Overthrow

February 20, 2006
The recent ouster of Saddam Hussein may have turned "regime change" into a contemporary buzzword, but it's been a tactic of American foreign policy for more than 110 years. Beginning with the ouster of Hawaii's monarchy in 1893, Kinzer runs through the foreign governments the U.S. has had a hand in toppling, some of which he has written about at length before (in All the Shah's Men
, etc.). Recent invasions of countries such as Grenada and Panama may be more familiar to readers than earlier interventions in Iran and Nicaragua, but Kinzer, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times
, brings a rich narrative immediacy to all of his stories. Although some of his assertions overreach themselves—as when he proposes that better conduct by the American government in the Spanish-American War might have prevented the rise of Castro a half-century later—he makes a persuasive case that U.S. intervention destabilizes world politics and often leaves countries worse off than they were before. Kinzer's argument isn't new, but it's delivered in unusually moderate tones, which may earn him an audience larger than the usual crew of die-hard leftists.

March 15, 2006
Narrating 12 instances of American toppling of foreign governments, Kinzer strives to detect motivations common to the incidents, settling frequently on the protection of American international business. Some of Kinzer's cases simply don't fit the model of the nefarious corporation (the 1963 coup against South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem; the 1983 invasion of Granada). Yet others manifestly do, such as the agitation of American banana interests over the communist leanings of Guatemala's Jacobo Arbenz. Perhaps better read as a series of discrete histories, Kinzer's book indubitably reminds Americans that their country has forced the fall of governments it doesn't like for more than a century. Commenting negatively on justifications for interventions, Kinzer dramatizes their precipitating events and decision makers. William McKinley, William Howard Taft, John Foster Dulles, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush are the main protagonists; the Mossadeghs and Noriegas, their antagonists. From a former foreign correspondent, this is fluidly composed popular history with a censorious point of view.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)

March 15, 2006
"New York Times" foreign correspondent Kinzer has collected 14 cases in which the United States overthrew another government, starting with the 1893 annexation of Hawaii. By doing so, he creates an image of U.S. policymakers as arrogant, ignorant, and driven entirely by self-interest. His analysis of overthrow operations in Cuba, the Philippines, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Grenada, Iran, Vietnam, Chile, and Afghanistan suggests that the invasion of Iraq was not an isolated case but an extension of settled American policy. Kinzer considerably vitiates his thesis, however, by ignoring the two world wars entirely, even though the wartime aim of the Allies in Europe, for instance, was explicitly regime change. He overreaches in arguing that 9/11 stemmed directly from the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1953, an assertion he originally made in "All the Shah -s Men". The chapter on Iraq attacks the Bush administration, comparing its mistakes to those of presidents from William McKinley on. Although not a balanced portrayal, this book is recommended as an addition to collections on foreign affairs. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 12/05.]" -Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS"

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