Foreign interventions by the United States
[2] The 19th century formed the roots of United States foreign interventionism, which at the time was largely driven by economic opportunities in the Pacific and Spanish-held Latin America along with the Monroe Doctrine, which saw the U.S. seek a policy to resist European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere.
The United States Navy has been involved in anti-piracy activity in international and foreign territory throughout its history, from the Barbary Wars to combating modern piracy off the coast of Somalia and other regions.
[12] A series of Neutrality Acts passed by the U.S. Congress in the 1930s sought to return foreign policy to non-interventionism in European affairs, as it had been prior to the American entry into World War I.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's cash and carry policy was a precursor to what would become the Lend-Lease program, which "lent" a wide array of resources and weapons to many countries, especially Great Britain and the USSR, ostensibly to be repaid after the war.
In 1949, during the Truman administration, a coup d'état overthrew an elected parliamentary government in Syria, which had delayed approving an oil pipeline requested by U.S. international business interests in that region.
[38]: 65–66 In the early 1950s, the CIA spearheaded Project FF, a clandestine effort to pressure the Egyptian king Farouk I into embracing political reforms amicable to American interests.
[41][42][43] The CIA armed an indigenous insurgency in order to oppose the invasion and subsequent control of Tibet by China[44] and sponsored a failed revolt against Indonesian President Sukarno in 1958.
American efforts to sabotage Cuba's national security played a significant role in the events leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which saw the U.S. blockade the island during a confrontation with the Soviet Union.
[63] The CIA organized Hmong people to fight against the Pathet Lao, and used Air America to "drop 46 million pounds of foodstuffs....transport tens of thousands of troops, conduct a highly successful photoreconnaissance program, and engage in numerous clandestine missions using night-vision glasses and state-of-the-art electronic equipment.
"[64] After sponsoring a coup against Ngô Đình Diệm, the CIA was asked "to coax a genuine South Vietnamese government into being" by managing development and running the Phoenix Program that killed thousands of insurgents.
Although David Chandler argued that the bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted--it broke the communist encirclement of Phnom Penh,"[70] others have claimed it boosted recruitment for the Khmer Rouge.
[72] In 1970, at the request of President Richard Nixon, the CIA planned a "constitutional coup" to prevent the election of Marxist leader Salvador Allende in Chile, while secretly encouraging Chilean Armed Forces generals to act against him.
[75] However, Peter Kornbluh asserts that the CIA destabilized Chile and helped create the conditions for the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, which led to years of dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet.
[citation needed] In 1973, Nixon authorized Operation Nickel Grass, an overt strategic airlift to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel during the Yom Kippur War, after the Soviet Union began sending arms to Syria and Egypt.
[78][79] Months after the Saur Revolution brought a communist regime to power in Afghanistan, the U.S. began offering limited financial aid to Afghan dissidents through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, although the Carter administration rejected Pakistani requests to provide arms.
[80] After the Iranian Revolution, the United States sought rapprochement with the Afghan government—a prospect that the USSR found unacceptable due to the weakening Soviet leverage over the regime.
The United States Navy launched Operation Praying Mantis in retaliation for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf during the war and the subsequent damage to an American warship.
[87] Under Carter and Reagan, the CIA repeatedly intervened to prevent right-wing coups in El Salvador and the U.S. frequently threatened aid suspensions to curtail government atrocities in the Salvadoran Civil War.
[88] In 1983, after an internal power struggle ended with the deposition and murder of revolutionary Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, the U.S. invaded Grenada in Operation Urgent Fury and held free elections.
[92] In 1995, the U.S. and NATO militarily intervened in Bosnia and Herzegovina against the Army of Republika Srpska as part Operation Deliberate Force, an air campaign aimed at halting attacks on UN safe zones and civilians.
A 2016 study by Carnegie Mellon University professor Dov Levin found that the United States intervened in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000, with the majority of those being through covert, rather than overt, actions.
[99] The War on Terror saw the U.S. military and intelligence community evolve its asymmetric warfare capabilities, seeing the extensive usage of drone strikes and special operations in various foreign countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia against suspected terrorist groups and their leadership.
[103] Though "Operation Enduring Freedom" (OEF) usually refers to the 2001–2014 phase of the War in Afghanistan, the term is also the U.S. military's official name for the War on Terror, and has multiple subordinate operations which see American military forces deployed in regions across the world in the name of combating terrorism, often in collaboration with the host nation's central government via security cooperation and status of forces agreements: In 2003, the U.S. and a multi-national coalition invaded and occupied Iraq to depose President Saddam Hussein, whom the Bush administration accused of having links to al-Qaeda and possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) during the Iraq disarmament crisis.
In the late 2000s, the United States Naval Forces Europe-Africa built the Africa Partnership Station to train coastal African nations in maritime security, including enforcing laws in their territorial waters and exclusive economic zones and combating piracy, smuggling, and illegal fishing.
[136] By 2009, the U.S. provided large amounts of aid and counterinsurgency training to enhance stability and reduce violence in President Álvaro Uribe's war-ravaged Colombia, in what has been called "the most successful nation-building exercise by the United States in this century".
In June 2014, during Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. re-intervened into Iraq and began airstrikes against ISIL there in response to prior gains by the terrorist group that threatened U.S. assets (including the U.S. embassy) and Iraqi government forces.
In March 2015, President Obama declared that he had authorized U.S. forces to provide logistical and intelligence support to Saudi Arabia in their military intervention in Yemen, establishing a "Joint Planning Cell" with them.
[147] In 2019, tensions between the U.S. and Iran triggered a crisis in the Persian Gulf which saw the U.S. bolster its military presence in the region, the creation of the International Maritime Security Construct to combat attacks on commercial shipping, and the assassination of prominent Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
[149][150][151] In response to the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, the Obama administration established the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), a program dedicated to bolstering American military presence in Central and Eastern Europe.
Donald Lu, US Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asia evaded the question regarding his meeting with Pakistan's Ambassador to the U.S.[162] Khan's party alleged that there is a close connection between regime changes after UN's Ukraine Resolution.
