America's Disastrous History of Foreign Coups, in Books and Films

This past weekend was hardly the first time that the American government has aided or abetted the overthrow of a foreign ruler.

Donald Trump’s unprovoked military action toward Venezuela over the weekend marked something of a departure for a president who has long positioned himself as an isolationist opposed to regime change (even if his actual track record doesn’t support the claim.)

But it is hardly the first time that the American government has aided or abetted the overthrow of a foreign ruler. Over the last century, the United States has toppled dozens of rulers overseas, from Guatemala to Iran. In his 2006 book, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, author Stephen Kinzer tallied 14 instances in the previous 110 years, and that was several coups ago.

These operations, driven by greed (particularly a list for oil) but sold as exercises in “democracy-building,” rarely lead to long-term peace or prosperity. As Jeopardy host and voice of moral clarity Ken Jennings recently put it on Bluesky, “America is always like ‘ok but the NEXT regime change will work,’ like when I ‘cut out carbs’ briefly every January.”

To Jennings’ point, there’s a rich body of novels, literary non-fiction, narrative films, and documentaries — about the dire unintended consequences of coups and crackdowns supported by the U.S. Some of these projects focus on the political scheming behind seismic events, while others consider the corrosive impact on everyday people.

Here are a few standouts. This list is necessarily abridged, so please add your recommendations in the comments.

Iran

Orchestrated by the CIA and MI6, the 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran who infuriated Western powers by nationalizing the domestic oil industry, is one of the most consequential of the last century. The fallout from Operation Ajax, as it was known, permanently strained relations between the U.S. and Iran, laying the groundwork for the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the ensuing hostage crisis, and tensions that persist to this day (literally). Even the CIA (belatedly) admitted the takeover was undemocratic.

🎬 Coup 53

Directed by Taghi Amirani and edited by the legendary Walter Murch, this documentary investigates the plot to oust Mossadegh and has been likened to a le Carré spy thriller. In an unconventional twist, actor Ralph Fiennes acts out the transcripts of a revelatory interview with British intelligence agent Norman Darbyshire which was conducted for a 1985 documentary series End of Empire, but cut from the final edit. (Watch on Vimeo)

📖 All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer

Kinzer, a long-time foreign correspondent for The New York Times, provides a lively account of Operation Ajax and the colorful figures involved, including Kermit Roosevelt — grandson of Teddy — who played a pivotal role in installing the Shah as a puppet ruler. (The tale is so riveting, you have to wonder why Hollywood hasn’t made it into a movie yet.)

📖 The Coup: 1953, The CIA and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations, by Ervand Abrahamian

In this concise history, Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian draws from declassified diplomatic cables between the U.S. and the archives of the the archives of the British Petroleum Company to shed new light on American involvement in Operation Ajax.

Chile

On September 11, 1973, a group of Chilean military leaders, led by General Augusto Pinochet and supported by the U.S. government, seized power from socialist president Salvador Allende, who died while the presidential palace was under siege. Under a military junta that lasted the following 17 years, more than 40,000 people were tortured, executed, imprisoned, or disappeared. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger viewed Allende as a grave threat to American interests in Latin America, and spent millions on propaganda and covert operations to undermine his rule.

🎬 Missing

Directed by Costa-Gavras, this 1982 film dramatizes the story of Charles Horman, an American journalist who disappeared in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 coup. Jack Lemmon plays Ed, his conservative father, who travels to Chile in search of his son. Sissy Spacek plays Charles’ bereaved wife, Beth, who is certain that American authorities know more about her husband’s disappearance than they are willing to share. Ed is initially unconvinced, telling Beth, “I don’t want to hear any of your anti-establishment paranoia.” But he gradually sees the light. (In 2014, a Chilean court ruled that American intelligence played a role in Horman’s murder.) The film is based on a book by Thomas Hauser.

It’s also worth checking out other political thrillers by Costa-Gavras, a master of the form. Z (1969) is a fictionalized account of the assassination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis by right-wing zealots in 1963, while State of Siege (1972) examines American involvement in Latin America through the case of Dan Mitrione, an American official who taught torture techniques to regimes across the region and was murdered by Uruguayan guerrillas in 1970. (Ironically, the film was shot in Chile just before the coup.)

🎬 The Battle of Chile

With startling immediacy, Patricio Guzmán’s epic, three-part, 264-minute documentary captures the tense months leading up to the 1973 coup, as well as the day of the event itself. Using handheld cameras, Guzman and his team chronicle a period when the hope spurred in many quarters by Allende’s election was tempered by the awareness of a looming right-wing threat. “We actually see a country cracking open,” Pauline Kael wrote of the film in The New Yorker. The Battle of Chile, widely regarded as one of the most consequential documentaries of all time, was made under extraordinary circumstances: Guzman was arrested and imprisoned at Santiago’s National Stadium for 15 days. Raw footage was stored at the Swedish embassy and smuggled to Cuba and France, where the film was edited. Not everyone made it out of Chile unscathed: Cinematographer Jorge Müller Silva was arrested, tortured, and murdered by the regime in 1974. Guzman’s magnum opus was restored in time for the coup’s 50th anniversary in 2023.

(Available on Ovid.tv and for digital rental.)

Argentina

Argentina was one of six South American countries ruled by right-wing dictatorships that participated in Operation Condor, a U.S.-backed campaign to silence political opposition and crackdown on leftist sympathizers. The military junta waged a campaign of state-sponsored violence to crush leftists and “subversives” of all kind. As many as 30,000 Argentines were disappeared, including many pregnant women. At least 500 newborns were taken from their parents and given to members of the military.

🎬 The Official Story

Directed by Luiz Puenzo, this Academy Award-winning film is set during the last months of the military dictatorship. An upper middle class couple in Buenos Aires struggles with the realization that their adopted daughter may be the child of a disappeared woman. (Stream on Kanopy.)

📖 A Flower Traveled in my Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children, by Haley Cohen Gilliland

Gilliland’s gripping book tells the powerful true story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a group of grandmothers who worked tirelessly for decades to find infants stolen during the military junta.

🎬 Azor

Directed by Andreas Fontana, this 2021 thriller is set in the early ‘80s and follows a Swiss banker who travels to Argentina in search of his business partner, who has vanished under mysterious circumstances.

(Stream on Mubi.)

Guatemala

Not long after Mossadegh was toppled in Iran, Guatemala’s democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz was deposed in another coup (code-named PBSuccess) that was backed by the CIA and American businesses (in this case, United Fruit). Painted as a Soviet sympathizer, Árbenz was pushed out and replaced by General Carlos Castillo Armas, leading to a string of military dictatorships and a bloody civil war.

📖 Harsh Times, by Mario Vargas Llosa

In his penultimate novel, the Nobel Prize-winning author transports readers to Guatemala in the 1950s, as Árbenz ascends to the presidency and attempts to implement a land reform program that angers United Fruit. “I think the tragedy of Guatemala was a tragedy for Latin America,” he told NPR in 2021.

Panama

🎬 The Panama Deception

Directed by Barbara Trent, this Academy-Award winning documentary feature takes a critical look at the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, also known as Operation Just Cause, which resulted in the ouster and arrest of General Manuel Noriega. Narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery — yes, from Bewitched — the film argues that American media downplayed the number of civilian casualties and glossed over the real motivation for the invasion. The PBS program POV refused to air the documentary, but some PBS stations showed it anyway. (Stream it on C-SPAN.)

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Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian