ISTANBUL

Last week’s US strikes on Venezuela have renewed focus on Washington’s long record of military and political intervention across Central America, the Caribbean and South America.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump confirmed that US forces carried out a “large scale strike against Venezuela,” and said that President Nicolas Maduro has been captured and flown out of the country.

The latest escalation came against the backdrop of decades of US intervention across the region.

US policy toward the Americas was largely shaped by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, when President James Monroe warned European powers against further colonial involvement in the Western Hemisphere. It has since been repeatedly cited by later presidents seeking to justify US intervention in the region.

By the late 19th century, the US had increasingly relied on military power to counter leftist movements and Soviet influence, as well as to protect trade routes, commercial interests and political influence, particularly in countries close to its borders.

Below is a list of major US interventions and operations across the Americas.

Central America

Guatemala

In 1954, the US played a key role in the ouster of democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.

Arbenz’s land reform plans, including measures affecting US-owned companies, alarmed Washington during the Cold War.


The CIA, under US President Dwight Eisenhower, organized and supported a coup that led to Guzman’s overthrow and the rise of a military-backed government led by Carlos Castillo Armas.


Guatemala later descended into civil war lasting more than three decades, leaving hundreds of thousands of people dead or missing.

Nicaragua and Honduras

Nicaragua has experienced some of the most prolonged US intervention in the region.

Between the mid-19th century and the 1930s, US troops entered the country several times, later backing the Somoza family, whose dictatorship ruled for more than 40 years.


In Honduras, US forces repeatedly intervened in the early 1900s, often to protect American agricultural companies. These actions are said to have weakened civilian governance and strengthened military control.

Panama

In mid-December 1989, the US invaded Panama during the presidency of George H. W. Bush.

The aim of the “Just Cause” military operation was to depose Panama’s de facto ruler, Gen. Manuel Noriega.


Wanted by US authorities on drug trafficking and money laundering charges, Noriega was later extradited to the US, imprisoned in France, and eventually returned to Panama, where he died in prison in 2017.

Caribbean

Cuba

After Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 by overthrowing Fulgencio Batista, relations between the US and Cuba rapidly deteriorated.

In 1961, the US, then led by President John F. Kennedy, backed an invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow Castro by seizing territory and triggering an uprising.


The covert operation, known as the “Bay of Pigs invasion,” failed and reinforced Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union, deepening Cold War tensions in the Caribbean and cementing decades of hostility between Washington and Havana.

Haiti

The US has invaded Haiti several times, including one of its longest occupations, which lasted from 1915 to 1934.

Following the assassination of President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam in 1915, US President Woodrow Wilson sent marines into Haiti “to restore order and maintain political and economic stability in the Caribbean.”

In 1994, under “Operation Uphold Democracy,” the US led an incursion to remove the military regime installed after the 1991 coup and reinstate elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

However, in February 2004, Aristide was removed from power amid an armed uprising, international pressure and direct involvement by foreign powers, including the US, Canada and France, which formed a Multinational Interim Force to force him out.

Grenada

In 1983, the US and a coalition of Caribbean countries launched an operation to overthrow a military government in Grenada.

“Operation Urgent Fury,” led by US President Ronald Reagan, deployed about 7,000 troops and marines against Grenadian forces and Cuban personnel on the island.

The operation followed rising tensions between the US and the Grenadian government led by Maurice Bishop’s New Jewel Movement, a Marxist-Leninist group.

US researcher William G Ratliff, in a paper "United States Invades Grenada," wrote that Washington moved to intervene after fearing Grenada could become a Soviet-Cuban base.

Dominican Republic

In the 1960s, a civil war broke out after the military seized control of the Dominican Republic and overthrew Juan Bosch, a reform-minded president.

Amid fears of a leftist takeover during the Cold War, the US invaded the Dominican Republic in April 1965, sending thousands of troops to the Caribbean nation.

Then-US President Lyndon B. Johnson claimed that there was danger that the country could become "another Cuba."

Following the US intervention, the fighting was brought to an end, and the elections were held in 1966, bringing Joaquin Balaguer, a conservative politician, to power.

South America

Analysts observe that US involvement in South America relied less on direct military occupation and more on covert operations, diplomatic pressure and support for allied military regimes, particularly during the Cold War.

During the 1970s, US-backed military regimes in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay coordinated repression through Operation Condor, targeting political opponents across borders.

In Chile, the US is said to have carried out covert actions to destabilize the government of socialist President Salvador Allende between 1970 and 1973 through economic pressure and accusations of CIA operations, leading to his ouster in a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet.

According to the office of historian in the US State Department, the US had a "long history of engaging in covert actions in Chile; it had provided funds in support of electoral candidates, run anti-Allende propaganda campaigns, and had discussed the merits of supporting a military coup in 1970."

In Brazil, the US backed a 1964 military coup that removed President Joao Goulart from power.

In Bolivia, Washington is said to have supported military governments and exerted political pressure following coups in 1964 and 1971.

Researcher James F. Siekmeier writes in his paper on US-Bolivia relations that the "decision in the late 1950s to significantly increase U.S. military assistance to Bolivia’s relatively small military emboldened that military, which staged a coup in 1964, snuffing out democracy for nearly two decades."

During this period, Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara was captured and executed by Bolivian forces in 1967 following an operation supported by the CIA.