America is the world’s most powerful rogue state

Every state murders and pillages to some extent, but when you are the hegemon, it’s called promoting democracy and freedom. After all, the victor writes the history


Alex Lo Published:  15 Jun, 2020

America has never been a champion of democracy. That was what I wrote yesterday. But a reader pointed out that I only listed three terrifying incidents of US subversion involving the deaths of hundreds of thousands to millions: Indonesia in 1965 and 1966, the traumatic birth of Bangladesh in 1971, and the overthrow and killing of democratically elected Salvador Allende Gossens of Chile in 1973.

He is right; three incidents hardly count as “never”. Today, I have more space. Just a random example: the kind of bananas we get in supermarkets is a legacy due mostly to the United Fruit Company that turned numerous South American countries literally into “banana republics” with the help of the US military and Central Intelligence Agency up to the 1970s.

Still, the list of US subversions around the world is just too long. Stephen Kinzer’s 2007 Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, has a pretty full list. I still recall my life-changing experience of reading, in college, the two-volume Political Economy of Human Rights by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman. Unfortunately, it’s dated, as it only runs up to 1979.

Also, they skip many US subversions against non-state actors, the only type of which you ever hear about are terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, rather than legitimate political parties, popular democratic movements, labour and socialist groups, and persecuted ethnic and peasant organisations, especially in South America.

On a less bloody note, The New York Times cited a 2016 study by Dov H. Levin, now an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong, who found that the US carried out both covert and overt election manipulation operations in other countries 81 times between 1946 and 2000, against 36 by the Soviet Union. These were not outright regime change or military takeover, but “influence operations”, exactly what Washington had angrily denounced the Russians for doing during the 2016 American presidential election.

Sometimes, though, it was a combination of terror and influence operations, such as those against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, by the Reagan administration, which funded, armed and trained the terrorist and drug-smuggling Contras and led to the Iran-Contra scandal. Subsequently, it tried less bloody influence operations and helped the opposition win the 1990 election.

Given Washington’s past behaviour, I have no doubt that it has been conducting at least “influence operations” in Hong Kong. But as anti-China hostilities intensify, our city is being turned into a battleground.

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This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: US is the world’s most powerful rogue state


Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.