The United States military carried out Trump administration orders to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro to face criminal charges for weapons offenses and narcotrafficking.
Maduro, leader of the criminal drug-trafficking organization Cartel of the Suns, had long been accused of running a narco-terrorism operation in coordination with FARC and other armed groups, and of violently repressing dissent in Venezuela, according to the U.S. State Department.
The operation has garnered divisive reactions, with some celebrating Maduro’s removal from power while others believe it was a dangerous overreach of power by the Trump administration.
For much of its history, the U.S. has engaged in various efforts to influence or change the regimes of other nations, either through invasion, multinational intervention or covert backing of factions.
In many, if not most, of these efforts, the U.S. has received support and backing from people within the country itself or from exiles who fled persecution at the hands of the ruling government.
Here are seven notable instances in which the U.S. has backed regime change in other countries since the end of World War II.
1. Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran) — 1953
A member of Iran’s parliament who briefly served as prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh led a successful effort in 1951 to nationalize the country’s vast oil reserves.
The democratically elected Mosaddegh and his nationalist supporters gradually sidelined the power of the nation’s monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
Due to the threat posed to their economic interests, the United States and the United Kingdom helped stage a coup in 1953 known as Operation Ajax that backed a return to power for the Shah and the deposing of Mosaddegh.
The shah remained in power until 1979, when a revolution established the modern Islamic Republic, with many linking the 1953 coup to contemporary anti-U.S. sentiment.
“Iran’s hard-line state television spent hours discussing the coup that toppled Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on its anniversary in June. In their telling, a straight line leads from the coup to the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ultimately toppled the fatally ill shah,” noted The Associated Press in 2023.
“It still fuels the anti-Americanism that colors decisions made by the theocracy, whether in arming Russia in its war on Ukraine or alleging without evidence that Washington fomented the recent nationwide mass protests targeting it.”
2. Jacobo Árbenz (Guatemala) — 1954
A former military officer, Jacobo Árbenz was elected president of Guatemala in 1950, vowing to continue pursuing various socio-economic reforms that put him at odds with U.S. interests.
His efforts at agrarian reform had made him an adversary of the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, with growing concerns that he would lead Guatemala to communism.
In response, the Eisenhower administration authorized the CIA to launch Operation PBSUCCESS, which sought to eventually remove Árbenz and his allies from power.
“Working in Honduras and El Salvador, the CIA helped to organize a counterrevolutionary army of exiles led by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas,” noted Britannica.
“Exaggerations of the size of the invading force panicked the capital; the Guatemalan army refused to fight for Arbenz, and he was forced to resign (June 27, 1954) and go into exile. He traveled to Mexico, Switzerland, and Paris and was offered asylum in the Soviet-bloc countries for a time.”
3. Sukarno (Indonesia) — 1965
Kusno Sosrodihardjo, a longtime Indonesian nationalist who went by the name Sukarno, was elected president of Indonesia shortly after it gained independence in 1949.
In the 1960s, Sukarno intended to remain president indefinitely and made efforts to increase his ties to China, prompting growing concerns among Western powers.
A failed communist coup in 1965 greatly weakened Sukarno and gave rise to anti-communist General Mohamed Suharto, who successfully seized power in 1966 and put Sukarno under house arrest.
Suharto’s consolidation of power, which included the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Communist Party members within Indonesia, received the backing of the U.S. government.
“American officials carefully tracked the 1965-66 killings, for which the U.S. provided the Indonesian military with money, equipment and lists of communist officials during the height of the Cold War,” explained the National Security Archive of George Washington University.
“One declassified embassy report from 1967, when Suharto was firmly ensconced as a leader, states that the U.S. had a ‘heavy stake in the outcome’ of the authoritarian regime’s success. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International has called Suharto, who embezzled more than $30 billion from Indonesia during his lifetime, one of the most corrupt leaders in modern history.”
4. Salvador Allende (Chile) — 1973
In October 1970, Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile and sworn into office the following month, despite publicly stated U.S. concerns about his socialist leanings.
Allende’s policies of nationalizing various industries and other proposed reforms led to persistent economic uncertainty, widespread protests and strikes and a failed military coup.
On Sept. 11, 1973, the U.S. government backed a Chilean military coup that successfully overthrew Allende and installed Gen. Augusto Pinochet as dictator, who would reign for 17 years.
In addition to bringing to power a regime that would disappear around 3,000 individuals, the coup is credited by some with galvanizing human rights activism in the U.S.
“[There was] a real sense of apprehension about presidential power in particular and the government more generally,” said historian Vanessa Walker to NPR in 2023.
“Cold War paradigms of fighting communism wherever you meet it are really starting to lose credibility in light of the Vietnam War. And so when Chile happens and then the subsequent reports of U.S. involvement in Chile come out, it really calls into question a lot of the fundamental premises of U.S. foreign policy for many people.”
5. Manuel Noriega (Panama) — 1990
General Manuel Antonio Noriega took control of Panama in the 1980s, following the death of military dictator Omar Torrijos, who was killed in a plane crash in 1981.
A former intelligence officer and CIA asset, Noriega was known for profiting from the drug trade, rigging elections and selling U.S. secrets to Communist Cuba.
Extensive protests in Panama in 1987 led Noriega to crack down heavily on free speech and political dissent. By 1989, Noriega had declared his country to be at war with the U.S.
In response, President George H.W. Bush authorized Operation Just Cause, with 13,000 U.S. troops occupying Panama City and toppling Noriega’s government.
On Jan. 3, 1990, exactly 36 years before Nicolas Maduro would be captured by U.S. forces and sent to New York, Noriega surrendered to American forces to face drug trafficking charges. He was convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering in 1992. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
6. Jean-Bertrand Aristide (Haiti) — 2004
A former Roman Catholic priest known for political activism on behalf of the poor, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was first elected president of Haiti in 1990, taking office the following year.
Aristide’s reforms met considerable backlash, and he was removed via a coup shortly after beginning his term in office in 1991. He returned to the presidency in 1994, however.
Reelected in 2000, Aristide championed policies that included raising the minimum wage for employees of American companies and demanding reparations from France.
In February 2004, political opposition forces within Haiti staged a coup against Aristide, receiving support from the U.S., Canada and France. By the end of the month, Aristide went into exile.
“Haiti has never recovered the level of democracy it had before Aristide’s departure. The past 20 years have seen just a single transfer of power from one elected president to another, in 2011,” explained Responsible Statecraft, a publication of the pacifist group the Quincy Institute.
“For over half that time, Haiti’s Parliament has been unable to hold votes, because the failure to run elections left it with too few members. For a quarter of that time, there has been no elected president in office.”
7. Muammar Gaddafi (Libya) — 2011
Colonel Moammar Gaddafi seized power in Libya in 1969, ruling the North African country as a dictator for decades. His government was tied to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in Scotland, which killed 270 people. However, following the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, he acted as an ally of Western powers.
In 2010, amid a wave of pro-democracy protests in the Middle East that came to be known as the Arab Spring, Gaddafi’s government faced widespread armed resistance.
In March 2011, President Barack Obama authorized a series of air strikes against Gaddafi, which were joined by other Western powers. Months later, rebel forces removed Gaddafi from power and killed him.
“In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards,” wrote Alan J. Kuperman, associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, in a 2019 Foreign Affairs piece.
“Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold.”
