From the Halls of Montezuma ...

• Author: Pal, Amitabh
• Position: Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer - Book review

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq By Stephen Kinzer Times Books. 384 pages. $27.50.

When I started becoming politically aware, one of the first things that caused me to sit up and take notice was the CIA's role in bringing about "regime change" around the world. During the Iranian hostage crisis, Time magazine once carried a single-line mention of the 1953 CIA-directed removal of Mohammed Mossadegh that surprised the hell out of me. In the early 1980s, when Missing came to New Delhi, a newspaper dealt with the U.S. role in the ouster of Salvador Allende in Chile, a further shock to me. And then there were the repeated assertions of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi about the intrigues of a "foreign hand" against her--not-so-subtle references to the CIA. Those of us who disliked her dismissed her mutterings. Only later did I learn that her accusations--exaggerated as they may have been--were based in part on the Pinochet takeover and the 1975 overthrow and killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Bangladesh next door in a U.S.-approved coup.

Now Stephen Kinzer examines fourteen instances where the United States has been the major force behind the removal of governments around the world.

Kinzer is well qualified to write this book. A former New York Times bureau chief, he co-wrote Bitter Fruit and wrote All the Shah's Men, invaluable accounts of the CIA-orchestrated coups against the Arbenz and Mossadegh administrations in Guatemala and Iran, respectively. Apparently, Kinzer thought it best to enlarge his scope and publish a "comprehensive" guide to U.S. ouster of governments since the turn of the last century.

"The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not an isolated episode," writes Kinzer. "It was the culmination of a 110-year period during which Americans overthrew fourteen governments that displeased them for various ideological, political, and economic reasons."

One problem with this important book, though, is the number fourteen--and the way Kinzer arrived at it. His basis for inclusion is so narrow that he omits several obvious candidates. William Blum, for instance, in Killing Hope, cites dozens of cases just since World War II where the United States played a prominent destabilizing role.

"This book treats only cases in which Americans played the decisive role in deposing a regime," Kinzer states. "Chile, for example, makes the list because, although many factors led to the 1973 coup there, the American role was...