March 17, 2003. Copyright, 2003, Graphic News. All rights reserved

A century of U.S. military intervention
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, March 17, Graphic News: Regime change. It sounds so inoffensive. Perhaps itÕs the unashamedly euphemistic quality of the term that has made it so irresistible to politicians and pundits since it was first uttered by Bush administration officials in discussing their policy towards Iraq last year. 

In the context of Baghdad, however, its meaning is hard to pin down. In recent months it has denoted disarmament, the execution of Saddam and/or overthrow of his government. Today it appears to signify most of the above, plus the Òrestoration of democracyÓ, U.S. occupation and even seizure of Iraqi assets. Whatever the concept implies, it is certainly nothing new.  

Since emerging as a global power more than a century ago the United States has asserted its growing influence in other countriesÕ affairs while bristling at any interference in its own. Its methods have varied, including sponsoring coups or uprisings, assassinations, trade embargos and, if all else fails, military intervention. The triggers, too, have varied depending on perceived threats. 

In the heady days of the early 19th century the United States began to jostle for position against the Old World. The 1823 Monroe Doctrine told Europe in plain terms that Latin America was now off-limits to colonisation, and the U.S. would take a big stick to anyone intruding in its own backyard. The bombing of an American battleship in Havana provoked the United States to declare war against Spain and take over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and Philippines. 

That set a precedent for intervention in the region that has continued ever since. Throughout the 20th century the U.S. sought to reshuffle the leaders of Latin America like a pack of cards, often because of domestic interests: in 1994 President Clinton sent 23,000 troops to Haiti as part of ÒOperation Uphold DemocracyÓ to oust coup leader Raoul Cedras, after the arrival of scores of desperate Haitians on U.S. shores prompted a refugee crisis. 

During the Cold War the United States slugged it out for preeminence against the Soviet Union and Latin America was a frequent battleground for the rival superpowers. For its part, the U.S. intervened to oust leftwing leaders around the continent, including President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in a CIA-sponsored coup in 1954. The CIA was also active in ousting ChileÕs Socialist President Salvador Allende, leading to the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
 
The Cold War prompted U.S. intervention in other spheres of Soviet influence, sometimes with disastrous results: the Vietnam War led to the loss of four million lives. In 1961 the U.S. staged the Bay of Pigs invasion to oust leftwing rulers in Cuba -- a doomed mission that perhaps warns of the danger of underestimating a peopleÕs will to self-determination (even in Iraq). 

If the September 11 atrocities have provided U.S. foreign policy with a new clarity, the years between the Cold War and the War on Terrorism were marked by interventions in the name of restoring democracy and upholding human rights. U.S. troops went to war-torn Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. In Kosovo they helped to end the brutal genocide of ethnic Albanians and to oust Slobodan Milosevic, but the recent murder of Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic has illustrated the difficulty of restoring democracy in real terms. 

To some extent, the enduring success of any U.S. intervention appears to have depended on commitment to the task, and a willingness to stay on. Africa, for example, does not generally fall into this category. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has never really recovered since, after winning independence in the 1960s, the U.S. helped to put dictator Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko into power. Since 1992 Somalia has degenerated further into lawlessness.

As a region of more strategic interest, the Middle East might be expected to receive more attention. In 1953 a CIA-sponsored coup got rid of Mohammed Mossadegh, and the U.S. then backed the brutal dictatorship of the Shah until the 1979 Iranian revolution. Today some argue that, in U.S. terms, modern Iran is more a candidate than Iraq for Òregime changeÓ.

That the oil-rich Gulf region is of paramount interest to the U.S. was made clear in a paper published in 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank, Project for a New American Century. The think-tank, which includes Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney, predicted an attack on Iraq to increase U.S. regional influence. But history teaches that the price of intervention may yet be high for the worldÕs lone superpower.
/ENDS