The US wants friendly governments, and if that’s not possible, unstable ones. There is a plethora of examples mostly in Central and South America, and the Middle East.
But the US is not the only one doing this. It’s been common practice for imperialist powers for centuries.
>Why do people continue to believe nonsense like this?
We've seen it happen a number of times? Graduates of the School of the Americas have committed countless human rights violations throughout and lead numerous military dictatorship throughout the Americas.
>The US wants stable governments, not unstable ones.
Civilian led governments often aren't stable. They can suddenly vote to not side with the US.
> Civilian led governments often aren't stable. They can suddenly vote to not side with the US.
If we actually cared about pro-American governments over democracy then we wouldn't have run democratic elections in Iraq, a government that's now rather anti America.
Despite the Iraqi leader being against the US presence in Iraq, US oil companies are still making huge profits in Iraq and the US military is still in Iraq as an "advisory role" even more powerful than the one mentioned in the article.
Plus, I can't imagine it's easy to create a truly pro-US government in Iraq no matter how hard you try.
If that were the case it wouldn't have even attempted implementing the Bretton Woods system because it is inherently unstable and creates unstable governments.
Instead of trying to maximize trade imbalances between countries one should have adopted a system that minimizes trade imbalances between countries.
The reason this isn't done is because you would rather be the king of nations over other poor nations than if you were an equal and insignificant country among many.
Don't extrapolate to the past into the future. The soviet union collapsed which was a turning point in US external interference. We were trying to prevent the spread of communism (which would often backfire).
The US has historically and currently benefited much more from unstable governments. Why do you think they've invested so much in making governments unstable? Especially if they're "unfriendly" to US business interests
The West/ US interventions were always supported by the population, that's why the amount of casualties from US/West military is so low.
In many cases there are barely boots on the ground and the actual work is done by civilians protesting en masse. ( They were already protesting before interventions).
It doesn't mean there are no casualties, but that's mostly lowered by the interventions ( by lowering authoritarian military strength)
Historically is different than currently. Historically the fight was against the spread of communism and so we propped up dictatorships all over the world that would prevent the spread of communism in their countries (which often backfired). Currently that is no longer the case because communism is basically dead for all intents and purposes.
It seems like the US wants weak trading partners with lots of natural resources more than it wants stability. There's a long history of them interfering and shaping regimes in countries where the government was left-wing, anti-US or linked to China/USSR, rich in oil/minerals/crops, or threatening to form a large trading bloc. South America in the early-mid 19th century, the Middle East more recently. Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, these are not countries that US intervention has helped to stabilise.
Shaping the politics of other countries with soft power is normal diplomacy. Don't confuse that with pushing for violent overthrow of the governments of other countries.
>In what was known as Operation Cyclone, the U.S. government provided weapons and funding for a collection of warlords and several factions of jihadi guerrillas known as the Afghan mujahideen fighting to overthrow the Afghan government.
Iraq:
>The CIA launched DBACHILLES, a coup d'état operation against the Iraqi government, recruiting Ayad Allawi, who headed the Iraqi National Accord, a network of Iraqis who opposed the Saddam Hussein government, as part of the operation. The network included Iraqi military and intelligence officers but was penetrated by people loyal to the Iraqi government.[349][350][351] Also using Ayad Allawi and his network, the CIA directed a government sabotage and bombing campaign in Baghdad between 1992 and 1995.
Libya:
>France, the United States and the United Kingdom launched the 2011 military intervention in Libya with Operation Odyssey Dawn, US and British naval forces firing over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles,[404] the French and British Air Forces[405] undertaking sorties across Libya and a naval blockade by Coalition forces.
Syria:
>Starting in 2013, the U.S. provided training, weapons and cash to Syrian vetted moderate rebels,[411][412] and in 2014, the Supreme Military Council.
I'm quite aware of history, but if you were aware of current events you wouldn't be agreeing with this. This hasn't been the policy of the US since the soviet union fell. It's been over 30 years since this was the policy of the US.
You could argue probabilities, causation vs. correlation, etc. - but the data on which countries have had their military trained by the U.S., vs. which countries have had military coups is fairly black-and-white. And the WSJ is not exactly a left-wing peacenic paper, to have knee-jerk or click-bait reasons to oppose U.S. training of foreign militaries.
> The US wants stable governments...
That line of argument tends to assume that the U.S. is both monolithic, and highly competent in the planning & conduct of its foreign policy. Vs. looking at history...
