failed to liberate or provide (promised) freedom or safety to a single woman in the regions they invaded. These wars were based on lies!!!
I appreciate this clear summary of disastrous and unethical American intervention.
This history reveals the core pattern: US regime change doesn’t fail from bad execution …it fails because removing authority accelerates entropy, not order.
Destroy a regime without building replacement institutions and you don’t get democracy, you get competing factions fighting over the vacuum, systems fragmenting toward maximum disorder.
Chile got 17-year torture state, Congo got genocidal war, Libya got permanent militia rule. Iran 1953 is the tell…overthrew Mossadegh, installed Shah, created conditions for 1979 Revolution.
Now trying again on same country, zero learning. Trump demanding “unconditional surrender” and picking Iran’s next leader proves the point: thinks authority flows from declaration rather than structural reality.
Can kill Khamenei from 30,000 feet, can’t reverse entropy or install functioning governance. History doesn’t teach lessons to people optimizing for spectacle over outcomes.
Trump is the last human on earth who should pick a leader of a nation. jmo.
Very enlightening article.
- "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."--George Santayana -
This is so true, and there have been so many more. I especially hold Henry Kissinger, that war criminal, responsible for the enormous pain inflicted on Chile.
He's responsible for so much more than that. As Anthony Bourdain very aptly put it -
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia — the fruits of his genius for statesmanship — and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milosevic."
I believe you and Boudain.
100% agree. I lived in Chile while Allende was still alive, just before the coup: most Chileans had no understanding of what Nixon and Kissinger were doing to their economy to destabilize their government (which was democratically elected.) Many years later in college, I started putting together the perfidy of US meddling and got a clearer picture of how the CIA and Kissinger were major actors who were never held to account.
Exactly. Such a time of hope brought to an engineered end.
Americans can’t remember a past they were never taught about. This country is suffering from a lowering of education standards and plenty of political meddling with the truth. I know about the events you outlined here because I lived through them. History repeats itself. I remember.
This is so true. Most people simply do not know the damage we have done in just the past 50 years... even those of us who lived through it have learned much by books and commentaries after the fact.
We don't really teach "history" in K-12. We're served a boring, dates-to-memorize, sanitized, uber-patriotic fairy tale designed to produce happy idiots who know nothing practical about the past. This enables the same shell-game and cons to be successfully run on them again and again.
Exactly right.
... and Vietnam... our intervention in defense of a repressive regime and in opposition to democracy...
That was so much the valiant effort of Ho Chi Minh to just get control of their own country.
Obligatory:
Must have been hard to narrow it down to just the seven...
Was it Gore Vidal that called us the United States of Amnesia? We do not learn from our history. Worse, we do not even try. The law of unintended consequences will overwhelm Trump and Hegseth, and their ally, Bibi Netanyahu.
I think that is the goal.
Let the blood run, bodies everywhere, destruction on the planet on false pretence of we want peace.
And yet most Americans still don’t understand that they are the bad guys.
I think that Americans are naive politically. Whether lack of civics classes, intellectual laziness in regard to understanding basic facts... Too many people make decisions in voting for our leadership basic on shallow criteria... physical attractiveness and popularity of candidates. And it hasn't gotten better considering that Americans apparently voted for trump twice. Certainly the average American has no clue in regard to politics of other countries.
War is bad
Thanks for this great historical perspective over the 60y of US hegemony post WWII The hubris of US foreign policy has been so disastrous for the world, individual countries as you point out, but in the end disastrous for the US which is currently set to economically implode due to its fiat currency system We will look back at this part of the nation's history as extremely destructive because greed and power drove its debility
The goal of US regime change is to destabilize and it has been effective.
Thanks for the primer on the unique awfulness of American foreign policy. Should be taught in every American history course, but of course this is just the sort of stuff that gets expunged, because--patriotism!
The U.S. wars of regime change in country after country, year after year have destroyed lives, livelihoods, cultures, economies and for the record have failed to liberate or provide (promised) freedom or safety to a single woman in the regions they invaded. These wars were based on lies!!!
So it has always been about money, and never once about democracy or freedom. What a surprise.