US Special Forces School Publishes a Book on Overthrowing Foreign Governments

Declares most past US plotting to be successful

US Special Operations Command can now be said to have literally written the book on US-imposed regime change, with the book “Support to Resistance: Strategic Purpose and Effectiveness” released this week by their official school.

The official study covers 47 distinct cases of US special forces trying to intervene in various countries from 1941-2003. It did not include some of the more famous US-backed coups, as the study said they did not involve “legitimate resistance movements.“

This meant a few pages covering each incident, attempts to sort them into various categories, and determinations if they were successful or failures. Overwhelmingly, they determined their own interventions were successful.

Apparently anticipating the problems in years to come, the study also addressed mounting unrest across the Middle East in its early portion, and waved this away by arguing that it was generally the fault of the Soviet Union, and would’ve happened no matter what the US did.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.