Book Review: Overthrow — America’s Century of Regime Change by Stephen Kinzer
Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow is a necessary book for understanding how the modern world has been shaped — not by diplomacy or democracy, but by force. Across the last century, the United States has systematically overthrown governments that stood in the way of its interests, often replacing democratically elected leaders with hand-picked authoritarians. The result? A world order that, while painted in the language of freedom, has been built through military interventions, economic sabotage, and covert intelligence operations.
Kinzer meticulously details these interventions, and reading them in sequence is staggering. The playbook rarely changes: first comes the economic pressure, then the propaganda campaign, and if those don’t work, the military steps in. Iran in 1953 is a textbook case. When Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh moved to nationalize his country’s oil industry — cutting off British Petroleum’s stranglehold — the CIA and MI6 launched Operation Ajax, paying off military officers, funding protests, and spreading disinformation to topple him. The Shah, installed as a U.S. puppet, ruled with an iron fist for decades, and his eventual overthrow in 1979 led directly to the Iran we know today — hostile to the West, deeply militarized, and a major regional power.
Guatemala in 1954 followed the same pattern. The democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, had the audacity to push for land reform that would take uncultivated land from United Fruit — an American company with powerful allies in Washington. That alone was enough to justify a coup. The CIA armed and trained a force to topple him, plunging Guatemala into decades of military dictatorship and civil war. It’s a reminder that U.S. foreign policy has never been about democracy — it has always been about business.
This pattern played out again and again: in Chile, where Salvador Allende was overthrown and replaced with the brutal Pinochet regime; in Nicaragua, where the U.S. funded the Contras to fight the leftist Sandinistas, despite full knowledge that the Contras were committing war crimes; in Panama, where Manuel Noriega, a longtime CIA asset, was removed when he stopped being useful. The details change, but the results are always the same — chaos, suffering, and U.S. economic interests secured.
Reading Overthrow in 2025 forces a disturbing question: if this has been the pattern for a century, how much of it is still happening today? We already have evidence that the FBI was infiltrating online spaces and egging on extremists before January 6th. We know that the U.S. intelligence community is deeply embedded in Ukraine’s war efforts. We’ve seen Meta admit to censoring political content at the request of the government. The interventions of the past were only revealed decades later — what will we find out about today’s events in 30 years?
Kinzer’s book also reframes Trump’s recent threats to Canada. His claim that the country might as well be the 51st state may sound like bombast, but history suggests otherwise. The first step in U.S. intervention is always economic pressure, and Canada is already feeling the squeeze. If that doesn’t work, what comes next? The country is in a uniquely weak position — while the U.S. has over 2,000 F-35s, Canada’s entire air force consists of just 63 aging jets. The U.S. has more special forces soldiers than Canada has active military personnel. Unlike almost any other nation, Canada allows non-citizens to enlist just to fill recruitment gaps. If a future Canadian government decided to nationalize key industries — following the exact path that led to coups in Iran and Guatemala — could we really be certain the U.S. would respect our sovereignty?
And if not outright intervention, then what? The U.S. has always adapted its methods of control. Today, it’s not just CIA-backed coups — it’s economic coercion, intelligence operations, and the digital manipulation of public sentiment. Canadian media is already dominated by American-owned platforms, and its elections are vulnerable to the same influence operations the U.S. has used abroad. If Washington wanted to steer Canada’s future in a specific direction, would it even need to fire a shot?
One of the more amusing yet telling moments in Overthrow is Kinzer’s mention of a Pentagon computer system that randomly generated operation names. This machine, completely indifferent to history, produced titles like “Operation Blue Spoon” for world-altering military actions. It’s a small, bizarre detail, but it perfectly encapsulates the detachment of those orchestrating these coups. A few keystrokes, a meaningless codename, and suddenly another nation is thrown into decades of dictatorship or war. It reads like satire — except it’s real.
Overthrow makes it impossible to ignore the fact that the U.S. has a long, well-documented history of removing governments that don’t align with its interests, often under the guise of protecting democracy. But these interventions were never really about freedom — they were about power, profit, and control. The book forces us to ask: what is happening right now that we aren’t seeing? What governments are being pressured, destabilized, or replaced under narratives of security or economic necessity?
History shows that by the time these tactics become obvious, the damage has already been done. Recognizing these patterns as they unfold is the only way to truly understand what’s at stake. The threat to Canada may seem absurd, but so did the idea of a coup in Iran, Chile, or Guatemala — until it happened. The more we dismiss these possibilities, the more we repeat the same mistakes.
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