Why The West Should Be Extremely Ashamed of Its Post-WW2 History

23 May 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Up until 25 July 1945, there was a real possibility for The West — the Governments that have been depending upon the U.S. Government for leadership (political, economic, financial, military, and otherwise) — to develop in a democratic direction, instead of in some sort of dictatorial direction (being ruled only by the wealthiest, and/or only by some clergy — that’s to say: heading toward either an aristocratic, or else a theocratic, dictatorship). The U.S.-led Governments had been generally aristocratic — wealth-based — but heading in a democratic direction, and there was real hope, at the end of WW2, for democracy to expand instead of contract. But then the military-industrial complex got started under President Truman on that date (25 July 1945) when he aimed his nation to take over the entire world; he took the advice from his personal hero, General Eisenhower, and from the leader of the English Empire, Churchill, both of whom had told him that if the United States would not take over the entire world, the Soviet Union would. This was the day when the Cold War started: Truman told Stalin that the United States Government must have some power over the lands that the Soviet Union had liberated from Hitler, and that the Soviet Union would have no power over the lands that the United States and England had liberated from Hitler. Stalin said he was opposed to America having any power over the countries that the Soviet Union had liberated, and that he was also opposed to the Soviet Union having any power over the countries that the U.S. and UK had liberated. That night, Truman wrote to his wife saying proudly that he had angered Stalin by this refusal by Truman to accept Stalin’s position (that his Government had the same rights that America’s, and England’s, do — no more and no less).

The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists — blocks from linking to — sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article “United States involvement in regime change” lists 22 such “regime changes” before Truman created the CIA in 1947, but all of those were invasions or else were indigenous internally generated overthrows of their own nation’s Governments, but which governmental overthrows were merely supported by (instead of initiated by) the U.S. Government — none was a U.S. coup. All U.S. coups were after 25 July 1945, and the first ones were coup-attempts. (But far more were military invasions.)

In other words: America’s coup-operations started virtually as soon as Truman came into power and then decided, on 25 July 1945, to start America onto the path of ultimately taking control over the entire world (it’s called the “neoconservative” path).

On 19 July 2024, I headlined “64 U.S. Coups During 1947-1989” and presented the list from “the highly regarded 2018 academic book Covert Regime Change, by Lindsey O’Rourke.” I noted that in addition, there were at least two that Lindsey O’Rourke had failed to mention — Thailand in 1948, and Indonesia in 1965 — both of which had been successes for the U.S. regime, not failed attempts. So, during that time-period (i.e., in the Cold War), there were at least 66. And here are the 32 of those 66 which were successful:

32 Successful U.S. coups during 1947-1989:

Italy 1947-48

[Thailand 1948]

France 1947-52

Iran 1952-53

Guatemala 1952-54

Lebanon 1957-58

Congo 1960

Dominican Republic 1960-61

Dominican Republic 1961-62

South Vietnam 1963

Brazil 1964

[Indonesia 1965]

Bolivia 1963-66

Japan 1952-68

Haiti 1965-69

Bolivia 1971

Guyana 1961-71

South Vietnam 1967-71

Italy 1972-73

Chile 1960-73

Portugal 1974-75

Angola 1975-76

Grenada 1979

Chad 1981-82

Philippines 1984-86

Angola 1985-88

Chile 1984-89

Panama 1987-89

Afghanistan 1979-89

Nicaragua 1980-89

Poland 1981-89

Cambodia 1982-89

Libya 1982-89

That book also states:

Perhaps given the notoriety of these cases, covert regime changes are sometimes viewed as an artifact of the Cold War [her book ended just before that ended.] Regime change is not, however, just a Cold War phenomenon. On the contrary, each American administration in the post-Cold-War era has embraced regime-change, intervening overtly and covertly in places such as Haiti (1994), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and Syria (2012).

Then, after this list of U.S. regime-change operations that destroyed countries and harmed the interests of the American peple but which were extremely profitable for American billionaires, she says “In simplest terms, states launch both covert and oivert regime changes to increase their security and the security of their allies.” That sentence is a flaming give-away of the author’s covering-up for the billionaires, and ignoring the actual dictatorship by them, in which she functions. (Otherwise, her book would likely not have been published.)

She then says “The first precondition is that the dispute must be based on the perception of a chronic, irreconcilable divergence of national security interests,” not on America’s billionaires trying to get cheap access to the natural resources, and to the low wages, of the targeted nation's human resources (the workers there).

Her book is filled with political-’science’ theory, which ignores the simple limitless greed of the beneficiaries of these regime-change operations (not only covert but overt, and also by means of economnic sanctions, and blockades, and subversions, etc.).

The book does, however, frankly acknowledge that the U.S, Government’s classification of covert regime change, laid out in National Security Council Directive 10/2 in 1948, says:

The National Security Council … has determined that, in the interests of world peace [and Hitler famously claimed that that was his objective, too] and U.S. national security, the overt foreign activities of the U.S. Government must be supplemented by covert operations … so planned and executed that any government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.

This at least suggests that the U.S. Government intentionally hides from the public the sheer and limitless greed of the actual masters behind these operations: American billionaires — the beneficiaries of these operations.

The book goes on to say that it “presents a security-based theory of regime change.” Of course, the beneficiaries are very pleased with that false theory, which absolves them and fits the false hypothesis that post-1945 America is a democracy instead of an aristocracy: the objective of all this bloodshed and massive destruction worldwide by the U.S. Government is the nationnal security of the American people, not the personal greed of the actual beneficiaries from it.

Internally within the U.S., this aristocracy is starting to be publicly acknowledged by even mainstream media, such as, for example, the Democratic Party neoconservative magazine Foreign Policy, which headlined on 25 March 2025, “Is America a Kleptocracy?”, because President Trump so very obviously is that and happens to be a Republican (and so the magazine can pretend that his immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, wasn’t the most corrupt President in U.S. history until Trump in his second term is exceeding even that).

The way to keep the voters fooled is to have them believe that it’s a partisan matter, instead of being pervasive throughout the U.S. aristocracy in BOTH Parties. For thousands of years, this has been the way aristocracies have gotten away with it — distracting the public to hate “the Blacks” or “the Jews” or the immigrants, or the opposite political Party, whatever — any “them” — INSTEAD of to hate the real malefactors, the super-rich, who benefit from this corruption and imperialism. All of the public pay for it, but only the wealthiest.01% of the wealthiest .01% benefit from it.

This is what’s destroying the world. Not merely the limitless greed of the billionaires, but the public’s seemingly equally limitless willingness to blame anyone BUT those actual enemies of the public.

And under Trump now, things are plunging to the bottom. And yet his suckers still support him, just as Biden’s suckers had supported him. Nothing is getting in the way of the plunge. That is the phase that we all are in right now.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.